Chapter 158: Intelligence on the Blood Rock World (Three Chapters in Total)

Virtual Universe, Yuxiang Mountain Public Area.

"Jiang Chen, you are such a freak!"

Wuka held a wine glass and said loudly, "In just over a decade, you’ve completed eight danger-level missions. Isn't that a bit too absurd? At this speed, are you trying to kill yourself?"

"That's not even the most absurd part! The most absurd thing is that half of the mission worlds this guy has been to have been temporarily sealed off by the Virtual Universe Company!" Rong Jun chimed in with a complaint. "What on earth did you do in those mission worlds?!"

Wuka wore a look as if he had more to say.

On the Visca Star, he actually knew a thing or two about Jiang Chen's affairs.

But he didn't dare to speak of it.

Mainly because he was unwilling to expose the fact that he had been on the Visca Star, fearing that people would link it to the "Blood God Fruit" and leak the information.

Although Wuka was usually carefree, when it came to important matters, he was still very cautious.

"Want to know?" Jiang Chen looked at the group, a mischievous smile playing on his lips.

Seeing this expression on Jiang Chen's face, Luo Feng immediately said, "No, not at all! You guys are definitely going to start playing mystery again!"

"Congratulations, you've learned to buzz in with the answer!" Jiang Chen slapped Luo Feng on the shoulder and laughed aloud. "If you want to know, go ask the Virtual Universe Company! Or go investigate the mission worlds yourself. Anyway, I'm not saying a word, hahahaha!"

"Pfft~!"

Wuka, Rong Jun, and Luo Feng all gave Jiang Chen expressions of disdain.

Naturally, Jiang Chen was not going to tell them the details of those mission worlds.

In over a decade, Jiang Chen had rapidly swept through eight mission worlds.

Of course, if his avatars were included, it would be over a dozen.

Although the two avatars, "Uchiha Shisui" and "Ersor," had much lower efficiency than his original body, combined they had still ventured into seven mission worlds.

Naturally, compared to the original body, the harvests of the two avatars were much smaller; their combined treasures were worth only tens of millions of mixed element units.

—To avoid unnecessary trouble, especially fearing to run into other geniuses who happened to be in the same mission world, Jiang Chen's two avatars avoided using the mechanical legions unless necessary.

Being unable to mine the resources within the mission worlds on a large scale, and with strength much lower than that of the original body, lower returns were only normal.

However, relying solely on the strength of a single path—either "Illusionist Martial Artist" or "Illusionist"—the strength of these two avatars far exceeded the standards of normal Universe-level geniuses, and the benefits they gained within the mission worlds were not insignificant.

Tens of millions of mixed element units might seem like not much compared to the original body's harvest, but compared to other Universe-level geniuses, it was terrifying.

The most terrifying one was still Jiang Chen's original body.

Excluding the Visca Star, in the following decade or so, he had ventured into eight mission worlds, almost turning them completely upside down.

The resources and treasures he looted alone had a total value exceeding five billion mixed element units.

Including the Visca Star, a total of five mission worlds had to be temporarily closed because of Jiang Chen's "over-sweeping," which had wiped out the high-end combat power of the indigenous people within those worlds.

Fortunately, the "foundation" of the mission worlds had not been damaged. After being closed for a period of time and waiting for the Virtual Universe Company to send people to "repair" them, they could be reopened.

Some unique and precious resources would not be severely affected either; at most, production would drop for a certain period, but eventually, it would slowly recover.

However, because of this behavior of "over-exploiting mission worlds," Jiang Chen had still received a warning from the higher-ups of the human race.

Of course, it was merely a warning, instructing Jiang Chen not to cause excessive destruction to the mission worlds, nothing more.

As for punishments and the like, they weren't even mentioned once.

Still, Jiang Chen decided to keep a slightly lower profile, resting for a period to digest the resources accumulated from the previous mission worlds before starting the next one.

"Right." Jiang Chen suddenly looked at Luo Feng and asked, "It's been over a decade. Is there any result regarding the matter I asked you to look into?"

After coming out of the "Visca Star," Jiang Chen had asked Luo Feng to help investigate intelligence on the "Blood Luo World."

This included resource output, the upper limit of the strong's strength, and so on.

This was to decide whether he should make a trip to the Blood Luo World in the future.

A continent with a maximum diameter measured in light-years—even if one merely went up there to mine, the returns would be astonishing.

The premise for all this, however, was that the mechanical legion in Jiang Chen's hands was sufficient to suppress the high-end combat power on the Blood Luo World.

