Chapter 287: Behemoth, Prepare to Attack!
Although the specific reasons were unclear, everyone still agreed to Jubian’s plan.
“What about the ships? Are we only sending out one Qiangyun? While I don’t doubt the luck of this ship, the number is simply too small.”
The Qiangyun was a modified Apollo warship. Its hull came from the renowned Paradise Island Shipyard, so its strength and space navigation performance were not an issue.
However, its firepower was definitely lacking, only about one-fifth of a “Qinling” class ship.
“No, of course not just this one ship.”
Lu Yuan smiled, full of confidence.
“How could I not have considered this in advance?”
The door opened.
“To everyone from Cangyuan, to describe how I feel right now with a phrase you like to say, I’ve missed you all so much!”
Two old friends from the Free Trade Alliance walked in, arms open and faces beaming.
“Hugh! Mr. Li Tao!”
Caoyuan was overjoyed and went to greet them.
“When did you arrive?”
“Just arrived! The caravan is currently resupplying at the dock area!”
Hugh gave a furry thumbs-up. “Executive Officer, you’re still the same, you calculate the time so precisely! Old Li and I have decided to return the four warships we leased until the day you return victorious.”
Oh—
That’s great!
The players all breathed a sigh of relief.
Previously, the escort for these two merchants consisted of two “Qinling” and two “Wuyi” class ships, plus the Qiangyun with its mystical buffs, finally giving them a semblance of a fleet.
“Then what about the latter half of your trade route? Can you manage?” Caoyuan asked with concern.
“No worries!” Hugh waved his hand.
“The new warships I ordered earlier will be delivered within this week! The subsequent route is just from here to Li Star, delivering the third batch of purchased supplies to Cangyuan. This path has become very safe thanks to your efforts and doesn’t require too strong an escort.”
“That’s good. Did you encounter any trouble at Galan’s doorstep?”
“The Jialan, because they haven’t been beaten in so long, did show some signs of resistance and had some conflicts with us, but it wasn’t really trouble.” Hugh said.
“We shot down at least four of their fighter jets, and a gunboat!”
Li Tao was clearly very satisfied with these results: “This was all thanks to the ‘owl’. If they dared to enter the warship’s firing range, hehe! I’d blast the crap out of them!”
“No, no, no, Jialan are already a big pile of crap, there’s no need to blast them.”
Hugh humorously corrected him.
Hmm, not bad!
Lu Yuan was very happy to hear the positive feedback from the users.
As the saying goes, a good start is half the battle. As long as Cangyuan’s weapons can make a name for themselves in the Free Trade Alliance, sales will surely follow.
This was actually a very important strategic move.
At this stage, the cangyuan coin was steadily appreciating, causing the export competitiveness of low-end goods to continuously decline, which is unavoidable in the process of faction development.
On the other hand, the price of the interstellar carbon market was also accelerating its decline due to Cangyuan’s large shipments.
This meant that relying solely on exporting crude oil for large amounts of foreign exchange would definitely not work.
In the future, if Cangyuan still wanted to maintain a relatively balanced trade, it would have to follow the path of “true imperialism,” importing large quantities of raw materials while dumping large quantities of advanced industrial finished products.
And among all industrial finished products, weapons, especially warships, were undoubtedly the most profitable.
The larger the warship, the higher the profit margin.
“We will depart in three or four days,” Lu Yuan told Caoyuan. “We’ll recruit another wave of crew members during this time.”
“Understood!”
Lu Yuan looked at the holographic star map and pulled up the clearest “ghost ship” sighting photo to date.
Although the surface details of the ship in the photo were blurry, it still occupied a significant portion of the image, indicating its considerable size.
It had a slender and relatively complex hull, with a parabolic nozzle at the stern whose diameter was slightly larger than the hull itself.
That was a typical feature of early nuclear-powered engines, and within that most primitive hull structure lay a precious legacy coveted by the entire Star Alliance and even the entire universe.
