Without pausing, he recalled the mining base he had seen when he first arrived at the Asteroid Belt.
It wasn’t the same one as this, but it was worth a try.
Flying out from the Asteroid Belt, he circled along the direction of his Memory and quickly located that mining base.
Using the same method, he struck from beyond the range of their radar detection and stole the three Ore Spheres orbiting the mining base.
This mining base was even larger than the last one, with nearly thirty Escort Ships in its guard fleet, but his timing was unlucky—only three Ore Spheres had been stockpiled around the base.
Still, that wasn’t a problem.
Who could have demands about ore gotten for free?
He continued moving on to new locations, roaming all along the Asteroid Belt.
Four hours later, he discovered a third mining base, and found that there were actually eight enormous Ore Spheres stockpiled around it.
But—
This mining base was even bigger than the previous two, and most critically, its radar was actually stronger than his own.
The moment he approached the edge of his radar’s maximum detection range, he was spotted, and then a Destroyer and over a dozen Escort Ships came charging at him.
He had no choice but to run.
If he was even a little slow and the Destroyer caught up, he might not be able to escape at all.
An Escort Ship’s base speed was only 130,000 kilometers per hour, while a Destroyer’s base speed was 140,000 kilometers per hour.
Judging by the radar configuration of this mining base, they had most likely already begun large-scale deployment of Tier 3 Weaponry and components.
Third-Generation Thrusters alone would match his speed, and with any additional acceleration components or skill bonuses, they might even be a bit faster than him.
With a Destroyer’s combat power far surpassing an Escort Ship’s, once caught, he might not be able to escape at all.
However, although he couldn’t touch this mining base, the base itself couldn’t run away.
Li Qing planned to first make a full circuit of this star system, sweeping the inner Asteroid Belt before heading to the outer Asteroid Belt.
When he had been chatting with Yang Yunbo and the others at their gathering, he’d heard them say there were more than a dozen mining bases in the outer Asteroid Belt.
If he swept through all of them, he could then make a trip home to sell the ore—fetching several hundred million would be no problem, and at that point he could properly upgrade this Escort Ship.
For an entire week afterward, he roamed all over this Asteroid Belt, searching for any mining bases that might exist.
He did indeed find two more mining bases, and neither of them could detect him.
But the problem was that one of them had apparently just gone through a round of expansion and had used up all its ore, having only accumulated a single Ore Sphere, while the other had accumulated four—five in total.
After that, he never found any other mining bases, though he did run into many Pirate Raiders and Gunboats wandering the Asteroid Belt.
He attacked any that were alone, taking out seven Pirate Gunboats in total at the cost of over two hundred Railgun Metal Shells and several thousand Autocannon Casing-Shedding Shells.
His total haul was a few dozen pieces of wreckage, worth a few thousand Star Credits altogether.
He was left utterly speechless.
He returned to base for a quick repair job, gaining a bit more repair experience, then set out again, flying toward the outer rim of the star system.
“This is too hard.”
On the way, Li Qing tallied up his income and expenses over these days.
Over the past few months, he had paid out over ten million in wages alone, without a single credit of income.
If you set aside the Ore Spheres he’d stolen through cheating over the past month, the income from a single Mining Ship’s normal operations was apparently only around twenty to thirty million.
After deducting time costs, it barely made any profit at all.
Veterans like Yang Yunbo, who had been grinding here for so long, each had their own Mining Fleet.
The largest belonged to Yang Yunbo, who had been here the longest—his fleet included one large, four medium, and thirty-eight small Mining Ships, plus one large, three medium, and three small Transport Ships.
On top of that, he had established Planetary Material Extraction Mines on several barren planets within the star system.
It was only with this income that he could afford to maintain a Cruiser, a Destroyer, and five Escort Ships.
Of course, that didn’t mean Yang Yunbo could only afford this much—with the income from so many Mining Ships, he could easily support another fleet of the same size; he simply chose not to.
He was just an individual player focused solely on making money.
His greatest wish was to earn a fortune and go live like a rich tycoon in some backwater.
Conquering the sea of stars held no interest for him whatsoever.
The main reason he kept a Cruiser was to deal with Wild Mobs that occasionally spawned near his base and mining sites—smaller ships couldn’t handle some of them.
The other players thought much the same as Yang Yunbo, all individual players focused on making money.
Their Mining Fleets were somewhat smaller than his, and the Warships they maintained were a notch below, but combined they could still field forty to fifty ships.
Together, the six of them maintained a total of three Cruisers, eight Destroyers, and over forty Escort Ships—which in turn required several hundred large, medium, and small Mining Ships to support.
