Technological advancement begins with devouring.

Chapter 73, Second Tier, Constant Star Level

The meeting did not take place in the Ares Palace, but in reality.

There were very few participants, only four people.

Jiang Chen, Jia Yi, Hong, and Lei Shen.

Actually, Luo Feng should have been added as well, but Luo Feng has only just barely adapted to the body of the Golden Horned Beast. As for the Earthling clone, it has only just begun to develop and will take at least another year to complete before it can return to human society.

"Jiang Chen, these people in your base..."

Jia Yi and his two companions could tell at a glance that the "guards" in Jiang Chen's base did not look like humans from Earth.

Upon entering the reception room, Jia Yi couldn't hold back any longer and blurted out the question.

Although Hong and Thor appeared very calm, they both pricked up their ears, wanting to hear the answer from Jiang Chen.

"Most of the slaves bought from the universe are planetary level nine, and there are a few star level four and five." Jiang Chen didn't hide anything and directly revealed the origins of Number Two, Number Four, and others.

"universe?"

"slave?"

All three of them were startled.

Hong was the first to come to her senses and quickly asked, "Jiang Chen, have you been to space and made contact with civilizations there?"

There are many relics on Earth called "ancient civilization relics," which are actually left behind by powerful civilizations in the universe.

Many high-ranking and powerful figures on Earth are not completely ignorant about the universe; they have some understanding of it.

Perhaps some people know more and some know less, but at least the very few people standing at the pinnacle of Earth are very clear that there are extremely prosperous and powerful civilizations in the universe.

For various reasons, Earth has never had the opportunity to make contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. They can only make some inferences from various clues in the ruins and obtain incomplete "puzzle pieces".

"That's right, I recently took a trip into space."

Jiang Chen didn't hide anything and directly recounted his general experience: "I went to an extremely prosperous commercial planet, which translates to 'Qiulong Star' in Earth's language. These slaves were all purchased on 'Qiulong Star.' It's just that I didn't have enough funds. If I had enough wealth, I could easily buy even cosmic-level slaves."

After a pause, Jiang Chen looked at the three of them and asked, "You know what the concept of 'cosmic level' is, right?"

"Cosmic level, based on clues from ancient civilization ruins, it's an existence capable of easily destroying Earth," Hong said in a deep voice. "Perhaps it can't completely destroy Earth, but spending some time causing a mass extinction of life on the surface would be no problem at all."

"I had some opportunities at the ruins of an ancient civilization that allowed me to travel to the universe. However, the cruelty of the universe far exceeded my imagination."

Jiang Chen concealed some of the truth, only revealing what he wanted others to know: "Many powerful races, far more powerful than those on Earth, have been enslaved as a whole. Their entire race continues to reproduce and then be sold by slave traders. Although there is a certain order, strength is the eternal theme in the universe. Without sufficient strength, one will be at the mercy of others."

"Jiang Chen, what are your thoughts on telling us all this?" Jia Yi suddenly asked.

Among the many powerful figures and high-ranking officials on Earth, besides Luo Feng, Jia Yi is most familiar with Jiang Chen and understands Jiang Chen's personality very well.

Jiang Chen wouldn't proactively contact others, let alone share information, without a purpose.

When the Golden Horned Beast appeared, Jia Yi didn't realize it at the time, but after carefully reviewing the events, he felt that Jiang Chen had already obtained some information about the Golden Horned Beast and had even made preparations in advance.

Because of his knowledge of Jiang Chen, Jia Yi guessed that Jiang Chen had gathered them together this time to achieve some kind of goal.

"Thanks to some previous discoveries at ancient civilization sites, I am not starting from scratch in the universe this time."

Jiang Chen's gaze swept over the crowd as he spoke, "I sold a treasure obtained from the ruins of an ancient civilization to buy these slaves. In addition, there is a batch of treasures from outer space that can greatly enhance the overall strength of humanity."

"Significantly enhance humanity's overall strength?" Jia Yi, Hong, and Thor all looked at Jiang Chen excitedly.

"It's not about increasing the strength of top experts, but about increasing the number of martial artists." Jiang Chen shook his head, took out a jar filled with purple liquid, and said, "This is a treasure called 'Purple Light Dew.' Just fifteen milliliters is enough to allow a quasi-martial artist to advance to the level of a martial artist. With this, the proportion of martial artists among humanity will skyrocket. And with a sufficient base of martial artists, naturally more powerful individuals will emerge."

