Chapter 567: Asking the Guest into the Urn_1

The Trisolaran fleet, according to plan, disengaged from lightspeed travel, and Yun Tianming left the fleet to meet with Cheng Xin.

The warships within the fleet entered combat mode one after another.

About one million Trisolaran hours ago (roughly a century ago), Sophon had captured signs of human ship activity in the vicinity.

The reason Sophon took notice of this area was that there seemed to be a "shipping lane" of an advanced civilization nearby, with large mass ships from unknown civilizations occasionally passing through.

The Trisolarans had been moderately monitoring this area until they detected traces of human ships, at which point they intensified their attention.

One million eight hundred thousand Trisolaran hours before (approximately 180 years ago), Humanity's technology for capturing Sophons made a new breakthrough, and the eight Sophons trailing behind Earth were all destroyed.

From that point on, the Trisolarans had no means of obtaining intelligence about humanity.

Now that they had found traces of humans, they naturally would not miss exploring further.

Most Trisolarans believed that a battle with humanity was inevitable and, according to their estimates, humans must have also developed a starfield civilization (i.e., an indigenous civilization).

The Trisolarans had now evolved into a starfield civilization, with a distance between their starfields and that of humanity not exceeding two million light-hours (about 200 light-years), and a confrontation might occur within the next one or two centuries.

The Trisolarans expected humanity, after a long period of stable life, to become as non-threatening as in the Intimidation Era.

However, the sober-minded Trisolarans knew that as long as Jiang Yu was there, humans would no longer be so foolish and weak.

The Trisolarans thought it best to prepare early and seek to crush human confidence in one battle.

Because humanity's current size was at least one hundred times that of the Trisolarans, if the conflict dragged on, human mass would gradually become their overwhelming advantage.

This was overall strategy.

Upon discovering human traces, Trisolaran military personnel thought they could quietly launch a surprise attack and completely destroy a human world, exerting significant pressure on humanity.

But some feared that this was a human ambush. Only after cautious reconnaissance over fifty thousand Trisolaran hours, the Trisolarans, based on comprehensive intelligence, concluded that it was unlikely to be a Solar System State world.

After another hundred thousand Trisolaran hours of further reconnaissance, they finally confirmed that this was a world of Starship Earth, and within ten light-years, there were no other human worlds nearby.

The Trisolarans knew how feeble the strength of Starship Earth was.

After meticulous calculations and deductions, the leader believed that because of Dark Forest Law, human worlds were likely to avoid communication with other planetary systems due to fears of their world being exposed.

In the contemporary human model established by the Trisolarans, due to human suspicion and distrust of their kind, they were expected to be aware of other worlds but seldom had contacts with them.

Their lag in intelligence led them to underestimate the cohesive force of Jiang Yu.

Without Jiang Yu, human worlds would indeed be fighting each on their own, lacking any unity.

Finally, the leader confirmed the decision to launch a surprise attack on this human world, releasing smoke bombs towards it.

Since this world was still far from the world where the Trisolarans currently lived, even if humanity were to search in this direction, they would not find the Trisolaran world.

This might even detain a portion of the human forces or expose some of their warships, thereby allowing the Trisolarans to seize the initiative in the war.

Thus, the Trisolaran fleet's ambush began, they disengaged from lightspeed as planned and rapidly detonated the dark matter of the planetary system at multiple locations.

In the tremors caused by the dark matter explosions, the star of the planetary system shattered, and massive stellar material spilled out like a broken egg.

The decision to use Dark Matter Detonators as weapons was because the power of the Trisolarans' dark matter weapons had increased more than tenfold since the second battle.

Moreover, the preparation time was significantly reduced, and they would not expose their other new weapons.

The damage inflicted on the star by the dark matter explosion was more than a dozen times that caused by photons; the stellar material poured out rapidly, and soon the star was like a cut open ball, leaving only part of a still-structured sphere.

The star quickly dimmed as most of its material poured into the planetary system. Due to the rapid pouring out, for the next two to three days, the temperature within three astronomical units of the star would reach tens of thousands of degrees.

Ordinary interstellar spacecraft would melt under such high temperatures.

This was just one of the Dark Matter Detonator's explosion points; there were four other points of similar size that twisted the entire space of the planetary system.

Immediately following this, a spatial backflow occurred, causing a large part of the planetary system's space to collapse and disappear, including the planet that Starship Earth had developed.

There was no chance for any humans to have survived in this star system.

The ambush was successful, and the Trisolaran Interstellar Fleet immediately turned around, preparing to retreat.

Just then, the radar alarm sounded loudly, as swarms of flying objects appeared surrounding them!

The commander of this operation quickly realized something was wrong, "Damn! We've fallen into an ambush!"

…

What the Trisolarans did not know was that the Earth-like planet they had destroyed had only some dilapidated buildings overgrown with weeds—it had clearly been uninhabited for a long time.

Because the radius of the "Catcher" system was already 0.6 astronomical units, Sophon didn't dare to get too close and could only vaguely observe that there were human settlements here.

Furthermore, ships were often seen departing from and arriving at the planet, as if it were a thriving human world.

In reality, this was a bait laid down by Starship Earth two centuries earlier!

Cao Yang, the commander of the First Corps, had already been lying in ambush around the planetary system.

The warships had utilized Stealth technology to conceal themselves, and unless the barrier was breached, they remained undetectable.

As soon as the Trisolarans began their attack, Cao Yang also issued the order to counterattack.

At this moment, Cao Yang's hair and beard were snowy white, but his complexion was ruddy and appeared healthy, with barely any wrinkles on his face.

A long time ago, Jiang Yu had promised him that he would command the final battle against the Trisolarans.

Yes, what the Trisolarans thought was a surprise attack was actually a decisive battle that humanity had been preparing for a long time.

At this point, humanity's strength was much greater than that of the Trisolarans, and the earlier the decisive battle occurred, the more advantageous it would be for humanity.

Upon learning that the enemy was retreating, Cao Yang immediately ordered, "Lower the Stealth, and implement a Two-Dimensional Strike against the enemy."

This Two-Dimensional Strike was not like the one the Solar System had suffered from.

It would rapidly form Two-Dimensional Space within a radius of one astronomical unit, and within a fraction of a second, all three-dimensional objects in this range would become two-dimensional.

The Two-Dimensional Strike that the Solar System State had endured was like a child's toy gun compared to this weapon.

However, launching a single Two-Dimensional Strike required a massive amount of energy, and the operation had to be extremely precise, otherwise it could easily engulf the attackers as well.

Many of the Trisolaran ships were unable to evade in time and were reduced to flat images.

Cao Yang used such advanced weapons right from the start because human spacecraft had already found a way to prevent Dark Matter explosions. It was highly probable the Trisolarans had as well, so he decided not to bother with those futile efforts.

Clearly, the Trisolarans were baffled by Cao Yang's attack. During the second campaign, the Solar System State had to pay a heavy price to destroy 72 Trisolaran warships.

In this battle, the Trisolarans lost dozens of warships from the get-go.

Humanity had changed; they were no longer the same!