Under Tom's secret observation, the Mechanical Disaster Fleet quickly completed its resource collection mission.

At the same time, Tom also saw that they had dispatched a large number of suspected scientific research vessels, following the routes of his six fleets that had previously left the solar system, conducting extensive scientific research missions there.

This seemed to be...

Tom pondered for a moment, gradually understanding.

"As expected, they don't just rely on observing tail flames to confirm a fleet's heading.

Although tail flames are bright, their directionality is extremely high, only spraying in one direction. Deviating from this direction, they become unobservable even at a slightly greater distance.

When close, one can directly confirm a fleet's heading by observing the tail flames. When far, other means must be used.

I haven't mastered this technology yet. However, I speculate that it's through examining the interaction between the plasma ejected by the tail flames and interstellar gas, observing their residual specific traces, to confirm the fleet's heading? That must be it."

A large number of scientific research fleets moved around within the solar system, quickly dividing into six parts, their paths basically overlapping with the trajectories of his six fleets leaving the solar system.

Tom then knew that they had already determined the headings of these six fleets.

At this point, only 20 years had passed, and with the headings of these six fleets confirmed, Tom saw that this Mechanical Disaster Fleet began to gather again, seemingly preparing to head to the next star system to continue searching for his traces.

Tom's heart tightened slightly.

They had already determined the headings of the six fleets, so it was clear that the Mechanical Disaster Fleet's next long-distance target would be one of these six star systems.

The probability for each star system was about 16.7 %.

If their destination was the Altair System...

Factoring in communication delay and their travel speed, they would arrive at the Altair System in just ten more years at most.

At this moment, his fleet had not yet been built, and ten years was not enough time to do anything.

By then, he would have no other choice but to immediately activate his backup plan, abandon everything he currently had, and move to another star system for development.

His original plan of developing technology while fleeing would also be completely abandoned.

After some more time, the massive Mechanical Disaster Fleet slowly set sail, heading out of the solar system.

After calculating their trajectory, Tom quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

Their target was Procyon B—a binary star system approximately 19.5 light-years from the solar system, composed of a yellow dwarf star similar to the Sun and an orange dwarf star, which was one of the destinations for Tom's decoy fleets.

Considering the relative positions of the six star systems of his six fleets in total, Tom immediately understood.

This Mechanical Disaster Fleet intended to follow the principle of proximity, using the shortest path to complete the search of all six star systems.

According to this search path, the Altair System, where he was located, should be ranked fifth.

Given their fleet's speed and the time for mid-journey resupply, it was estimated that the Mechanical Disaster Fleet would reach the Altair System in approximately 300 years.

300 years, much shorter than the time it took them to chase from the Bluetoth star system to the solar system, and this seemed to imply that their search radius was continuously shrinking, which also meant that the noose that was originally around the Bluetoth Civilization's neck, and now around his own neck, was tightening.

But... for him, 300 years was still acceptable.

Normally, 300 years is slightly insufficient to complete an interstellar migration.

After all, Tom's fleet's maximum speed could only reach a few percent of the speed of light.

But for this migration, Tom had decided not to stop at any star system for the time being.

He was going to fly through interstellar space for a thousand years!

Yes, a full thousand years of interstellar travel, without stopping at any star system during these thousand years!

The universe is vast, and star systems only occupy a small part of cosmic space.

As long as he did not stop at a star system and hid himself in interstellar space, it would be almost impossible for the Mechanical Disaster to find his traces.

Even if they tracked along his main fleet's departure route, it would be impossible to find him. Because during the journey, his fleet would constantly make small course adjustments.

Even if this Mechanical Disaster Fleet had mastered the technology to determine a fleet's heading by analyzing the interaction between ejected tail flame material and interstellar gas, the power of orbital micro-adjustments is extremely low, and thus their interaction with interstellar gas is also extremely low.

It is probably unlikely that they could confirm the heading through this.

They would still only be able to confirm where he ultimately ended up by searching one star system after another.

And in space flight, a difference of a hair's breadth in heading leads to a thousand-mile deviation.

Even Tom at this moment did not know where he would ultimately fly to or at which star system he would stop.

Tom was confident that this plan would be extremely effective in shaking off pursuit. However, this plan was completely unfeasible for ordinary civilizations.

For example, the Bluetoth Civilization back then. If they had chosen this plan, the only outcome would have been to die in the empty expanse of space after their supplies ran out.

Because their industrial strength was limited, their fleet size was limited, and the amount of materials they could carry was limited, they simply could not sustain such a long voyage.

But Tom was different!

The original solar system migration fleet was already large enough, and the fleet Tom was building now was 20 times the size of the original solar system fleet.

Such a massive fleet could carry an astonishing total amount of supplies, which alone could support this long, thousand-year voyage.

At this moment, the Mechanical Disaster Fleet had already set sail for the Procyon B Star System.

In the Altair System, Tom's massive construction was also nearing completion.

There were still six fleets, five of which were decoy fleets, and one was the true main fleet.

All six fleets, each with the same tonnage and specifications. This meant that the tail flame traces would also be identical.

Fleet construction was complete, and resource collection was also finished.

Countless material compartments, numerous Aerospace Carriers, and heavy transport ships were already fully loaded.

Now, only one last task remained.

To migrate the total of over 1500 large scientific devices he had built into the fleet.

Based on the working principles and environmental requirements of each large scientific device, this task was extremely troublesome, extremely difficult, and there was no unified placement method; a customized migration plan had to be devised for each large scientific device.

"Customize then! It's just building a few more ships!"

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