Chapter 219: The Decisive Battle, Ye Chen's Cunning_1

Of course, the price Ye Chen paid was also extremely heavy—the self-destruction of The Waterdrop, coupled with the warships previously destroyed by it, led to the Human Combined Fleet losing nearly 900 warships.

To destroy a single Waterdrop at the cost of sacrificing 900 warships highlighted Ye Chen's outstanding tactical deployment and excellent command capabilities and further proved The Waterdrop's astounding strength from another angle.

In the original timeline, the 2,000 human warships hadn't even probed a tenth of The Waterdrop's capabilities, and their arrogance earned nothing but the Trisolarans' disdain.

For this battle, Ye Chen had actually been laying out plans for quite some time. Ordinary human scientists could possibly infer the probable nature of The Waterdrop through logical analysis and scientific research. With Ye Chen's military strategy and technical perspectives, there were naturally many speculations about The Waterdrop.

Forty years ago, when designing human warships, Ye Chen had proposed modifying the ships' secondary guns. At that time, he considered that The Waterdrop might possess extremely strong maneuverability and that it might be using strong interaction materials.

The Waterdrop's ability to traverse 4 light-years to the Solar System must have come from an exceptionally powerful propulsion system, thus strong maneuverability was inevitable. Installing numerous secondary guns on warships was precisely to limit The Waterdrop's mobility.

Strong interaction materials are not an unimaginable concept; even earlier, many suspected it was neutron star matter.

In the original timeline, upon receiving the gravitational wave detection report, Ding Yi remarked, "Then it's at least not made from neutron star matter."

It wasn't that the people of the original timeline couldn't guess it, but rather they did not want to believe. The whole world was pretending to sleep, unwilling to wake up, and also unwilling to be awakened by others.

Nowadays, humans also believe they have a slim chance to resist. As Lin Sen said, no matter what it is, strengthening the main cannon's attack energy is the right path.

The development strategy of the human warships was originally based on this, constantly pursuing long-distance attacks in order to enhance their power. Shi Qiang knew that pursuing this kind of long-distance attack was futile; how could so many human elites not know? They all knew how to hide.

The contempt for this era was a fatal error committed by the Trisolarans.

In the end, it was about setting a trap according to the Trisolarans' thought patterns and ambushing them.

Ye Chen employed High-Speed Arrays against the enemy, aiming to set up an ambush.

Ye Chen's initial display of panic and helplessness was feigned; in fact, he was greatly relieved to see The Waterdrop behaving just as he had anticipated.

What followed was Ye Chen's highlight as an actor, "Truly regrettable, I shouldn't have engaged the enemy with arrays."

This act did indeed deceive the Trisolarans who never thought humans could produce so many great actors like Lin Sen.

Commanding the warships to flee appeared to be a panic-stricken move, but in fact, it was during this that the fleet formation was adjusted. The Trisolarans had ultimately underestimated human cunning.

Furthermore, the Trisolarans' gravest error was being penny-wise and pound-foolish, always preferring to use the most optimal method to solve problems.

Although the Trisolarans had greatly improved in strategizing, their ability to connect events was still lacking, and being too rational became their weakness.

If the Trisolarans hadn't been so set on conserving resources and seeking the fastest way to eliminate the federal fleet, Ye Chen's plan might not have succeeded; his plan was a significant gamble.

In Ye Chen's heart, defeating a single Trisolaran Waterdrop in the battle of the apocalypse was enough; it would be a consolation for the two hundred years of human effort.

The real key to victory lay with the Wallfacer, and he had not expected Lin Sen to have already destroyed a Waterdrop in advance.

...

The Trisolaran world.

The Governors' thoughts were heavy, the atmosphere oppressive, revealing expressions of disbelief and anger.

The Eternal Leader's mindset was filled with deep frustration and unwillingness: "We've yet to solve Lin Sen's Global Broadcast Station, and there's now a problem in the First War Zone. We have already lost two Waterdrops.

"We seem to have become playthings for the humans, led around by the nose. Ye Chen and Lin Sen both successfully deceived us. This is not just a tactical defeat but also an intellectual one.

"From the planning to execution, we've actually failed to see through their schemes all along. The cunning and strategy of the humans are indeed impossible to guard against. Our capabilities in this regard are still far from reaching theirs.

"To achieve victory in this war of civilizations, we must comprehensively enhance our strength, including cunning, technology, and tactics. We must learn to use cunning to overcome the enemy.

"How should we respond to the current situation in the First War Zone?

"Should the remaining Waterdrop continue to pursue the remaining 2,100 warships?"

