The Vast Sea of Cosmic Battles

Two of China's top scientists predict that Earth will explode in ten years for some unknown reason. The protagonists, Li Yuji and Ma Yueyuan, use a strange black stone to send their souls into the ramshackle little spacecrafts they each built, then secretly launch them into space. The two men, in their two little spacecrafts, overcome countless hardships and eventually build themselves into a top civilization in the universe.