Li Qing did the math carefully: not counting weapons and ammunition, crew wages and basic maintenance alone cost tens of millions every month.
“Absurd!”
“Those Warlord Clans with Division-level Fleets—how much must their monthly expenses be?”
A Division-level Fleet possessed at least two Titan Super-Flagships, and twenty to thirty Flagships, including Dreadnoughts and Carriers.
Roughly 10,000 Battleships, usually Elite Template Crusader-Class, occasionally Excellence Template Lord-Class Heavy Battleships.
Roughly 20,000 Cruisers, mostly a mix of Elite Template Patroller-Class and Excellence Template Nightwatch-Class, occasionally Nightmare-Class Battlecruisers whose combat power was no less than standard Battleships.
Roughly 50,000 Destroyers—Elite Template Hurricane-Class and Excellence Template Storm-Class.
And roughly 100,000 Escort Ships—Elite Template Raptor-Class and Excellence Template Black Hawk-Class.
It was worth noting that the Division-level Fleet specification was only a standard template; different Warlord Clans would adjust it according to their circumstances.
Some might field more large and medium vessels like Cruisers and Destroyers, while others might focus primarily on developing Battleships.
With so many Warships, just the Escort Ships alone theoretically required 100 billion Star Credits in wages and maintenance every month.
Adding the costs of the other Warships, monthly salaries alone probably exceeded 400 billion—it was simply…
However, compared to the income of a Warlord Clan, it was nothing.
After all, with populations in the tens of billions and players numbering in the billions, the taxes collected each month alone were an astronomical sum.
Add in other industries, and supporting a Division-level Fleet was more than manageable.
“The road ahead is long!”
Li Qing clicked his tongue, marveling at just how difficult it would be to support a massive fleet through one’s own strength alone.
One needed the backing of a huge power—like a team or a Legion—pooling the strength of many to rival those Warlord Clans.
Although their overall combat power differed enormously, any single Legion already had the qualifications to threaten a Warlord Clan.
After all, a Legion collectively possessed tens of thousands of warships.
Even though Warlord Clans viewed them as mere rabble, fighting a war against one would incur enormous losses even in victory.
That was why the Warlord Clans generally adopted conciliatory policies toward the Legions within their spheres of influence—some even directly bought shares in them.
Take the Qinghe Li Clan, for example.
Beyond the fleets within the family itself, each internal branch had its own supported Legion, which could be pulled out and thrown onto the battlefield when needed.
This was all hidden strength.
Li Qing sent a message over the communication channel, saying in essence that he wanted to take a spin around the Outer Ring Asteroid Belt.
Several of the dozen or so Wild Mob mining bases in that asteroid belt were not far from their mining zones and might spot him, so he was giving them a heads-up to avoid any misunderstanding.
This time he didn’t wander around blindly, because he had coordinates.
Yang Yunbo and the others had occasionally glimpsed them before and jotted them down casually, and had passed them along when they sent him the star map coordinates of the area earlier.
He didn’t need to search around—he headed straight for the coordinates.
Two hours later, the Escort Ship appeared amid a jumbled cluster of asteroids.
The rapidly drifting meteors gave him the best cover.
Using his old trick, he continued stealing Ore Spheres from a distance.
One, two, four…
By the fifth day, he had stolen every single Ore Sphere from all 11 Wild Mob mining bases on his coordinate list.
Unsurprisingly, the radar sensors of most of these Wild Mob mining bases were inferior to his.
Only two were on par with him, and their Destroyers’ shipboard radar detected him early—but he seized the chance when the enemy Destroyer patrolled to the other side, stole quickly, and turned and fled the moment the Destroyer reacted.
After shaking off his pursuers, he returned and continued.
He repeated this cycle more than a dozen times before finishing the job.
Among these 11 Wild Mob mining bases, the smallest stockpile held two Ore Spheres and the largest eight, totaling 42.
Added to the 14 he had accumulated before, he now had 56 in all.
He wasn’t sure of the exact price per sphere, because besides iron ore, they contained a good amount of gray crystal stone, silver crystal stone, and gray rock, plus small quantities of the somewhat more valuable copper-like ore, gneiss, and crystalline quartz-type minerals.
The most valuable of all was one Ore Sphere filled entirely with silver-like ore—from a distance it looked like a giant gray-silver ball of iron.
Silver-like ore raw ore was priced at 78 Star Credits per cubic unit, while iron-like ore was 15 Star Credits per cubic unit—a full fivefold difference, meaning this single Ore Sphere was worth five ordinary ones.
