Two hours later, the ship appeared before an asteroid just over a thousand kilometers in diameter.
This asteroid was located at the edge of the Asteroid Belt, its surface covered in craters of all sizes.
Its gravity was even weaker than that of a normal asteroid of this size, not nearly enough to pull in surrounding meteorites.
Far from the system’s main sequence star, the temperature here was extremely low, but with no water vapor on the asteroid, there was no freezing—only a thick layer of dust that had accumulated over who knew how long.
On this asteroid, there were actually three personal bases not far apart from one another.
When Li Qing arrived above Yang Yunbo’s base, he received a public communication channel invitation from Yang Yunbo.
He opened it, and a light screen popped up, split into six interfaces, each showing a player—five men and one woman—all waving at him at the same time:
“Welcome to the star system, Brother Li Qing! Glad to have you settling down here!”
He waved back in surprise:
“Are you all together?”
Yang Yunbo shook his head:
“Not originally, but this place is too far from the Jinmen Star System, and there are too few people. It gets lonely, so we all keep in touch and play together.”
The Escort Ship hovered in midair as he took a small five-meter Flyer into the base.
Yang Yunbo’s base was also a small one, with a Main Core Module just like his own, but piled here were probably twenty or thirty Auxiliary Pods, with Raw Ore stacked all around and mountains of scrap further out.
It had already been expanded to a considerable scale, and the two nearby players’ bases were about the same size.
The Flyer entered the Main Core Module’s gate, went through routine disinfection and inspection, and the hatch opened with a blast of cold air.
Yang Yunbo and three other players—two men and one woman—were standing on the steps waiting for him.
He hurriedly greeted them as they introduced themselves to one another.
The three other players were named Xia Qi, Ning Xi, and Lu Yanqi.
Lu Yanqi was Xia Qi’s girlfriend, and quite pretty.
As the host, Yang Yunbo had long since prepared food and drinks.
A stone had been carved into a ding-cauldron shape and set on the ground, its surface featuring a tray-like groove crisscrossed with many channels.
By some unknown method, the stone grooves were heated to an extremely high temperature.
Thin slices of meat were laid across them, sizzling instantly—ready to flip in just two seconds.
The five of them ate grilled meat and drank beverages while chatting.
Most of the time, Li Qing asked them about this star system and the nearby ones, and they answered.
Through their conversation, he learned that this system originally had six players—seven now with him included—and they all got along well.
Yang Yunbo, Xia Qi, Lu Yanqi, and Ning Xi’s four bases were all on this asteroid, while the other two players’ bases were elsewhere in the Asteroid Belt.
As it happened, those two were deep in the Asteroid Belt today on some business and couldn’t make it back for a while.
“If you’d said something earlier, those two would have come over.”
Yang Yunbo spread sauce on a palm-sized piece of cooked meat, rolled it up, stuffed it into his mouth, and chewed it down.
He took another sip of his drink and said to him:
“You came to the right people. It’s far too hard to make it alone out here. When I first arrived, I was all by myself, lonely as hell. Every time I collected enough ore, refined it, and hauled it out for sale, I was terrified I’d come back and find my base gone.”
“Haha, I have that same worry.”
“But now there’s no need to worry. If you’re going out, just let us know beforehand, and I’ll send a couple of ships over to your base to keep an eye on things.”
Li Qing quickly thanked him:
“That would be too much trouble.”
Yang Yunbo waved his hand:
“No trouble at all. We all help each other out.”
Li Qing nodded:
“Indeed, we have to help each other, otherwise it’s hard to get by.”
“By the way, how often do you all head back to Jinmen? Maybe we could travel together.”
“Jinmen? We rarely go back—maybe once every three or four years.”
Li Qing asked in surprise:
“Do you stockpile your ore that long before selling it?”
Xia Qi, who had been eating the whole time, looked up and said:
“You might be misunderstanding. We don’t ship our ore back to Jinmen to sell.”
“Then where?”
“North of here, in the JM-N-381 star system, there’s a large team called Burning Ghost that established a team headquarters there. They have a Tier 3 Star Fortress and control thirty to forty star systems centered on JM-N-381. Basically all the ore from individual players and small teams in the surrounding area gets sold to Burning Ghost.”
“Hmm! Then—” This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Just as he was about to speak, Ning Xi finished a piece of roasted meat, looked up, and said to him:
“You should be careful. Although we sell all our ore to Burning Ghost, this team doesn’t have a very good reputation around here.”
“Tell me more.”
“The Burning Ghost team moved to this area over thirty years ago and started building their base. Word is they originally made their fortune through piracy, and after establishing an official team they cleaned up their act, but some things are ingrained in their bones—pettiness, vindictiveness, greed. Since they’re the only team around buying ore on a large scale, they push prices extremely low, paying only ninety percent of market value, and even less for newcomers. Meanwhile, the industrial goods they sell are twenty percent more expensive than in Jinmen.”
