Mars, the underground steel city.
“This underground steel city is really enormous.”
Dressed in blood red armour, Luo Feng swept his spiritual force across the surroundings as he searched through the ancient underground city.
“Luo Feng, head to the warehouses!” Babata urged. “The large quantities of Black Iron mined by those workers should have been stored in important warehouses.”
“Alright.”
Luo Feng’s spiritual force covered a radius of six kilometres. On the streets and buildings throughout the underground city were numerous inscriptions written in the Universal Language.
Using these signs, Luo Feng quickly located the most important area of the steel city, the warehouse where Black Iron ore was stored.
Landing before the massive warehouse complex, Luo Feng could not help freezing for a moment before cursing softly.
This was going to be troublesome.
The warehouse complex before him was piled with enormous quantities of Black Iron, forming what looked like a small mountain.
Not only was the gigantic warehouse itself completely filled, but even the courtyards outside were packed, with Black Iron extending beyond the warehouse grounds.
“Haha, those miners were trapped on Mars. No matter how much Black Iron they had, they couldn’t transport it away. Black Iron became the least valuable thing here. The entire steel city was built from it, so naturally they piled it up however they wanted.”
Babata laughed.
“Luo Feng, search carefully and see if you can find any Black Iron Essence.”
Luo Feng looked helplessly at the mountain of Black Iron before him.
Force his way through?
How?
A8 grade Black Iron was extremely hard. Even an eighth stage Planetary Level martial artist would struggle to damage it through brute force.
Even with the Soaring Heaven Shuttle, Luo Feng would find it difficult to pierce.
Digging through soil was easy for him, but tunnelling through a mountain of Black Iron would be as difficult as an ordinary person digging through solid earth.
Virtually impossible.
“Collect! Collect! Collect!”
With a thought,
Whoosh!
Large piles of Black Iron vanished one after another.
Using his space ring, Luo Feng rapidly stored huge quantities of Black Iron.
“Babata, my space ring isn’t large enough. Help collect some as well.”
Luo Feng called out.
His space ring measured over six hundred metres long, more than five hundred metres wide, and over one hundred metres high.
Its total volume exceeded thirty million cubic metres.
If packed tightly enough, it could hold everything.
However, Babata’s storage space was available as well, so there was no reason not to use it.
“Crafty Luo Feng. Fine, I’ll handle it.”
Babata agreed readily.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
The mountain of Black Iron visibly shrank as large sections disappeared continuously.
Within moments, all the Black Iron piled around the warehouse grounds and courtyards had been transferred into Babata’s storage space.
“Hmm. A total of 118 million tonnes. Far too little. Barely enough to build a small interstellar warship.”
Babata commented.
Luo Feng laughed and strode towards the warehouse itself.
With all the Black Iron outside removed, the warehouse’s true appearance became visible.
It was a massive rectangular building with tightly sealed doors.
“Break!”
Luo Feng looked at the huge, thick Black Iron doors.
The Red Mixed Copper Mother fragment transformed into a streak of light and slashed heavily against them, cutting its way inside.
“These are really thick.”
Luo Feng could clearly feel the significant drain on his spiritual force.
Cutting Black Iron with the Red Mixed Copper Mother fragment was not difficult, but slicing through such thickness consumed considerable energy.
After half a minute, he finally cut an opening large enough for a person to pass through.
Inside the warehouse.
Using the same method as before, Babata stored all the Black Iron into his storage space.
“Hmm? Dark red?”
Luo Feng immediately noticed a small pile of dark red metal in the distance.
Drawing upon his vast inheritance memories, he quickly identified it.
Black Iron Essence.
“We finally found some!”
Luo Feng felt excited.
The Golden Horned Beast’s internal world currently needed B grade pure metals to increase its growth speed.
“Babata, check how much Black Iron Essence there is.”
Luo Feng walked over.
Swish!
A Silver Guard suddenly appeared.
The Silver Guard stared at the Black Iron Essence, its eyes glowing faintly as it collected data.
“The volume is approximately thirty five cubic metres, around twelve hundred tonnes in total.”
Babata replied.
“Oh?”
Luo Feng was about to praise the find before stopping.
“Twelve hundred tonnes? The Golden Horned Beast can currently consume nearly one hundred tonnes of B8 grade metal per day. Doesn’t that mean this is only enough food for a little over ten days?”
One had to remember that a third stage Stellar Level Golden Horned Beast could consume ordinary metals from Earth at a rate measured in hundreds of millions of tonnes per day.
Take the war bases as an example.
Each massive steel war base over five hundred metres in length and width contained more than ten million tonnes of metal.
Back when it was only at the first stage of Stellar Level, the Golden Horned Beast needed to devour several war bases before it felt full.
Now that it had reached the third stage of Stellar Level, its appetite had grown even larger.
For A8 grade metals, it could consume tens of thousands of tonnes per day.
For B8 grade metals, around one hundred tonnes per day was sufficient.
“Far too little.”
Luo Feng shook his head.
After collecting every piece of Black Iron from the warehouse, he failed to discover any additional Black Iron Essence.
“Babata, is there really so little Black Iron Essence here?”
Luo Feng could not help asking.
“It’s not that there’s little. It’s that the Golden Horned Beast eats too much. Isn’t twelve hundred tonnes already a huge amount?”
