20: Chapter 20: Forty Times!

A full day and night passed.

Zhou An was like a tireless, unfeeling machine. His eyes were bloodshot, but his spirit was extremely exhilarated.

With the crazy dumping and accumulation of his massive orders, the stock of Tier 1 materials in the regional Trading House was depleting at a terrifying speed, while the originally scarce Tier 2 metals began to circulate in the market due to his sell-off.

The supply and demand relationship reversed, and the exchange ratio began to collapse irretrievably.

1:3.5... 1:3... 1:2.5...

Until the evening of the second day, when Zhou An threw out his last order, the price of Tier 1 materials in the market had been completely beaten back to its original form, and the exchange ratio was stuck firmly at 1:2.1.

"Phew... it's reached the limit."

Zhou An rubbed his sore brows and stopped the operation. The ratio dropping to 1:2.1 meant that the profit margin for his 2:1 synthesis using [Level Up!] had been infinitely compressed, and continuing to resell was meaningless.

With trembling hands, he clicked open his system warehouse.

When he saw that long string of blinding numbers, he fell into a long stupor.

[Tier 2 Steel: 385,000 units]

[Tier 2 Composite Rubber: 152,000 units]

[High-Density Energy Core and others: 86,000 units]

Adding up the few core Tier 2 materials, the total amount exceeded a shocking 620,000 units!

From the initial 15,000 units of short-selling capital to 620,000 now! It had increased by more than forty times! This was no longer just a simple strike of wealth!

What was even more terrifying was that he also had the Hextech [Compound Interest]!

Automatically increasing basic materials by 1% every day. Based on the current terrifying base of 620,000, every day when he opened his eyes, without doing anything, 6,200 units of Tier 2 materials would appear out of thin air in his warehouse!

"This is what you call financial freedom."

Zhou An leaned back in his leather seat, letting out a near-maniacal low laugh.

At this moment, the regional public channel had long since been turned upside down because of this unprecedented price shock.

"What the hell! Where did the Tier 1 wood and scrap metal in the market go?! I just wanted to buy some wood to repair the deck, but I couldn't even buy any goods!"

"How did the exchange ratio become 1:2? Wasn't it 1:4 yesterday?!"

"There is definitely a super whale maliciously manipulating the market! In the entire region, there is only one entity capable of swallowing and spitting out hundreds of thousands of units of supplies in a single day!"

"@Four Seas Chamber of Commerce, you bunch of vampire resellers! Did you do this?! Monopolizing supplies, you deserve to die!"

"Other than the Four Seas Chamber of Commerce, I can't think of any other force that has such massive capital..."

Watching the players in the entire region cursing the Four Seas Chamber of Commerce in the channel, Zhou An closed the chat panel without a shred of guilt.

The Four Seas Chamber of Commerce had firmly taken the blame for him this time, and their upper management was probably currently investigating with confused expressions.

Zhou An pulled up the [Cloud Top Fortress Upgrade Blueprint (LV3)] from before and checked the requirements:

Tier 3 Steel: 15,000 units, Tier 3 Composite Rubber: 10,000 units, Rare Conductive Gel: 2,000 units, High-Density Energy Core: 5,000 units, Floating Island Core Crystal: 10 units.

He glanced at the hundreds of thousands of Tier 2 materials in his warehouse. Using the 2:1 conversion rate of [Level Up!], the first few Tier 3 materials only required consuming about 60,000-plus units of Tier 2 materials to synthesize, which was a piece of cake for him now.

But his gaze was stuck firmly on the last line.

"Floating Island Core Crystal?" Zhou An frowned.

He opened the Trading House, typed in those words, and the search result was blank. Going to the forum to search, there was likewise no one who had ever discussed such a thing.

"No one is selling it, and no one has seen it."

Zhou An touched his chin and pondered to himself.

"Looking at the name, it most likely has an inseparable connection to those randomly refreshing Floating Islands in the sky. And it must be that kind of high-tier, large Floating Island; ordinary micro Floating Islands probably won't drop it."

Since the fortress upgrade was stuck, Zhou An decisively closed the vehicle panel and instead took out the blueprint he had been coveting for a long time—[micro-nuclear battle armor (Purple)]!

"If the fortress can't be upgraded, then I'll arm myself to the teeth first!"

Zhou An pulled up the battle armor's manufacturing interface, and a long list of extremely demanding Tier 3 materials popped out:

[Manufacturing Requirement List (micro-nuclear battle armor):] Tier 3 Steel: 1,200 units, Tier 3 Nanotube Structural Bundle: 800 units, Tier 3 Radiation-Resistant Insulation Lining: 500 units, High-Purity Uranium Enrichment Reaction Core: 100 units.

"All Tier 3 materials..."

If not for this heaven-defying wave of reselling, Zhou An wouldn't be able to gather these items even if he scavenged for junk for a month. But now, he snorted coldly with the confidence of the wealthy and directly selected the corresponding Tier 2 materials in the warehouse.

"Level Up!, synthesize it for me!"

Seven-colored lights flashed continuously inside the cabin.

Within a few short minutes, all the top-tier Tier 3 materials needed for the battle armor were all neatly arranged on the system manufacturing table.

"Manufacture!" Zhou An slammed his fist onto the confirm button.

[Ding! Material deduction successful!]

[Epic Equipment: micro-nuclear battle armor is being manufactured...]

A high-density energy isolation shield rose on the manufacturing table. Inside the isolation shield, various Tier 3 materials, under the interference of some unknown rule, turned into pools of silvery liquid metal.

These liquid metals seemed to possess life, interweaving and entwining with each other, finally fusing together to form a fist-sized silver metal sphere flowing with a faint blue halo.

[Manufacturing Complete!]

[Prompt: This battle armor uses liquid memory metal technology; for the first use, you must perform a DNA blood-drop binding.]

Zhou An excitedly picked up the heavy silver sphere, bit his fingertip without hesitation, and smeared a drop of fresh blood onto the surface of the sphere.

"Hum—" The silver sphere melted instantly, like living liquid mercury, rapidly crawling and spreading from Zhou An's palm to his entire body.

In less than two seconds, a layer of streamlined silver battle armor, as thin as a cicada's wing yet exuding an extremely terrifying metallic texture, completely enveloped him!

It was not as heavy as he had imagined, but instead as light as nothing. On the chest of the battle armor, a tiny faint blue reactor was emitting a steady energy pulse, and a continuous stream of power was flowing into Zhou An's body along the armor's neural interface.

"This is... the micro-nuclear battle armor?" Zhou An clenched his fist violently, and he could even hear the sonic boom of the air being instantly crushed.