Chapter 170 169: Gravity Boundary

At a command from Li Qingsong, the six fleets, totaling over 30 million assorted spacecraft, began to accelerate as one. Some vessels ignited their own engines to propel themselves forward, while others traveled aboard Space-Air Carriers, using the carriers' power.

The six fleets each headed toward a different star, in six different directions.

Aside from the one true migration fleet, the other five fleets contained not a single Clone. They were all operating entirely on autopilot.

They would follow the flight plans preset by Li Qingsong, flying and accelerating automatically. Once the acceleration process was complete and they entered an inertial cruise, all intelligent control components would self-destruct. Every ship in these fleets would be reduced to a dumb rock, continuing its journey on pure inertia.

Bathed in the light of countless engines, the swarm of ships scattered throughout the Jupiter System momentarily seemed to merge into a curtain of light, illuminating the entire system.

But as the fleets accelerated and receded, this curtain of light gradually dimmed, eventually splitting into six separate clusters heading in six different directions.

The massive form of Jupiter gradually shrank, eventually becoming just another bright point of light that blended into the vast sea of stars.

The Clone that housed Li Qingsong's consciousness stood before a massive viewport, silently watching the star-dusted cosmos whirl by outside.

The vast majority of Li Qingsong's forces were now en route.

However, Li Qingsong had still left some things behind inside the Solar System.

These were technological artifacts, hidden in extremely remote corners far from the ecliptic plane, along with several Clones in hibernation.

They took the form of telescopes, spy satellites, bases, and more.

Controlled by smart programs and powered by low-yield, long-life fusion reactors, they operated as inconspicuously as dust, running silently in forgotten corners of space.

Should they detect any anomalies—for instance, a bright engine plume from a particular direction, or an external force entering the Solar System—those Clones would be awakened.

With the communication technology Li Qingsong currently possessed, transmitting messages across light-years was still impossible.

Electromagnetic waves suffered from too much signal degradation and interference as they traveled through interstellar space. The information they carried simply couldn't be transmitted very far.

The signal couldn't even travel a single light-year, let alone from the Solar System all the way to another star system.

This led to a simple consequence: once Li Qingsong traveled too far from the Solar System, he would lose all contact with it.

It wouldn't matter how many technological devices Li Qingsong left behind in the Solar System; they would be useless to him.

But that was only under normal circumstances. And clearly, Li Qingsong's very existence was anything but ordinary.

'The connection between my true self and my Clones doesn't seem to degrade with distance. Of course, this is just a hypothesis based on the experimental data I have so far, but I believe it's highly probable.'

'This way, no matter how far I am from the Solar System, I can still use the Clones serving as "Observers" to get information from back home.'

'If the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity does come to the Solar System in the future, I'll know immediately. I won't be completely in the dark about the enemy's movements.'

Right now, about 500 Observers were hibernating in various corners of the Solar System, and around ten thousand of the devices and bases Li Qingsong had left behind were operating silently in the shadows.

After a long moment, he pulled his gaze away from the direction of the Solar System and looked toward another point in space.

There, too, was a bright star.

That was the destination of this long voyage.

Two months after the migration began, the immense fleet crossed the orbit of Saturn.

In the fifth month, it crossed the orbit of Uranus, followed by Neptune, and then Pluto.

In the tenth month of the migration, the fleet crossed the orbit of Ceres.

The fleet was now approximately 15.1 billion kilometers from the Sun.

Starting from an initial velocity of 15 kilometers per second, the fleet had maintained a constant acceleration of 0.04 meters per second squared for eleven months. Its current speed had now reached 1,140 kilometers per second.

Through this long acceleration, Li Qingsong had achieved an unprecedentedly high velocity.

Now, traveling at this incredible speed, the fleet crossed the orbit of Ceres and flew into the vastness of Deep Space—a region where not only Li Qingsong but all of Human Civilization had never ventured, having at most launched unmanned Detectors into it.

This region, so much farther from the Sun, seemed no different from the Inner Solar System. It was just as empty, just as vast and deep.

It seemed that no matter how long they traveled, the scenery outside never changed.

Time slipped by unnoticed. Gradually, the fleet reached a point approximately 95 billion kilometers from the Sun.

The Clone housing Li Qingsong's consciousness once again directed its gaze toward the brightest star in the sky.

Even from this immense distance, the Sun was still incredibly bright.

Its current brightness was equivalent to that of the brightest full moon as seen from Earth. But the moon appears as a disk, whereas the Sun was now just a single point of light.

For a single point to possess the brightness of the entire lunar disk made it appear intensely brilliant, almost painfully so.

In that moment, the power of the Sun was laid bare before Li Qingsong.

Even from nearly 100 billion kilometers away, the Sun could still project its light, still cause a person or an object to cast a shadow.

There are different ways to define the boundary of the Solar System, each yielding a different distance.

If defined by the orbits of the major planets, then Neptune's orbit marks the boundary, some several billion kilometers from the Sun.

If defined by the heliopause—the boundary where plasma from the Sun can no longer push back against interstellar space—the edge of the Solar System is just over 10 billion kilometers away.

Beyond this distance, solar plasma can no longer push forward. The region outside is the domain of high-energy interstellar radiation.

But if defined by the gravitational boundary, the Solar System extends all the way to the Oort Cloud.

Based on previous Human Civilization's theories and his own research, Li Qingsong believed that the Solar System had formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and that the Oort Cloud was composed of residual material from the early system's protoplanetary disk.

These bodies were initially much closer to the Sun, forming in a process similar to asteroids. But after the two gas giants, Saturn and Jupiter, took shape, a series of gravitational skirmishes flung these small celestial bodies out to the edge of the Solar System. Over a vast stretch of time, they eventually formed the Oort Cloud.

The Oort Cloud is located more than one light-year from the Sun—a distance of over 9.4 trillion kilometers.

At this point, Li Qingsong's fleet had already crossed the Solar System's radiative boundary, but it was still a long way from the gravitational boundary.