"Halfway done, I suppose." Luo Feng shook his head and said, "I can manage to investigate the mineral vein outputs by relying on spaceships and detectors. But investigating the strength of the high-end combat power within the mission world exceeds my capabilities. My Mosha clan avatar has died over a hundred times, and I still haven't figured out the strength of the strongest entity in the 'Immortal Temple'."

The last few sentences were shielded from the others, spoken by Luo Feng to Jiang Chen alone.

Possessing an "avatar" was still a secret that needed to be kept.

"Having this much is enough. As for the 'Immortal Temple,' if you can't find out, forget it. Safety first." Jiang Chen felt somewhat disappointed, but he didn't say anything more.

After all, Luo Feng's strength was still a bit weak.

If not for the Mosha clan avatar not fearing death, Jiang Chen wouldn't have let Luo Feng do such dangerous work.

Although he failed to find out the maximum degree of high-end martial power the "Immortal Temple" in the Blood Luo World could reach, being able to probe the distribution of most shallow mineral veins in the Blood Luo World was already of very high value.

Jiang Chen checked his inbox. The data was dense and packed; even with Jiang Chen's speed of thought, calculating it felt extremely complex, so he simply threw it directly to Jarvis to process.

As an artificial intelligence, organizing, calculating, and analyzing data was its greatest specialty.

Jiang Chen continued to drink and chat with the others.

After a while, Jarvis finally finished organizing the data sent by Luo Feng and reported a figure in Jiang Chen's consciousness: "Master, the mineral veins detected by Luo Feng have an estimated total value exceeding one hundred billion mixed element units! And this is only a part of it! The area Luo Feng probed doesn't even account for one percent of the Blood Luo World's scope!"

Hearing this figure, Jiang Chen raised an eyebrow.

An area of less than one percent yielded mineral veins valued at over one hundred billion mixed element units.

Jiang Chen had long guessed that the value of such a void continent would be extremely high, but he hadn't expected it to be this high.

"However, even with full-scale mining, given our current forces and resources—expanding the mechanical legion while simultaneously expanding the scale of the mining corps—it would still take thousands of years to finish mining the area Luo Feng explored. If it were the entire continent, the time consumed would be even longer."

Jarvis's words instantly calmed Jiang Chen down.

Rich resources were a good thing.

However, if mining capacity and efficiency couldn't keep up, it was all for naught.

The scope of the Blood Luo World was simply too vast. Even if the number of mining machines under Jiang Chen's command was counted in the hundreds of millions, tossing them into the Blood Luo World wouldn't even stir up a ripple.

The same went for military strength.

To control a region and ensure that resources could be mined with peace of mind required absolute suppression through military force.

Over the past decade or so, the scale of Jiang Chen's mechanical legion had expanded very rapidly, and its size was already quite impressive.

Yet, for a world of the Blood Luo World's caliber, it still seemed like a drop in the bucket.

"Still, if I can conquer a world of the 'Blood Luo World' caliber and plunder a massive amount of resources, the scale of the mechanical legion under my command will definitely expand to a terrifying degree."

"But to develop the 'Blood Luo World,' I must first have a military legion of sufficient scale, along with larger-scale resource extraction and production capabilities..."

Jiang Chen began to feel a headache coming on.

The volume of the Visca Star was already massive enough, but compared to the Blood Luo World, it was like a single drop of water to the ocean.

"Jiang Chen, what's wrong?" Wuka noticed that Jiang Chen's expression was off and quickly asked, "Did some trouble happen in reality? If you have something urgent, go take care of it."

"It's not that, just suddenly thought of some issues." Jiang Chen shook his head and said, "Let's not talk about this. Drink, drink!"

"Heh, you're a tycoon anyway. Today I'll borrow your light to drink some good stuff!" Wuka and the others stood on ceremony not at all, clinking glasses with Jiang Chen one after another.

It seemed they also hoped that through this method, Jiang Chen wouldn't dwell on those vexing matters.

—

The gathering ended, and consciousness returned to reality.

Jiang Chen picked up one world ring after another, his consciousness penetrating them to inspect them one by one.

Over the decade, Jiang Chen had accumulated an astonishing amount of military forces and resources in his hands.

Regarding the mechanical legion, the troop configuration hadn't changed much.

However, the number of "Void Dragon Mechas" had increased to twenty, immortal puppets to five hundred, and fighter jets to over ten thousand.

As for the Gundam mechas serving as the lowest-tier "cannon fodder," they had long surpassed the million mark.

