368: Chapter 369 The Bricklayer, Moving Billions in Assets

Thirty meters underground.

Lin Qi's body was enveloped in Dao Source as he moved silently through the rock layers.

A Silence Bubble covered the surrounding twenty-meter space, suppressing all Law fluctuations to zero.

It had taken twenty-four hours to get here.

He was already familiar with the path back, so theoretically, he could be much faster.

However, Lin Qi was in no hurry to leave.

He stopped.

As the Dao Source swept across the area beneath his feet, something caught his attention.

Soil.

To be precise, it was the soil layer between fifteen and thirty meters underground in the heart of the Rotten Wood Forest.

This layer of soil was completely different from ordinary rock layers.

The color was dark, the texture dense, and the gaps between particles were extremely small. When the Dao Source permeated it, the feedback caused Lin Qi to slow down.

Law Sediments.

Ku Ye had been rooted in this place for a hundred years, and his Law of Decay had seeped into the ground day after day through the root network. During the operation of Law energy, there would be a very small amount of 'loss'; these losses wouldn't vanish into thin air but would instead deposit into the surrounding medium.

One hundred years.

A hundred years of residual Law energy had thoroughly 'marinated' this soil.

Ordinary people would find no use for this soil—they couldn't even use it to grow flowers because the Law residues would interfere with the normal elemental cycle.

But Lin Qi was no ordinary person.

His Dao Source swept back and forth through this soil three times, reading the microstructure with each pass.

Then, he reached a conclusion.

This stuff was a natural shielding material.

The Law Sediments had altered the soil's crystalline structure, giving it a special physical property: absorbing and neutralizing external Law fluctuations.

Simply put, if you placed a Law detector outside this material, even if a fourth-turn powerhouse was releasing skills inside, the detector's reading would be zero.

Law Stealth.

Lin Qi ran through the current defense system of the D-3 Region base in his head.

The fabrication workshop for Law Creatures was open-air; every time a Law Circuit was inscribed, the Dao Source fluctuations would radiate outward for at least three kilometers. Although he had shielded the Federal Military's long-range monitoring equipment, if there were higher-level sensing methods—such as a High Priest of Eternal Frost's caliber—they could theoretically capture abnormal frequency bands from thousands of kilometers away.

He had always relied on the D-3 Region's inherent Leyline Interference for cover, but that interference wasn't a hundred percent reliable.

If he used this Law Sediment soil as a lining, it would be equivalent to adding a silencer to the fabrication workshop.

And not just the workshop.

Lin Qi's train of thought expanded.

If this material were ground into powder and mixed into an alloy base, the Law radiation of the resulting Law Creatures in standby mode would decrease by more than ninety percent.

What did that mean?

It meant Law Creatures could enter 'Stealth Mode'.

The biggest shortcoming of the Law Creatures currently leased by the Federal Military was that their Law radiation was too obvious; the Void Realm creatures in the Rift Zone were extremely sensitive to Law fluctuations and could detect their presence from afar.

If 'Law Silence' could be achieved...

Then they wouldn't just be defensive units; they would be infiltration units. Assassination units. Special operations units.

The product line would upgrade directly from 'Security Guard' to 'Special Forces'.

The rental price would triple at the very least.

Zhang Wei's fat face, distorted with excitement, automatically popped into Lin Qi's mind.

"Good."

He muttered a single word to himself.

Then he got to work.

Dao Source was released from his body—not the kind that radiated outward, but a downward penetration, establishing an assimilative connection with the rock layer beneath his feet.

Underground Medium Fusion.

This was the core ability he used when traveling through the earth. Normally, he would 'soften' the medium to let himself pass.

But now, he used it in reverse.

Not softening. Compression.

Dao Source expanded outward with Lin Qi as the center, covering a fifty-meter radius of the strata. All the Law Sediment soil in this area began to gather toward a single point under the control of the Dao Source.

The rock layers squeezed silently.

