Since leaving Jinmen, although he hadn’t experienced many battles, Li Qing had come to understand one thing clearly: high-configuration warships were indeed far more powerful than low-configuration ones.
This time when he returned, he definitely had to configure two Level 5 Escort Ships.
Actually, what he really wanted was to configure a Destroyer—not only was it bigger, it was stronger in combat and faster as well.
But a fully-equipped Destroyer would cost at least six to seven hundred million, and all the Ore Spheres in his Palm Universe combined might not be enough.
Still, it was hard to say for sure.
On the way back, he planned to wander around the star systems he passed through, looking for mining bases like this one, and steal some ore along the way if possible.
If he could gather another few hundred million worth of ore along the way, he could go straight to a fully-equipped Destroyer once he returned to Jinmen.
A Destroyer was not only faster than an Escort Ship, its onboard radar also had a wider range, making it more convenient for stealing ore.
The next day, Yang Yunbo arrived with three Escort Ships and a medium-sized Transport Ship.
Li Qing handed over the three Ore Spheres he had prepared long ago along with a portion of Refined Ore, and obtained a new Escort Ship.
After chatting for a while, Yang Yunbo took his leave.
Li Qing stored all the Refined Ore he had accumulated during this period into his Palm Universe, sent Yang Yunbo a message, and set off.
The Escort Ship quickly left the star system and entered the neighboring one, then directly activated its Hyperspace Engine and entered a Sub-light Speed State.
He already had star charts of the nearby star systems.
This star system had no Asteroid Belt, so it most likely wouldn’t have any Wild Mob mining bases.
Three days later, he entered the next star system and again activated the Hyperspace Engine, but this time heading toward the system’s interior.
Before long, he arrived near an Asteroid Belt inside the star system.
The warship slowed down and traveled along the Asteroid Belt, searching for any possible mining bases.
After nearly a month of stopping and going, he discovered six mining bases in total and successfully stole 22 Ore Spheres.
There were certainly more than just a few mining bases in an Asteroid Belt, but the belt was simply too vast—he couldn’t possibly circle it entirely by ordinary flight.
That was a distance that would take more than a year to traverse, so he could only stop and go as fate allowed.
Setting the Escort Ship to cruise at constant speed, Li Qing left the ship and entered the Palm Universe.
The moment he entered the Palm Universe, his pupils burst with brilliant light.
It was as if a ball of fire had been ignited in his mind—surging Psionic Power could no longer be suppressed and erupted from his eyes like two streams of transparent flame.
After more than a month of accumulation, his Psionic Power had finally crossed that threshold, successfully awakening.
Psionic Power was the fusion and sublimation of soul force and the power of the mind.
Only those born with powerful soul force or power of the mind, under the stimulation of some intense emotion or guided by an external force, could ignite their soul force with the power of the mind and awaken Psionic Power.
Psionic Power was a special form of energy.
Because it was the sublimation of the power of the mind and soul force—and the power of the mind could also be called Spirit force—the intangible mind and soul force, after sublimation, transformed into tangible Psionic Power, allowing the Spirit to interfere with reality.
One could compare it to the legendary magic or Daoist arts—Psionic Power could achieve the effects of legendary spells.
For example—
Li Qing extended his palm, and an invisible, transparent force in his palm took the form of a flame.
With a flicker of his thought, the transparent psionic force rapidly turned red and ignited, radiating scorching heat.
As his thoughts stirred again, the burning flame’s temperature rapidly dropped, quickly falling below zero and radiating a fierce chill.
Spirit interfering with reality—Psionic Power could achieve the impossible.
His Psionic Intensity was currently insufficient.
Having just awakened with only 10 units of Psionic Intensity, he could at most light a fire or freeze a popsicle—anything more was beyond him.
But as his Psionic Power grew stronger, its might would grow as well.
Upon reaching a certain realm, the power of Psionic Power could form a devastating Psionic Storm, capable of easily tearing apart even a Warship.
After a brief experiment, Li Qing clapped his palms together to extinguish the icy flame.
With a thought, a light screen popped up before him, and several notifications appeared:
“You have awakened Psionic Power and become a Psionic. All Innate Attributes +2, Lifespan +200 years.”
Regardless of whether one’s Psionic Power was strong or weak, awakening it would greatly extend one’s lifespan.
Moreover, the lifespan granted by Psionic Power did not interfere with high-grade Genetic Tuning—one could still undergo five rounds of Genetic Tuning to further increase lifespan and physical constitution.
It was worth noting that the Innate Attributes gained from Psionic awakening far exceeded those from Genetic Tuning—each round of Genetic Tuning only added a single point of Innate Attributes.
However, Psionic awakening did not add Neural Slots.
