A month is not long.
But in such a tense environment it was like years.
When the month ended, the surrounding exfiltration was in the middle of the process and nothing had been found.
At the same time, Jon had Ella conduct a probe against the planet Biryani, and found that there was only a narrow shipping channel between Biryani Star b and Biryani Star c.
Outside of this shipping lane, the civilization on Birijin b would not venture, even their warships were on the surface of the planet, and after reaching 0.1 astronomical units around the planet it was a complete blank slate.
"The civilization appears to be an ant that has been drawn in a circle."
"Although it is able to see and walk outside the circle, the smell of the pen and ink disgusts and frightens it, keeping it inside the circle."
This was Jon's assessment of this civilization.
"Ella, what do you feel is the rating of that civilization?"
Through a month of observation, they also learned more information.
Through the speed of the spacecraft, its use of energy, and the speed of development, all aspects were comprehensively rated.
"Around level 1.8."
"This is an extremely strong civilization that may have even developed for tens of thousands of years."
"Judging from the number of spacecraft, they likewise have an extremely large population size, at least over 10 billion."
For every 0.1 level of civilization difference, it was a 10-fold difference in total energy.
Technically speaking, Jon's fleet plus the current Hundred Eyes fully technology sharing combined with another 100 years or so of development to reach level 1.7.
This civilization was a much stronger one than Jon's current fleet.
Originally, Jon was prepared to retreat first.
But after discovering this characteristic of this civilization, he planned to observe it for a while longer.
"We should be able to simulate the appearance of that civilization's spacecraft."
"We need to enter the interior of that civilization and obtain information about it."
...
Half a month later, a spacecraft with a square box in the front and dozens of tubular independent thrusters in the back, like a steel jellyfish, headed towards that civilization.
After a 40 day voyage it reaches the outer space of the planet Beelzebub C.
Then it was destroyed before it could even get close.
Within almost the next 2 days, the shipping lanes between Proxima b and Proxima c were closed.
The light in the darkness of the planets disappears, and even the defense warships in outer space on both planets begin to flame out.
Day 3.
A half-meter diameter robot spider landed somewhere in the no-man's land of Proxima c. It was surrounded by dilapidated industrial garbage, which hundreds of robots were in the process of disposing of.
It wasn't as cold here as originally thought because of the presence of civilization, and the planet had become livable after a massive injection of greenhouse gases.
The robots didn't have a human appearance, only a boxy, simple shell, which then extended into two mechanical arms that were used to clamp the garbage.
They float electromagnetically and can perform calculations with tons of weight.
Machine Spider jumped on top of a garbage disposal robot, using a gap in the shell to drill into its body, and then disassembled its core for modification.
The garbage robot fell from the air as if scrapped.
No creature came to take care of it, and the rest of the robots went about their own business; these machines clearly did not have high intelligence.
As the machine spider finished a circuit board inside the garbage disposal robot, it dug out its own master control chip and soldered it to it.
The garbage disposal robot began to awaken, and it disassembled the Machine Spider into countless portions to mix into this garbage, and then it began to work just like the other garbage disposal robots.
This went on for a week.
The garbage disposal robot slowly approached the edge of the entire dump.
It saw the life of this world.
Their bodies were heavy and bulky, about two and a half meters tall, their skin was rough like rock, they had three pairs of rhinoceros-like feet, their thick torsos were parallel to the ground like Earth animals, they had no tails, and their bodies were not long horizontally, making them look a bit constricted.
The front of the body has a huge head like a sarcoma, full of ten pairs of bone spurs, the diameter of the head is more than half a meter, but only one eye, only a little bigger than a human's, vision does not seem to be their main senses.
From their shoulders grows a pair of secondary limbs that only have the ability to grasp, the real main limbs for the four flexible tentacles that grow on the chin.
These creatures are more like the monsters of legend, but they are indeed the masters of this planet.
Like the Hundred Eyes grow beyond the limits of human aesthetics.
Their mouths were the most human creature-like, fanged mantis-like mouthparts, and the four flexible tentacles were more like pincers for shoe mouths to aid in feeding, though as they evolved they took on a more dominant function.
The robot listened to the sound of these creatures, and their appearance is different, the sound of these creatures is very rhythmic and light with a strong penetrating power.
They were in the ultrasonic range, reaching high frequencies that the human ear could not hear.
None of these intelligent creatures noticed that there was a robot watching them in the garbage.
They walk back and forth, with great sophistication if human society.
The robot collects them and transmits them toward the universe using light as a medium of information, which is then received and parsed by Ella.
"Light is capable of transmitting information more complex than sound."
"Through parsing, I have taken control of the language of that civilization, and am now translating it for you, Jon."
Jon was lying on a massage chair and was enjoying the massage from the mechanical arms that extended from the massage chair.
Ella played the information she got.
"Did you hear, we found traces of the alien civilization and shot down their spacecraft."
"Nonsense, I was close at the time, that spacecraft was just off course due to an accident."
"That was nothing more than a spacecraft created by an alien civilization to mimic us, just to blend in."
"There really is an alien civilization?"
"The universe is so big, how can there be only one civilization that exists, there must be."
"If there is a higher civilization than us that exists, we must hide ourselves well and not let the higher civilization find out."
"No, now could it be that the higher civilizations have already discovered us? What would they do?"
"Don't be anxious, the higher-ups haven't sent the news out yet, maybe it's just a misunderstanding."
"According to existing theories, the universe is a battlefield, all civilizations are hostile to each other, such as us are hidden, if any civilization is discovered, the higher civilizations will definitely not be able to tolerate the lower civilizations, and will directly use weapons to destroy that civilization."
"That's right, as long as we continue to hide, we won't be discovered by the alien civilization, we are still too weak, we have to develop and keep developing to the limit ..."
In these words, Jon perceived a sense of familiarity.
"Dark Forest Law?"
Ella nodded.
"That's right, this civilization seems to have been meticulously developing, not wanting to be discovered and destroyed by alien civilizations."
"They contracted their warships to the planetary surface and their previous reactions mostly because of this consensus."
Jon perceived a sense of wonder.
It seemed like a combination of fiction and reality, and there was a saying that reality was more magical than imagination.
He smiled.
"Ella, perhaps we can conquer this civilization."