Chapter 36: Chapter 36: Conditions for an Airship to Ascend to a Warship

If it were true that there were over a hundred tons of Phantom Crystal reserves deep within the Star Core, then this would be an extraordinarily vast harvest.

One ton valued at 5 strands of First Rank Floating Land Origin, a hundred tons would be 500 strands, and converted to Zero Rank Floating Land Origin, that would be 5000 strands. To a Spectral Shuttle, it seemed an astonishing amount.

With a faint excitement, Song Chi donned the exoskeleton device, but even so, upon exiting the airship, he still felt an extreme discomfort. Ordinary life entities of Zero Rank level found it very difficult to adapt to the unique environment of space. This was mitigated somewhat by the exoskeleton armor and his own enhanced Guidance Technique level, otherwise, he feared it would be far worse.

Immediately, he ingested the Cang Qiong into the Ancestral Torch, and then swiftly, with the remaining three Fire Peony Soldier Figurines, entered the core area of the fragments below through the hole in the ground.

The diameter of the fragment was only about several dozen meters, so naturally, the core space wasn’t large. The surprisingly long body of the Gold Devouring Vine accumulated in the corner made the already cramped space seem even more congested.

Even if the Furious Tiger Mining Cart had managed to get in, it would have been difficult to operate, let alone the fact that the mining cart was still inside the Cang Qiong’s hold; to release it would require summoning the seven-meter-long Cang Qiong from the Ancestral Torch at his forehead, which was simply impossible.

Consequently, Song Chi could only order the three Fire Peony Soldier Figurines to begin further excavation and prospecting manually, using specially made drill shovels.

Before long, at the bottom of a small excavation pit, a few meters down, the Fire Peony Soldier Figurines successfully discovered a new vein of ore, the very Phantom Crystals they were seeking.

Over this, Song Chi smacked his forehead and made a mental note to prevent such a low-level oversight in the future.

Previously, to guard against any remaining tricks of the Gold Devouring Vine, and because he could not expose himself to the external star space environment for long, he had only allowed the Fire Peony Soldier Figurines to clear the area. Indeed, aside from the Crystal of Life, the Soldier Figurines extracted dozens of tons of ordinary electrum.

Considering this, he had then entered to casually inspect the site, and finding no oversights, withdrew directly, not realizing that beneath those dozens of tons of electrum lay even greater quantities of Phantom Crystal.

Had it not been for the post-event reminder of the Prospector and the vehicle’s intelligence system, this bounty of Phantom Crystal would have slipped through his grasp.

…

The subsequent arrangements were fairly straightforward. It was impossible to manually mine at least a hundred and more tons of Phantom Crystal. Even by the return time point over a dozen hours later, it was unlikely that even half could be extracted.

For this, Song Chi had a solution. Without lingering in the core space, and after returning to the surface of the fragment with the three Fire Peony Soldier Figurines, he summoned the Cang Qiong and the Furious Tiger Mining Cart, then issued instructions to the vehicle’s intelligence system to dig straight down.

If the original core space of the fragment was not suitable for summoning the mining cart, then why not simply create a larger entrance from the surface and enter that way?

Leaving the mining cart to work there, Song Chi piloted the Cang Qiong on a trip back to the first Furious Tiger Mining Cart’s location. Several hours had passed, and the thousand tons of electrum had been mined. He transported the raw electrum ore to the Ruins Market in batches using the Cang Qiong and then returned along with the intact mining cart.

The second mining cart was now significantly less efficient, and Song Chi wasn’t sure if it would finish extracting the Phantom Crystal before the return the next day. He felt switching to the undamaged cart would be safer.

The next day, a half-hour before returning, with the damaged mining cart that had roamed for over ten hours and harvested minerals worth between a hundred and two hundred strands of Zero Rank Floating Land Origin, Song Chi finally piloted the Cang Qiong back.

Having mined all 112 tons of Phantom Crystal and deposited them in the Zhu Tian Ruins Market, he began to quietly await.

…

An hour later, at the entrance of Dongjiang Community, Song Chi and Chen Lixia both got off their respective Torch Warships.

At home, the Benteng Type-3 car was currently being used by Song Chao, so even though it might seem a bit ostentatious, they had no choice but to drive their own Torch Warships back as calling for another vehicle was too troublesome.

Chen Lixia’s Flagship was a Spectral Airship named “Dragonfly,” which had been upgraded from a shuttle for several decades and now was stuck at level 19, just one step away from Second Rank.

But don’t think this small difference of just one level is insignificant—it’s a huge gap that has thwarted the life ambition of numerous Torch Ship Captains.

Advancing from a Spectral Airship to a “Guardian Class” Spectral Warship isn’t just about obtaining certain special resources; it also requires the captains to personally explore Alien Territories and kill alien life entities that are above their own rank, bathing in the blood of alien races.

It is said that when an airship attempts to advance to a warship, the success rate is frighteningly low, initially only 1%, and by investing in certain rare enhancement resources, this success rate can be raised to around 10%. To increase the success rate further, one must kill members of an Alien Race in the Alien Star Domain and use their blood to baptize the shuttle.

The more Alien Race members killed, and the higher the rank of their blood, the greater the increase in the success rate.

“Mom, what’s the current success rate for Dragonfly’s advancement?”

Chen Lixia pursed her lips and gave an answer that Song Chi found hard to accept.

“24%.”

“Less than one-fourth, how can it be so low?”

Song Chi frowned. Advancing from Zero Rank to First Rank wasn’t too difficult; as long as one had enough resources and wasn’t extremely unlucky, one could generally succeed.

But it was different for advancing a Spectral Airship to a Spectral Warship; once the advancement quest was initiated, there would only be one year of preparation time.

In the year that followed, the captain would need to put in their utmost effort to increase this success rate, whether by investing rare resources or entering the Alien Star Domain to hunt Alien Races. After a year, the airship would undertake its advancement attempt. Higher success rates meant greater chances of successfully advancing to a warship (Second Rank), and vice versa.

Chen Lixia had started her advancement quest five months ago, and nearly half of the year had already passed. Originally, he had thought that with his father’s help, the rate should be raised to over 30%, or even 40%, since his father’s Flagship had advanced to Second Rank over ten years ago. But he never expected it would only be 24%.

Chen Lixia gave her son a look.

“Do you think it’s so simple for a Spectral Airship to advance to a Spectral Warship? If it were that easy to raise the success rate, do you think out of the over twenty million people in Jiangyuan City, with tens of thousands of registered Torch Warships, there would only be a few dozen at Second Rank?”

Song Chi was left speechless, but the worry in his eyes did not fade away.

Considering the current pace, if there wasn’t some great opportunity, by the end of the one-year preparation period, the success rate for his mother’s Dragonfly might just peak at about 30%.

This success rate, for an ordinary Torch Ship Captain, would already be considered very high, but Song Chi still couldn’t accept it.

Within the Torch Human Civilization, it’s common knowledge that each Torch Warship only gets one chance to advance, and there’s no such thing as a second attempt after a failure. Once the advancement fails, the Torch Warship will be irretrievably lost.