Starting as a Wallfacer, his defection to the Three-Body Problem shocked the world.

Elbart Cluster: Outer layer.

The dense fleet almost filled the entire starry sky, with thousands of warships forming a square formation, and countless engineering ships constantly dismantling the surrounding asteroids to build temporary platforms.

"How are the preparations going, Captain?"

Zhang Beihai wore a military uniform today, and the worry on his face was less than before. It was obvious that he was in a pretty good mood today.

Now, the Human Alliance has essentially sealed off the outer perimeter of the Elbart Cluster. The Ringworld is expected to arrive here some time from now. Until then, all kinds of matters, big and small, will be handled by Chu Yan. Zhang Beihai, like Luo Congmin and others, has chosen to step down to the second line and become a symbolic leader rather than holding real power.

"It's business as usual."

Chu Yan turned around. He looked a little tired from working overtime these past few days, but it was all worth it.

"How come we never realized before that this woman, Ai AA, could gather so many talented people?"

"Two-thirds of the senior executives and researchers of Xinghuan Group chose to flee to the stars. However, these talents are now all ours. I originally thought that with the loss of top scientists like Principal Liu Chang during this return voyage to Earth Alliance, our scientific research level would not improve again in the short term. But now, good news is coming one after another."

As Chu Yan spoke, he handed a progress chart to Zhang Beihai.

"Look at this, the latest generation of interstellar fortress. This thing is much more powerful than an aircraft carrier. It's almost a second copy of the Navigator."

Zhang Beihai had been somewhat indifferent, but upon hearing Chu Yan's words, he immediately perked up.

The Navigator was a gift from Lin Xuan to the entire Human Federation. Its value and growth potential are such that they still cannot replicate a second ship exactly the same. This makes Zhang Beihai very worried. Compared to dealing with the Trisolarans, the obvious technological gap, the upcoming final battle in the Elbart Cluster makes him more uneasy.

The entire Human Alliance knew almost nothing about who the enemy was, how many there were, or what their equipment was like.

The only information I had came from Star Ring Group.

There was something wrong with Zhizi. Ai AA noticed Zhizi's abnormality earlier than anyone else, but this woman chose to hide it at the time, which led to the following incident. Without the knowledge of the Earth Alliance, Ai AA used the technology provided by Zhizi to create a vanguard fleet that far surpassed the Earth Alliance's main fleet.

If the People's Alliance hadn't received Luo Congmin's message in advance, knowing that the entire Earth Alliance's regime could be overthrown at any time, it would be hard to say who would still be in control of the Earth Alliance now.

In Zhang Beihai's view, her actions were even more despicable than those of ETO back then; she was pushing all of humanity toward a dead end.

"Most of the technologies of the Star Ring Group come from that Earth inside the Elbart Ring. According to their senior management, the one who made contact with the AA back then should be Number One."

"Number one?"

"It's just a code name, like our... their Earth Alliance, the code name might be number four or some other Earth," Chu Yan explained.

"I know a little about the Observer, but what exactly is the situation with Sophon? Why is he able to contact Observer Number One?"

"Who knows? We'll probably only find out what's going on once we enter the Elbato Cluster." Chu Yan shrugged. "I didn't call you here today to talk about that. I wanted you to contact Luo Congmin and send Wang Miao and Dr. Ding Yi here ahead of time. We need to reverse engineer the technology that Zhizi provided."

Zhang Beihai immediately understood what the other party meant.

"Are you planning to thoroughly study all the technology of Earth One before entering the Elbart Cluster?"

"At least I should understand where the gap lies. I don't want to go through another dark battle."