Event Description
Zhang Beihai was an officer who joined the Space Force in the early Crisis Era. Outwardly, he appeared to be a firm triumphalist, actively promoting the construction of the space fleet and technological development. Yet deep within, he had been a resolute defeatist from the very beginning — he clearly recognized that with sophons locking down humanity's fundamental science, there was no possibility of catching up technologically with the Trisolaran civilization, and military confrontation was utterly hopeless.
Zhang Beihai spent nearly two centuries executing his secret plan. He hibernated and awakened multiple times, each occasion serving as preparation for the ultimate escape. He even assassinated conservative aerospace experts who supported chemical propulsion-based designs, in order to advance the development of more capable nuclear fusion propulsion technology — because only sufficiently fast ships could successfully flee.
As the Doomsday Battle was about to commence, Zhang Beihai, serving as acting captain of the Natural Selection, suddenly ordered the ship to accelerate away from the battlefield at maximum thrust. The officers and crew aboard were stunned, but under Zhang Beihai's iron-willed control, the ship successfully broke away from the fleet. When news of the Doomsday Battle's catastrophic defeat arrived, the Natural Selection had already traveled a sufficient distance. Zhang Beihai's decades of patient concealment and deception ultimately proved to be the foresight that saved a portion of humanity. However, the "Dark Battle" that the fleeing fleet subsequently faced brought new moral dilemmas.