Warhammer, I really didn't intend to form a second empire!

After receiving the first batch of samples, the engineering team got stuck in the material analysis stage. They could analyze the composition and physical properties of these materials, but they had no idea how they worked, how they were powered, or how they responded to external inputs.

The technological gap is so vast that it's impossible to even find a starting point for reverse engineering.

Zhao Zheng flipped through the first round of preliminary analysis reports submitted by Zhang Heng and Zu Chongzhi. The data boards were filled with percentage data of material composition and electron microscope images of structural organization, but the parts involving functional analysis were almost entirely blank.

He closed the report and prioritized these necromantic technology samples in the "long-term research" sequence, placing them in the same technological reserve as the Qilin-type armor and the essence injection experiment, to be stored away until a breakthrough in the bottleneck could be achieved, at which point the analysis would be restarted.

Even so, the harvest of living metal alone is more than enough to justify the cost of this battle.

Zhao Zheng knew very well that the purpose of this batch of materials went far beyond manufacturing more robust armor plates.

He had already conceived of a self-repairing armor concept based on living metal. If he could crack its microscopic self-organizing mechanism and apply it to the warships and armor of the Qin Empire, it would directly bring about a generational leap in the defense system.

And this is just the most intuitive application of living metals.

As for the Star God fragment he devoured, after absorbing the energy, Zhao Zheng continued to recuperate for more than ten days until he was sure that he was in good health and that his spirit was constantly growing stronger. Only then did he finally turn his attention back to the daily affairs of the empire.

In any case, the harvest this time was incredibly abundant.

Those planets rich in mineral resources, the technology of living metal and the undead, and the power boost that the fragment of the Star God brought him.

Even if all previous losses are taken into account, Zhao Zheng still made a huge profit this time!

We've won so much!

Chapter Twenty-Eight Technological Innovation

The Qin Empire entered a three-month period of reflection after the World War of the Necropolis.

Zhao Zheng did not issue any new expedition orders. All the marshals' fleets were ordered to remain in their current star systems, focusing on the planets already incorporated into the territory, and awaiting the next round of expansion orders.

The bridge of the Lishan has been much quieter these days.

The update frequency of the holographic star map has decreased from tens of thousands of entries per day to one or two thousand entries per week. These mainly consist of engineering progress reports and population registration data sent back from various star regions, occasionally interspersed with a few abnormal signal reports from outpost reconnaissance units, but none of them require the deployment of the fleet to resolve.

The living metal became the highest-level sample at the Central Research Institute of Qiankun Star and was distributed to various specialized laboratories in materials science, metallurgy, and molecular engineering.

The first batch of prototype plates was produced on the seventeenth day after the battle ended. The thickness and size were the same as the outer armor plate of the Xuanwu Heavy Armor. However, after being activated in the living metal activation device designed by Zhao Zheng, its self-repair capability was verified to the experimental stage, and the efficiency was 20% higher than the previous estimate calculated by the laboratory.

Zhao Zheng was not surprised by this; necromancy technology was truly awe-inspiring.

He stood in the new alloy smelting workshop on the 140th floor underground of Chiyang City, watching the living metal plate slowly transform and change in the activation device. The original cracks were filled by the newly formed metal after more than ten minutes.

The color of the damaged surface gradually returns from dark gray to a glossy finish that matches the surrounding area, and the entire process requires no external intervention.

After recording a few lines of data in his experimental log, Zhao Zheng left the workshop.

He had roughly figured out the principle behind this self-repairing ability: the living metal contains an extremely small network of active structures that can rearrange the atomic structure under the stimulation of energy, and reweave the metal components in the damaged area into a complete lattice.

Microscopic repair can be completed without external intervention, but to maintain this repair efficiency, a continuous energy supply is required; otherwise, it can only slowly repair itself over time.

Zhao Zheng felt a pang of pity for those Star God fragments. Tsk tsk, sixty million years! They were used as an endless energy power bank for a full sixty million years!

Constantly having their energy drained by the undead to keep the dynasty running is truly torture. Compared to that, the likes of the Dark Eldar are utterly weak.

Living metal is itself a semi-active smart material; energy merely accelerates its repair process, rather than being a necessary condition for its activation.