“But there’s no way around it. This place is too far from Jinmen. A fleet takes four or five months to get back, and another four or five months to return—nearly ten months for a round trip. Too time-consuming. Weighing the options, it’s better to earn ten percent less and save ten months of time.”
“Also, the Burning Ghost people are petty and hold grudges. But most of the time they stay within their team’s territory and rarely go out. I’ll send you a complete star map later. Take a look, and don’t go mining in their territory unless you have to, so you don’t get on their bad side.”
Li Qing laughed:
“Don’t worry about that. I only have one ship right now, and I can’t even finish mining the local ore. There’s no way I’d go digging anywhere else.”
After some casual chatting, he found that although they all had different personalities, they were all pretty easy to get along with.
Most of them were the standard type of Individual Pioneers—seemingly without much ambition, and even if they had any, their abilities limited their achievements.
They just wanted to mine some ore while they were young, make some money, and once they’d earned enough, sell off their ships and mining operations, return to the interior of the United Empire of Humanity, settle down on a stable Colony Planet, and live as financially free rich men.
They had no thoughts of conquering the star sea at all.
The most active among them were Xia Qi and another player, who occasionally went out adventuring in between mining, though never too far.
Li Qing liked having neighbors like this—worry-free and reassuring.
However, whether it was his imagination or not, he happened to catch a strange glance exchanged between Xia Qi’s girlfriend and Yang Yunbo.
He didn’t dare think too much of it, chalking it up to seeing things wrong.
They ate and drank together, getting to know one another, chatting and joking around.
Li Qing took the opportunity to ask about the surrounding area and obtained a more detailed star map—the farthest explored region extended to the JM-N-544 star system.
Returning from Yang Yunbo and the others’ base, Li Qing was in a good mood.
This trip had been full of gains.
He’d made a few friends and learned about the surrounding area, unlike before when he’d been completely in the dark.
However, they didn’t have any spare ore-crushing and refining equipment; he would need to buy that from the Burning Ghost squad.
In about a month, Xia Qi and the others would have mined enough ore to sell, and they had agreed to go take a look together then, and to learn the route along the way—a newcomer going there without a guide would definitely get lowballed.
Back at his base, he rested for only a day before heading out to mine again the next day.
Even though ore was piling up like mountains at the base, far more than it could process.
Besides, the Palm Universe’s space was virtually infinite, so stockpiling it did no harm.
Back at the Asteroid Belt, the Mining Ship was still mining.
Checking his previous records, there was nothing unusual.
Though very few people came here, the Wild Mobs that periodically respawned had slowly accumulated in considerable numbers.
But compared to the vastness of space, that was nothing—you could search a radius of over a hundred thousand kilometers and not find a single living thing.
What followed were more boring days of mining.
The only improvement over before was that he now had communication channels opened with Yang Yunbo and a few other players, so they could chat.
These communication channels were similar to the Regional Channel, built on the pivot of players’ radars.
You needed a radar to join, needed permission from the others to join, and had to be in the current star system—leave the system and communication was cut off.
Though because the radars they used weren’t particularly advanced, real-time communication wasn’t possible—there was a delay of about a minute—it was still far better than having no way to communicate at all.
The Escort Ship advanced along the edge of the Asteroid Belt, collecting any meteorite containing ore into the Palm Universe, regardless of how much ore it held.
Others had to consider transport and refining costs; he needed to consider nothing at all.
Time passed day by day, and before he knew it, half a month had gone by.
That day, he was mining as usual, opening the Palm Universe to draw a drifting meteorite into the giant black hole within.
With that several-kilometer-diameter meteorite barrier gone, a vast stretch of empty void was revealed behind it, and at its far end, an enormous artificial structure flickered in and out of view, with several Armed Mining Ships circling the massive construct.
“Back here again!”
Li Qing glanced at the ore spheres piled up beside the giant meteorite into which the huge artificial structure was embedded, and couldn’t help swallowing.
Those ore spheres were made because there was nowhere to store the mined ore, so it was fused together into giant spheres using special methods—many mining players did the same thing.
Then tractor beams were used to bind the ore spheres around the base, orbiting it, until enough ore had accumulated to be hauled away all at once.
Clearly, this Wild Mob mining base had collected so much ore that the base itself couldn’t hold it all.
If nothing unexpected happened, after stockpiling even more ore for a while, the base would convert that ore into resources and then spawn more Mining Ships or Escort Ship fleets.
At this stage, players could rob these ore stockpiles—seized directly, it was Raw Ore, the kind that could be taken straight away and sold for money.
