The massive fleet continued to advance at a speed of 12,000 kilometers per second.

Tom, in his clone, smiled as he watched the asteroid gradually recede and the Sun, still bright but no longer prominent, fade into the distance.

"Goodbye, my hometown."

At this moment, 30 years had passed since Tom set sail.

A long journey of approximately 400 years still awaited him.

Time quietly slipped away, and during this period, Tom was not idle.

Due to carrying sufficient supplies at the time of departure, some scientific research with lower resource consumption could also be conducted at this time.

Thus, numerous shuttle ships constantly traveled back and forth between the many cylindrical living spacecraft, large scientific research vessels, and Aerospace Carriers.

Large numbers of clones and Bluetoth traveled between different spacecraft, communicating with each other, materials flowed between the various ships, and scientific research activities were in full swing.

Tom intended to use these approximately 400 years to address all his technological shortcomings.

Although in critical technologies, such as ship structure, engineering, materials science, controllable nuclear fusion, and thrusters, Tom had caught up to and even slightly surpassed the Bluetoth Civilization, there were still many gaps in some detailed areas.

The technological development model of a normal civilization always progresses in parallel, with all aspects of technology advancing at the same pace.

It's impossible for mobile phones to have entered the era of highly intelligent smartphones while computers are still old, outdated models and mice are still roller-ball mice.

However, Tom's unique approach led to this bizarre situation where military technology was highly advanced, but other relatively minor technologies were still inferior to even the Human Civilization of that time.

Now was the perfect time to catch up on all the outdated technologies while he had these years.

In the vast, empty cosmos, such an "island" composed of many spacecraft appeared, quietly suspended.

Although the fleet's current speed was as high as 12,000 kilometers per second, due to the lack of reference points, it still appeared to be quietly suspended, as if it hadn't moved at all.

Even if a small spacecraft left a large spacecraft and entered space, or clones and Bluetoth, wearing spacesuits, entered space, there was no need to worry about being left behind by the fleet.

This was because every spacecraft and every person within this fleet had acquired the same orbit and velocity during the previous acceleration process, remaining stationary relative to each other.

Aside from the absence of other celestial bodies nearby, life within the fleet was completely unaffected.

Thus, various experiments were carried out in numerous laboratories, and experimental data and conclusions from hundreds of millions of clones were continuously compiled in Tom's mind, then distributed and synchronized to the mind of every clone.

Although the number of Bluetoth Scientists was small, they undoubtedly played a relatively important role in providing references and clearing blind spots in thinking during this process.

This even made Tom secretly ponder:

"If such a situation arises again in the future, perhaps I'll have to capture more aliens to join in. After all, the more intelligent life forms with different cultural and physiological attributes there are, the more references there will be, and the fewer blind spots in thinking."

However, this way of acting seemed somewhat similar to non-orthodox intelligent life forms like the Mechanical Disaster and the Parasitic Disaster.

Tom thought about it and decided that even if he gained the ability in the future, he would never proactively and maliciously invade other civilizations.

He would only capture their populations and bring them under his command if other civilizations first showed malice towards him.

This was not because Tom had a moralistic obsession or felt compelled to draw a clear line between himself and the Disasters.

Rather, Tom hoped that he could uphold the beautiful qualities originating from Human Civilization and not lose them.

Only then could Tom feel that he was still a human, and not something strange and unusual.

These cultural attributes are probably the only connection between himself and Human Civilization now…

With the combined efforts of numerous clones and Bluetoth—those Bluetoth unwilling to cooperate had long been marginalized over the years, their genes unable to be passed down—the less important technologies that Tom had previously lacked the energy, brainpower, and resources to develop also began to make breakthroughs.

Breakthroughs in these secondary technologies even began to show signs of feeding back into the primary technologies.

During this process, Tom conceived many hypotheses regarding more advanced warship structures, more powerful electromagnetic cannons and Laser Cannons, or spacecraft propulsion methods.

However, due to insufficient materials at present, large-scale research could not be conducted for now and would have to wait until reaching the Altair System.

Every day, a large number of spacecraft shuttled, and in the warehouses, a large amount of materials were allocated daily.

In the hundreds of thousands of nuclear fusion reactors combined, a large amount of deuterium was consumed daily, and in the food factories, a large amount of starch, meat, fish, and fruits were produced daily.

It is worth mentioning that for this migration, Tom did not adopt the previous method of storing large amounts of food in advance, as he did when traveling from the solar system to Jupiter.

Instead, he adopted the method of synthesizing starch, building large industrial spacecraft to directly synthesize starch from carbon dioxide.

This technology was not actually very difficult; Tom had mastered it long ago.

The reason it wasn't used before was simply that starch synthesis technology could only produce starch and was too low-end.

Within a star system, there was no shortage of resources or energy, and intelligent planting bases also had low consumption, occupied few clones, and could produce more carbohydrates with different flavors, which objectively was more conducive to maintaining the physical health and brain activity of clones.

Furthermore, some economic crops, such as cotton, flax, oilseeds, and sugars, still needed to be cultivated and could not be directly synthesized.

So, it was simply better to adopt the planting base method; there was no need for starch synthesis technology.

However, being in interstellar travel now, with limited resources and materials, there was no choice but to implement starch synthesis technology, regardless of whether the clones' health would be affected.

Thus, supported by the abundant energy from the nuclear fusion reactors, the carbon dioxide produced by the clones and Bluetoth was collected, converted into starch through a series of processes.

A portion of the starch served as the staple food for clones and Bluetoth, a portion was used for industrial purposes, and a portion was used as animal feed to produce meat.

Ultimately, a considerable portion of the starch was consumed by living organisms, supporting their life activities, which in turn produced carbon dioxide, which was then synthesized again, thus completing the cycle.

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