280: Chapter 281 The 8th Underground Level Opens

Yuanwang Star System, underground of the outpost.

Lin Li was slumped in his chair, staring at the screen in front of him.

He hadn't dared to go to the surface for the past few days.

The reason was simple: Iron Man U-999 had been pushing him way too hard recently.

Every time they met, Iron Man U-999 would report the optimal conception time and positions in a flat, mechanical voice.

And it kept emphasizing that Frannie was a good candidate for conception.

Talking about the continuation of the human race, the best childbearing age...

Lin Li couldn't afford to offend it, so he could only hide underground for some peace and quiet.

At this moment, the screen was displaying the internal battle report section of the forum.

Lin Li clicked on a long post just published by Dumpling, the guild leader of the Baby Bus Guild.

The title of the post was very grounded:

"Research on the Political Ecology of The Three Great Families NPCs and Insights on Getting Free knight mecha."

Lin Li skipped the nonsense about how he managed to get something for nothing and went straight to the core intelligence section about the power structure.

"In general," Dumpling wrote in the post,

"That old man named Jack Li is no pushover. He went to such great lengths to set up this encirclement just to use us as pawns, trying to borrow our strength to help him with his restoration movement."

"But, I personally have a decent impression of The Three Great Families. After private inquiries, I found that the people of The Three Great Families value honor and the spirit of contract very much. They are only responsible for the military defense and piloting of knight mecha on these three planets."

"As for the internal affairs, resource allocation, and even some basic welfare for civilians in the entire galaxy, they are actually managed by that group of bureaucrats led by Jack Li. It is said that some of the welfare for the bottom-level serfs and slave laborers was actually fought for by those three knight families banding together to pressure Jack Li..."

Seeing this, Lin Li rubbed his chin, his fingers tapping gently on the tabletop.

He now had a relatively comprehensive and clear understanding of the situation with The Three Great Families.

Clearly, this Jack Li sitting in the wheelchair was the true mastermind behind this galaxy.

Those three seemingly majestic knight families were nominally lords of their own territories, but in reality, they were more like the three great vassals under Jack Li.

Jack Li controlled the internal affairs and resources, and most likely, the production and manufacturing chain and core technology of the entire knight mecha were also in this old man's hands.

"What a fine game of checks and balances."

Lin Li sneered, seeing through the underlying meaning. He used resources to restrain the military and used the knight families to manage the commoners, while he hid behind the scenes pretending to be a good person.

This old guy really understood the art of kingship.

Lin Li scoffed at such politicians who only knew how to hide in dark corners and play power games.

"We'll talk about it later."

Lin Li closed the post, too lazy to deal with that old remnant of the Pan-Pacific right now.

Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that the galaxy where The Three Great Families were located was remote, even more peripheral than Yuanwang Star System, these remnants of the previous dynasty would have long been wiped out by the empire's fleet.

According to Lin Li's habits, he was now more interested in directly issuing a few daily missions to cause trouble.

Send a batch of players over to directly incite the bottom-level serfs of The Three Great Families to revolt, and then hang that Jack Li from a street lamp in Lieyang City.

However, Lin Li recalled a detail from Dumpling's battle report.

"Precise prophecy? Foresight?"

"This old guy is a high-level Psyker. This kind of old fox who can see through the future is very difficult to deal with, just like that Old Man Huang sitting on the Golden Throne. If one is not careful, they will be led by the nose."

Suddenly, a flash of inspiration hit Lin Li.

"Wait." Lin Li sat up straight.

"This old guy likes playing conspiracy games so much, is a high-level Psyker, and acts so strangely... is it possible he is related to Tzeentch?"

In the Warhammer Universe, anything involving prophecy and conspiracy has a high probability of being a trap set by the Lord of Change, Tzeentch.

"Perfect." Lin Li snapped his fingers and made a decision.

"Hasn't our Daemon Hunter special forces unit just established its initial framework? Send them over."

Lin Li quickly drafted a faction-level hidden mission in the backend.

"Under the guise of investigating Chaos corruption, let the Daemon Hunters make official contact with them. First, it allows us to legitimately test the depth of Jack Li; second, it's a perfect opportunity to use the complex situation in this galaxy to train the newly promoted Daemon Hunter players and see if their ability to counter Warp infiltration is up to par."

"Yes, that's the plan."

