9: Chapter 9 The price is no price.

Cheng Yu's consciousness, like a cold tide, withdrew from the unsettling, eerie green light of the Zhao Zhen Planet front line and refocused on the bustling, chaotic land beneath his feet.

The awakening of the Necron Dynasty was a long-term, latent catastrophe, but for now, survival and expansion were the primary tasks.

"Construction."

His will spread clearly and concisely throughout the network.

"Before they can threaten us, we must first become unthreatenable."

The construction of the base camp, Cheng Yu Planet, entered a new phase.

Hundreds of millions of Cheng Yus Clones, like tireless worker ants, dug frantically across the planet's surface.

Hard rock and soil were chiseled open by hand or with crude tools, forming closely packed caves.

Efficiency was paramount; aesthetics were meaningless.

These caves connected to each other, forming a massive and ugly underground hive, barely solving the most basic living requirements.

The knowledge "voluntarily" contributed by the Rogue Trader crew came into play.

Some captives with a rudimentary understanding of engineering, under the "enthusiastic" gaze of Cheng Yus Clones, tremblingly guided the excavation of drainage ditches and water pipes.

Although rough, a basic water supply and drainage system utilizing the natural terrain began to take shape.

At least the Cheng Yus Clones no longer had to walk in mud and filth.

Another important "harvest" was the production of Promethium.

Those captives who had witnessed the memory of Orks being digested and absorbed, in order to prove their value, scrambled to explain the technology of converting organic matter into high-efficiency fuel.

What Cheng Yu Planet lacked least was organic matter—every hour, Cheng Yus Clones died due to accidents, exhaustion, or "testing."

Huge, crude fermentation tanks and distillation facilities were quickly erected.

The bodies of the dead Cheng Yus Clones were no longer wasted; instead, they were collected and thrown into the tanks.

After a series of brutal conversion processes, a turbid, pungent, but highly efficient burning liquid was produced.

"This is Promethium?"

Main Body looked at the first batch of fuel produced, contained in crude pottery jars, and nodded.

"Very good. Corpses are no longer waste, but fuel reserves for the Empire."

He named it "Cheng Yu Promethium" and ordered mass production.

This not only solved the problem of corpse disposal but also provided a long-term, reliable energy source for the patchwork fleet.

Although it was still far from driving truly large starships, it at least allowed those ragged aircraft to fly farther and more stably.

Aria watched from afar the facilities that converted the corpses of their companions into fuel, and for the first time, an unconcealable fear appeared on her exquisite face.

These monkeys not only profaned technology but even profaned life itself.

She gripped the Aeldari dagger hidden under her robes, but ultimately made no move. Being alive was, indeed, quite good.

Cheng Yu occasionally glanced at her, knowing her psychological state perfectly well, but did not care.

A living, emotionally complex Aeldari was of more research value than a cold corpse.

At least she was pleasing to the eye.

His attention was focused more on the energy crystals that had already been transported to Zhao Zhen Planet.

The Cheng Yus Clones tried various methods and discovered that these crystals could stably store and release large amounts of energy, making them extremely suitable as energy cores for large equipment.

Of course, they could also be made into salt-explosive bombs, but that would be too wasteful.

Near the front line, a small weapon testing ground powered by crystals was established.

The Cheng Yus Clones attempted to combine the Orks' "Big Shootas" with laser technology to create more reliable weapons, but progress was slow.

Technical barriers could not be overcome in a short time just by quantity.

However, the shared consciousness network of Cheng Yu allowed everyone to learn, think, summarize, innovate, and reflect while working... it was ultimately just a matter of time.

Meanwhile, the "dont eat cilantro" battle group struggled to maintain logistics between the two planets.

The battle group suffered heavy losses; even without obvious enemy threats, interstellar travel itself was a perilous affair.

But a stable supply line transporting starch and Promethium had finally been barely established.

The Cheng Yus Clones on the front line of Zhao Zhen Planet, relying on supplies transported from the rear, built crude fortifications far from the entrance of the Necron tomb, adopting a strategy of surrounding without attacking.

At most, they just constantly harassed and probed with numbers, sacrificing themselves to obtain sporadic data on the enemy's tactics and weapons.

The guardians of the Necron tomb tirelessly killed and dismantled all Cheng Yus Clones that attempted to approach the tomb entrance; their weapon energy also seemed endless.

"Hmph, he is endless, and so am I. Let's see who can outlast whom."

"No rush, let's play with them."

Main Body sat securely in command on the "dont eat cilantro".

His main consciousness simultaneously processed planet construction, fuel production, weapon development, front-line confrontation, and the constantly expanding internal population pressure.

The division never stopped; with every standard hour that passed, the Empire's burden and power grew in sync.

He gazed at the starry sky; the Empire's tax collector might still be on the way, might have been drowned by the bureaucratic system, might land the next second, or might have long since died in Warp.

But none of that mattered anymore.

His Empire was self-perfecting in a barbaric yet efficient way.

Using caves to withstand bombardment, using corpses to drive the fleet, and using quantity to offset quality.

Cheng Yu Planet might still be crude, ugly, and full of primitive violence, but it was surviving, and... preparing to devour more.

...

The consciousness network of Cheng Yu continued to operate like a precise and cold engine.

The stalemate on the Zhao Zhen Planet front line was temporarily shelved; the Cheng Yus Clones there only needed to maintain minimal harassment, trading endless deaths for sporadic data on Necron weapons.

The construction of the base camp was the true focus.

The cave network spread deep underground at an astonishing speed.

The initial crude pits were continuously reinforced and widened, forming a complex multi-layered structure.

The basic engineering knowledge extracted from the Rogue Trader was utilized to the extreme; crude but effective support structures and drainage systems ensured the stability of the underground hive.

Billions of Cheng Yus Clones inhabited it, entering and exiting silently, like worker ants in an anthill.

The Promethium factory became the busiest area on the planet's surface. Rows of huge fermentation tanks emitted pungent odors; the dead Cheng Yus Clones were continuously transported over, thrown into the tanks, and through brutal conversion, turned into turbid fuel.

These "Cheng Yu Promethium" were bottled and stored, providing power for that increasingly large patchwork fleet.

Every transport mission saw ships lost due to malfunction or combat, but new, slightly improved ships would slide out of the crude shipyards to fill the gaps.

Research into those energy crystals had made breakthrough progress.

A large drilling device powered by crystals was built, its efficiency far exceeding manual digging.

More importantly, the Cheng Yus Clones successfully combined a smaller crystal with an extremely unstable "port defense cannon" dismantled from an Ork starship.

The result was catastrophic—the first test fire blew up the cannon body and a dozen surrounding Cheng Yus Clones, but the power of the explosion was also far greater than any previous weapon.

Main Body saw the potential of this thing and ordered continued testing; the cost was merely the death and replication of more Cheng Yus Clones.