Gravel and ordinary dirt were filtered out, while the Law Sediments were screened, gathered, and superimposed.

Density increased.

Volume shrank.

An entire layer of soil from a fifty-meter radius was compressed into a sphere three meters in diameter.

Then two meters.

One meter.

Half a meter.

Finally, a dark brown square brick, two sizes larger than a fist, appeared in Lin Qi's hand.

It weighed approximately four hundred kilograms.

The density was absurdly high.

The surface felt cold and smooth, with a faint dark luster. Tapping it produced a dull, metallic sound.

Lin Qi weighed it in his hand a couple of times.

To the Physical Body of the Tongshen Realm, four hundred kilograms was about the same as holding a cell phone.

He stuffed the square brick into his backpack.

The backpack's zipper let out an undignified groan under the four-hundred-kilogram pressure.

It didn't break.

This bag had followed him from the campus to the Dragon Tomb, from the Dragon Tomb to D-3, and from D-3 to the Rotten Wood Forest. It had endured countless instances of violent treatment, and its zippers and stitching had long since been unintentionally reinforced by Dao Source.

Four hundred kilograms—it could still hold.

But Lin Qi felt it wasn't enough.

He changed direction and spread his Dao Source once more.

This time, the coverage was even larger. A hundred-meter radius.

Five minutes later, the second mineral brick was in hand.

Ten minutes later, the third.

Twenty minutes later, Lin Qi stopped.

Six Law Sediment mineral bricks were stuffed into the backpack, with a total weight exceeding two tons.

The bottom of the bag had already begun to deform, and the two shoulder straps were pulled taut, looking like they might snap at any moment.

But under the reinforcement of the Dao Source, it stubbornly held on.

Lin Qi shook his head.

"I'll have to get a new bag when I get back."

He restarted his subterranean travel, merging his body into the rock medium.

Carrying over two tons of 'local specialties' on his back, plus an entrenching tool and two useless seeds.

Others went on thousand-mile expeditions to kill enemies and serve their country.

He went on a thousand-mile expedition and even dug up the ground to take it with him.

The surface of the Rotten Wood Forest was still collapsing.

After six large chunks of the underground Law Sediment layer were removed, the rock structure—which had already lost its Law support—loosened further. On the surface, the already mostly collapsed withered wood area began to experience sinkholes, with patches of ground caving in and kicking up grayish-white dust.

Lin Qi traveled at high speed underground, the tunnel behind him automatically backfilling.

A two-thousand-kilometer return journey.

Carrying two tons of local specialties.

He was already doing the math in his head.

If all six mineral bricks were ground into powder and mixed into the alloy base at a five percent ratio, it would be enough to manufacture at least thirty 'Silent-type' Law Creatures.

Thirty units.

Based on the current monthly rent of twenty-four million per unit for the Second Transition Peak model, the Silent-type—which would have at least a Third-Turn level combat framework—would start at a monthly rent of seventy million.

Thirty units, twenty-one hundred million per month.

An annual income of 25.2 billion.

And that was just the first batch.

If he could return to continue 'extracting soil' later, or harvest the Law Sediments from the Ice Rift Valley stronghold after taking it down...

Production capacity and income could double again.

If Zhang Wei knew about this, he would probably drop to his knees and kowtow to him on the spot.

Lin Qi's speed through the ground stabilized at around eighty kilometers per hour.

It was a bit slower than when he came.

Not because of the weight on his back—two tons was nothing to someone in the Tongshen Realm.

It was because he was doing two things at once.

While traveling, he was using his Dao Source to repeatedly scan the strata along the way, checking for any new Law Sediment areas.

None.

The Law Sediments in the Rotten Wood Forest were a special product of a hundred years of accumulation; other places didn't have those conditions.

This made these six mineral bricks even more precious.

The only source, no other branches.

The corners of Lin Qi's mouth twitched slightly.

Then he continued on his way.