Technological advancement begins with devouring.

Chapter 76 The Space Adventurer Arrives!

After the introduction, Jiang Chen asked the 'butler' to take Luo Feng to visit the factory, while he himself reviewed the report submitted by the 'butler'.

This report is very detailed. Just by reading the content, one can clearly picture the entire process of the factory's continuous expansion from its initial construction to the present day, which has taken more than a year.

However, Jiang Chen didn't care about most of the details; he focused on the large amount of data listed by the 'butler'.

This includes inventory in the warehouse, the number of production lines, the production efficiency of the 'Goliath', the cost of goods purchased, the selling price, and so on.

Combining the logs previously sent to him by AI, and carefully calculating the output and quantity of goods entering and leaving, Jiang Chen was surprised to find that this factory had also benefited from the bonus of his expertise [Mass Production Insights].

[Mass Production Experience]: Success rate of assembling on any production line increased by 50%, mass production efficiency increased by 20%, and production cost decreased by 20%.

The 'assembly line success rate' attribute is useless; at least Jiang Chen hasn't found its use yet. The success rate of assembling any production line is 100%, and he has never encountered a failure.

However, the attributes '20% increase in mass production efficiency' and '20% decrease in production costs' are extremely valuable, allowing Jiang Chen to significantly improve his earning efficiency.

Without these two features, the 'Goliath' would still be a very profitable business, but the efficiency of snowballing would be greatly reduced.

"Apart from the first production line, the subsequent production lines were all built using intelligent control. I didn't participate in them, so can I still enjoy the bonus from the [Mass Production Experience]? Is it because I controlled the intelligent system, so it's counted as something I built? Or can any production line under my name enjoy the bonus?"

Many guesses came to Jiang Chen's mind.

The mechanism by which the 'specialty' works is as mysterious as the system itself, something Jiang Chen cannot comprehend.

Jiang Chen has no confidence that he can figure out the underlying principles.

However, regardless of how a specialty works, as long as it's useful enough, that's sufficient.

As for the rest, there's no need to delve into it.

-

Jiang Chen and his group stayed in Bailanxing for a few days, partly to handle the equity transfer procedures for the factory area—Luo Feng did not have citizenship before, so he naturally could not obtain equity.

On the other hand, both Luo Feng's transport fleet and the personnel Jiang Chen sent to develop the 'Aurora Star' and 'Raven Star' mines need time to prepare.

The former was Luo Feng's own business, and Jiang Chen didn't ask about it at all.

As for the latter, the 'steward' recommended two slaves skilled in management, along with their deputies, to form two teams that would travel to 'Aurora Star' and 'Raven Star' respectively, carrying the official permits Jiang Chen obtained from the Black Dragon Mountain Empire to take over the mines.

As for the miners mining the veins, Jiang Chen directly mobilized a full 50,000 SCVs from Mars, 10,000 for each vein, which should be enough to achieve maximum mining efficiency.

These five mines can solve a small portion of the Goliath's supply of relatively "low-grade" ores.

However, most Grade B metals, and a small amount of Grade C metals, still need to be imported from abroad.

Even so, the five mines can still reduce the raw material costs of the 'Goliath Giant' by nearly five percent.

It may not seem like much, but if the number is scaled up to thousands or even tens of thousands of mechs per year, the amount of money saved becomes quite considerable.

If the factory on Bailan Star could produce 5,000 'Goliath Giants' annually, these five mines alone would save Jiang Chen over 10 billion Black Dragon Coins each year.

The cost is merely a 'contract fee' of less than three billion per year, plus some worthless SCVs.

The latter is very inexpensive, requiring only common metal resources such as iron and titanium to build. The metals contained in asteroids within the solar system alone are enough to produce hundreds of millions of SCVs.

More than three times the profit, in some respects even higher than that of the 'Goliath'.

However, combining the two is the best way to maximize their advantages.

After spending several days sorting out the industries on 'Aurora Star' and 'Raven Star' and confirming that they were on the right track, Jiang Chen boarded the spaceship to return to Earth.

As before, Jiang Chen does not intend to personally handle any further development and expansion; he will delegate the responsibility to the management personnel among his slaves.

You only need to grasp the general direction; you don't need to worry too much about the details.

