Age of Cosmic Exploration

The theories mentioned by Ren Tao were familiar to Yao Yuan and Xiao Niao. It was a famous incident back on Earth. Specifically, two scientists were arguing about aliens, and one of them suddenly asked: if there are aliens, where are they?

The sentence spoke volumes. First, if we accept the premise that there are aliens or other sentient life forms in the cosmos, according to the lifespan of the universe, there has to have been aliens before the birth of humanity or even Earth itself. This is undeniable because the universe has been around for a long time. It is too conceited to assume that humanity is the first life form to appear.

If we pursue this line of thought, why don’t those aliens that have already been there for so many years before the arrival of humanity not show themselves on Earth? Logically speaking, they should have been scientifically advanced enough to make contact with the people on Earth or even make Earth their colony, so why didn’t they?

For example, a space civilization that has mastered space travelling technology one million years before humanity. What can it do in that span of one million years? Perhaps the civilization, like mankind, had a penchant for fighting civil wars, and since the civilization would have better weapons, they blew themselves up in space.

However, the cosmos is enormous. What are chances that every space civilization went through the same thing?

One million years is more than enough for any space civilization to propagate for multiple generations. Logical assumptions say that the population for every civilization will double every one thousand years, and how many one thousand years are inside a million years? The population for that civilization would be large enough to fill every planet they have come across.

So why hadn’t humanity discovered any space civilizations? Even using space surveillance technology, the one thing we could see was a sea of silence and utter loneliness, as if the entire cosmos was home to humanity only.

Based of this observable reality, multiple theories emerged. Some argued there were only human beings in the whole cosmos, and others supplied theories like the Black Forest theory.

However, after that theory was overturned due to the ability to breach light-speed, the Academy had tossed out many other speculations. Furthermore, the discovery of the junkyard civilization proved that humanity was not alone in space, so why? Why there were so few living civilizations in the wide cosmos?

Finally, humanity was proffered a logical answer: the Law of Conservation of Life.

As an example, a civilization has entered space after its 4th revolution. The scientific progress keeps going on even though they are in space, but they realize that the progress is gradually but surely slowing down until it eventually stagnates. Several decades later, the future generation of this civilization suddenly realized that they cann’t understand the scientific theorems left behind by their ancestors and then list them as ancient super high tech technology. Like the space merchants, they could use them but not understand them.

As time passes, the civilization suddenly realizes that the number of retards in its future generations is gradually increasing until the stage where the ratio can’t be ignored anymore.

The obvious question would be "why." No one would know, and even after they scanned through the scriptures left behind by their ancestors, there would not be an answer. Was it genetic? Impossible. With a large enough gene pool and no incestuous marriages, how could there be a massive scale of retardation affecting their newborns?

Just like that, the civilization gives birth to more intelligence-challenged babies, and when it comes time to pass on the torch to these new generations, they realize that there is no intelligence in their future generation, perhaps not even basic knowledge; they are nothing more than ‘meat’!

Finally, before they can reach the sixth revolution, the whole civilization perishes in space. Other than the large spaceship’s ruins, no one can find a trace of this civilization anymore...

Yao Yuan, Ren Tao, and Xiao Niao shivered when they envisioned these images in their minds. It was as if they were seeing humanity’s future, and it was scary enough to steal their breaths away.

Yao Yuan said immediately, "All the information, details, and elaboration about this Law of Conservation of Life, we must get it from the merchants no matter what... It’s lucky that we are the winner of this war that we can demand spoils of war. If we realized that there were retards among our newborns only later on, then it would’ve really been a tragedy."

Ren Tao thought about it and said, "There are two key questions: one, what is ‘soul,’ and two, what is the relationship between cosmic adapters and this Law of Conservation of Life."

Xiao Niao interrupted, "Why are we still hung up on these while we should be preparing for the upcoming negotiations? If we can get another victory during the negotiations, all of this information will naturally be ours. Everything will be clear then. Furthermore, we will end up with a large amount of 4th revolution technologies that we do not have yet, and not to mention those 5th revolution technologies. This might be the kick humanity needs to become a level 3 space civilziation."

The other two nodded in agreement. They stopped discussing the law and started focusing on their own task.

Ren Tao and Xiao Niao returned to question the big-brained alien and its clansmen. They posed them different questions, trying to gauge from their answers and responses to see whether they had been lying to them and also to get more bargaining chips for the upcoming negotiations.

Yao Yuan took over Guang Zhen’s commanding duties... because Guang Zhen was simply too tired. He had not rested ever since the army marched into the space merchants’ mother ship. He was finally given release when Yao Yuan took over.

Under Yao Yuan’s orders, twenty negotiators were selected from the Hope. Other than the business experts, some political experts were needed as well. The selection process surprised even Yao Yuan. The originally peaceful Hope came up in a ruckus because almost all of the representatives had volunteered to represent humanity during the negotiations. Even Speaker Matt volunteered himself, expressing his wish to be part of the negotiation team.

This was going to be mankind’s first negotiation with an alien civilization, and this was a peace talk with mankind as the victorious party. If the negotiations were successful, all those involved would be written into the history books!

Which politicians or lobbyists didn’t want a chance at that? This would be great political asset! In the future, when the number of mankind’s population has increased and the governmental system has expanded, those that participated in this momentous negotiation will have an unimaginable political weight!

Therefore, the vehemence shown by these politicians overwhelmed even Yao Yuan. Initially, he thought no one would be willing to go to the enemy’s mother ship due to fear of death. He intended to force them into it through orders, but obviously he had underestimated their political sensitivity...

In truth, the politicians’ desire for name and fame was much greater than the business experts’. Most of the time, the business people still valued their lives more than fame, but any politician worth his weight would tell you that the most important thing in his or her life was their name. They would pick death if death would bring them a good name after the fact.

Moreover, they noticed that the human army had already set up a bridgehead in the mother ship. Even though the politicians were not particularly clear about what was going on between the two sides, mankind had managed to fight until they had secured a position inside the enemy’s spaceship, so how dangerous could it really get...

12 hours later, a group of about 140 people in size departed from the Hope. Bo Li’s alien robot helped transport this shuttle of people from the Hope to the space merchants’ mother ship. Matt, who led the group, told Yao Yuan when he stepped out of the shuttle, "Captain, do not worry. With our names and reputations on the line, I assure you we will fight until they lose even the pants they’re wearing!"

"...I believe in you."

He wasn’t lying. Yao Yuan had full faith in the group of politicians. After all, earlier, with only 3rd revolution technology, they had managed to swindle alien merchants so much. Now, with a gun to the space merchants’ heads, if this group of politicians were still unable to have a landslide victory, then he would truly suspect the usefulness of this group of politicians who once gave him enormous headache.

In conclusion, after 48 hours, mankind infiltrated the space merchants’ mother ship. The peace talks between mankind and space merchants began at a location already occupied by the Black Star Troopers...