Babata replied.
“The peak bloodlines among the Star Beasts are all monstrous. Flame Star Beasts devour stars directly. Your Golden Horned Beast doesn’t eat stars, but its requirements are incredibly demanding.”
“When you eventually become a World Master, you’ll be consuming E grade metals. At the rate you eat every day, even your teacher, the Master of Yun Mo Planet, would end up bankrupt feeding you.”
Luo Feng smiled bitterly.
That was true.
The higher his level became, the more advanced the metals he required.
Unless he was willing to evolve at the slowest possible speed, which would save money.
But if he wanted rapid growth, simply purchasing pure metals would require a staggering amount of wealth.
“Keep searching. Let’s see whether there is any more Black Iron Essence in this steel city.”
…
The large scale looting continued.
Although the city itself was built from Black Iron, many houses and residential structures were not.
Most had decayed after so much time.
During the search, Luo Feng occasionally discovered small pieces of Black Iron Essence hidden inside ruined homes.
Clearly, they had once been treasured possessions of the miners.
Each discovery was small, but there were many of them.
Altogether, they added up to more than a thousand tonnes.
Thirty two minutes later.
Boom!
Luo Feng kicked open the basement door of a filthy, decayed mansion.
Dust poured from the door, revealing its original colour beneath.
Dark red.
“A door made from Black Iron Essence? If even the door is made of Black Iron Essence, what’s inside this basement?”
Luo Feng’s eyes lit up.
“Collect!”
He immediately stored the several tonne door into his space ring and stepped into a basement that had remained untouched for hundreds of thousands of years.
The basement was enormous.
“My heavens!”
Luo Feng stared in shock.
Inside the huge basement were large quantities of long decayed weapons arranged in neat rows.
Occupying the most space was a massive stack of dark red metal.
Its volume far exceeded the amount Luo Feng had collected from the warehouse.
And at the centre of the pile sat a blood red metal block.
“So much Black Iron Essence. Is that Black Iron Mother in the centre?”
Luo Feng was stunned.
“There’s actually more here than in the warehouse?”
“Babata, calculate the quantity quickly.”
Luo Feng urged.
Because of interference from the pyramids, Babata could only deploy a Silver Guard to visually inspect and gather data.
“There are approximately 12,300 tonnes of Black Iron Essence and about 360 kilograms of C8 grade Black Iron Mother.”
Babata replied.
“That’s far more than the warehouse.”
Luo Feng was astonished.
The warehouse contained only slightly over a thousand tonnes of Black Iron Essence and no Black Iron Mother at all.
“Luo Feng, I suggest we head to the central control centre of the underground steel city and connect to the intelligent monitoring system.”
Babata said.
“I suspect that after the miners were trapped here for so long, the internal order changed, and valuable materials such as Black Iron Essence were relocated.”
“Good idea.”
Luo Feng agreed.
Five minutes later.
The black metal robot connected directly to the city’s monitoring intelligence system.
Thanks to the energy towers, the system had remained operational until Luo Feng severed the city’s power supply.
The infiltration succeeded quickly.
“The records have been found.”
Babata began.
“After my master destroyed the interstellar fleet, around 3.2 million miners were stranded on Mars and unable to leave.”
“They requested rescue through the Virtual Universe Network and even offered rewards for assistance.”
“However, after retreating underground and receiving no rescue for a long period, internal changes occurred.”
“Among the miners, the male to female ratio was nearly twenty to one.”
“It became much like the feudal struggles you once had on Earth. More than three million people began fighting among themselves.”
“Resources were limited. Women were limited. Attractive women were even more limited.”
“Valuable Black Iron Essence and the even more precious Black Iron Mother were hidden away by the various factions in their own strongholds.”
“However, resources on Mars were limited. Producing food became increasingly difficult.”
“The steel city lacked the technology to build a proper spacecraft, so they spent thousands of years researching spacecraft construction.”
“In the end, they painstakingly built three tiny spacecraft and sent some elites away in a final attempt to survive.”
“The remaining several thousand people entered death sleep.”
“The steel city continued operating for more than three thousand years before finally perishing.”
Luo Feng sighed.
More than three million lives had struggled desperately.
Yet Mars lacked resources and supplies.
There had been virtually no hope.
“Luo Feng, let’s go. I have maps of all the major factions and their strongholds. We’ll search every one of them.”
Babata said.
“Excellent.”
Luo Feng’s eyes brightened.
They searched a total of twelve strongholds.
Eight were completely empty, evidently belonging to factions that had been defeated and destroyed.
The remaining four yielded gains far greater than the warehouse.
By the end,
Luo Feng had practically stripped the entire underground steel city of every piece of Black Iron Essence and Black Iron Mother.
The final total reached approximately 33,600 tonnes of Black Iron Essence and about 2.34 tonnes of Black Iron Mother.
“More than thirty thousand tonnes of Black Iron Essence. That’s roughly enough for almost a year of consumption.”
Standing at the city’s gate and looking into the dark city behind him, Luo Feng felt somewhat troubled.
The price of accelerating the Golden Horned Beast’s growth was truly enormous.
“Once it reaches Universe Level, its appetite will become even more outrageous.”
He shook his head.
“By then, even all this Black Iron Mother probably won’t be enough for a single day’s consumption.”