Another point worth noting: Psionic awakening and Genetic Tuning were entirely different matters from Psionic Ascension and Genetic Ascension.
Whether it was Psionic awakening, Genetic Tuning, or Cybernetic Augmentation, all of these were prerequisites for the Three Great Ascensions.
Only when a Psionic’s Psionic Intensity reached over one thousand units, after five rounds of Genetic Tuning, and after five rounds of Cybernetic Augmentation, would the path of the Three Great Ascensions open.
Only upon success could one be considered to have truly Ascended, thereby obtaining the enormous rewards that came after Ascension.
Reining in his thoughts, Li Qing’s gaze fell upon the second notification.
“You have awakened Psionic Power and become a Psionic. Please choose your Psionic Skill direction.”
Psionic (Administrator): A powerful Psionic whose mighty Psionic Power grants extremely high administrative efficiency.
Attributes: Efficiency of assigned role +20%, Industrial output +20%.
Psionic (Researcher): A powerful Psionic whose mighty Psionic Power grants extremely high research efficiency.
Attributes: Research efficiency +20%, a tiny chance of a flash of inspiration while researching.
Psionic (Naval Commander): A powerful Psionic whose mighty Psionic Power grants enormous bonuses to fleets.
Attributes: Fleet speed +20%, Fleet range +20%, Accuracy +10.
Psionic (Army General): A powerful Psionic whose mighty Psionic Power grants enormous bonuses to ground forces.
Attributes: Ground force range +20%, Accuracy +20.
“Hmm…”
Li Qing hesitated.
Psionic Power itself had no distinctions—it was pure Psionic Power.
But the new universe’s rules were Datafied, and thus these exclusive Psionic Skills came into being.
This was also the main reason why Psionics were ranked just below the Purple Epic-grade Innate Talent—not only did they possess power, they also possessed a powerful buff, and this skill would grow stronger as the Psionic’s level increased, making it extremely powerful.
In theory, the Psionic skill was stronger than the vast majority of Epic-grade Innate Talents.
The only catch was that Psionics were very difficult to level up, and it only became harder the further one progressed.
Innate Talents, on the other hand, had no such thing as a bottleneck.
Psionics couldn’t compete with them in terms of level caps, which was why they ranked below.
But in any case, the Psionic skill was an extra ability beyond Innate Talents, and a powerful one at that.
Actually, the choice didn’t require much deliberation.
The administrative branch was definitely out first, and the scientific research branch—
Li Qing hesitated for a moment, then ruled it out as well.
That branch was actually quite impressive.
A +20% research efficiency was one thing, but those occasional flashes of inspiration were truly powerful.
Many research breakthroughs came from a scientist’s sudden flash of insight.
With this, becoming an excellent scientist would be no problem at all.
But the issue was that he had never considered taking the scientist path.
Two options passed over.
The army didn’t need consideration either, leaving only the naval command skill route.
The moment he made his choice, Li Qing immediately and clearly felt the Escort Ship’s speed increase by a large margin.
As for psionic power, it resided in his mind.
Upon awakening, his Psionic Intensity was only 10 units.
Normal Psionics had to seek out psionic secret arts and train constantly to slowly improve, while he didn’t have to do anything at all—even eating and sleeping all day, his power would keep growing.
At this stage, his psionic power increased by about 1 unit per day.
Once the Palm Universe was repaired to a certain point and the Void Realm energy it extracted increased, the psionic feedback he received would grow stronger as well.
That said, at this stage he couldn’t hope to unleash something like a Psionic Storm.
That was a technique that only the strong known as Storm-class Psionics, with at least a thousand units of power, could barely manage—and even then, its power couldn’t compare to that Psionic Devourer’s will avatar he had seen before.
Even though that one had merely been a will avatar, its Psionic Intensity was well over a thousand units.
“The road ahead is long!”
Li Qing smacked his lips, feeling quite hopeful that one day he could be like that too—or even stronger.
It was worth noting that while late-stage Psionics were extremely powerful—some legendary super Psionics could even cover an entire planet with their psionic power—fleet combat remained the mainstream in the star sea.
Psionic power was strong in bursts but couldn’t last.
At most, it let you unleash a few waves of Psionic Storms to wipe out a small fleet in seconds. This story is hosted at g.com.
Once your psionic power was exhausted, that was when you got slaughtered.
Powerful Psionics never counted on psionic power to fight against fleets.
To them, the greatest benefit of being a Psionic was the strength of their skill effects.
Just imagine: a fleet commanded by a powerful super Psionic with +100% speed, +100% range, +100% attack power, and guaranteed hits.
How terrifying would a fleet with such buffs be?