All three immediately realized the key point, and Hong immediately pressed for details: "How many of these things can transform a quasi-martial artist into a martial artist?"

"Currently, there are 10,000 tons, and there will be more in the future, enough to supply everyone on Earth. As long as a quasi-martial artist is born, I can make him a formal martial artist."

Jiang Chen's voice immediately excited the three of them.

Although, according to Jiang Chen, this "Purple Light Dew" is useless against strong individuals.

However, from the perspective of the race, it is even more important to significantly increase the proportion of human warriors.

The higher the proportion of martial artists, the more they will combine and reproduce generation after generation, the more their genes will be optimized, making them more conducive to cultivation.

If this process of optimization continues generation after generation, perhaps in the future, humans on Earth will naturally enter the level of formal martial artists as soon as they are born or reach adulthood.

With a sufficiently large pool of participants, the probability of producing geniuses and strong individuals will naturally be higher.

"Being a formal martial artist is nothing special." Jiang Chen shook his head and reminded him, "In the universe, only by reaching the planetary level can one obtain the status of a 'citizen' and be protected by the laws of various universe nations. Before reaching the planetary level, one is not even a 'citizen,' and even if one is captured and enslaved, or even killed at will, there is nothing one can do."

"Only planetary-level beings qualify as 'citizens'?" Thor exclaimed in surprise. "Billions of people on Earth, and only fifty-odd planetary-level beings? That's an incredibly low ratio! Does that mean everyone else is unworthy of surviving in the universe?!"

"The specifics are quite complex and can't be explained in a few words. Just know that improving the overall strength of Earthlings is very important." Jiang Chen shook his head, not going into details, and steered the conversation back to the 'Purple Light Dew,' saying, "I don't like dealing with complicated matters, so the distribution of the 'Purple Light Dew' is your responsibility. This stuff has almost no effect on martial artists above the level of formal martial artists, and I hope that every drop of 'Purple Light Dew' will be distributed to those who need it."

Jia Yi was the first to come to his senses. He looked at Jiang Chen with a serious expression and said earnestly, "Mr. Jiang, rest assured, I guarantee that at least in our China, not a single drop of 'Purple Light Dew' will be wasted. I will absolutely not let the treasure that Mr. Jiang worked so hard to bring back go to waste!"

Jia Yi did not understand the value of the "Purple Light Dew" in the universe, but he knew that this treasure was very important to Earth and to humankind.

Without hesitation, he made a promise to Jiang Chen in his capacity as the highest-ranking officer in the Chinese military.

"The same goes for Limitless Martial Arts School and Thunder Martial Arts School. As for other factions, we'll find ways to urge them on!"

Both Hong and Lei Shen made promises.

After distributing the 'Purple Dew', Jiang Chen didn't concern himself with the rest, only sending a few slaves to supervise the process.

For a small or weak group, the evolution of the group as a whole is extremely important.

Even a powerful race like the Darkga, where adults inevitably reach the planetary level and more than half of the race can reach the eternal level, is still a well-known "slave race" in the universe.

For humanity on Earth to reach or even surpass the level of the 'Darkga Clan,' based on Jiang Chen's understanding of gene iteration, even with the best resources and environment, it would require at least a thousand generations of continuous optimization.

Rather than hoping that Earthlings can secure a place in the universe through the collective talent of their race, it would be better to concentrate our efforts on cultivating a small number of powerful individuals to protect Earth.

In fact, in Jiang Chen's eyes, only Jiang Chen himself and Luo Feng were capable of doing this in a relatively short period of time.

Even though Hong and Thor may have high potential in the future, their growth rate is much slower than that of himself and Luo Feng, making them insufficient to become a reliable support for the Earthlings in the short term.

Jiang Chen would be willing to allocate a certain amount of resources to cultivate Earthlings, but he would never slow down his own growth because of it.

After making arrangements for Earth, Jiang Chen returned to his base in South America, secluded himself, and focused on learning and researching new knowledge.

During his trip to space, Jiang Chen also purchased a lot of materials that would be helpful for his research.

Although the overall value is not very high, the quantity is huge, enough to last for a long time.

In addition, Jiang Chen launched another new project: the upgrade of Jarvis.

As Jiang Chen gained more and more resources and his power continued to grow, Jarvis's data processing capabilities gradually became unable to keep up with the demands.

This is not just a matter of computing power, but also the upper limit of Jarvis's capabilities as an "artificial intelligence".

However, this kind of thing is not very difficult; it just takes some time and effort.

