My empire of stars

Proportional to the empire's growing territory was the size of its fleet.

If the original 10 million Zeus-class warships and 50,000 White Dwarf-class warships owned by the empire are regarded as one unit.

Then every time the empire captures a new river system, it will build a fleet of one unit.

As the empire's territory expanded to the empire's fifth river system, the empire's sixth river system, the empire's seventh river system, and the empire's one hundred river system, the size of the imperial fleet also snowballed.

Correspondingly, the time required for the imperial fleet to capture a new river system is getting shorter and shorter.

In the later stage, even the advance fleet of the imperial fleet was able to directly capture the enemy's entire river system just after teleporting there.

On the surface, the empire's strength seems to be constantly increasing, and the number of the empire's fleets continues to increase.

But Li Mingze knew that the empire was now in a very troublesome situation, that is, the empire's technology seemed to have reached an upper limit!

Whether it's physics, chemistry, biology, etc., the empire seems to have touched the ceiling of these disciplines!

This is not a good thing. After all, Li Mingze knows that there is a more powerful civilization above the empire, but the empire is now trapped at its current level. The seemingly narrow gap in the ground is like a chasm that cannot be crossed.

In the inner world of the Shenzhou, a hemispherical building reflected a pale white light under the sunlight. On the smooth outer shell, white drop-shaped spaceships separated from the outer shell and flew into the air.

The purpose of this building is very simple: it is used for meetings.

In this very large conference room building belonging to the Imperial Royal Academy, all the elite scientists of the empire have gathered in this conference room.

These scientists include all known subjects in physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and even psychology!

Standing in the center of the conference room was Emperor Li Mingze, the supreme ruler of the empire.

As the empire has touched the ceiling of various subjects, all the research rooms and laboratories in the empire have now come to a standstill. It's not that they don't want to conduct research, but that they have nothing to research.

It seems that everything they can discover has been researched by the empire, but these discovered technologies cannot piece together the technologies necessary for the next level!

This situation attracted Li Mingze's great attention, which is also the origin of this conference covering all subjects.

"Quiet! Quiet!" Li Mingze looked at the messy venue and clapped his hands.

In an instant, the entire venue became silent, and all the scientists sat upright obediently and looked at Li Mingze, who was standing at the far south of the venue.

"You are all the pillars of the empire's scientific community. I believe that everyone is aware of and understands the recent situation that the empire has encountered." Li Mingze looked around at the scientists in the venue.

These scientists are all carefully selected from the nearly one trillion scientists in the empire. They are at the top of the empire in terms of knowledge and IQ.

This was also the reason why he brought these people together to discuss. He could not come up with a solution by himself.

"Your Majesty, the materials science I am responsible for has fallen into a bottleneck. No matter how many times we try, we cannot synthesize materials with better performance."

"Whether it is the materials used to conduct energy or the materials used to make armor, they have begun to stagnate and are still at the level of more than a hundred years ago!" A scientist raised his hand and stood up.

"We are the same. The supercomputing research I am responsible for has also fallen into a bottleneck due to materials science. Without new materials, it is impossible to develop a supercomputer with stronger computing power."

"The same goes for us. Now the power of weapons can only be increased by expanding the size of the weapon. There is no way to improve the quality at all!"

"The same goes for our shield research. We can only expand the upper limit of the shield by accumulating the number of shield launchers. We also cannot qualitatively increase the strength of the shield."

"So are we." In an instant, the venue fell into chaos again. Countless scientists began to complain. Their research had been stagnant for hundreds of years. Now scientists and researchers are too lazy to work. After all, No matter how hard you work on it, what you come up with is still the original thing.

"When did research start to stagnate?" Li Mingze frowned and asked these scientists.

"Your Majesty, roughly speaking, it should be from two hundred years ago, when we first captured the Lower Spiral River System!" A scientist thought back and gave the answer.

"At that time, we began to feel that the research was becoming somewhat difficult, and the experimental results that originally took ten days began to take longer."

"And as time goes by, we develop new technologies slower and slower, and the bonus of the mental network no longer seems to be effective."

"A hundred years ago, our research came to a complete standstill, and we were unable to develop new technologies anyway." The scientist sighed.

The scientists around him nodded when they heard this, and all agreed: "Yes, that's it. It stopped a hundred years ago."

Li Mingze reached out and touched his chin and fell into deep thought. Was there any sign of this two hundred years ago?

The changes that took place in the empire after the invasion of the Spiral Federation were nothing more than the beginning of research into space folding technology and the expansion of the empire's territory by nearly double.

At the same time, the empire's human-creation system was fully activated, creating hundreds of billions of people for the colonization of new river systems.

If nothing else, does the problem arise in these three aspects?

Is it because the empire began to research space folding technology, or is it due to the expansion of territory or the increase in population?

Headache! Li Mingze rubbed his temples and didn't know what to do.

There is no way to find out the specific reason now. After all, the research on space folding technology has been completed!

Moreover, these river system empires have completed their occupation, and trillions of people have been spread to various river systems. No matter which of these three river systems it is, it is irreversible!

"Your Majesty, I think we may be able to get the answer from other civilizations." Suddenly, a scientist stood up and said loudly.

"Oh? What do you mean?" Li Mingze looked at the scientist curiously. He had some impression that this person seemed to be responsible for the empire's "cemetery", that is, those scientists who were stuffed into the virtual world's civilization-related matters.

"Your Majesty, I think we can explore the factors that lead to the bottleneck of our technology by observing the development of a civilization!" The scientist showed a confident look.