Shen Shi now already has a thorough understanding of interstellar warfare, so he understands clearly that interstellar warfare is not about placing bets, but about the balance and confrontation between information and intelligence, technology and vision.
Unless absolutely necessary, both sides in a conflict will try to fight each other only when they have full confidence based on the existing intelligence and information.
Therefore, that Daike People’s Master of Primordial Energy chose to give up when the distance to the jump point was less than two light years.
Because the true performance of Iwen completely exceeded his expectations, forcing him to raise the probability of estimation for human intelligence—acquiring a warship of this level, possessing even the lowest level of civilization-level energy device, is a likely event. The frenzied assassination of Iwen also became a tactic to reduce their troop numbers. After all, when the number of individuals is reduced to a certain extent, their strength in primordial energy will also be greatly weakened.
And this explanation also became one of the reasons many among humans revered Shen Shi.
It seemed as if Shen Shi had accounted for all of this, even having assurance before the war.
But only Shen Shi knew.
He was really just gambling.
"Succeed, and become a Sage Saint; fail, and it’s all for naught. I clearly hate doing such things," Shen Shi laughed self-mockingly.
According to his understanding of himself, he disliked gambling and the feeling of uncertainty.
Yet based on a plethora of information brought to him by Time Crystal after this change, these other future lines of Shen Shi can actually be regarded as his consciousness residue.
In other words, the choices made can be regarded as ones Shen Shi would have made in the same environment.
This victory not only propelled Shen Shi’s reputation to the top, but also earned human civilization another crucial three hundred years for development.
Those three hundred years might be the most arduous period in the entire Starry Era for human civilization.
Because they were deeply aware that next time, the Daike Civilization’s invasion force would be even stronger!
Thus, within a short three hundred years, they had to accomplish many things for even a sliver of hope.
They developed a civilization-level primordial energy device, though extremely crude and forced, but ultimately researched it.
Their warships focused entirely on defense, though still far from being a match for Daike People’s warships, they were barely able to lead billions of humans to the battlefield.
They also had to build a star system fortress, for that would be the most crucial defense line to truly resist Daike Civilization and protect Blue Star.
And so, when the Daike People arrived with even more massive warships again.
Shen Shi once again relied on Iwen and tens of thousands of offensively defensive human warships to launch deep space sniping.
This battle was extremely fierce.
Latter generations regarded it as the war in which human civilization truly gathered its military spirit through blood and sacrifice.
Spanning seventy-two years, costing nearly a billion human warriors’ lives, Blue Star even came close to falling several times.
Shen Shi and Iwen traversed like firefighters across various parts of the battlefield.
They eventually succeeded in winning the war.
But it was precisely this battle that made the Daike People truly value this civilization, which lacked even a star system fortress, yet could continuously deliver defeats to them.
Thus, the war and development spanning over a thousand years formally began.
Throughout this millennium, human civilization almost became accustomed to endless, frantic development.
From the upper echelons down to ordinary people, even newborns stepping into this era of war, all seemed to be walking on the edge of a cliff.
Not moving forward meant death.
And Shen Shi, in this process, gradually became a true Sage Saint.
He resisted externally while promoting internal development of human civilization.
Until Starry Era 1121, the Iwen, long deprived of updates and maintenance, worn out from the millennia-long war, became a pyrotechnic display in space during a campaign, fulfilling its ultimate destiny as a warship—dying on the battlefield.
Without Iwen, Shen Shi finally retired.
The prolonged war had already caused irreparable damage to his consciousness.
Fortunately, by then, human civilization already had over a dozen Masters of Primordial Energy.
The entire civilization no longer required his protection.
Human civilization finally formally joined the Mude System as a C-level civilization and launched a major counterattack against Daike Civilization.
And Shen Shi, long unable to endure, also passed away in the same year.
"This year, the entire human civilization was simultaneously a celebratory ocean achieving millennium goals and a profound sadness at the departure of the Sage Saint, intertwining to forge a new spirit, human civilization gathers smiles and tears, formally stepping into a new era."
Shen Shi repeatedly read the last sentence.
Then went back to reevaluate the entire record from start to finish.
After a long time, he couldn’t help but smile.
"It truly is a Sage Saint-like life."
This segment of life, even to Shen Shi, cannot be considered a tragedy.
He fulfilled his dream.
Ensuring his name would be eternally remembered by the entire civilization, and in his personal life likewise filled with happiness—he and Ai Xin’Er together bore thirteen children.