Zhao Zheng wrote a new annotation in his experimental log.

"If living metal is applied to ship armor, its self-repair capability can still maintain a certain efficiency even if the external power supply is interrupted. This is equivalent to equipping every warship with a maintenance team that never stops on the battlefield."

Progress in the other direction is slower.

The large number of necromantic technology samples recovered from the tomb world were stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled storage facility underground on Qiankun Star. The black metal plates, the discs engraved with green patterns, and several crystal components with extremely complex and compact structures were all numbered, classified, and entered into the database.

Zhao Zheng personally visited the storage warehouse after the war.

He lingered for a long time in front of those necromancy technology samples, scanning the internal structure of each device with his psionic energy.

The signals that the psionic energy returned when it touched the surface of those metal plates were very weak. They must have been filtered layer by layer by the dense structure during propagation until only extremely blurry outlines remained.

Zhao Zheng was certain that these devices themselves did not reject psionic energy, but their internal structure was too precise, so precise that psionic energy, which has no actual existence, could not penetrate the gaps between atoms to perceive deeper functional units.

Simply put, his psionic precision is not high enough to detect the microscopic functional structure of necromancy, and therefore he cannot analyze its working principle.

Zhao Zheng did not show any disappointment, after all, it was once the pinnacle of the pyramid, and it was not so easy to surpass.

He spent several hours in the storage room, handling each sample by hand. The metal plates were smooth and cool to the touch, barely deforming under his fingertips, and their hardness and density were at the upper limit of any man-made material he had ever seen.

It's normal that he couldn't decipher the necromancer's technological level in a short time, since the necromancer's technology in space is now "unrivaled" in the galaxy.

While the Eldar's spirit bone technology is mystical, it's still somewhat understandable, since it combines elements of the warp. The Undead, on the other hand, simply cannot comprehend it.

When someone is pushed to the limit, they can do anything. But if you ask them to solve these purely scientific problems, then sorry, even if they have a burst blood vessel, a stroke, or their whole body explodes, they just can't do it, there's nothing you can do about it.

Zhao Zheng only hoped that he would have the opportunity to acquire more necromancy technology in the future. With a large quantity, there would always be a time when he was "lucky" enough to research something amazing.

The three months passed smoothly as Zhao Zheng steadily advanced each task.

During this period, the Qin Empire completed the comprehensive recovery of the remaining living metal in the Necropolis world, cleared away the green light and decaying metal that once covered the entire world, and laid the infrastructure for the first colony outposts on the planet's surface.

The Qin Empire has received an unprecedented opportunity. Its reserves of living metal are sufficient to support armor upgrades for at least the next fifty years. Although the unanalyzed necromancy technology cannot be used for the time being, Zhao Zheng can sense a very low energy fluctuation inside the black metal plates every time he passes by the storage warehouse.

And most importantly, Qiankun Star can actually generate living metal veins!

Although Zhao Zheng had anticipated and prepared for this, he was still shaken when he saw a mineral vein that should never have existed.

What exactly does the Qiankun Star hold? How can it achieve such miraculous results?

When news of the discovery of the living metal vein reached the Lishan, Zhao Zheng had just returned to the bridge from the underground storage facility.

The communication panel was flashing with encrypted messages from Kongming. He clicked on them and glanced at them, his gaze lingering for a few seconds between the words "living metal" and "mineral vein," and he was momentarily stunned.

While conducting routine drilling in a previously unexplored mountainous area in the Northern Hemisphere, the geological survey team of Qiankun Star unexpectedly broke through a rock layer only a few hundred meters deep. The core sample brought out by the drill bit revealed a layer of extremely dense black metal. The compositional analysis results matched the living metal samples recovered from the Tomb World with a consistency of more than 90%.

Zhao Zheng stared at the footnote at the end of the report for a long time before turning it off.

He no longer tried to understand why Qiankun Star would generate such mineral veins. Anyway, whenever he needed a certain material, the corresponding mineral layer would appear underground on Qiankun Star at the right time, from the initial ordinary iron ore to the ceramic steel vein, and now to the living metal. It was as if it knew his needs in advance each time.

The accuracy of this predictive ability goes beyond mere coincidence, but Zhao Zheng cannot find any possible explanation for its cause.

