Chapter Three: Descent

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The distance between Luoshen Planet and the Sun reached 15 billion kilometers, placing it beyond the heliosphere. From this vantage, the Sun’s brightness was less than half of the full moon as seen from Earth—barely enough to cast a shadow. This revealed just how faint the sunlight was on Luoshen Planet.

Such dim sunlight caused the surface temperature to plummet to around minus 251 degrees Celsius, approximately 22 Kelvin. This extreme cold solidified nearly all gases into solids. The planet bore no atmosphere, existing in a state of high vacuum.

Moreover, having exited the heliosphere, high-energy interstellar radiation bombarded the surface unimpeded. Without any protection, even the strongest human would perish within a minute on its surface.

Without a spacesuit, no matter how many clones Li Qingsong created, they would be useless. But unlike cloning tanks, the Deep Space ship had few spare parts.

“You’re the only one here. Aren’t four spacesuits enough? Why do you need so many?”

Li Qingsong’s two brains began thinking simultaneously but after long consideration found no solution. Modern spacesuits were exquisitely complex; he simply couldn’t fabricate one from scratch, no matter how much he tried.

Finally, he clenched his teeth and resolved:

“No matter what, a spacesuit serves five essential functions: one, providing pressure; two, storing oxygen; three, insulation; four, radiation shielding; and five, maintaining communication.

For pressure, I’ll cut some airtight, non-permeable sealing material into clothing shapes.

Oxygen tanks are indispensable for any spacesuit—I have plenty of those.

As for insulation… I can’t do much. At best, I’ll rig some batteries to heat the oxygen tanks to prevent them from freezing and becoming unusable.

I’ll just leave it at that. If it gets too cold, the clones can wear thicker layers. After all, radiant heat transfer is the least efficient method. With good insulation, they should survive for a few hours. When freezing becomes unbearable, they can return for warmth.

Radiation shielding is even harder to solve, so I won’t bother. Although radiation exists here, the dose is low. If they get sick, it’ll be years later. I can just recycle the clones that develop radiation sickness.

Communication isn’t an issue—I can control the clones directly with my mind, so no need for communication devices.”

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Having made this decision, the two Li Qingsongs immediately went to the warehouse to search for usable materials.

Eventually, his gaze settled on a special plastic film. This film was originally designed for emergency sealing.

If the ship suffered damage, Li Qingsong could cover the breach with this film to temporarily isolate the ship’s interior from the external environment.

Because it was compact and lightweight, many rolls were stored on the ship.

“This is it!”

He grabbed a roll and brought it to the processing room.

Then, the two Li Qingsongs once again began studying tailoring and film-processing techniques.

After forty hours of study, Li Qingsong finalized the production plan.

“Cutting is easy, but sealing the joints is tricky. Reinforcing vulnerable parts like the soles, palms, knees, and elbows is another challenge.”

Tricky, but not impossible. It mostly required high precision and time-consuming, painstaking work.

Once the plan was set, Li Qingsong operated both bodies to gather tools and began meticulous fabrication.

Three months later, the first “spacesuit” was complete.

He left an opening for the eyes, replacing it with special glass.

Metal plates were added to vulnerable areas like soles, palms, and knees, connected to the film with soft padding.

Seams between film pieces were secured with special stitching and adhesives to ensure airtightness.

Overall, it resembled a full-body protective suit in a dull yellow hue.

He tested it in the vacuum of space outside the ship, inflating it and observing the data carefully. Sighing, he said, “It’ll have to do.”

The first spacesuit took three months, but the second was finished in just two months.

By the time the second batch of five clones was born, Li Qingsong had six suits in total.

He still needed to make six more.

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With the addition of these five new clones, as expected, Li Qingsong felt his brainpower and mobility multiply fivefold compared to when he had only his original body.

Seven identical bodies busied themselves in the processing room, working for half a year to complete the remaining six suits.

By then, the second batch of five clones had been successfully created, bringing the total number of bodies and brains at Li Qingsong’s disposal to twelve.

These twelve identical Li Qingsongs, indistinguishable in height, weight, and appearance, busied themselves aboard the Deep Space ship. The once vast and empty cabin now felt slightly crowded.

At this point, Li Qingsong paused the cloning process.

Not because he didn’t want more clones, but because producing too many at once would exhaust the ship’s supplies.

Clones were not robots; though lacking independent consciousness, they retained biological instincts. They needed to breathe and eat.

Li Qingsong carefully inventoried the supplies.

Originally, the ship’s resources and energy were enough for him alone for fifteen years.

After creating the first clone, that was halved to 7.5 years.

Now, with twelve bodies, food, drinking water, oxygen, and energy would last only one year.

Within this year, Li Qingsong had to procure sufficient supplies from Luoshen Planet. Otherwise, all the Li Qingsongs would starve to death.

“Then… it’s time to get to work.”

Looking out the porthole at the vast, dark red planet, he made a firm decision.

He left his original body and one clone aboard the Deep Space ship as a safeguard against total loss. The other ten clones boarded two small landing craft, carrying initial supplies, and departed.

There were only two small landing ships, and Li Qingsong sent them both out.

Before the porthole, in his original body’s field of vision, the two landing ships’ thrusters blazed as they descended toward the planet’s surface.

Through the clones’ perspective, the dark red land rapidly expanded below.

The two landing ships finally touched down. As the hatches opened, the bleak, cold, desolate, and deathly silent surface of Luoshen Planet unfolded once again in Li Qingsong’s mind.