Chapter 154 - 153: Infection Celestial Calamity

At this moment, looking at the 160 million Blutuk People spread across a thousand large, hastily retrofitted cargo ships equipped with temporary life support, Li Qingsong felt a tinge of emotion.

A powerful civilization, once boasting a population in the hundreds of billions, had been wiped out. Over 99.9% of its people were dead, leaving only this handful of survivors.

After the Blutuk Civilization occupied Venus, they had relocated the vast majority of their population there to build facilities, carry out missions, and gather resources to supply their war effort.

When chaos later descended, only a small fraction managed to escape—those who could secure a spot on a ship or had their own vessel to flee Venus.

The vast majority failed to get out.

By Li Qingsong’s rough estimate, at least 80 billion people had been consumed by the harsh environment of Venus.

Of the roughly 20 billion who remained, some died on the battlefield, but the vast majority perished in the internal fighting that followed.

In the end, only these 160 million people remained.

This alone was a testament to the brutality of the war.

For Li Qingsong, it was a slight shame. After all, many of the dead Blutuk People had been scientists who possessed a wealth of knowledge.

But it couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t a major issue, anyway; the experts and scholars among the 160 million survivors were enough to piece together a rough scientific framework.

Li Qingsong could research the remaining details himself.

After leaving behind enough Clones to sweep the battlefields of Venus—tasked with collecting valuable Warship wreckage and salvaging any intact vessels—Li Qingsong set a course for Mars, his ships laden with captives. At the same time, he directed his Clones on Mars to begin rapidly constructing a new city.

For the foreseeable future, this city, which Li Qingsong named "Blutuk City," would be the new settlement for all Blutuk People.

Building a new city sounded like a massive undertaking, but the difficulty was manageable if one prioritized basic life support over comfort and livability.

It was just a matter of fully sealed steel frames, along with some air exchange systems, climate control, and other necessities.

The factories were all ready, capable of immediately producing the necessary construction materials. Combined with the capabilities of the Divine Craft AI, Blutuk City had already taken basic shape by the time the cargo ships reached Mars.

And so, filled with a mixture of anxiety, confusion, and fear, the Blutuk captives entered the city.

The interrogations began.

Li Qingsong was primarily concerned with two questions.

First, what exactly was a Celestial Calamity? More broadly, what was the state of affairs in the Solar System’s vicinity, the wider Milky Way Galaxy, and even the Cosmos itself? How did different civilizations interact? What were the taboos?

Li Qingsong had never even left the Solar System, and the Blutuk Civilization was the first alien civilization he had ever encountered. He was completely in the dark about such matters.

Second was the technology the Blutuk People possessed.

The Blutuk People had full Interstellar Navigation Capability, having mastered technologies such as small, ship-mounted controlled nuclear fusion, high-speed ion propulsion, and layered spatial-scanning radar—a whole suite of technologies that greatly interested Li Qingsong. He was determined to acquire them all.

Obtaining them would save him at least several centuries of hard work.

The technology couldn’t be rushed; that could be dealt with slowly. The matter of the Celestial Calamity, however, could be answered immediately.

After a simple screening process to identify the highest-ranking individuals among the survivors, Li Qingsong began the interrogations at once.

As he conducted the interrogations, Li Qingsong also directed his Clones to search for relevant data on every surviving ship and computer to cross-reference the information.

Among this group of high-ranking survivors, the most senior was a confidential secretary from the Supreme Leader’s Mansion.

His position meant he had been privy to numerous core secrets concerning the entire civilization, making him the perfect target for intelligence gathering.

"Why did the Blutuk Civilization leave its home star system and begin migrating?"

The confidential secretary, trembling, spilled everything without any need for threats or torture. "Because... because we discovered signs of a Celestial Calamity. If we didn’t flee, the Celestial Calamity would have descended upon us."

This story corroborated what the Molomans had said before.

"What is a Celestial Calamity?"

The confidential secretary replied, still trembling, "A Celestial Calamity is a general term for any kind of disaster that can annihilate a civilization, is not natural in origin, and comes from beyond the sky."

Li Qingsong paused for a moment, processing the somewhat convoluted definition. He couldn’t help but scoff. "Isn’t that just an invasion by an alien civilization? Why give it a fancy name like ’Celestial Calamity’?"

’Not natural in origin means it’s the deliberate act of an intelligent entity. From beyond the sky means an alien civilization. Causing the annihilation of a civilization... isn’t that an invasion?’

’Put the three together, and what you get is an alien invasion.’

"No, it’s not the same. Well, it’s not entirely wrong to classify it as an alien invasion, but... this kind of invasion might be different from what you imagine."

"Oh?"

"You probably think all alien invasions are like the war we just fought, with both sides piloting technological weapons to attack and defend, right? No, that’s not it. That is merely the method of war between ’orthodox’ intelligent civilizations."

"We call conflict between orthodox intelligent civilizations ’war,’ not a Celestial Calamity. A Celestial Calamity is the threat posed by a *non-orthodox* intelligent existence to an orthodox intelligent civilization. That is what we call a Celestial Calamity."

Li Qingsong was puzzled. "So there’s a distinction between orthodox and non-orthodox?"

"Yes. An orthodox intelligent civilization is one like ours—one that researches technology step-by-step, incrementally improving the performance of its technological creations to eventually possess great combat power and the ability to survive."

"This is the most conventional way to increase one’s power in the Cosmos—at least, in the part of the Cosmos known to us. That is why we are called orthodox intelligent civilizations."

"But non-orthodox intelligent existences—we can only call them ’existences,’ not ’civilizations,’ because they are incredibly complex, diverse, and bizarre. The word ’civilization’ simply doesn’t fit them."

"For example, we know of one type of intelligent existence that excels at infecting other life forms. It uses their bodies as nutrients, hijacking and integrating their best genes to optimize itself. Once it reaches maturity, it abandons the completely devastated ecosystem and continues its journey through the cosmos."

"An invasion launched by this kind of intelligent life is what we call an ’Infection Calamity.’"

"Besides that, there are Parasite Calamities, Microbial Calamities, and... the one that forced our civilization to undertake interstellar migration... the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity, and so on."