three possibilities

Their tactics were indeed ruthless—not so much because of the strategy itself but because of what it represented.

If they had employed an all-out detection effort, sparing no resources to find Xiao Yu, there would have been no escaping their pursuit. At that point, both sides would be locked in a direct confrontation, and it would be uncertain who would emerge victorious.

Although their civilization was nearly ten years ahead of Xiao Yu's in terms of technology, Xiao Yu's exceptional and precise command of his fleet could compensate for this gap. In a direct conflict, the most likely outcome would be mutual destruction: the losing side would face annihilation, and the winning side would be left with only a pyrrhic victory.

However, instead of seeking Xiao Yu out, they chose to hide.

This indicated that they were deliberately stalling for time, planning to wear Xiao Yu down by leveraging their advantage of having an entire planet as a base of operations. They intended to drag the situation out until Xiao Yu could no longer hold out and was forced to come out and seek a final showdown, at which point they would have the upper hand.

Of course, Xiao Yu had ways to break this deadlock—namely, by finding them first. However, this was easier said than done.

If Xiao Yu could locate them beforehand, he would regain the initiative. If he couldn't, they would slowly wear him down, and eventually, he could be completely wiped out.

The intense radiation interference persisted for three days. After three days, the interference gradually weakened and finally disappeared.

As the space around him returned to calm, Xiao Yu began to ponder how to locate a planet that was fully concealed and emitting no detectable radiation, in the absence of visible light.

"They chose to hide instead of finding me, which means they don't have absolute confidence in defeating me," Xiao Yu sighed. The aliens' actions once again confirmed their wariness of him.

"I must find them, or else I'm likely to die," Xiao Yu thought to himself. "I traveled for thousands of years after leaving the solar system to get here. How could I just die like this?"

"I must find them, I must find them," Xiao Yu muttered to himself, increasing the central computer's usage to 90%, fully calculating various methods.

An idea occurred to Xiao Yu.

"Perhaps this could work," Xiao Yu thought, as he began using the high-precision telescope to scan the entire visible star field, looking for any stars that had suddenly disappeared or had dimmed.

The method was simple: he would search the entire sky for any stars that had disappeared from his line of sight or had dimmed because they were blocked by the alien planet. He could then calculate the planet's location and distance based on the degree of dimming.

But after a month, Xiao Yu found nothing.

"If no stars are observed to disappear or dim, then there are only three possibilities..."

"The first possibility is that they used some form of camouflage to simulate normal starlight, which I observed. This is unlikely, as this method would require extremely advanced technology."

"The second possibility is that their planet hasn't blocked any of the stars recorded in my 'Heroes of the Galaxy' star catalog. If it blocked a star not in my catalog, I wouldn't know. But this is also unlikely; my catalog currently contains over 300 million stars. The chances that their planet blocked none of them are slim."

"The third possibility is that they are too far away... If they are over 30 million kilometers away, my telescope would be observing more than a trillion stars at that distance, most of which I have yet to record."

"The third possibility is the most likely," Xiao Yu concluded, and he had to abandon the idea of locating them this way.

Time passed slowly, bit by bit. A month went by, then two, then half a year.

Both sides remained silent, neither daring to make the first move.

Xiao Yu had no idea what the other side was up to. Meanwhile, he spent this time continuously searching for a way to find them. But after six months, he had made virtually no progress.

During this time, Xiao Yu had experienced tens of thousands of failures.

He had tried using gravitational acceleration and infrared radiation detection to locate them, but either because of the distance, the gravitational acceleration their planet exerted on Xiao Yu's fleet was too weak, and the infrared radiation was nearly undetectable. Reluctantly, Xiao Yu gave up on this method.

Xiao Yu once again confirmed the distance between him and them: at least 30 million kilometers.

"Maybe... I could choose to run away? At this distance, even if their interstellar missiles travel at 3,000 kilometers per second, it would take over three hours to reach me. I could intercept or evade them in that time. High-powered laser cannons would also be nearly ineffective at this range."

Xiao Yu pondered this idea for a while but eventually had to painfully abandon the plan to escape.

"A wandering planet's best fate is to find a stable star and enter its orbit. Based on the overlapping trajectories of their orbit and mine, it's likely that their target is also Tianyuan IV. I can't change my destination, and their planet probably can't change theirs either. But how could one star system accommodate two civilizations? Only one of us can survive."

Sighing, Xiao Yu continued to formulate plans to find and destroy them.

After yet another failure, Xiao Yu forced himself to stay focused and entered his latest plan into the feasibility testing program. Half a second later, the results were in.

After passing 37,000 obstacles, the plan was ultimately rejected by the 37,001st obstacle.

This meant that the plan was still unworkable.

"No, there must be a way, there must be a way. I am the most outstanding of the seven billion humans; I can't possibly lose. I won't lose!"

Xiao Yu silently encouraged himself, but after the next plan was also rejected, a hint of desperation began to creep into his thoughts.

"Damn it, if it comes to it, I'll jump out and fight them head-on! I refuse to believe I can't take them down!" Xiao Yu fumed, torn between impulsive anger and strong rationality, gritting his teeth, unable to calm down.

Xiao Yu remembered a program he had written when he first left the solar system. After quickly searching, he retrieved the program from a corner of the massive storage unit.

When he ran it, the 3D holographic projector in the cabin displayed a human figure.

It was Chen Mo. She stood there quietly, smiling at Xiao Yu. Her eyes were gentle and calm, emitting an invisible warmth that slowly soothed Xiao Yu's increasingly agitated mind.

Xiao Yu recalled something Chen Mo had said to him back on Earth.

It was after Xiao Yu had just led his team to solve a technical problem that the outside world thought was impossible to overcome. Chen Mo's large eyes had curved into crescent moons as she wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and softly, shyly said, "Director Xiao, you're amazing. I knew you'd figure it out."

At that time, Chen Mo's cheeks had been slightly flushed, and she had looked at Xiao Yu with admiration, wearing a white hat.

"I knew you'd figure it out."

Looking at the virtual Chen Mo before him, Xiao Yu fell into deep thought.

With trembling hands, Xiao Yu wrote a short program, and when it ran, the holographic image of Chen Mo repeated her words.

"I knew you'd figure it out."

"Yes, I will figure it out," Xiao Yu muttered to himself, his agitated mind gradually calming down. With the hologram of Chen Mo watching over him, he plunged back into the sea of data, calculating possible plans and testing their feasibility.

Another month passed. The silent, dark space remained unchanged. It seemed the alien civilization had not yet found a way to locate Xiao Yu.

But today, Xiao Yu suddenly detected something unusual.

Through the faint reflection of starlight, the high-precision optical telescope on Xiao Yu's ship happened to spot something about a few cubic meters in size drifting aimlessly in space.

The object had a regular rectangular shape, with several protrusions resembling signal transmitters on one side.

Xiao Yu's nerves immediately tensed.

"Could it be... Could it be... I knew it, it's not that simple. This must be it. During the signal interference, while hiding, they released a bunch of detectors into space to randomly probe. If one of these detectors finds me, it would send out a broadcast... and they would receive the signal... This way, they avoid exposing their own location and still manage to locate me..."

The more Xiao Yu thought about it, the more alarmed he became.

"Luckily, I spotted this thing first, and it didn't detect me." Xiao Yu began to feel relieved. If the device had broadcasted a signal, Xiao Yu would have received it too. Since it hadn't, that meant it hadn't detected Xiao Yu yet.

Xiao Yu immediately began planning to destroy it.