Chapter 710 - 689

About "Karst", or rather, the information shock from an alien civilization, was just too overwhelming; in fact, people who had arrived in the previous few hours all refused to believe it was true.

Yet they also greatly acknowledged the extreme extraordinariness of New Yuan itself, and after receiving guidance about Guo Xiao and GW180509, they rapidly mobilized the information network to verify these contents.

Among the items in the briefcase, Guo Xiao’s "legacy" passed preliminary assessment by several intelligence experts, but forging items from not-so-distant times isn’t particularly difficult, and it’s even harder to verify such features as handwriting.

Forensic identification is an extremely difficult job, as without definitive corroborative evidence, reliance on a single technical method cannot serve as absolute proof.

At one time, several archaeologists and master restorers from the National Museum cooperated in creating a batch of antique replicas for auction. Had it not been for markings made in advance, it would have been virtually impossible to determine their authenticity, which shows how common modern forgery technology has become.

More time was needed to verify information about Guo Xiao himself, but a quick judgment could be made about those advanced technologies and GW180509.

A hard drive containing crucial data held one overwhelmingly persuasive piece of technology: the Yu Qian Formula, as well as the laser-constrained inertial fusion pathway it proposed.

Of course, in the data, the Yu Qian Formula was labeled as "Advanced Unified Equation", and the technical details of laser-constrained inertial fusion had been heavily redacted, but after preliminary evaluation by top nuclear experts called in urgently, they expressed over 90% confidence in its credibility and immediately started conceptualizing a supercomputer model for verification.

One of these top nuclear experts was Fu Mingdong, who was only asked to perform a technical analysis, and like the others who had reviewed the data, he was utterly shocked.

Even though the data was brief, it could be discerned that it was most certainly based on a substantial amount of experimentation and likely had achieved successful sustained ignition. But besides EAST, only the international collaborative project ITER could do this—and could ITER really possess such capability?

With fusion technology preliminarily verified, others were excited but also felt a growing sense of ominous gloom:

Suddenly seeing a ray of hope for controlled fusion was certainly a good thing, but it also pretty much confirmed the reality of an alien civilization, since such technology couldn’t possibly just emerge out of nowhere on Earth.

GW180509 provided the final piece of the puzzle, with the external intelligence network gathering recent information from a handful of Gravitational Wave Observatories; naturally, they discovered public reports of failures at the Livingston Observatory and the accidental death of an employee in a car accident.

It was precisely on May 9, and a little analysis suggested that it had to be the "Black Stone" making a move, the purpose of which was clearly self-evident.

The signals and logs from the gravitational waves that "Departing Fire" received were also reviewed by relevant experts, with no abnormalities found at first glance.

Once the existence of an alien civilization was fully confirmed, the military was the first to respond. Even though it takes over a year for gravitational wave signals to leave the Solar System, they still hurried to prepare defense plans.

Without knowing when the crisis might arrive, the military needed to be always battle-ready, or at least able to respond at a moment’s notice.

As for the construction of the Space Force, one thing at least became clear: the fastest way to form a fighting force would surely be to use existing organizations, namely the space agency.

It’s not to say that the space agency will be upgraded on the spot to Space Force, but the quickest, most convenient method would be military-civil fusion. Civilian projects wouldn’t be put on hold, but the military tasks would have to be taken on immediately, and separation could happen when the time is right.

In other words, Zhong Cheng, in the future, might serve not only as the head of the space agency but also effectively as the commander of the Space Force, in all but name.

However, he himself hadn’t thought that far ahead and was instead preparing to head to New Yuan again with his convoy.

This time, of course, there would be many people going; besides them, a small contingent of elite soldiers drawn from the northwest would be on standby near Rong City.

If the possibility of an alien civilization’s invasion remains years or even decades away, the imminent threat is "Karst".

Upon learning that "Karst"’s entity might be a supercomputer capable of external communication, safety experts immediately thought of "Skynet".

If it indeed was a supercomputer with strong artificial intelligence, it could have controlled the entire world’s network for many years. Even if New Yuan claimed it had been shielded fifteen years ago, what if it hadn’t been?

For instance, could the robots used for defense at New Yuan suddenly turn their weapons and massacre everyone, or infiltrate the missile launch system?

If this became reality, "Karst" could easily annihilate humanity without lifting a finger, covertly fomenting chaos and disrupting intelligence sharing among nations, with countless ways to incite civil wars.

Even though no suspicious traces had been found in the real world upon rational analysis, this possibility couldn’t be overlooked.

Zhong Cheng, however, believed that "Karst" probably hadn’t secretly maneuvered the world, its behavior doesn’t seem intent on destroying humanity.

The experts heading there this time aimed to make contact with "Karst" and unearth more information on GW180509, especially why a nuclear test on the Moon would trigger gravitational wave signals.

Among those selected for this mission, a significant number were frontier physicists, including Wu Yunfeng and Li Shi from the Institute of High Energy.

These two were among the frontliners in the team, second only to a few leads at the Academy of Sciences, and what made them even more special was that they had both signed contracts with the base, so they were "insiders".

The details of GW180509 were highly classified; even they were informed only a few hours before Zhong Cheng and would act as important decoy roles.