“I will definitely succeed!” Lu Yuan was full of fighting spirit.
After completing the “main quest,” Jubian teleported back to the “Deep Sea”’s bridge.
Consciousness teleportation is so convenient!
Seeing the research director appear, a group of Engineer players gathered around him.
“Teacher Jubian, we’ve figured out how to operate the Deep Sea’s internal automated factory!”
“What’s the result?”
Judging by their excited expressions, there must be good news beyond expectations.
“It can produce more than just swarm drones here! The factory’s principle is also based on 3D printing and can manufacture all the components it needs, including warp engines!”
That’s great!
Jubian’s eyes lit up.
This way, they wouldn’t have to wait for the “construction team” to slowly travel from their home base for over a month.
“What about the previously vacant device, the suspected jump engine?”
The Engineer shook his head.
“That’s not a jump engine, but a warp overclocker. It can increase warp travel speed by consuming extra zero element, up to 99.9% of the speed of light.”
“Really?!”
Although not being able to immediately acquire jump technology was somewhat disappointing, this was definitely not bad news!
Jubian speculated that the “Deep Sea” was merely the most basic small to medium-sized combat unit within the Intelligent Order Consensus, and did not possess jump capability itself. Its faster-than-light movement relied on higher-level combat units in the same formation.
It was like a Titan in EVE, opening jump gates for fleet members.
From this perspective, faster-than-light jump likely required an immense amount of energy, making it difficult for even a monster like the “Deep Sea,” with an extreme power generation capacity exceeding 1400 times that of the entire Earth in reality, to satisfy.
This indirectly validated Old Jia’s conjecture.
The jump engine on cangyuan one was more advanced than similar technology from humanity’s golden age, or even from the “great enemy” that destroyed humanity.
It must have applied principles that are currently incomprehensible, or even unimaginable.
Otherwise, the 21st-century level nuclear reactors on the colony ship simply couldn’t power it!
“Very good, very good. Are you short on raw materials for construction?”
“No shortage! We just need to melt down about 5,000 swarm drones, and all the required elements will be complete. 5,000 drones account for half of the currently deployed total.”
“Alright, then let’s take from Peter to pay Paul for now. How quickly can it be done?”
“About 25 days.”
“25 days is still a bit slow, can it be faster?”
“Hmm—it’s only theoretically possible. The manufacturing requirements for some parts of the warp engine exceed the limits of the 3D printing equipment in the automated factory. They can only be slowly processed using optical tweezers and nano-stacking technology. The bottleneck is mainly here.”
“You mean, the 3D printing technology here is still inferior to the black tech products we have?”
“Yes! If there were more 3D printers here, it would be great; at least it could halve the construction period.”
“Heh heh~”
Jubian smiled very “mysteriously.”
“Don’t worry, I think ‘Planner’ big brother will help us solve this problem.”
The “Deep Sea” still had enough zero element reserves.
If it could successfully complete its warp engine and warp overclocker in 15 days or less, that would truly be amazing!
What did this mean?
It meant that this giant ship could join the Executive Officer in the latter half of the journey, and even if they encountered the Super Democratic Empire head-on, they would definitely not be afraid!
Jubian immediately sent a message to the Executive Officer.
After reporting the situation, he saw the Mage walk over.
“Li Shen, check the player community private messages.”
As a friend in real life, the other party rarely called him by his real name, indicating that the next matter was related to “another world.”
Jubian walked to a less crowded corner and quietly opened the player community.
The person who sent him a private message was the official contact person from that unspeakable department in reality.
“Dr. Li, hello! Do you have time tomorrow? A major confidential project has entered the acceptance phase, and the next step requires your presence and guidance! Tickets and hotels have already been booked for you.”
Below was a screenshot of high-speed rail ticket information.
Destination: Anhui Province, Shuangfei City.
This place... nuclear fusion experiment?!
Jubian looked up at the Mage.
“It’s done?”
“Yes, it should be done.”