Gazing at the distant luminous body.

Yet, Zhou Yi harbored some doubts.

Is this really the sun?

If it is the sun, then this place should be within the Solar System. The dark environment is indeed identical to the universe, yet there are no meteors or other celestial bodies visible in all directions.

No other planets are visible in the distance either.

And the light it emits is red.

Zhou Yi summoned Xiao Fu.

"It is indeed a star, we refer to it as the Light Creation Star."

The Reverse Flow immediately delivered a judgment.

"As for the absence of other floating objects around, it's very likely due to some technological treatment."

"This space is where the Heavenly People Gem Bodies are active. Just like human houses, with their power, blocking external floating objects from approaching it isn't difficult."

"It seems they live around the star, which belongs to a still comprehensible realm of life."

What Zhou Yi particularly cared about was,

the previous sun that was a serene blue, has now turned into a flaming red.

But from the human perspective, the sun should be white or golden.

Zhou Yi pondered, "The sun observed by the Gemstone Body is different from humans, I can understand that. Due to the vast differences in physiological structures and observational organs... However, this change of color, has also driven the transformation of the Gemstone Body."

"The blue sun appeared more like a pure Energy Body, which affected the Blue Gemstone, but now the Blue Gemstone no longer reacts, while the red sun stimulates the Ruby within me."

"The Ruby is now actively moving in a manner never seen before, the consciousness observation is no longer compressed, and can extend far in all directions."

He asked Xiao Fu: "Does this seem to represent two different cycles?"

"Possibly."

Reverse Flow suggested: "You could try it out."

To be cautious, this time Zhou Yi first shifted his observing perspective towards the direction away from the sun.

He gazed afar.

His vision continuously pushed into the darkness.

Under the enhancement of the sun, this time the expansion reached a far greater extent. After crossing a peculiar black boundary, the outside becomes suddenly clear, and many stars finally come into view in the dark space.

He is indeed in the universe.

Zhou Yi focused on a larger grey celestial body.

After observing for a while, he continued to gaze further into the distance, and then saw another pale yellow celestial body.

Are these Mercury and Venus?

But that's not enough.

However, consciousness projection here has already become somewhat blurry, difficult to push deeper.

Zhou Yi grit his teeth, choosing to consume his own Blue Gemstone. As the energy of each gemstone is ignited and extracted, he gains the power to fly further into the distance.

Then, he encountered a blue planet.

Its surface clearly displayed white clouds, lands like island groups, these scattered continents appearing brown, yellow, and green, the majority of the planet being shrouded in gray fog.

Zhou Yi almost immediately confirmed.

This is Earth.

Just because of the coverage by the Dead Sea, the lands on Earth appeared as if the continents were shattered.

Xiao Fu also mentioned: "It should be. Every world is actually very different, it's hard to find another world so similar in environment, morphology, and internal structure."

After external observations were complete, Zhou Yi turned his viewpoint back.

Now having pinpointed the position of the Heavenly People group, it is located between Mercury and the sun, extremely close to the sun.

Strangely, from the Heavenly People's perspective, the energy released by the sun itself is not high.

It can't even sustain the charging of White Gemstone for the Blue Gemstone.

Logically speaking, given they are closer to the sun than Earth, obtaining Circular Flow energy via the star as a conduit, this place should be much stronger.

Zhou Yi remembers clearly.

Inside the memories left in the Ruby, a Heavenly Person had once descended part of their body into the Dead Sea, quickly completing the charge using Circular Flow.

The distant Earth, could it possibly be absorbing more energy?

To clarify this point, he needs to inspect in the direction of the sun.

Zhou Yi pondered and then decided to try.

He first slowly flew towards the direction of the red sun, moving farther away from his physical form.

Along the way, Zhou Yi also observed other Gemstone Bodies.

They all had dim lustre and no consciousness fluctuations, floating in the void, all already in a corpse-like form.

Carefully avoiding them, Zhou Yi continued his traversal.

He finally reached the end.

A crystalline wall spanning the stars stood in front, like some kind of giant sign prohibiting further progress. Once here, the viewpoint could not move forward again, as if constrained by a powerful force, unable to cross it.

The wall was entirely composed of gemstones, the surface sparkling with dazzling red light.

Zhou Yi found that the light wall also had white, blue, black, and red four-color gemstones.

The colored gemstones were slowly moving, making the high wall spanning the starry sky resemble an electronic screen.

However, at this time, nearly all the rubies were gathered in the middle, releasing a high-intensity red flash that suppressed the brightness of the same group, completely overshadowing the other colors.

The ultra-long-range consciousness perspective could only advance through the light formed by the rubies, unable to break out of this trajectory.

"What's going on?"

