From star gatherer to leader of humanity

During the five-month virtual spaceship room, Xu Bai only spent half of his time controlling the spaceship. The rest of the time, he was constantly battling other mining spaceships in the virtual environment of the Shattered Star Sea.

While his combat skills may not be top-tier among the hundreds of thousands of trainees, they are still at an upper-middle level.

Now, with the two attributes he bestowed upon the spaceship, Xu Bai is even more determined to fight.

The best way to deal with two mining ships flanking from the left and right is to quickly eliminate one and then concentrate on taking down the other.

The two places are less than 3,000 miles apart. Even if there is a broken celestial body in between, the mining spaceship will meet in less than a minute at its fastest speed.

The two Hummingbird-class mining ships met in a narrow celestial gap, opened fire almost simultaneously, and performed evasive maneuvers.

The 80mm heavy twin cannons spewed out a beam of fire like a giant dragon, directly locking onto all directions the opposing mining ship was trying to escape.

The moment he opened fire, Xu Bai was amazed to discover that the rate of fire of the twin heavy machine guns had increased by 20%.

Both ships evaded the first wave of fire, but Xu Bai's ship was more agile and dodged all the machine guns.

Meanwhile, the mining spaceship opposite was grazed by a machine gun shell, causing its flanks to lose power and its speed to drop drastically.

"Looks like I won!"

Xu Bai fired three machine gun shots, easily hitting the mining ship that had lost its speed.

"boom!"

A machine gun shot hit the control room directly, paralyzing the entire mining ship.

"Bang!"

The spaceship's final counterattack resulted in a shell hitting Xu Bai's cabin.

"Beep! Beep! Damage detected in the cabin. Automatic repair program detected. Initiate?" Hakimi's voice rang out.

"start up."

"The repair is expected to be completed in half an hour."

The large hole in the ship's hull, breached by machine gun fire, began to be slowly repaired.

At this moment, Xu Bai did not collect the spoils of war. Instead, he turned around and hid behind a ten-mile-long broken celestial body, waiting for another mining ship to arrive.

But Xu Bai noticed something amiss when he looked at the fluctuations transmitted back by the reconnaissance drone: the signal was moving away from his location, eventually exceeding a range of tens of thousands of miles, and the reconnaissance drone lost signal.

"Did it run away?"

"That's so cowardly!"

Xu Bai released a reconnaissance drone to the battlefield where he had just been, and began to collect the spoils of war, especially to detect fluctuations in spiritual energy.

"Judging from the extent of the damage to the spaceship, they must be experienced. Hopefully, they have spirit stones on them!" Xu Bai's eyes gleamed.

"That machine gun shot just now only hit the control room. The engine and the medium machine gun should be fine. We can take them back and sell them for money."

In the battlefield just now, Xu Bai maneuvered the mining spaceship to stop next to the wrecked mining spaceship, extended the mechanical arm, and quickly removed the medium-sized machine gun and the spaceship engine from the top of the spaceship, bringing them into the cabin. He also put the few mining robots that were still relatively intact into the cabin.

Just then, the reconnaissance drone sent a signal, saying that it had detected fluctuations in the spirit stone, which instantly made Xu Bai happy.

Xu Bai immediately dispatched a multi-functional drone.

Before long, the drone brought back a very tough calfskin purse.

Xu Bai opened it and found eight spirit stones inside, one of which was half-used.

"I made a profit!"

"The medium-sized machine gun and engine can sell for at least 100,000 strands of spiritual energy, plus these few spirit stones, and I won't have to worry about a loan of at least 100,000!" Xu Bai grinned, maneuvering the spaceship to the mining site to continue mining Chen Iron.

"Ten thousand strands of spiritual energy have a gray attribute, while one hundred thousand strands have a white attribute. Want to give it a try?"

The thought of going back and selling these items, which would yield at least 100,000 strands of spiritual energy, stirred an irresistible urge within me.

If his spaceship doesn't have repair capabilities, he'll be delayed for at least half a month.

The original 10 mining robots were increased to 14, increasing efficiency by 40%. In less than a day, 115 tons of Chen Iron appeared in Xu Bai's ship's hold.

