196: Chapter 196 Don't Answer, Blast the Trisolaran Planet

Nanbei Lvdou said "Understood" on the surface, but his lowered eyelids twitched up and down ever so slightly at an angle no one noticed.

He knew very well in his heart,

that every phrasing the Grand Commander had just used: "Mere Level Two civilization, we have no intention of destroying you, stay put and don't make a fuss,"

if sent out as-is, would no longer be a notification, but a provocation.

In the standard operational manual of interstellar foreign affairs communications, the sentence "We have no intention of destroying you" itself was equivalent to hinting to the other party that they possessed the potential qualification to be destroyed.

Any Level Two civilization with basic interstellar communication capabilities, upon receiving such a "notification", would automatically categorize it as a deterrent contact from a higher civilization.

He did not intend to send the Grand Commander's exact words word for word, turned away from the command console, and walked toward the communication array on the flank of the dome.

Not long after, Nanbei Lvdou returned.

His pace was noticeably slower by at least two beats compared to when he left,

and the expression on his face looked as if he had just wandered around a logical maze several times and still couldn't find the exit,

plunging his entire being into a rare state of utter bewilderment.

Seeing Nanbei Lvdou like this, Nailong and the various Zeta Star expeditionary generals all stopped what they were doing.

Nailong slightly furrowed his brow, his tone carrying undisguised confusion:

"Didn't I just ask you to send a passing-by communication to Trisolaris? Is such a look necessary? Is the communication sent?"

Nanbei Lvdou knelt on one knee, his tone still steady, but mixed with a layer of incomprehensible confusion that he desperately suppressed yet still leaked through the seams of his words:

"Grand Commander, the communication you ordered has been sent to Trisolaris."

"But next, the Trisolaris side sent me three identical replies in succession."

Nailong frowned slightly:

"Three times in succession? What did they reply?"

The rest of the Zeta Star generals present also focused their gazes on Nanbei Lvdou.

To be able to turn a long-distance communications officer who had served for over several centuries and handled countless interstellar contact events into this state,

the content sent back by Trisolaris was definitely not routine diplomatic rhetoric,

and couldn't even be considered a rude but unsurprising reply like "We refuse to dialogue with higher civilizations".

Nanbei Lvdou remained silent for a moment, as if repeatedly confirming that what he was about to say had not gone wrong due to a communication signal decoder malfunction.

"Their reply was extremely brief."

"Only one sentence, repeated three times in succession:"

"Do not answer! Do not answer! Do not answer!"

The entire central command dome fell into an extremely brief yet thoroughly absolute silence.

Nailong lifted his gloves from the edge of the command console and rested them at his sides, his lips opening and closing.

The generals behind him who had just been whispering about fleet acceleration parameters were all looking at each other in dismay at this moment.

What did this mean?

Do not answer?

Do not answer what?

There was no parsable specific target object in this sentence.

It did not deny the Zeta fleet's transit request, expressed no welcome or rejection, proposed no negotiation terms, and did not even use any interstellar diplomatic terminology that could be logically categorized.

Inside the entire command dome, all tactical analysis terminals fell silent at that instant.

Taking advantage of the fact that everyone had not yet snapped out of this collective bewilderment, Nanbei Lvdou spoke up to add:

"Furthermore, the Trisolarans added exclamation marks at the end of every 'Do not answer'."

"Based on my experience with long-distance communications, adding such symbols often implies a certain warning."

Nanbei Lvdou's supplementary remark still did not solve any problems.

Do not answer, followed by three exclamation marks—what was it warning about?

Was it warning the Zeta fleet not to answer their own dispatched communication?

Or warning the Zeta fleet not to continue flying forward?

Or perhaps some internal Trisolaran matter completely unrelated to the current fleet transit was just caught at this moment by the Zeta fleet's receiving devices through repeated broadcasting?

Nailong stood in place, his hands mechanically hanging at his sides.

In his life, he had commanded countless interstellar expeditions and conquered dozens of planets, but never once had he encountered a Level Two civilization daring to respond to the official communications of Zeta Star's million-strong fleet with such incomprehensible nonsense.

Just as everyone was collectively confused and puzzled, two Zeta generals stepped forward from the ranks simultaneously.

The one on the left was named Baba, and the one on the right was named Boyi.

As they took this step, they exchanged an extremely brief glance,

in which there was no hesitation, only the blazing light of interpretation that ignited as if their cerebral cortices had been struck simultaneously by the lightning of inspiration.

Baba spoke first, his voice suppressed low and hurried:

"Grand Commander, I understand! I know what the Trisolarans want to express!"

Boyi followed closely and spoke simultaneously, his tone identical to Baba's:

"I understand too! Grand Commander, this reply from the Trisolarans is truly vicious!"

Nailong shifted his body slightly, moving his gaze from Nanbei Lvdou to the two generals who stepped forward. His tone remained cautious, but he was clearly stirred with a deep probing interest by the inexplicable "Do not answer" just now:

"What do you know? Make it clear."

