Scavenging

Mars, the underground steel city.

“This underground steel city is truly massive,” Luo Feng, clad in blood-red combat armor, swept his mental power across the ancient subterranean metropolis, searching every corner.

“Luo Feng, head to the warehouse!” Babata urged. “The vast quantities of Xuan Tie excavated by the miners back then should be stored in a major warehouse.”

“Understood.”

Luo Feng’s mental power spread across a six-kilometer radius. Some streets and buildings in this underground city bore inscriptions—text in the universal language! Within moments, Luo Feng easily located the city’s most crucial area: the warehouse where raw Xuan Tie materials were piled!

Luo Feng landed before the colossal warehouse complex, momentarily stunned, and couldn’t help but curse under his breath.

Big trouble!

The warehouse complex before him was overflowing with immense quantities of Xuan Tie, forming a veritable mountain. Not only was the massive interior packed, but the entire outer courtyard was also filled, with piles even extending beyond the warehouse grounds.

“Haha, back then, those miners were trapped on Mars. Even with vast amounts of Xuan Tie, they couldn’t transport it. Xuan Tie was the least valuable thing; the entire steel city was built from it, so storage was naturally haphazard,” Babata explained. “Luo Feng, search carefully. See if you can find any Xuan Tie Essence!”

Luo Feng gazed at the mountain-like piles of Xuan Tie, feeling utterly helpless.

Force his way through?

How? A8-grade Xuan Tie possessed such extreme hardness that even a planetary-level eighth-tier warrior would struggle to damage it. Luo Feng’s Duntiansuo would find it difficult to pierce! While Luo Feng could easily burrow through soil, drilling through a mountain of Xuan Tie was as hard as an ordinary person trying to dig through solid rock—an impossible feat!

“Collect! Collect! Collect!” Luo Feng thought, and with a mental command.

Whoosh! A huge pile of Xuan Tie vanished, then another…

Using his spatial ring, Luo Feng rapidly collected massive amounts of Xuan Tie.

“Babata, my spatial ring isn’t big enough. Help me collect some,” Luo Feng quickly said. His spatial ring was over 600 meters long, 500 meters wide, and over 100 meters high. Its volume exceeded 30 million cubic meters, and if he really crammed it full, it could certainly hold everything.

However, Babata’s storage space was there to be used!

“You cunning Luo Feng! Alright, I’ll handle it,” Babata replied cheerfully.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

Visibly, the mountain of Xuan Tie before them rapidly disappeared, pile after pile. In mere moments, all the Xuan Tie piled outside the main warehouse area, including within the vast courtyard, was absorbed into Babata’s storage space.

“Hmm, a total of 118 million tons. Far too little, barely enough to build a small starship,” Babata commented.

Luo Feng smiled and strode towards the warehouse ahead.

With the obstructing Xuan Tie gone, the warehouse’s exterior was revealed—a vast, rectangular building with tightly sealed doors.

“Break!”

Luo Feng stared at the massive, thick Xuan Tie door. His Crimson Copper Mother Fragment transformed into a streak of light and fiercely cleaved into the door, cutting a path through it.

“That’s incredibly thick,” Luo Feng clearly felt a significant drain on his mental power. While the Crimson Copper Mother Fragment could cut through Xuan Tie, its immense thickness consumed a considerable amount of mental power.

It took him half a minute to cut an opening large enough for one person to enter.

Inside the warehouse.

Using the same method, Babata absorbed the remaining stored Xuan Tie into his storage space.

“Hmm, deep red?” Luo Feng spotted a small pile of deep-red metal in the distance. From his vast inherited knowledge, he quickly found information on Xuan Tie and identified the metal before him—Xuan Tie Essence!

“Finally found it!” Luo Feng felt a surge of excitement.

The Golden Horned Beast’s inner world currently needed to devour B-grade pure metal to accelerate its growth!

“Babata, check how much Xuan Tie Essence is in this pile?” Luo Feng walked up to the Xuan Tie Essence. Swish! A Silver Stream Guard appeared out of thin air. The Silver Stream Guard stared at the Xuan Tie Essence, its eyes faintly glowing, clearly collecting data on the pile.

“Approximately 35 cubic meters, totaling about 1200 tons,” Babata reported.

“Oh?” Luo Feng was about to praise, then frowned. “1200 tons? The devouring beast can consume nearly 100 tons of B8-grade metal a day, meaning this is only enough for a dozen days’ worth of food?”

One must know.

A stellar-level third-tier Golden Horned Beast, if it were to devour Earth’s steel and other metals, could consume metals in units of ‘hundreds of millions of tons’ per day! For instance, a war base, a massive steel structure over 500 meters in length and width, would contain tens of millions of tons of metal. Back when it was stellar-level first-tier, it needed to devour several war bases to feel ‘full’.

Now at stellar-level third-tier, its appetite had increased, and it consumed even more.

For A8-grade metal, it would still consume tens of thousands of tons a day. For B8-grade, nearly a hundred tons was about right.

“Far too little,” Luo Feng shook his head.

After clearing out all the Xuan Tie in the entire warehouse, he found no other ‘Xuan Tie Essence’.

“Babata, is there really so little Xuan Tie Essence here?” Luo Feng couldn’t help but ask.