His current bonuses weren’t that dramatic, but Li Qing could clearly feel the difference.
The instantly boosted speed let him easily shake off ordinary Pirate Gunboats, and even Destroyers could be thrown off, greatly improving his safety.
Over the next few months, Li Qing traveled leisurely along the route back to Jinmen, making a tour of every star system with an Asteroid Belt, casually searching for mining bases.
Whenever he came across a player base, he would spend some money buying that star system’s star map from them, saving himself a great deal of time.
Before he knew it, five months had passed, and he finally returned to the Jinmen Star System.
By then, the Ore Spheres he had accumulated numbered over one hundred—114 in total.
Back in Jinmen, he did nothing at first—instead, he rented a hotel on the scenic tourist planet Jinmen II and spent a good half month sightseeing to relax.
Then he went to the star system next door to Jinmen and rented a large Industrial Ship from a trading guild, piloting it to a deserted spot in the system.
Although the neighboring system saw heavy traffic, it was simply too vast for every corner to be occupied.
He only needed to find an empty area to open the exit of the Palm Universe and drag the Ore Spheres out one by one with the Industrial Ship’s tractor beam, towing them along like a train.
He casually found a mining company called Diyi and sold all 114 Ore Spheres, each roughly five kilometers in diameter, at market price.
Just smashing the spheres open one by one, taking stock of the Raw Ore inside, tallying the quantities of different ores, and calculating the total value took nearly a week.
In the end, the combined tally showed that the 114 Ore Spheres, plus the ore he had accumulated earlier, sold for 1.24 billion Star Credits—a bit higher than he had expected.
A fortune of a billion would barely be enough to assemble a small fleet, but it was a good start.
He could easily afford a fully equipped Destroyer and two fully equipped Escort Ships, which would be more convenient and efficient whether for actual combat or for stealing ore.
For configuring the Warship, he sought out a shipyard belonging to the Yu Clan, which accepted custom orders up to Cruisers at most.
It wasn’t that they couldn’t build Battleships—it was that Battleship orders were in such high demand that the queue stretched ten years into the future.
There was no way he’d get a slot.
In the reception room, Li Qing sipped tea while studying the various Destroyer configurations displayed on the light screen before him.
A pretty girl in a well-fitted skirt uniform that showed off her fine figure was enthusiastically making introductions:
“Sir, our Yu Clan shipyard has over four hundred years of heritage and can accept custom orders up to Battleships.”
“Your Destroyer order is currently number 58 in the queue, with construction expected to begin in about a month.”
“Of course, if you’re in a hurry and don’t mind, you could purchase a finished Warship instead—it would just need to be refitted and enhanced.”
Li Qing didn’t reply, only examined the initial Module configurations of the different Destroyers on the light screen, along with the various refit options.
Weapon and Universal Slot configurations weren’t important—those could be swapped out at any time on new or old ships alike.
Custom orders were mainly about the Modules.
A Destroyer was divided into two sections: the bow and the stern, each with many Module options.
Ordering one meant freely customizing different Module combinations rather than using preset ones.
Common bow options included the Gunboat Bow, Sentry Bow, Great Cannon Bow, and Missile Bow, while stern options included the Sentry Stern, Interceptor Stern, Gunboat Stern, and Missile Stern.
Beyond these, there were also the rarer Hangar Bow and Hangar Stern.
On top of that, a custom Warship could be enhanced and refitted during construction, adding new weapon slots or Universal Slots, so it would come off the production line stronger than a standard Warship of the same class.
Of course, it was also more expensive—easily costing over a hundred million at a time.
But in the early stages, when one couldn’t assemble a large-scale fleet, a single ship’s combat strength directly determined overall fighting power, which was why Warship refits were so popular early on.
Xia Qi’s Cruiser, for example, had been refitted—not only with all Tier-5 configurations, but the ship itself had also been enhanced, with many additional weapon slots added.
It could essentially take on two standard Cruisers at once.
Li Qing considered carefully.
For a long stretch ahead, he would likely be running all over looking for Wild Mob mining bases to steal ore, so speed would be crucial, and his own combat power equally important—the full five-star configuration plus all manner of enhancements had to be maxed out.
For the bow, he chose the Great Cannon Bow Module, which had 2 L large weapon slots and 4 M medium weapon slots.
For the stern, he chose the Gunboat Stern Module, which had 8 M medium weapon slots.
There were no S small weapon slots, and no P-type CIWS Slots either, making it hard to mount a threatening counterattack against enemies attacking at point-blank range.
But that was no big deal—point defense could be left to the two fully equipped Escort Ships.
Three Warships also made up a small fleet: the main Destroyer handled frontline combat, while the Escort Ships simply needed to escort.