By the time he returned to base, only a few days remained before the agreed trip with Xia Qi to the Burning Ghost Star System to sell the ore—but now a problem stumped Li Qing.
Fifty-six Ore Spheres, each roughly five kilometers in diameter—how was he supposed to transport them there?
Towing them over was a good idea, and the Industrial Ship did have towing equipment, but a small Industrial Ship simply lacked the hauling capacity.
That kind of load required at least a large Industrial Ship.
Though there was no resistance in space, and theoretically even a large planet could be towed.
In practice, even if one could forcibly knock a major planet out of orbit, within the star’s Gravity Well, under the binding force of the star’s powerful gravity, there was simply no way to pull it away.
Borrowing ships from Xia Qi and the others wasn’t realistic either.
The Transport Ships they had on hand were all purchased according to their own means.
Borrowing a single small Transport Ship might not be a problem, but the 56 Ore Spheres he had couldn’t possibly be hauled away by a few small Transport Ships.
Crushing and Refining them was a good idea, but he only had one Refining setup, and the output was far too small—there wasn’t enough time.
“What a headache!”
Li Qing had never expected to be stumped by this.
When he first left the Jinmen Star System, he hadn’t imagined he’d run into this kind of problem.
His original plan was that even if he really stockpiled a huge amount of ore, he could just store it in the Palm Universe, then find an uninhabited star system near the Jinmen Star System to reload the ships, selling it in trip after trip—it would just cost a bit more time.
But here, that approach wouldn’t work.
There were only a handful of individual players in this star region, practically countable on one’s fingers.
If he kept selling back and forth like that, he’d easily draw attention.
After being troubled by this problem for two full days, Li Qing finally—
It wasn’t exactly a flash of inspiration, but rather, after considering countless possibilities, he naturally arrived at a way to cover it up.
As everyone knows, in the Sea of Stars there exists a kind of treasure called a Legacy Relic.
These things are also known as Ancient Relics.
The conditions for their formation are extremely harsh, making them extraordinarily precious.
Because the formation conditions of Ancient Relics are extremely complex and unpredictable, the categories of Legacy Relics are equally unpredictable.
As long as conditions allow, anything can potentially form a Legacy Relic and thereby gain miraculous powers.
So here came the key point.
Li Qing thought it over carefully.
Considering that this thing would inevitably be exposed someday, rather than hiding it and letting others speculate wildly, it would be better to reveal it proactively himself.
By controlling what functions and effects were displayed, that was far better than letting others guess randomly.
At the very least, others would know it was merely a Legacy Relic with an enormous space.
There might be greedy people, but they certainly wouldn’t be any big shots.
Big shots valued their status and cherished their reputations.
At least until the benefits were enough to make them abandon a reputation they had maintained for so long, they would never do something like outright robbery.
It was worth noting that some Legacy Relics could not be stolen, while others could—but under extremely harsh conditions.
The unstealable ones simply couldn’t be taken no matter what you did; even if you completely killed the Legacy Relic’s owner, you couldn’t obtain it.
For the stealable ones, the conditions were also extremely harsh.
First, you had to find an extremely powerful Psionic to suppress the relic, then find a treasure called a Psionic Crystal—a crystallization of the psychic energy and soul left behind after a powerful Psionic’s death.
The Psionic Crystal needed to be melted into liquid psychic energy to envelop the relic, severing the connection between the relic and its owner, and then the relic’s owner had to be killed.
And by “killed,” it meant completely killed.
As everyone knows, players can revive after death, only losing a certain amount of lifespan depending on the cause of death.
Only when all lifespan is exhausted does one die completely.
The three requirements for stripping a Legacy Relic:
An extremely powerful Psionic.
The soul crystal of a powerful Psionic.
Completely killing the Legacy Relic’s owner.
Only with all three combined could one forcibly seize a Legacy Relic.
Of course, this refers to Legacy Relics that have already been bound to an owner.
If a Legacy Relic is unbound, the difficulty of seizing it drops dramatically—kill its holder within a certain period of time, and it will drop directly.
Additionally, some special Legacy Relics don’t have the binding function at all.
Anyone who holds one can use it, and they can be traded.
The conditions for taking such relics are just as simple.
The vast majority of low-tier Legacy Relics lack the binding function; only a few special Legacy Relics and high-tier Legacy Relics can be bound to an owner.
Li Qing had publicly claimed that his Legacy Relic was already bound, and that its function was singular—just a huge independent space with no combat capabilities.
This would minimize the number of covetous people as much as possible.
So…