Li Qing rolled his eyes:
“Then why don’t you go? You have a better chance than I do.”
“Women only slow down my sword-drawing speed.”
“They might speed it up, too. You’re better than me both in family status and Innate Talent. Put in some effort and you might actually succeed. Becoming the husband of a Yu clan noblewoman would get you a massive supply of resources—wouldn’t that speed up your sword-drawing?”
Li Lie glanced at him with a strange look and waved his hand:
“Let’s add each other as friends. I’ll look you up for drinks next time I’m back.”
Li Qing accepted the friend request and waved back.
The two boarded their respective Flyers and departed.
Li Lie tilted his head, watching him leave, and muttered to himself:
“He’s not as trash as the rumors say? Is he playing the pig to eat the tiger?”
Shaking his head, his Flyer lifted off and flew toward the Starport where his Warship was docked.
Back at the Starport, Li Qing first visited the insurance company and purchased insurance for the Escort Ship, Mining Ship, and Industrial Ship he had bought.
The premium was 1% of each ship’s total appraised value per year.
If a ship sank in an accident, he would receive compensation of a certain percentage of the ship’s total appraised value, depending on the circumstances.
For a newcomer like him, the maximum compensation percentage was 25%.
Then he went to the Crew Hall and collected everyone he had previously recruited: fifty Clone Crew members, fifty Clone workers, three senior crew members, and two captains, gathering them all together.
The Starport was fixed in orbit around the planet, a building shaped like a snowflake, divided into hundreds of stacked layers.
Each layer was docked with many small ships and Warships; medium and large vessels or Warships were not allowed to dock here and could only stop at Star City.
His Escort Ship, Mining Ship, and Industrial Ship were all docked on the seventy-seventh layer.
Many players like him brought along a bunch of crew members or Clone cannon fodder—most of them had more than he did—so he blended right in, completely unremarkable.
The fifty ordinary crew members boarded the Escort Ship.
The fifty Clones were split in two, entering the Mining Ship and the Industrial Ship respectively, and the two captains also took their posts.
Li Qing boarded the Escort Ship and stepped onto the Bridge.
The interior lights turned on automatically, and a crisp electronic voice sounded:
“Welcome back, Commander!”
Sitting in the command seat, two of the three senior crew members took the left and right vice-command seats, while the other stood behind Li Qing.
The three senior crew members consisted of a Vice Captain, whose main duty was to control the ship’s internal facilities depending on the Warship’s and battle’s situation, directing ordinary crew members in combat, repairs, and so on.
Another was a Warship Operator, who assisted the captain in controlling the Warship.
Normally they had few tasks, but when the captain was resting, when the ship entered combat status, or when the captain was absent, the Warship Operator had the authority to temporarily take over control of the Warship—though only for navigation and combat.
The third senior crew member was a Staff Officer, whose main duty was to receive orders from the fleet commander and relay them to the captain, or pass the captain’s orders to the various posts on the ship, while also providing advice and reference opinions to the captain or commander.
In fact, beyond these three, there were many further subdivisions among senior crew members.
For example, larger warships might have specialized pilots, signal officers, tactical coordinators, maintenance chiefs, logistics chiefs, main gunnery officers, hangar chiefs, multiple staff officers, and so on.
The bigger the warship, the more of them there were.
Escort ships were small in scale, with only three senior crew members.
Of course, if you had the money and insisted on hiring a whole pile of senior crew, that was fine too.
Once all the crew members were familiar with their positions on the ship, and the various things Li Qing had casually ordered earlier had arrived, he gave the command.
The escort ship slowly started up, and the view outside the transparent Bridge gradually shifted from facing the Starport toward open space.
Warships large and small slid past through the starfield, and his little escort ship was utterly unremarkable among them.
“Ding-dong!”
A new message arrived.
He opened it, and a light screen popped up as Li Lie’s projection appeared on the Bridge.
He had changed into a dark green military uniform, with a Command Saber at his waist, striking a pose and saying spiritedly:
“How handsome do I look!”
Li Qing immediately noticed that his Bridge seemed different from his own.
Instead of answering, he asked in return:
“Isn’t that an escort ship you’re on?”
“Boring!”
“But you’ve got a good eye—this is a Hurricane-class Destroyer. My mom bought it for me with her private savings. Handsome, right?”
“Handsome.”
The Hurricane-class was the elite template among Destroyers, with stats stronger than the standard Gale-class.
The bare hull cost a whopping two hundred million, and with a full weapons loadout it easily exceeded three hundred million.
If fitted with all Tier 4 or Tier 5 weapons and components, a total price of five to six hundred million was normal.