By utilizing higher-level knowledge in mathematics and informatics, Jarvis's source code can be upgraded. The workload is indeed quite large and tedious, but the difficulty is not high.

According to Jiang Chen's prediction, after the upgrade, Jarvis will be able to rival the mainstream artificial intelligence in the universe in terms of overall performance.

It is naturally not on the same level as top-tier intelligence, or intelligent life forms like Babata.

But it will be more than enough for a long time to come.

As for other aspects, Jiang Chen was not in a hurry to start any new projects.

The main problem is that the technology Jiang Chen possesses is far too backward compared to the advanced technology in the universe.

To borrow the words of a certain general, it's more cost-effective to buy ready-made products than to build them yourself.

Of course, this is only from the perspective of cost-effectiveness.

In the long run, however, people feel more secure when they have core technologies in their own hands.

-

time flies.

In the blink of an eye, several months have passed, and the first batch of "Goliath Giants" has been completed.

The slave "butler" that Jiang Chen bought was indeed very capable. He quickly contacted a large mercenary group in the Black Dragon Mountain Empire through the virtual universe and negotiated the price of the order.

Of the 203 Goliath Giants, three were kept for internal use to strengthen the defenses of the White Star base, while the remaining two hundred were sold to a large mercenary group in dire need of increased combat power for a total of 240 billion Black Dragon Coins.

This huge sum of money added a large amount to the accounts of the company Jiang Chen registered in Bailanxing.

However, Jiang Chen did not touch the money, but continued to authorize the "butler" to manage it, to purchase large quantities of materials for the production of the "Goliath Giant" and to further expand the base on Bailan Star.

Due to the increased scale of procurement, the "housekeeper" was able to negotiate lower supply prices with raw material suppliers.

The 20 billion Black Dragon Coins could theoretically be enough to produce over 400 Goliaths, nearly doubling the profit.

Of course, in practice, this money cannot all be used to purchase raw materials.

Whether it's securing upstream raw material supply or expanding sales channels in the future, certain necessary "public relations expenses" are indispensable.

There are also the expansion of the Bailan Star base, the construction of the transport fleet, and so on, all of which require a considerable amount of funding.

Furthermore, as the Bailan Star base expands, it will require even more powerful combat forces to protect it, and the cost of this in the future may even exceed the cost of purchasing raw materials.

For example, purchasing cosmic-level slaves would require a huge sum of money.

Of course, there's no need to consider this issue at this stage.

Even a slave of the first level of the universe is not something Jiang Chen can afford with the funds he has.

After reviewing the operational logs of the Bailan Star Base through intelligent monitoring, Jiang Chen fully recognized the capabilities of the "Butler".

At least, Jiang Chen believed that he could never achieve such high profits if he were in charge. The price of raw materials would be higher, the selling price of the mechs would be lower, the profit margin would be smaller, which also meant that the future expansion speed would be significantly slowed down.

Since the "Butler" is powerful enough and controlled by a biochip, making it impossible for him to rebel, Jiang Chen simply authorized the operation of the Bailan Star Base to the Butler, while he himself only retained control of the most core technologies.

Of course, necessary monitoring measures will still be in place.

The AI ​​that Jiang Chen left on Bailan Star was not low-level. It might not be able to monitor the entire planet, but it had complete control over everything within its own base and compiled all matters, big and small, into a log so that Jiang Chen could refer to it when needed.

If anything serious happens, the AI ​​within the base will notify Jiang Chen immediately and issue an alarm.

With the successful transaction of the first "Goliath Giant," Jiang Chen's most troublesome problem of "difficulty in getting started" has been successfully solved.

Or at least we have a direction for a solution.

In this universe, money may not be everything, but it can solve almost all kinds of problems.

As long as the Bailan Star base expands smoothly and gains stronger profitability, Jiang Chen will naturally have a very high starting point when he enters the universe again in the future.

After confirming that the Bailan Star base could operate smoothly without his intervention, Jiang Chen continued to immerse himself in the system library, frantically absorbing knowledge from different worlds and civilizations.

2061 years.

Luo Feng's "Earthling clone" was successfully conceived and returned to the human world.

Less than a week after Luo Feng's return, Jiang Chen finally received the long-awaited system notification.

[Natural Science upgraded to Lv.24, level increased.]

[Current level: Tier 2, Level 1.]

You gain +10 to all attributes and 10 free attribute points.

You have gained 99 feat points.

(End of this chapter)