Chapter 474: Clearing
The life planets previously conquered by the Swarm were either like Neighboring Planet, which lacked advanced intelligent life, or like the Riken planets, where the Swarm had infiltrated for centuries, prompting a surrender as soon as the Swarm army approached.
However, in terms of directly conquering a planet through hard combat in a short period, the Swarm had no prior experience. This operation presented a valuable opportunity for the Swarm to conduct such an exercise and learn from it.
When devising the battle plan, Luo Wen encountered a dilemma: this type of combat exercise would be most effective if conducted covertly, away from the prying eyes of external observers. To achieve this, their surveillance channels had to be destroyed or blocked.
The reconnaissance ships in space, equipped with quantum communication devices and relying on their speed, continued hovering near the Swarm forces. However, they dared not get too close. As long as the Swarm sealed off the exercise area and deployed interference devices, these ships’ long-distance observation methods would be largely ineffective, providing at best vague data. Moreover, the life planets’ atmospheres served as natural barriers against surveillance.
Within the star system, the Swarm had already cleared out all monitoring devices. The only remaining surveillance devices were on the life planets themselves. These devices were far more numerous and omnipresent, making it impossible for the Swarm to destroy them all before the planets were fully conquered—a task inherently contradictory to their plan.
Fortunately, transmitting the surveillance data beyond the Swarm’s blockade to the outside world was not an easy feat. There was only one method for such transmission, quantum communication devices.
These instant quantum communication systems could not be intercepted—not by the Swarm and not even by the Ji. While the information itself could not be stopped, the devices transmitting it could be destroyed.
If the Swarm managed to eliminate the quantum communication devices, the two life planets would become isolated information islands. No matter how much intelligence the monitoring devices collected, it would become useless without a way to transmit it.
The problem, however, was that the quantum communication facilities of the Daqi were hidden in extremely secretive locations. Even within the Daqi civilization, their existence was highly classified, and very few Daqi individuals knew their exact positions.