The support Li Lie’s mother gave her son for his first expedition certainly wouldn’t be lacking—it would surely be the best Tier 5 configuration, and it had probably been modified too, which would push the price even higher.
Over six hundred million was entirely possible.
Pioneering families provided no additional resources beyond the base one hundred million, but rules are dead while people are alive.
Is there anything wrong with a mother giving her son a little private money?
No, there isn’t.
Because this was an accepted unspoken rule.
Everyone has selfish motives.
Every parent wants their children to live better lives, to surpass others right from the starting line.
The rules restricted extra support from the father’s side, but placed no restrictions on support from mothers or the maternal family.
If the maternal side had money, arrangements would be made early on.
Directly preparing a ship, or preparing several hundred million or even over a billion in funds, was the simplest and most direct approach.
Those with more decorum would wait a while, or arrange a designated mission that rewarded you with a Battleship or tens of billions in starting funds, along with a steady stream of follow-up resource supplies—all within the rules.
Rules are dead, people are alive.
There has never been such a thing as absolute fairness in this world.
Li Qing had no complaints about this.
After all, they could have their mothers’ support, but he had his own cheat—a Palm Universe.
That was his greatest trump card, his greatest unfairness to others.
Naturally, he had no complaints.
If his starting funds couldn’t compare, so be it.
He wanted no inheritance rights and needed no one’s approval—he didn’t need to compete with anyone at all.
Earn money step by step, grow slowly, and one day he would surpass those so-called prodigies.
The three ships departed the Starport along their predetermined routes.
The ships began to accelerate, entering sub-light speed.
Sub-light speed refers to warp travel, where a Jump Drive accelerates a ship’s speed infinitely toward the speed of light.
In this state, speeds can reach hundreds of millions or even hundreds of millions of kilometers per hour, with the maximum approaching the speed of light infinitely closely.
In the sub-light state, the ship exists on a different plane from matter in the normal universe, and the two cannot interact with each other.
The distances of the cosmic starfield are extremely vast.
Even within a single star system, the distances between planets are measured in hundreds of millions of kilometers—tens or hundreds of millions at a time—let alone interstellar distances measured in light-years.
In the Jinmen Star System, under the influence of the Jump Interception Field covering the entire system from the main Star City, enemy fleets cannot jump directly into the Jinmen Star System, and warships within the system cannot jump out via hyperspace either.
They must first leave the Jinmen Star System at sub-light speed to reach an adjacent system, and only then use their hyperspace engines to jump to other star systems.
Around the Jinmen Star System, at the edge of its Gravity Well, there are ten fixed Wormholes.
Through these fixed Wormholes, one can travel in ten directions—four cardinal, four diagonal, plus up and down.
Li Qing was heading south.
According to the Jinmen Star System’s position in the New Galaxy—a massive galactic disk with four spiral arms—the Perseus Arm lies to the north of the New Galaxy.
Starting from the edge of the galactic disk is the Perseus Arm’s First Sector—the Timor Sector.
There dwells an alien civilization called the Kelzaka Star Sea Empire, which spans the First Sector and part of the galactic disk region.
With its extreme militarism and xenophobic ideology, it firmly guards the passage from the Perseus Arm into the galactic disk region.
If the United Empire of Humanity cannot push north into the depths of the Perseus Arm, then to head south into the vast galactic disk sectors, it would have to defeat this powerful alien civilization.
But looking at it from another angle, this powerful alien civilization also serves as the gatekeeper of human civilization.
Any player civilization located in the galactic disk region that wants to move against human civilization would first have to defeat this alien civilization.
Then again, given that the Kelzaka Star Sea Empire is even stronger than the Brul United Civilization, if any player civilization could defeat this alien civilization and push north into the Perseus Arm, it would absolutely be bad news for the United Empire of Humanity.
In other words, to the south of the Second Tianjin Star Sector lies the Timor Sector, to the north is the Third Zutal Sector, and further north lies the Imperial Throne Sector, the heartland of the United Empire of Humanity.
Li Qing speculated that most of the Military Lord family descendants coming from the Empire’s heartland this time would develop northward, where competition would surely be fierce.
Rather than squeezing in there to compete with them, it would be better for him to head south and develop quietly.
After all, Jinmen Province occupied only a tiny fraction of the Tianjin Sector—less than one percent—and a vast portion of the sector remained unexplored.
The ten nearest star systems beyond the Jinmen capital were all named Jinmen-1 Star Systems, though on the star map they were designated jm-d-1, where “jm” stood for Jinmen, “d” for east of Jinmen, and “1” for the first star system east of Jinmen.
The middle letter changed with direction: south was “n,” and west was represented by the letter “x.”
Southeast was naturally “dn.” Up was represented by “s+,” and down by “s-,” not “x-.”