But…
Li Qing glanced at the fleet patrolling not far from the base, led by a Destroyer.
With his current strength, there was no way he could take them.
But—
He left a message for everyone on the communication channel:
“Brothers, I’ve found something unusual here. There’s a mining base with ore piled up into a ball, guarded by one Destroyer and twenty-some Escort Ships. Anyone interested in taking a shot at it?” The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
Nearly two minutes later, Ning Xi replied:
“We can’t beat it.”
Then another player named Zhang Weiqi, who hadn’t come last time, said:
“There’s no point. The Asteroid Belt is full of these wild mining bases. We’ve found at least ten on our side and couldn’t be bothered with any of them.”
“Huh?”
Li Qing asked in surprise:
“You six together can’t handle it?”
Another two minutes passed before Zhang Weiqi responded:
“Small ones, sure, but there’d inevitably be losses. Twenty-some Escort Ships plus a Destroyer have serious firepower—an Escort Ship can’t take more than a few hits before it’s blown apart. Losing even one ship means it’s a net loss even if you take the base.”
“These mining bases drop at most some wreckage and the ore inside, with a tiny chance of dropping a Data Chip or Blueprints—but the drop rate is extremely low. And ore? The Asteroid Belt has plenty; it’s just a matter of spending time mining it. Risking your ships for that tiny chance is not what a wise man does.”
“You’ve only got one ship right now, way too weak. Don’t think about anything else early on—first earn money, buy more mining ships, build a fleet to make money. Once you’ve earned more, then consider configuring more Warships.”
“Oh!”
Li Qing went quiet.
They’d been at this longer than he had; if they said it wasn’t worth it, it definitely wasn’t worth it.
Setting the idea aside, he turned his Escort Ship to leave.
But halfway there, the Escort Ship stopped and turned back.
Li Qing stood before the Bridge glass, watching the distant view of the void, hand on his chin, a bold idea forming in his mind.
Fighting them was definitely out of the question, no doubt about it—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t snag some benefits.
These Wild Mobs had limited AI.
Right now he was observing the base from afar, but neither the base nor the surrounding Escort Ship fleet had detected him, which meant the base’s radar couldn’t match his third-generation radar.
That left room for the mischievous idea in his head to work.
Simple: open the Palm Universe outside the detection range of the mining base’s radar and steal the ore ball piled up around the Wild Mob mining base.
He couldn’t crack the base, but stealing some ore?
No problem.
After all, the maximum distance of the Palm Universe’s opening was determined by line of sight—meaning it could be opened anywhere within the radar’s maximum detection range.
His radar’s detection range was longer than the Wild Mobs’, so stealing ore from a distance meant they’d never even know where the enemy was.
The Palm Universe’s opening wasn’t invincible, but it certainly wasn’t something the attacks of ordinary Wild Mobs could shake.
He acted on the thought at once.
Li Qing first circled the area and found a huge meteorite to hide behind, then gazed at the feed from the Subspace Radar Sensor showing the Wild Mob mining base.
With a thought, a massive black hole-like opening silently appeared in front of the ore ball, four to five kilometers in diameter, orbiting the mining base.
The ore ball drifted by inertia and slipped silently into the black opening.
Then, Li Qing felt a nearly five-kilometer-diameter ball of pure ore appear inside his Palm Universe.
“Yes!”
He pumped his fist forcefully and closed the Palm Universe exit.
Looking back at the radar display, several Escort Ships were flying back and forth nonstop at the spot where the ore sphere had vanished, as if they were glitching.
To be expected—how could the Wild Mobs’ tiny bit of AI possibly understand what had just happened?
They had probably never encountered anything like it, so their AI logic had no way of handling this situation, causing a logic conflict and producing this bizarre glitch-like behavior.
The attempt had succeeded, and Li Qing was thrilled.
Just that one ore sphere, even if it was all iron ore, was definitely worth over ten million.
The mining base had six such ore spheres.
If he stole them all, the total haul would probably exceed fifty million.
Unfortunately, it was Raw Ore.
If it had been refined ore, the total value would likely have broken five hundred million.
But no matter what, all of this was free.
After waiting a short while, Li Qing pulled the same trick again, stealing the remaining ore spheres one by one in the same manner.
The Escort Ship fleet guarding the mining base attacked the black hole as it appeared, but no attack could damage the black hole in the slightest.
Once all the ore was stolen, the Escort Ships quickly withdrew.
Li Qing’s consciousness returned to the Palm Universe, exhilarated.
It wasn’t just the six ore spheres worth over fifty million Star Credits—through what he had just done, it was as if a whole new world had opened up to him, and countless even bolder schemes surfaced in his mind.