After dealing with the political maneuvering from the Baby Bus side, Lin Li continued to browse the battle reports of the other major legions.

Currently, the entire player base was advancing very quickly.

The Scourge Legion had initially defeated the Tyranids on two planets on the western front.

Moreover, their Commander had made contact with the remaining local Adeptus Mechanicus priests and was currently shocking the locals from Mars with the existing Shelter technology.

The Brotherhood of Steel had made a big move.

They spent a large sum of money to buy a coordinate from Baby Bus and planned to explore it, unexpectedly discovering an unknown galaxy being farmed by Chaos Space Marines.

According to screenshots sent back by frontline players, the humans there had already been enslaved by Chaos Space Marines, and a great battle between the two sides was imminent.

The Hand of God guild, with the help of Marshal Miller of the Adeptus Arbites, began recruiting mortal auxiliary troops on a large scale.

This was also an operation personally approved by Lin Li.

Currently, the Hand of God had recruited over 50,000 former PDF members from surrounding planets, forming the first Astra Militarum unit belonging to the Spark Alliance.

These native soldiers already possessed a certain level of military literacy; they only needed to be re-equipped to quickly form an army, greatly alleviating the problem of insufficient player troop numbers.

As for the Galactic Empire Stormtroopers...

Lin Li looked at the sentence in the battle report:

"We got lost in the Warp, but there are plenty of little monsters with tentacles to farm here, and the scenery is quite unique."

He rubbed his temples in pain and swiped this battle report away directly.

"Everything is advancing steadily, no major disasters."

Lin Li closed the forum panel, stood up, and stretched.

He turned his head, his gaze landing on the elevator in the corner of the secret room.

Just a moment ago, a brand new green button had lit up on the elevator panel—Level B8.

That's right.

Because the players had been frantically expanding their territory recently, the previous phase of the main storyline mission was finally judged as completed.

The B8 level, hidden deeper in the underground base, was officially opened to Lin Li for ownership.

At the same time, accompanied by a crisp prompt sound, Lin Li received a brand new main storyline mission.

[Phase Main Story: Great Crusade!]

[Mission Description: The glory of humanity should not be confined to one corner! Go, lead your legions, and bring more lost human worlds back into the embrace of civilization!]

[Mission Objective: The total population under the jurisdiction of the Spark Alliance reaches 100 billion. (Current Progress: 31.2 billion / 100 billion)]

[Mission Reward: Open final facility — All permissions for Level B9!]

The moment he saw the mission objective clearly, Lin Li's mouth twitched violently.

He stared at the huge number representing 100 billion on the screen and was laughed to the point of anger.

"Heh."

Lin Li mercilessly raised a middle finger at the computer.

"Does this broken system have some misunderstanding about a population of 100 billion? Or has the mathematical module in its underlying logic completely burned out?"

In the warhammer 40,000 universe, what is the concept of a 100 billion population?

During the Great Crusade, the Ultramarines' 500 Worlds, painstakingly managed by Guilliman, as the most prosperous and peaceful sector in the entire Galaxy, had a total population of only about 1 trillion.

And where is this place?

This is the Ghoul Stars, known as the graveyard of the Galaxy!

Forget 100 billion, Lin Li seriously doubted that even if all the breathing humans in the entire Ghoul Stars were rounded up, including those mutated mutants, they might not even be able to make up this number!

"This is exactly like when I was working before, that idiot boss who didn't even know how to use Excel, opening his mouth to set a monthly sales KPI of 100 million for you."

"What's the point of doing this kind of pie-in-the-sky mission!"

However, complaining aside, Lin Li's brain was still very clear.

To achieve this outrageous mission target, just taking back lost territory step by step in this remote galaxy would definitely not work.

The only way was to constantly pull more new players from the multiverse in reality through the Shelter system.

Use the unreasonable troop-production speed of The Fourth Calamity to frantically paint the entire Galaxy, and even go to those densely populated Hive City worlds of the Empire to snatch people!

"Forget about the population for now, let's see what good stuff B8 level unlocked."

Lin Li pressed the elevator button.

Accompanied by the soft sound of metal friction, the elevator door slowly opened.

As per custom, every time he explored a new floor, he had to bring his bodyguard and mobile database. Lin Li shouted into the communication channel:

"73, come to the underground elevator and wait for me."

Not long after, the tall and cold metal body of Iron Man 73 walked into the elevator.