After leaving the Jinmen Star System, the nearest few star systems were extremely crowded with traffic.
The Yu Clan had fixed bases in the nearby systems, and many trading companies kept their warehouses here rather than in the Jinmen Star System, where every inch of land was worth a fortune.
It wasn’t until about five jumps out from the Jinmen Star System that the traffic gradually thinned out.
When the fleet arrived at the JM-N-6 star system, Li Qing did not accelerate as before.
Instead, he left the normal shipping lanes and entered an uninhabited region, where wild mobs gradually began to appear in the void.
Wild mobs were factionless warships that spawned in the wilderness.
The most common were pirate gunboats; occasionally, somewhat stronger warships from criminal syndicates would appear, or extremely powerful rebel warships.
There was a very small chance that anomalies would spawn—usually a fleet led by high-tier warships, or a wild mob base with formidable combat power.
Players jokingly called these “bosses.” Destroying them could yield blueprints and high-tier component materials of considerable value.
Near the Jinmen Star System, wild mobs spawned infrequently and posed little danger.
Moreover, patrol fleets swept through daily to ensure the safety of the main commercial shipping lanes, which was why it was called a High-Sec Zone.
The High-Sec Zone roughly extended fifteen to twenty jumps—that is, starting from the Jinmen Star System, at most fifteen systems deep in any of ten directions, with each system crossed counting as one jump.
Beyond twenty jumps, it was no longer a High-Sec Zone but a Low-Sec Zone.
Because past pioneers had expanded outward from Jinmen as their center, the closer to the Jinmen Star System, the more active players there were.
Teams large and small and individual player bases were everywhere, and any wild mobs that spawned wouldn’t last long before being cleared out.
But correspondingly, both the High-Sec and Low-Sec Zones had already been claimed by earlier pioneers.
Along Li Qing’s entire route, every star system was dotted with players’ personal bases—sometimes a single barren planet would have several player bases on it.
All resources had already been divided up and occupied by earlier pioneers.
Latecomers who wanted to develop and make money had to go farther from the Jinmen Star System, even to the edges of the province.
The three ships left the shipping lane, avoiding pirate gunboats drifting aimlessly about, and came to rest behind an asteroid seventy to eighty kilometers in diameter.
With a thought from Li Qing, ripples spread through the void behind the escort ship.
A black hole opened, rapidly expanding to about a kilometer in diameter, and then he ordered the mining ship and industrial ship to enter the black hole.
The two captains were somewhat nervous and sent communications to ask about it.
Li Qing told them it was the effect of a Legacy Relic and asked them to enter temporarily.
Legacy Relics were treasures with miraculous abilities—almost anything was possible.
Relics with independent spaces weren’t common, but they weren’t unheard of either.
These captains were well-traveled and had naturally heard of them, so they had no doubts and piloted the mining ship and industrial ship into the black hole one after another.
As the owner of the Palm Universe, Li Qing immediately sensed two ships appearing at the edge of the Palm Universe, parking in the void as ordered and staying still.
In truth, it didn’t matter whether they moved around inside the Palm Universe.
The entire Palm Universe, comparable in size to a star system, contained nothing at all, and the sole Witness of the Stars higher-dimensional fortress could not be entered by anyone but him.
Without the Mining Ship and Industrial Ship dragging it down, the Escort Ship traveled light, its speed and agility many times better than before.
Back on course, it continued its journey.
A typical star system’s gravity well has a diameter of over fifty astronomical units, with larger ones reaching over a hundred astronomical units—a diameter of seven to fifteen billion kilometers.
For example, the Solar System’s gravity well—Neptune’s heliocentric orbit—has a diameter of 60 astronomical units, or 9 billion kilometers.
Within a star system, ships can only travel at sub-light speed, meaning a maximum speed of no more than 1.08 billion kilometers per hour, and they cannot exceed this speed.
Even traveling at this extreme speed the entire way, crossing from the wormhole at one edge of the star system to the wormhole on the other side would still take several hours.
In reality, upon exiting a wormhole, a ship cannot enter sub-light speed for a long stretch and must travel at normal speed; the same applies when approaching a wormhole.
If the region traversed at sub-light speed contains military bases with various interference fields or interdiction fields, a ship could be forcibly intercepted.
In the High-Sec and Low-Sec Zones there are many player bases, which inevitably have all kinds of interference fields and interdiction fields.
So in these zones, ships often have to enter sub-light speed in segments, which greatly slows down travel.
In theory, crossing 60 astronomical units takes only about ten hours, but in practice it takes 50% more time or even more.
So merely crossing the High-Sec Zone takes more than ten days.
The Low-Sec Zone might be a bit faster, but not by much.