Zhou Yi asked Xiao Fu: "Is it the Ruby cycle now, so the consciousness field can extend over a large area? Was it the Blue Gemstone band composed before, so the energy propagation was active?"

Reverse Flow fell silent.

After a while.

It finally said, "They are locking down the Sun."

"Heavenly People use gemstones as the basic unit of life, and this wall encircles the Sun, acquiring energy from the source to the maximum extent. This should be a unique technology of the Heavenly People..."

With this reminder from Xiao Fu, Zhou Yi recalled a concept from the era of the Old Humans.

Dyson Sphere.

The idea of enclosing the Sun in a massive spherical structure, capturing most of the Sun's radiative energy to utilize it.

However, this was still only a theoretical conjecture; the pinnacle of Old Human civilization was far from this goal.

But the Heavenly People's civilization could already do it.

Only, they were using a high wall of gemstones.

"Da Zhou, I understand now!"

"Using this special gemstone structure is for converting energy in different ways."

Reverse Flow suddenly said, "The blue light band we saw earlier is absorbing the purest energy from the Sun, and now switching to the red wall phase is to collect consciousness information released by the Sun."

"We Reverse Flows enter the world of Circular Flow outbreaks to collect the local civilization's Spark, essentially collecting and conserving consciousness information."

"Their method is to wrap around the source to conduct large-scale collective gathering and then filter out the needed parts."

As Zhou Yi listened, a thought sprouted in his mind.

"Are you saying, the goal of the Heavenly People is not Earth but to take away the Sun?"

"No, the Sun cannot be taken away. Even if they had the capability, they wouldn't do such a meaningless thing."

Xiao Fu corrected: "They are constructing a device that can fully utilize the Sun, which is this wall, we will temporarily call it the Ring Solar Wall."

"The energy supplied to the Heavenly People probably also comes from here."

"We are now outside the wall; this area outside includes deceased Heavenly People. I guess, inside there likely exists at least one more inner wall. All acquired energy and information serve the inner wall."

"Technically speaking, it's like pressing oil from peanuts twice to keep energy loss to a minimum while maximizing utilization."

Zhou Yi looked worried: "It looks like, eventually they will completely encase the entire Sun, gathering all the energy."

Xiao Fu added, "In terms of the behavior of the Heavenly People, I don't think this will be the case either. If their target was just this one Sun, then there would be no need to enter Earth, no need to interact with local life at all, which would just be a waste of their time."

"But the Heavenly People keep projecting to Earth. From the initial direct landing attempts to adopting consciousness projection means, using the bodies of local life to explore."

"There must be something important on Earth that they need."

The image of those glass people flashed through Zhou Yi's mind.

In a corpse he had just captured, there were Heavenly People cultivating human infants, trying to transform them into glass fiber structures.

"Could it be, they are looking for substitutes for glass people?"

"Very likely."

Xiao Fu pondered for a while, "But there's too little information on that humanoid civilization; I can't make any judgments."

Zhou Yi thought.

Perhaps only by going to the Outer Sea, via those Skywalkers, can some insight be gleaned.

"But this time we've obtained very important information."

Reverse Flow said happily, "I didn't have data on this group of Heavenly People's civilization and was quite nervous before, fearing they were a genuine High-level Civilization leading in dimensions. We would have no way to resist if we encountered them."

"Now it seems, based on the technology and life characteristics they've shown, using your language system, they should be a Second-level Civilization."

"Second-level Civilization?"

Zhou Yi asked, "Then what level was the Old Human civilization?"

"Just barely First-level. A First-level civilization can dominate the world they live on, modify the local environment, monopolize and control all resources... but according to the information I have, Old Humans still could not directly control weather or subterranean activity, so it's quite a stretch to call it First-level. This stage is also called Low-level Civilization."

Xiao Fu continued, "Second-level Civilization can efficiently utilize the energy of a star, move and live on the stellar bodies radiated by a star. Their society has its unique forms, relatively advanced, also called Mid-level Civilization."

"If one reaches Third-level Civilization, they can collect vast amounts of energy from many stars within the galaxy and even utilize extreme celestial bodies... That is already the category of High-level Civilization."

Zhou Yi couldn't help asking, "What level of civilization does Reverse Flow belong to?"

"Second-level."

Xiao Fu stated, "However, the society of Reverse Flow itself is quite loose, so strictly speaking, it shouldn't be considered a civilization, calling it a profession is more appropriate."

"Although starting from scratch will be very difficult, fraught with danger, we have a high potential."

"Indeed, each Reverse Flow can potentially collect various civilization Sparks, eventually linking them into a Fire Civilization, evolving a High-level Civilization also isn't impossible."

Zhou Yi didn't refute.

This profession belongs to civilization scavengers, resembling a librarian in some ways, both have incredibly high potential.

It's just that reaching that potential is quite challenging.

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