No. 7 was greatly astonished inwardly, for humanity had managed to destroy The Waterdrop on the frontal battlefield, something it had never envisioned, which undoubtedly was the heaviest blow to the Trisolarans.

The success of Ye Chen's strategy was fundamentally due to the Trisolarans' eagerness for rapid victory and their extreme care for their own resources. Had they gone all out, how could the Trisolarans have possibly failed?

Ah, it was very much like that Eternal Leader, fond of meticulous micromanagement, but his luck was always not so good.

Suddenly, a thought emerged in No. 7's mind: missing by just 0.1 seconds, this was even more about losing to fate. Could it have anything to do with the Fuhrer's saying, "The advantage lies with me"?

No. 7, "Continuing the pursuit now is pointless, they will scatter and escape. Just now in the emergency condition, we used The Waterdrop's highest acceleration mode, consuming a large amount of energy.

"Now, if we pursue, the Human Combined Fleet will surely accelerate again, and the remaining Waterdrop will need to use an even higher level of acceleration mode. Moreover, we could only destroy a maximum of 1,100 of their warships, after which The Waterdrop's resources would also be nearly depleted.

"Continuing the pursuit is meaningless.

"And pressing the pursuit too urgently might also cause some warships to choose to flee at extreme speeds, which would also reveal our intent.

"Only by waiting for the other ten Waterdrops to arrive can we resolve all of humanity's warships in one fell swoop."

Fuhrer, "Call off the pursuit, it's meaningless."

Meanwhile, the lone remaining Waterdrop in the First War Zone sped away swiftly.

What was left on the battlefield were ruins and wreckage, with fragments of various warships drifting through space. These colossal remains were silently floating, but they were actually speeding away into the distance.

Each piece reflected the faint starlight, twinkling with a cold metallic sheen, flowing like the Milky Way to an unknown destination.

The remaining warships on the battlefield, seeing The Waterdrop recede, also immediately sent out a large number of lifeboats to rescue survivors. Fortuitously, there were not many casualties, and most were saved, these being the most valuable resources of the Human Space Force.

Because it was uncertain whether The Waterdrop would attack again, the federal fleet maintained its speed but spread out its formation more and more.

But the federal fleet sent out countless rescue boats to save those on the battlefield.

Within The Waterdrop's self-destruct zone, it was impossible for anyone to have survived; all the warships had essentially become space dust. However, among those warships that were earlier directly destroyed by The Waterdrop, most people were rescued in time and still had a chance for survival.

The Waterdrops mainly penetrated directly through the warship's power systems, utterly destroying the sterns, but leaving the rest of the warship relatively intact, providing crew members submerged in Deep-Sea Acceleration Fluid within the life pods a chance for survival.

After the life detectors had confirmed there were no more survivors, Ye Chen used over a hundred of the remaining warships from the First Array Group to bind the warships that had been struck and destroyed by The Waterdrops and towed them to reduce their speed.

These wrecked warships are currently traveling at one thousandth of the speed of light; if not slowed down, these remains could continue inertially to the Trisolaran Star System in 600 years.

...

PS: Regarding how Ye Chen defeated The Waterdrop, the author has deleted a lot of the content.

The original setting was Ye Chen sacrificing a large number of human warships to lure The Waterdrop into an encirclement and then attack the warships surrounding The Waterdrop together.

There were nearly 200 human warships that were directly destroyed by humans themselves, and here the attitude of humans towards war was also discussed. Such a plot might be unacceptable to readers, so it was ultimately deleted, which is why it feels like something is missing here.

In a non-war state, humans have always advocated that life is the most important thing, but once the war starts, human lives seem to be only as valuable as weeds.

No matter how you dress up war, it remains a tool, and the essence of war is even to deceive one's own people. This topic is too deep to be clarified in a few sentences, and I won't discuss it too much.

Many things are indeed necessary, but the more necessary they are, the more cruel they become, often beyond imagination.

The Trisolarans, on the contrary, if they needed to sacrifice someone, would tell the person needing to be sacrificed directly, showing more respect for those who are to be sacrificed.

The stark difference between the attitudes of humans in wartime and peacetime also led the Trisolarans to misjudge the situation; they did not expect Ye Chen to dare issue an order to attack hundreds of thousands of his own kind.

Ye Chen's callousness also made humanity realize that the war of civilizations would be crueler than we could imagine—not just towards the enemy, but also towards our own people.

I feel that it's better not to write these analytical episodes, otherwise, it seems that many readers will be lost again.