Baba took another step forward, abruptly raising the gloves that had been hanging at his sides and spreading them out in front of his chest, his tone sounding as if he had deduced all logic in his heart, lacking only the final verbal promulgation:

"Grand Commander! The Trisolarans are playing with you! They are playing with you!"

Boyi followed by taking a step forward himself: "Indeed, Grand Commander! The Trisolarans are too arrogant!"

"They feel they are superior to others, so they think they can toy with us like this at will!"

"They told us not to answer because they feel that our Zeta people's communications are simply unworthy of receiving their response!"

"They feel that any answer from us would taint their self-righteous nobility!"

"They look down on our Zeta civilization!"

Baba turned his head, nodded heavily,

then turned back to Nailong, and suddenly clenched the pair of black gloves spread out in front of his chest into fists:

"Grand Commander, think carefully: do not answer, repeated three times, all with exclamation marks at the end."

"What does this show?"

"It shows they are warning us: 'You Zeta people must not attempt to answer our communications, because you are unworthy'!"

"This is blatant interstellar discrimination!"

Boyi immediately picked up the conversation the moment he finished the last word:

"Grand Commander, what was the communication you asked Nanbei Lvdou to send to the Trisolarans just now like?"

"It was a passing-by notification, a polite notice from a higher civilization to a lower civilization, a decent step for them to stay quietly in place and not move around."

"And the result?"

"The result is they turned around and said to us 'Do not answer'!"

"They were too lazy to even reply with a single 'Okay, we know'!"

"They just want to use this sentence to toy with us, making us guess for ourselves how base we are!"

Baba loosened his clenched fists, flattened his palms again, and pressed them against the light-rune military rank on his chest:

"Our Zeta Star has twin suns shining together and a million warships!"

"Our royal bloodline traces straight back to the First Era of the Galaxy from His Highness the Fourth Prince!"

"And the Trisolarans, mere planets of a Level Two civilization, actually said to us 'Do not answer'!"

"This is no longer an insult, this is a declaration of war!!"

Nailong still hadn't spoken when he heard this, but his gloves had pressed back onto the edge of the command console, his knuckles slowly tightening.

He turned his head to look at the remaining Zeta generals present around him.

He swept his gaze over these people one by one, then spoke:

"What do you think?"

Baba and Boyi's words had never been the mainstream in the history of the Zeta Star expeditionary fleet's command tier,

but tonight, in this dome, not a single person stood up to refute them.

From a lower civilization to a higher civilization—not only did the other party refuse the passing-by notification, but they also repeated "Do not answer" three times in succession!

Every Zeta general present, even the most cautious and conservative among them, could not find an explanation conforming to basic interstellar communication etiquette for the Trisolarans under this scenario.

Nailong abruptly clenched his gloves pressed against the edge of the command console into fists, then raised them high above his head.

His voice blasted simultaneously from the amplification arrays across the four walls of the central command dome, carrying a furious rage erupting from the deepest part of his chest:

"Zeta Star people will never suffer humiliation!"

"Destroy Trisolaris for me!"

This order was passed down layer by layer from top to bottom,

passing through the tactical channels of the central command dome,

passing through the various decks of the Eternal Night bridge,

passing through every encrypted communication link between the escort fleet and the attack craft formation,

and finally falling upon an obscurely flying, most inconspicuous ordinary attack saucer at the very edge array of that million-strong fleet.

It was lighter than the mothership, simpler than the corvette, just one among a million vessels, and its serial number was even positioned on the tactical screen where one had to scroll to see it.

It detached from the formation, flew forward alone for a not-too-distant distance, and aimed the weapon hatch on the side of its hull belly at the slowly rotating galaxy composed of three stars and twelve planets located one light-year ahead.

It fired a Black Hole Bomb.

That Black Hole Bomb flew out of the hull belly at an extremely high speed,

and after escaping the hull's gravitational range, automatically activated its internal warp engine.

Within seconds, it crossed one light-year of interstellar space and arrived right at the center of the Three-Body Star System.

It exploded at the gravitational equilibrium point of the three stars.

The moment of the explosion produced no sound at all, only a pure, absolutely lightless and soundless darkness spreading outward from the detonation point.

A small artificial singularity rapidly formed right in the center of that darkness,

and the gravitational field compressed to its limit instantly released huge gravitational waves,

dragging all matter within the explosion radius—stars, planets, asteroid belts, interstellar dust, and everything that had ever existed in that galaxy—indiscriminately toward that infinitely small singularity.

That darkness lasted for a long time, until the entire triple-star system, along with all planetary shells and atmospheres, was compressed together into a pure energy singularity that could no longer be observed from the outside.

After finishing the launch, that most inconspicuous Zeta Star saucer simply reported four words in its shipboard communication channel:

"Mission complete."

Then, it turned its bow back around, rejoined the formation,

and continued along with nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine other Zeta vessels to accelerate forward through the void at maximum transition speed toward the direction of the Solar System.