"Let's go, to Level B8."

The elevator began to descend at a constant speed.

Lin Li looked down at his watch.

The sensation of weightlessness lasted for a long time.

This time, the elevator ran for a full five minutes before stopping.

This was much longer than the time it took to get to Level B7 previously, indicating that Level B8 was buried deep in the planet's crust.

The elevator doors slid open to both sides amidst a sound of airflow.

Lin Li stepped out of the elevator first, with Iron Man 73 following closely behind.

To Lin Li's surprise, he had expected the facility's space to be larger the deeper he went, but the area of Level B8 was much smaller than imagined.

There was only a simple space about the size of a football field here.

The surrounding walls were all made of some kind of pitch-black sound-absorbing metal, giving one a sense of absolute, deathly oppression.

And in the center, directly opposite the elevator position, lay a square metal instrument about five meters on each side.

The surface of the instrument had no seams, looking like a perfectly cut black magic cube.

As Lin Li and 73 approached, the black cube seemed to sense the arrival of the user.

"Hum—" with a low, dull sound, the interior of the instrument started automatically, and circles of ghostly blue data light lit up on the surface.

"This is?" Lin Li stopped, examining this black box full of sci-fi aesthetics.

Iron Man 73's eyes flashed with red scanning beams, conducting a deep analysis of the instrument.

"Creator." Iron Man 73's voice echoed in the empty room.

"According to the instruction manual unlocked in the backend, this is a Gene Assembly Machine."

"Its main function is that it can directly manufacture customizable cloning pods with neural interface functionality based on preset data."

"As expected..." Lin Li pointed at the black box, "With this thing, the more cloning pods we create, the more new players we can accommodate into the game? And players can customize their body data before connecting?"

"Theoretically, that is the case," Iron Man 73 answered rigorously. "The player's consciousness projection must use a clone as a carrier. On the premise of having enough cloning pods, the system lifting the player population cap seems like a matter of course."

"Beautiful!" Lin Li slapped his thigh hard.

"How is the production capacity of this thing?" Lin Li asked impatiently. "How many cloning pods can it produce in a day?"

73's data processing hub operated for a fraction of a second and immediately gave the answer: "Under the condition of sufficient energy, the maximum daily output of this motherboard is 14 units."

"14 units a day? Too slow."

"But it doesn't matter, we have the World Forger upstairs! Since this gene motherboard is a physical object, it can be scanned and analyzed!"

Lin Li calculated rapidly in his mind: "One unit produces 14 a day, if I first copy a thousand motherboards! Then a thousand motherboards can produce 14,000 cloning pods a day!"

"14,000 new player quotas every day! This is the troop-production speed that The Fourth Calamity should have!"

Lin Li was full of excitement, wishing he could call someone to carry it up for copying right now.

But just then, another question occurred to Lin Li.

He turned his head, his expression becoming a bit strange, and asked Iron Man 73: "By the way, Old Seven, this thing can customize the clone's body data. If a male player in reality connects, can he create a female body with a curvy figure for himself in this system?"

Iron Man 73's electronic eyes flashed twice, and it answered in a matter-of-fact mechanical voice: "No problem at all, Creator. The gene pool contains the basic chromosomes of all genders. Not to mention a man creating a female body, even if a player wanted to create a hermaphrodite, there would be no problem at all. Because when Dr. Z designed the preset library, he happened to retain a large number of edge gene templates."

Lin Li's eyes almost popped out.

"Holy shit?"

"That old guy Dr. Z is also a pervert in private, isn't he? Why keep these kinds of preset templates?!"

He knew those silly players too well.

If a completely free character creation and gender conversion system were opened in a universe like warhammer 40,000, the consequences would be unimaginable!

You can imagine the scene: On the front line of a Space Marine company, a group of two-and-a-half-meter tall, muscular magical girls with twin-tail loli faces, or Cthulhu monsters with two heads, three breasts, or even tentacles for lower bodies, charge out.

While shouting "For the God-Emperor," they go to bayonet fight with Chaos Daemons in a frenzied posture.

This is not only a devastating blow to the Warhammer aesthetic, it could even make the opposing Khorne Greater Daemon vomit!

"No! Absolutely not!"

Lin Li decisively extinguished this evil spark that could destroy the universe's aesthetics.

He had to put shackles on those players with abnormal thought patterns!