Wandering Meteor-Chapter 4 Solar Sheath

The Heliosphere itself possesses a strong magnetic field, otherwise, it wouldn't be able to serve as the boundary of the Solar System.

Instantly, Lu Chen brought along the Wandering's detector to search for Discharge Nebula within the Heliosphere.

Despite the Heliosphere being merely a dust belt at the boundary of the Solar System, it spans over a dozen astronomical units.

An astronomical unit refers to the average distance from Earth to the Sun—about 150 million kilometers!

Imagine, over a dozen Earth-to-Sun average distances; this is a vast dust buffer zone, which could contain any kind of magical substance.

However, after flying for a long, long time, Lu Chen still hadn't found any Discharge Nebula!

This is how normal yet unpredictable the universe is, magical substances may be abundant, but the cold vacuum is more prevalent, just like the strong light of constant stars, which is just a drop in the ocean compared to the vast universe.

Thus, one can imagine, the journey of Lu Chen, the Wanderer, is destined to be filled with solitude and loneliness.

This is also why he wanted to fix the detector, seeking some companionship and someone to talk to; otherwise, he might go mad from loneliness!

During the period of searching for the Discharge Nebula.

Naturally, Lu Chen wouldn't miss any interstellar material he encountered on his way.

Unnoticeably, his body had grown to a diameter of ten thousand meters.

Under the influence of gravity, the crust of Star Stone had become thicker and harder than before.

Even so, the surface of Star Stone still bore impact craters ranging from several meters to a hundred meters, all formed from collisions with meteorites within the Heliosphere.

The Heliosphere is not as safe as the inner Solar System, where one might not encounter a single meteorite even after flying half a day; in the Heliosphere, one is encountered almost every second.

Due to their vast numbers, some meteorites, moving too fast, break free from gravitational constraints and strike directly on the Star Stone.

And Lu Chen's survival up to now is all thanks to his sense of crisis, which prompted him to increase his own density as soon as he entered the Heliosphere; otherwise, he would have been reduced to debris long ago.

Vast universe, endless years.

After a long period of flight, Lu Chen arrived at a region of unpredictable shocks.

The substances in this region are always violently clashing with the external interstellar material, creating shock waves.

Lu Chen knew this should be the area between the Heliosphere's top and the terminal shock, called the Solar Sheath by humans!

The Solar Sheath is mainly formed by the collision of Solar Wind with other constant star winds, marking the limits of Solar Wind's influence and also the very edge of the Solar System!

Fantastic!

Lu Chen couldn't help but feel excited; he was finally going to fly out of the Solar System.

However, what made him even happier was that he discovered a Discharge Nebula in the Solar Sheath area!

This Discharge Nebula, created by the collision of Solar Wind and constant star wind, was about a hundred meters wide, dazzlingly merging blue and purple, seemingly a high-speed vibrating cloud of particles, continuously releasing purple lightning!

Immediately, Lu Chen controlled the detector to slowly approach, but halfway there, he abruptly stopped.

His initial plan was to let the detector enter the Discharge Nebula to collect electricity, but then he suddenly realized the high voltage of the nebula and that every particle was charged; if he let the detector rashly enter, it might not collect the electricity and instead its battery panels and electronic components could get damaged by the current.

So, he decided to use another method to collect electricity for the detector.

Thinking it over, he controlled his gigantic body to slowly approach the Discharge Nebula.

This way, whenever the Discharge Nebula released lightning, it would be influenced by the gravity of Star Stone and strike directly onto the crust of Star Stone.

This was his devised method, utilizing the property of the ground to absorb lightning.

To express it another way, the ground is actually a very large resistor that can greatly weaken the intensity of the electric current, and the current weakened by Star Stone will closely approximate the voltage used in human industry.

At this time, Lu Chen uses gravity to control the generator's boom to touch the ground surface, slowly absorbing the diluted current.

Although this method is not fast, it is at least effective. After a long time of charging, the detector's solar panels finally filled up with electricity!

Follow current novels on ƒreewebηoveℓ.com.

The detection system was immediately activated.

When Lu Chen saw the lights on the surface of the detector light up one by one, he couldn't stop feeling happy, excited, and proud.

"Wandering, it's me who fixed you, you better start calling me big brother!" Lu Chen commanded using Consciousness Particles.

Unfortunately, the rebooted Wandering didn't understand at all, it just ignited the thrusters by itself, slowly took off, and continued its unfinished mission.

It had never paid attention to the lifesaver right in front of it!

"You ungrateful Wandering!" Lu Chen mournfully complained, but he didn't truly blame it; he was merely venting his loneliness and solitude.

This solitary voyage was just too lonely, too isolating!

At the same time, the detector, having scanned and found itself in the Sun Sheath Zone, took photos of the peculiar things around it and sent them back to the coordinates of Earth.

Seeing this, Lu Chen's heart suddenly felt very uncomfortable and also full of admiration.

He really wanted to tell Wandering that Earth was gone, and even if it sent things back, no one would receive them.

Yet, he couldn't bear to deliver such cruel news to Wandering; maybe letting Wandering continue to faithfully fulfill its mission was the best choice.

Wandering was created to explore the Universe; let it die for this cause!

Why should it be made aware that it has been cruelly abandoned by its own master?

Then, Lu Chen together with Wandering flew out of the Sun Sheath Zone, out of the Solar System, and officially entered the more vast Cosmic Space.

Wandering's mission was to explore the Universe, and Lu Chen's goal was to explore the Universe as well; their purposes coincidentally aligned, and Lu Chen slowly used gravity to guide the detector to follow his flight.

Wandering discovered that it was locked by a strange gravitational force, which seemed to come from that giant meteorite. Thus, it snapped a few photos of Lu Chen and sent them back to Earth's coordinates.

Lu Chen did not stop it. Watching Wandering loyally complete its mission was also one of his ways to kill time now.

.......

Somewhere outside the Solar System.

A huge Cosmic Battleship intercepted the signals sent by Wandering.

The life forms on the battleship are a race self-identified as the Iron Base Civilization, sixty percent of their bodies are composed of Iron Element, and the rest—carbon, zinc, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, magnesium, and other trace elements—make up forty percent.

They have one head and two hands, but to combat the strong gravity of Mother Star, they have evolved four legs.

Their bodies are thicker than humans, but their height is only one-third of humans; this is because they have been influenced by the huge gravity of the Mother Star since evolution.

"Captain, we have just decrypted the intercepted signal content!"

"Oh, what is the content? I didn't expect that apart from us Iron Base Civilization, there are other life forms in this nebula system!"

"The signal content says, Wandering has flown to the Solar System's Sun Sheath Zone, accompanied by data about the Sun Sheath Zone, and a few photos!"

"Solar System? Is that the Constant Star System they live in? They are still using detectors to explore their own Constant Star System; it shows that their civilization hasn't reached a First-level Civilization, otherwise they would certainly be able to use planetary energy like us and fly out of their Constant Star System."

"Captain, I have located the coordinates of the signal emission, and intercepted some more photos, this time it seems to be just photos of an ordinary meteorite, I don't know what use they have sending these meaningless photos?"

"Lower civilizations naturally do some foolish things; it's not strange. Since they haven't even reached a First-level Civilization, they have no qualification to cooperate with us, issue my order—immediately head to Sector 23 of the Solar System and see if this civilization has any plundersome resources!"

ps: For the convenience of reader lords' reading comprehension, all alien civilization languages, scripts, appellations, measuring units etc. in this novel have been translated by the author into Chinese characters, please do not be concerned.