“It’s not that there’s little; it’s that the Golden Horned Beast is too gluttonous. Is 1200 tons really ‘little’?” Babata retorted. “The peak bloodlines among Starry Sky Behemoths are all incredibly abnormal! Flame Star Behemoths devour ‘stars’, and while your Golden Horned Beast doesn’t devour stars, its requirements are extremely stringent. Once you become a Sector Lord, it’ll be devouring E-grade metals, so much every day… even your master, the Yunmo Star Master, would be eaten into poverty by you!”

Luo Feng gave a wry smile.

Indeed, the higher the grade of metal it devoured, the more expensive it became. Unless Luo Feng was willing to grow at the slowest pace, which would save money.

But to grow quickly, just buying those pure metals would cost a fortune.

“Keep searching. Let’s see if there’s any more Xuan Tie Essence in this steel city!”

...

A wide-ranging search!

The entire city was constructed from Xuan Tie, but many of the houses and residences were not. However, due to the passage of time, most had decayed.

During his extensive search, Luo Feng occasionally discovered small pieces of ‘Xuan Tie Essence’ in some decayed residences, clearly treasured by the miners. Each find was small, but the sheer number of discoveries added up to over a thousand tons!

Thirty-two minutes later.

“Boom!”

Luo Feng kicked open the basement door of a filthy, decayed mansion. Dust cascaded down from the door, revealing its original deep-red color.

“A Xuan Tie Essence door? If the door itself is made of Xuan Tie Essence, what could be inside this basement?” Luo Feng’s eyes lit up with joy. “Collect!” He directly absorbed the several-ton Xuan Tie Essence door into his spatial ring, then stepped into the basement, untouched for hundreds of thousands of years.

The basement was vast.

“My heavens!”

Luo Feng’s eyes widened. The enormous basement was meticulously organized, filled with countless decayed weapons! The largest space was occupied by densely packed, deep-red metal—a volume far exceeding what Luo Feng had collected from the warehouse! And in the center of the deep-red metal, there was a piece of blood-red metal!

“Xuan Tie Essence, so much Xuan Tie Essence! And in the center, is that Xuan Tie Mother?” Luo Feng was dumbfounded. “It’s even more than what was in the warehouse?”

“Babata, quickly calculate how much there is,” Luo Feng urged.

Due to the influence of the pyramid, Babata could only release the Silver Stream Guard to visually inspect and collect data for assessment.

“There’s approximately 12,300 tons of Xuan Tie Essence, and about 360 kilograms of C8-grade Xuan Tie Mother,” Babata reported.

“That’s much more than the warehouse,” Luo Feng said, astonished.

The warehouse only had a little over 1000 tons of Xuan Tie Essence, and no Xuan Tie Mother at all.

“Luo Feng, I suggest we go to the central monitoring station of the underground steel city now. Connect to the intelligent monitoring system and query the historical data of this underground steel city,” Babata proposed. “I suspect that in this steel city, the miners, trapped for so long, underwent internal changes, and the storage locations for Xuan Tie Essence and other valuables shifted.”

“Good,” Luo Feng agreed with Babata.

...

Five minutes later.

The black metal robot connected directly to the underground steel city’s intelligent monitoring system. Thanks to the energy tower’s support, the monitoring system had been running perfectly until Luo Feng cut off the power earlier.

Intrusion successful.

“Data found.”

“Back then, the master destroyed the interstellar fleet with a single move. Approximately 3.2 million miners were unable to leave Mars. They requested rescue through the virtual universe network, even issuing bounties for help. However, after retreating underground, and receiving no rescue for a long time, internal changes occurred among the miners!”

“Among the miners, the male to female ratio was nearly 20:1.”

“Just like the warring states on your Earth, these three million-plus people began internal strife. After all, resources were limited, women were limited, and beautiful women were even more limited.”

“Some precious Xuan Tie Essence, and the even more precious Xuan Tie Mother, were hidden by the major factions in their own strongholds.”

“However, resources on Mars were limited. Gathering resources to produce food became increasingly difficult. This steel city, lacking blueprints for building spaceships, constantly tried to research them. After thousands of years, they finally managed to painstakingly build three ultra-small spaceships to send some elites off-world, to contend for a slim hope of survival. The remaining thousands of other clansmen then entered sleep-death. This steel city lasted for over 3000 years before perishing,” Babata recounted.

Luo Feng sighed.

Three million lives, struggling relentlessly, yet Mars’s scarce resources and lack of supplies offered no hope.

“Luo Feng, let’s go. I have maps of the major factions, including the locations of their strongholds. Let’s search every one of them,” Babata said.

“Alright,” Luo Feng’s eyes gleamed.

They searched a total of 12 locations. Eight of these strongholds were empty, clearly belonging to factions that had been conquered or failed.

The other four, however, yielded far greater harvests than the main warehouse.

From then on!

Luo Feng scavenged almost all the Xuan Tie Essence and Xuan Tie Mother from the entire underground steel city.

In total, he acquired approximately 33,600 tons of Xuan Tie Essence and about 2.34 tons of Xuan Tie Mother.

“Over 30,000 tons of Xuan Tie Essence, that’s roughly enough for nearly a year of devouring,” Luo Feng stood at the city gate of the steel city, looking at the dark, desolate metropolis. A hint of vexation crossed his mind. Accelerating the Golden Horned Beast’s growth truly came at a steep price. “Once it reaches cosmic-level, the cosmic-level Golden Horned Beast’s devouring capacity will be even more exaggerated. At that point, even this Xuan Tie Mother probably won’t be enough for a single day’s consumption!”