The control of biochips and the monitoring of artificial intelligence are sufficient to ensure that no problems arise within the industry.

As for the outside...

Jiang Chen's assets are not enough to attract the covetousness of a powerful enemy.

Those petty thieves don't even need Number One or Number Three to take action; the factory's automatic defense weapons are enough to eliminate those clueless little thieves.

During this trip into space, Luo Feng also purchased his own Class C spaceship, so he wouldn't need to borrow a spaceship from Jiang Chen for future trips into space.

Similarly, Babata also handed Jiang Chen a map showing the routes to and from Earth.

"This is the route map for entering and leaving Earth. Going out is fine; you can just fly directly into the dark universe. Returning is a bit more troublesome; you need to fly along a specific route. Just have your AI memorize the route."

Babata handed the route map to Jiang Chen, instructing him, "The spatial secret technique left by the master is excellent for protecting Earth. This route map is very important; never divulge it to anyone outside of Earth. Do not give it to anyone, not even the people on Earth."

"Don't worry, I won't give it to anyone." Jiang Chen had no intention of letting anyone else from Earth go to space.

Although Hong, Jia Yi, and others repeatedly expressed their desire to go into space and broaden their horizons, Jiang Chen refused them all, citing that "the time is not yet ripe."

The Earth is still too small and weak, and the secrets it holds are too great.

Jiang Chen didn't want those powerful figures on Earth who knew nothing to go into space and inadvertently expose some of Earth's secrets, thus attracting powerful enemies they couldn't fight back against.

"Luo Feng."

Jiang Chen looked at Luo Feng and said, "Let me know when your Earthling clone reaches the stellar level."

"Stellar level?" Luo Feng was a little puzzled, but he didn't ask any further questions. He simply nodded and said, "I bought quite a few treasures this time. If I go back and cultivate diligently for a while, I should be able to reach the stellar level soon. At most... a few years."

"Just contact me when the time comes."

Jiang Chen said something casually, then took his leave and returned to his base in South America.

The electronic calendar in the base's main hall shows the current time as May 2061.

Countless pieces of information flashed through Jiang Chen's mind as he muttered to himself, "There's less than half a year left... I need to speed things up."

-

In the world of Swallowing the Stars, the crises on Earth seem to never cease.

First came the 'Great Nirvana' that nearly led to the extinction of human civilization.

Having finally risen again from the Great Nirvana and restored and even surpassed the prosperity before the Great Nirvana, a terrifying cosmic behemoth, the 'Golden Horned Beast,' has descended upon Earth once more.

Luo Feng risked his life to finally defeat the Golden Horned Beast, but less than two years later, the exploration team of the Norlan Mountain family, 'bandits' from outer space, discovered Earth.

Although Jiang Chen's appearance caused many butterfly effects and changed many things.

But this level of change is clearly not enough to affect the universe.

At least, Jiang Chen was certain that the Nolan Mountain family's adventure team would still come to Earth.

There is a high probability that even the timing will remain unchanged, and it will be at the end of this year.

This adventure team isn't very strong; their strongest member is only at the sixth level of the Stellar Realm. Jiang Chen is absolutely confident that he can easily kill them.

The real problem is that we have to be quick and eliminate the adventure team before they can react. We absolutely cannot give them a chance to send a message.

Once information on Earth is leaked, the Nolan Mountain family, with its power, is fully capable of inflicting near-devastating damage on the planet.

The head of the Noranshan family alone, a cosmic-level powerhouse with the title of 'Giant Axe Warrior,' is enough to destroy the Earth countless times.

If it attracts the attention of Mount Noran, it would be a huge problem for Earth.

To eliminate the adventure team before they get close to Earth, even with Jiang Chen's superior strength, he needs to make sufficient preparations.

Under Jiang Chen's orders, after the third expansion of the Bailan Star factory, further expansion was halted, and most of the profits were instead used to purchase a large number of intra-star monitoring devices.

With a massive sum of hundreds of billions of Black Dragon Coins poured in, the entire solar system came under Jiang Chen's complete surveillance.

Unless this adventure team possesses concealment equipment or anti-detection equipment of grade D or higher, they will be discovered by Jiang Chen as soon as they enter the interior of the solar system.

On November 21st, China time, Jiang Chen was immersed in the system library when he was suddenly awakened by a piercing alarm.