The technology of the Necromancers could not possibly reach this level, and the Eldar's skeletal artifacts would not appear beneath the surface of a natural planet in the form of native mineral veins.

Yes, that's right, not only is there living metal, but also spirit bones! They were discovered on the very day Zhao Zheng attacked the Tomb World.

Could there be mineral veins in Linggutamadi?

Zhao Zheng didn't know exactly how the Spirit Race produced spirit bones, but there was no doubt that Qiankun Star had helped him skip the production process.

It's even less likely that the tentacles of the four Chaos Gods could make any move on this planet, which is covered by Zhao Zheng's black hole essence.

Since you can't figure it out no matter how hard you try, just accept it, make use of it, and don't waste time worrying about its origin.

Zhao Zheng replied to Kongming with a brief instruction, approving the mining plan for living metal and spirit bone veins and listing it as the Empire's highest priority resource acquisition project.

At that moment, Zhao Zheng vaguely sensed that these mineral veins were not something that the Great Qin had collected, but rather a reaction that Qiankun Star itself had taken based on his behavior patterns.

It knew Zhao Zheng needed living metal and spirit bones, so it prepared them in advance, just as it had done for ceramic steel and ordinary minerals before.

Zhao Zheng withdrew his senses and did not pursue the matter further.

He has a mountain of things to deal with right now: the initial data from the third phase of the psionic pulse field experiment needs to be reviewed, supplies and reports for the expeditionary fleets of the various commanders need to be delivered, and the turnover rate of the mineral transport fleet in the D-7 system barely met the target last month, and the next few months...

There is something even more important than all of these.

The mass production of Tao Gang has been ongoing for several months. The first batch of 42 Xuanwu-type heavy armored battle suits has been completed in the assembly workshop underground in Chiyang City. They are currently undergoing adaptation training in the Astartes companies of various expeditionary fleets before actual deployment.

Mass production of living metal and spirit bones will take time, but Zhao Zheng has already decided that once these veins can be mined stably, he will first use these materials to create a brand new suit of armor specifically designed for himself.

The dark gold armor he was wearing had suffered several minor structural damages during multiple high-intensity psionic outputs. Although it was still within the repairable range, Zhao Zheng could tell that it was nearing its limit.

The Primarch's values ​​are still too high; things made of metals other than adamantite would hardly be able to withstand their bursts.

He needed an extremely sturdy suit of armor that could amplify his psionic properties and withstand the ever-increasing psionic power after he devoured the Stargod fragments.

Zhao Zheng had already conceived the design framework for this new armor, sketching out its basic outline in his mind.

He listed the composite structure of living metal, spiritual bone, and refined gold as the preferred option.

This strengthened Zhao Zheng's resolve to seize Noztramo in the future.

I'm sorry, Lao Ba.

After silently apologizing to himself, Zhao Zheng threw himself back into his scientific research.

Zhao Zheng lifted the sketch of his new armor from the workbench, folded it twice, and tucked it into the bottom of the drawer.

He stood by the table for a while, tapping his fingertips unconsciously twice on the drawer panel, then turned and walked to the long table on the other side of the workshop, where the mass production plan for the Xuanwu-type heavy armor was laid out.

Now is not the time to build yourself armor.

Although living metal has been stably produced from the new ore veins on Qiankun Star, the current daily mining volume is far from sufficient to support the large-scale replacement demand.

The yield of spirit bones is even lower. Although the grade of the first batch of trial mining layers is up to standard, the speed of production ramp-up is limited by the matching degree of mining equipment and technology, and it cannot meet the mass production standard in a short period of time.

Both of these are strategic reserve materials and must be prioritized for use in areas that can maximize the overall combat effectiveness of the legion.

His armor didn't matter, but his offspring's equipment couldn't be neglected in the slightest. They were the ones who would actually go to the front lines and fight bloody battles, and it wasn't right for him to be so extravagant in the rear.

Zhao Zheng stood in front of the long table, unfolded the blueprints of the Xuanwu-type heavy armor from the middle, and turned to the last page of the production plan. There was a blank area there, originally marked "Reserved for future upgrades," and now he needed to fill in new information in this space.

The first units to be re-equipped were the Astartes Company in the frontline expeditionary fleet.