Even though many of the materials had been exchanged from the Virtual Universe Company's treasury with a "50% discount privilege," it had nearly exhausted Jiang Chen's harvests from the previous mission worlds.

The remaining materials were worth less than ten billion mixed element units, most of which were special materials that the mechanical legion didn't currently need, yet he was reluctant to sell.

As for cash, there were only tens of millions of mixed element units left.

"Actually, with my current strength, if I could have enough materials to forge more immortal puppets—to a large enough quantity—even if a King-class Immortal came to attack, I wouldn't worry."

"However, whether it's mining resources or forging immortal puppets, it requires not only materials, but even more so, time."

A thought flashed through Jiang Chen's mind: "If my army-spawning capability were stronger... Hmm?! Army-spawning capability?!"

A flash of inspiration seemed to cross Jiang Chen's mind.

In fact, judging by Jiang Chen's current level of "productivity," his army-spawning capability was already quite astonishing.

The production modules for various types of machinery alone were so numerous that they couldn't even fit inside a medium-sized world ring.

If there were sufficient resources and they operated at full throttle, hundreds of thousands of mechanical armies could be produced every day.

Yet, for a world of the Blood Luo World's magnitude, it still seemed somewhat inadequate.

However... things like army-spawning capability weren't solely improved by expanding production modules.

Jiang Chen opened the system, fixing his gaze on his personal attribute interface and its two special specialties:

[Mass Production Insights]: Assembly success rate of any production line +50%, mass production efficiency +20%, production cost -20%.

[Mechanical Genius]: Attributes of manufactured mechanical equipment increased by 14%, manufacturing speed accelerated by 44%, manufacturing costs reduced by 22%.

Initially, what Jiang Chen valued most about these two specialties was the "cost reduction."

However, as the mechanical legions forged by Jiang Chen grew more and more powerful, Jiang Chen discovered that the "cost reduction" of such specialties had an upper limit.

It wasn't a limit on the "total cost," but rather a limit on the "specialty tier."

For example, the specialty [Mass Production Insights] had cost only 222 specialty points to redeem.

Its attribute of reducing costs only took effect when manufacturing machinery of "Tier 2 and below."

When manufacturing higher-level machinery, the attributes of "mass production efficiency" and "production line assembly success rate" remained effective, but the cost reduction attribute no longer worked.

This evaluation depended on the system's rating of the blueprint's grade.

For some blueprints not recorded by the system, Jiang Chen could roughly judge their level within the system's grading through experience.

The specialty [Mechanical Genius] was much the same, though the condition for its "cost reduction" attribute to take effect was higher than that of [Mass Production Insights], remaining effective on blueprints of "Tier 3 and below."

After all, this specialty had cost more specialty points when Jiang Chen redeemed it.

Tier 2 corresponded to the Star level, and Tier 3 corresponded to the Universe level.

Blueprints of these two tiers were only used by Jiang Chen nowadays to manufacture some logistics and production machinery.

For combat-grade mechanical units, the minimum starting point was Tier 4, while the mainstays were Tier 5, representing the Domain Lord level, and Tier 6, representing the Immortal level.

For blueprints of this caliber, the "cost reduction" attributes of these two specialties had zero effect.

Still, the increase in mass production efficiency was quite useful.

"If I had more specialties that increase mass production efficiency, and my army-spawning capability drastically improved, wouldn't I be able to handle a world on the scale of the 'Blood Luo World'?"

A thought flashed through Jiang Chen's mind. He immediately clicked to enter the [Specialties] interface, entered the search criteria, and pressed the [Search] button.

The interface before him instantly shifted, and rows of specialty lists floated into Jiang Chen's view.

[Assembly Line Manufacturing Expert]: Assembly line production efficiency +80%, output +10%, cost -15%.
Redemption requires 5,555 specialty points.

[Super Mechanical Manufacturer]: Mechanical creation performance +30%, efficiency of producing mechanical units +300%.
Redemption requires: 30,000 specialty points.

[Heart of the Creator - Machinery]: Mechanical affinity +500%, efficiency of producing mechanical units +300%, mechanical creation performance +40%.
Redemption requires: 40,000 specialty points.

[Mechanical Life Creator]: Mechanical unit manufacturing speed +3000%, can consume a large amount of spiritual power to imbue mechanical units with "life." Mechanical lives created by you will regard you as their creator, and loyalty and faith toward you will be implanted into their underlying logic, forever unchangeable.
Redemption requires: 200,000 specialty points.

(End of this chapter)