"Master, a C5-class spaceship has been detected, approximately 43 billion kilometers from Earth!"

Jarvis quickly reported his findings while projecting the images onto the large screen.

The screen showed a blank starry sky. A disc-shaped, silver-gray spaceship suddenly appeared in the void and began to accelerate, flying towards Earth.

Against the backdrop of the vast starry sky, a pale blue planet flashed by.

Even though it was only for a moment, Jiang Chen still recognized the origin of this planet: Neptune.

Since Pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet and removed from the 'planet' list, Neptune has become the farthest planet from the Sun in the solar system.

After observing for a while, Jiang Chen discovered that this spaceship was actually the same model as his own, the flagship C5-class spaceship in the 'Black Dragon Mountain X' series, known for its extremely high cost-performance ratio.

Even the color is the same silver-gray.

“43 billion kilometers, even traveling at near the speed of light, would take more than forty hours.” Jiang Chen immediately ordered, “Dispatch ships to take off, carrying ‘C6-class laser cannons’ to intercept! At the same time, the ‘Goliath Giant’ squad will act as the second line of defense, and must prevent the enemy from getting close.”

After a pause, Jiang Chen gave another order: "Recall Squads Two and Four and send them to Mars orbit to prepare for a third layer of interception, just in case!"

To deal with the adventure team from the Nuolanshan family, Jiang Chen prepared three lines of defense.

The C6-class laser cannon, purchased at a high price from space, could instantly destroy a C5-class spaceship and kill everyone inside if it hits directly.

However, the C6-level laser cannon was extremely expensive, and Jiang Chen only prepared one.

If the shot misses and doesn't hit, there will be absolutely no time to recharge and fire a second shot.

At this point, a squad of 'Goliath Giants' remotely controlled by Jarvis will conduct a second layer of interception.

If they still fail, Units 2 and 4, along with their slaves, will form a third line of defense in Mars orbit to prevent the Norlhan family adventure team from approaching Earth.

Despite being well-prepared, Jiang Chen still dared not be careless in the slightest when it came to the safety of Earth. After assigning the task to Jarvis, he immediately dialed Luo Feng's number.

"Luo Feng, time is of the essence, listen to me." Jiang Chen interrupted Luo Feng's greeting, speaking rapidly, "Adventurers have entered the solar system from space, and I've already dispatched my men to intercept them. You, have your slaves set off immediately; we absolutely cannot let this adventuring team discover Earth!"

"A space adventure team? How could that be?" Luo Feng was taken aback.

He simply couldn't understand why an adventure team would approach Earth when Earth's dark cosmic coordinates were obscured by Hu Yanbo's spatial magic.

But Luo Feng immediately realized that now was not the time to get to the bottom of things.

He immediately said, "Okay, I'll send Meng Yi and Meng Er out right now! They'll cooperate with you!"

"I've set up two more lines of defense ahead of you. Only if both lines fail will they be the ones to intervene. The third line of defense is located in Mars orbit; I've already sent you the exact coordinates."

Jiang Chen said something and then turned his attention to the monitor screen.

However, communication with Luo Feng was not interrupted. Through the video footage, Luo Feng could also see the spaceship that was rapidly approaching Earth in space.

On another large screen, spaceships were rapidly taking off from Earth and Mars, heading towards their designated interception positions.

Jiangnan Base City, Mingyue Community.

Luo Feng stared in astonishment at the rows of spaceships on the screen and exclaimed, "When did A-Chen prepare so many spaceships? Did he know this day would come?"

This wasn't the first time Luo Feng had experienced Jiang Chen's 'precognition'.

However, Luo Feng was a very sensible person. Although he was very curious, he would never pry into his friend's secrets.

In the footage, the two spaceships are getting closer and closer.

However, due to the great distance, even the first line of defense did not arrive until nearly twenty hours later.

The Norlhan family adventure team's spaceship arrived at the ambush location of the 'C6-level laser cannon' several hours later.

"Distance 1820 million kilometers, laser cannon charging begins! Charging time 50 seconds!"

Jarvis's voice rang out, and Jiang Chen and Luo Feng clenched their fists nervously.

If this shot hits, it can kill the enemy instantly, leaving them no time to react.