The charge of basic physics research needs to be completed within the star system, as only here are there enough materials for supply.

However, subsequent research at the applied physics level, as well as the development of various facilities, can be entirely completed in space.

Other civilizations couldn't achieve this, but Tom could.

Furthermore, Tom had genuinely verified this point during his long journey of over two thousand years prior.

So, what Tom was going to do next became very clear.

It wasn't technology development, nor fleet upgrades—at this stage, Tom had not yet mastered any Strong Nuclear-level application technologies, nor could he upgrade the fleet—but rather…

Once again, a large-scale collection of materials, a large-scale construction of empty shell decoy fleets, and then, escape into deep space!

Once he left the stellar system and entered deep space, even the Mechanical Disaster fleet would be unable to track him for a short period.

Thus, he would have the time to transform breakthroughs in basic physics into industrial and combat power breakthroughs.

Therefore, at this moment, with large-scale scientific research drawing to a close, the vast number of factories still hadn't stopped; instead, they entered an even more efficient operational state.

This time, the material stockpiling Tom was undertaking far exceeded any previous effort.

The reason was simple: with technological advancement, the quantity of materials required for further scientific research and technological improvement naturally increased.

On the last departure, including the spacecraft's own weight, Tom's fleet had a total mass of about ten trillion tons.

This time, not counting the spacecraft's own weight, Tom planned for a total of approximately 200 trillion tons of reserves!

Even such a massive reserve, in Tom's calculations, was barely enough.

If it weren't for the extreme time constraint, Tom would have wanted to bring even more materials.

However, even the current 200 trillion tons of materials presented Tom with an enormous challenge.

That was, how to carry so many materials…?

The maximum carrying capacity of a single giant aerospace carrier is around several hundred million tons.

200 trillion tons of materials would mean hundreds of thousands of aerospace carriers, wouldn't it?

Aerospace carriers are not Mercury-class battleships; they cannot be built by the hundreds of thousands with little effort.

Which aerospace carrier doesn't take a long time and is difficult to manufacture?

Even if Tom dedicated all his remaining time to the construction of aerospace carriers, it would be impossible to build hundreds of thousands of them.

Even with Tom's industrial capabilities, facing such a massive construction project, he was outmatched.

Even if Tom were to achieve breakthroughs in the biological branch based on the Unified Field Formula in the future, doubling the current 1.5 billion consciousness connections to 3 billion, he would still be unable to complete such a colossal construction task.

This was simply not something a Strong Nuclear Civilization could accomplish.

So…

Tom gritted his teeth and made up his mind.

Then, no more aerospace carriers!

I will build a Flying Star!

After this plan was decided, the transport spacecraft, which had been carrying large amounts of materials to converge with the fleet, immediately changed course and arrived at a void area far from any large celestial bodies.

Here, about ten million tons of steel were unloaded and directly dumped into space.

According to different uses, some of this steel was in the form of ingots, some as plates, and there were also coils, bars, and other various types.

They were packed into massive containers, each with a volume of about 300 cubic meters, totaling over four thousand.

Using a connecting mechanism, these containers were fixed into a giant, non-standard sphere with a radius of approximately 100 meters, quietly suspended in space.

They were the 'core' of the Flying Star.

Outside this core, one heavy transport ship after another flew in from various planets, accumulating various materials stored in different ways onto the Flying Star's core: for example, deuterium, helium-3 gas in enormous gas tanks; sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, and other chemicals in massive chemical tanks; various plastics, biological products, machinery in containers; huge steel ingots, aluminum ingots, tin blocks, gold, silver, copper, iron, and so on, little by little.

Like a snowball, under Tom's continuous 'feeding,' the Flying Star's core gradually grew, developed, and became larger and larger.

During its continuous 'development,' Tom also reserved various pipes and passages to ensure that even materials pressed into the innermost core could be conveniently retrieved.

Countless mines and factories on multiple planets roared day and night, heavy-duty railway lines to the Space Elevator rumbled with trains all day long, and large quantities of materials, like water from a pump, were continuously 'drawn' from the planet's surface into space by the Space Elevator, then loaded into heavy-duty transport spacecraft.

One transport spacecraft after another, like diligent bees, collected 'nectar' from afar and converged it at the Flying Star's construction site.

With each arriving heavy-duty transport ship, the Flying Star grew a little, becoming a little larger.

On average, more than 1,500 heavy transport ships arrived every day, over sixty per hour, almost one every minute!

Each heavy-duty transport ship carried tens of millions of tons of materials, starting from that amount.

Their types were diverse and all-encompassing.

From spoons for clones to eat with, to complete spacecraft thruster assemblies, the total categories numbered almost over ten million!

In short, everything that could possibly be used during the fleet's deep space voyage was being massively stockpiled by Tom, accumulated onto this 'Flying Star' as if money were no object.

Tom worked diligently in this manner, with a heavy-duty transport ship arriving almost every minute, for a full thirty-two years.

Over thirty-two years, the total number of round trips by transport ships between the industrial base and the Flying Star reached 19 million!

The total mass of all kinds of materials transported also reached an unprecedented and astonishing figure.

A full 202 trillion tons!

Such a mass of various materials, when accumulated, even created a planet out of thin air.

This planet's average density was approximately 0.38 \text{ g/cm}^3—the reason for such low density was due to Tom's massive reserves of deuterium and other lighter gases within it.

Its radius reached 50 kilometers, and its overall shape remained spherical.

A nearly spherical celestial body with a radius of 50 kilometers, to put it bluntly, had already surpassed the vast majority of planets in this star system in both volume and density.

Even an asteroid with a longest dimension exceeding 100 kilometers, because it was not spherical, had a total volume far less than the planet Tom had created at this moment.

This was a genuine Flying Star, a ship-planet, which Tom simply called, Flying Star!

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