The core skeleton and joint system of the Xuanwu-type heavy armor remain unchanged from the original design. The outer armor plates have been completely replaced with living metal plates and have built-in micro energy storage units to ensure that it has continuous self-repair capabilities on the battlefield.

This project involves a significant amount of work. The armor plates for each Xuanwu-type battle armor need to be re-molded. Moreover, the process parameters for cutting and forming living metal are completely different from those for ordinary ceramic steel alloys, requiring the establishment of a complete new processing flow.

But the benefits are also quite direct.

The self-repairing properties of the living metal armor mean that the survivability of each Xuanwu-type battle armor will be increased to a new level on the battlefield. The armor plates that would have been gradually thinned during continuous firefights can now repair themselves during the lulls in the battle, which in turn extends the effective combat time of a single battle armor.

As for the spirit bone, Zhao Zheng envisioned coating his offspring with a layer of spirit bone armor on top of the black shell, and then mixing spirit bone and ceramic steel at the joints of each type of armor to maintain flexibility while ensuring sufficient strength.

If this idea can be realized, then in the future, living metal will not only appear on the armor of the offspring, greatly enhancing their defense and increasing the survival rate of frontline warriors, but also allow spirit bones, a material with extremely high psionic conductivity, to help those psionic offspring make the best use of their power.

Zhao Zheng is also preparing for the next stage of the project.

New Type of Armor Development: Ceramic steel frame, living metal + spirit bone composite external structure, weapon system adapted to heavy mode, positioned as an elite vanguard armor, codename undetermined.

New ship development: Living metal is used in the outer armor structure of the Great Wall-class battleship, with ceramic steel mixed with living metal as the keel, and the internal structure is a mixture of keel, ceramic steel and living metal, codenamed "Great Wall-II".

The Qin Dynasty is about to enter its first true technological revolution since interstellar colonization.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Arrival of the Imperial Fleet

The orbit of Qiankun Star will become busier than ever in the coming months.

The transport barges take off from the planet's surface along a fixed route, pass through the atmosphere, and then turn to a large transfer station moored in geosynchronous orbit. There, they unload crates of living metal and skeletons, load a new batch of parts and supplies, and return to the Earth's surface.

The mining speed of those living metal veins and spirit bone veins finally climbed to the production capacity curve that Zhao Zheng had expected in the sixth month.

The geological team's drilling radius continued to expand outward along the vein, and the existence of multiple secondary veins was confirmed, which increased the average daily mining volume by nearly five times in the past six months.

Meanwhile, deep underground in Chiyang City, the first batch of Xuanwu-type heavy armor, made primarily of living metal, is undergoing final testing in a materials workshop.

Zhao Zheng stood to the side of the assembly platform, watching the armored vehicle fixed to the hydraulic arm slowly complete its power-on self-test.

The cool gray living metal plate gleamed with a fine sheen under strong light. There were no weld seams or rivet holes on the surface, and the entire piece of armor looked as if it had been directly cut from a single piece of metal blank.

The living metal layer has undergone a slight activation process at a fixed location and is currently in a low-energy self-test mode, with almost no changes visible to the naked eye.

Zhao Zheng reached out and tapped the front of the breastplate twice, the metal producing a crisp echo.

A technician handed over a data panel, which Zhao Zheng glanced at; all the values ​​were within the expected range.

This is the fifth version of the living metal Xuanwu-type battle armor that has been assembled. The first four versions have been tested in actual combat in the front-line companies of various expeditionary fleets, and the results have been quite good.

The data currently being transmitted shows that the four armored vehicles withstood varying degrees of impact and fire in moderate-intensity firefights, and their living metal armor plates demonstrated the expected self-repair speed after each battle.

Zhao Zheng handed the data board back to the technician without lingering.

He walked down the corridor at the end of the workshop to the next floor, and after passing through three sealed gates, he entered another, more spacious area.

Here are five simplified prototypes of the Xuanwu-type battle armor. The overall structure is basically the same as the Xuanwu type, but a small amount of spirit bone material has been added to the construction of the armor layer.

The spirit bones were embedded in the inner side of the shoulder armor and the interlayer of the breastplate, and were evenly distributed in a mesh-like pattern in the gaps between the living metal plates.