Leaving behind a shattered celestial body riddled with holes, Xu Bai continued to venture deeper into the Shattered Star Sea. The most common substance on the surface of the Shattered Star Sea was Chen Iron, and only by going deeper could one possibly encounter those precious mineral veins.

"Chen Tie, Chen Tie, it's Chen Tie again."

Xu Bai gritted his teeth as he ate the apple-flavored nutritional paste. In the past two weeks, he had not encountered any other spirit mines; all he had detected was Chen Iron.

Currently, the mining spaceship's cabin contains nearly 1300 tons of Chen Iron. Including the medium twin-barreled machine gun and the spaceship engine, Xu Bai's mining spaceship only has 40% of its cabin space remaining.

Just as Xu Bai had finished collecting 200 tons of iron ore and was exploring deeper, he suddenly discovered a different kind of fluctuation transmitted back from the exploration.

"This is!" Xu Bai's eyes lit up, and he quickly asked Hakimi to analyze the fluctuation.

"There is a 70% probability that it contains spirit wood charcoal."

"Finally, I've discovered something different!"

Xu Bai excitedly piloted the mining spaceship toward the fluctuating coordinates.

A fragmented celestial body, 5 kilometers long and elliptical in shape, is half black and half gray in color.

As he got closer, Xu Bai detected the fluctuations more clearly.

"Spirit charcoal, and it even contains a small amount of spirit charcoal crystals, not bad!"

Just as Xu Bai was about to start mining, the mining spaceship was suddenly hit hard, and the spaceship's main control room was almost torn open.

Xu Bai swiftly maneuvered the spaceship away skillfully and began to explore the surroundings.

A ten-meter-long, winged alien beast, resembling a black cat, was crouching on a broken ceiling, staring at Xu Bai's spaceship.

In an instant, the flying cat transformed into a phantom and rushed towards Xu Bai.

Xu Bai quickly maneuvered the spaceship to create distance, and the machine guns on top opened fire rapidly.

The mining ship was severely damaged again, with the attack originating from the ship's main control room. However, at the last moment, Xu Bai swerved the ship to avoid the location that had just been attacked.

But during the heavy machine gun firing, one of the shells hit the hind leg of the alien space beast.

With a flash of black shadow, the alien beast appeared on another broken celestial body, looking at Xu Bai's spaceship with wary eyes.

Xu Bai turned the heavy machine gun around and aimed it at the alien beast. The machine gun did not fire but instead entered a preheating state. Given the alien beast's speed just now, firing directly while it was stationary would have no chance of hitting it.

"call!"

A peculiar fluctuation, like a sound, entered Xu Bai's ears. The alien beast dragged its injured hind leg and flew away to another location.

"How long will it take for Hakimi to be repaired?" At this moment, Xu Bai's back was covered in cold sweat.

"Estimated repair time: 40 minutes."

"The alien beasts of the starry sky are driven entirely by animal instinct. The moment it left, it acknowledged that this spirit charcoal belonged to me."

Xu Bai calmed himself down and continued mining, but the joy he had shown earlier was gone from his face.

"40 tons of spirit charcoal, 50 strands of spiritual energy per ton, 3 jin of spirit charcoal crystals, 600 strands of spiritual energy per jin, in less than half a day, a total of 3,800 strands of spiritual energy, which is 800 more than my dad's monthly salary."

"When I get back, I'll secretly transfer 800 strands of spiritual energy to my dad and buy him cigarettes." A smile unconsciously appeared on Xu Bai's face.

"After I get back this time, I'll use the spirit stones to add white attributes to the spaceship. If it weren't for the agility and repair, I would have been thrown into the Shattered Star Sea long ago."

"No wonder the instructor in the training course strongly advised me to join a gang for collective action, and even if I was a lone wolf in the early stages, I shouldn't go deep into the Shattered Star Sea."

Xu Bai glanced at the coordinates on the instrument panel. He had already ventured 300 million miles into the Shattered Star Sea. This was normal for an experienced person, but considered quite deep for a novice.

"I've been away from the space station for more than half a month. I'll work for another 10 days and then go back to see if I can find anything good."

Just as Xu Bai was preparing to delve deeper, the chaotic dynamics in this area suddenly went out of control.

For a moment, Xu Bai felt dizzy and the entire spaceship was moving with this chaotic force.