Chapter 272: Looting

Mars, underground steel city.

“This underground steel city is built on a truly grand scale,” Luo Feng, clad in blood-red battle armor, thought as his mental force swept outward, searching through the ancient subterranean city.

“Luo Feng, head to the warehouse!” Babata urged. “Back then, the miners unearthed a vast quantity of Xuan Tie, which should be stored in a key warehouse.”

“Right.”

Luo Feng extended his mental force across a six-kilometer radius. Within this range, streets and buildings of the underground city revealed inscriptions—written in the Universal Cosmic Language. Within moments, Luo Feng easily located the city’s most important area—the warehouse where raw Xuan Tie was stored!

Standing before the massive warehouse base, Luo Feng couldn’t help but stare in disbelief, muttering a curse.

Big trouble!

Before him, the warehouse grounds were piled high with enormous stacks of Xuan Tie, like a small mountain. Not only was the interior filled, but the outer courtyards and even the areas beyond the warehouse gates overflowed with the material.

“Haha! Back then, those miners were trapped on Mars. Even with vast quantities of Xuan Tie, they couldn’t transport it away. Xuan Tie became the least valuable commodity—after all, the entire steel city was built from it. Naturally, storing it here was no concern,” Babata explained. “Luo Feng, search carefully. See if you can find refined Xuan Tie!”

Looking at the mountain of raw Xuan Tie before him, Luo Feng felt a pang of frustration.

Break in?

How? Xuan Tie of A8 grade, in terms of sheer hardness, was nearly impossible for a Star Level Eight warrior to damage. Even with the Dun Tian Shuttle, Luo Feng would struggle to pierce through it. Drilling through soil was effortless, but drilling through a mountain of Xuan Tie was as difficult as a normal human trying to dig through solid rock—nearly impossible!

“Store! Store! Store!” Luo Feng willed.

Whoosh! A massive pile vanished. Another pile disappeared…

Using his spatial ring, Luo Feng quickly gathered a vast quantity of Xuan Tie.

“Babata, my spatial ring isn’t big enough. Help me store some,” Luo Feng urged. His spatial ring was over six hundred meters long, five hundred meters wide, and over one hundred meters high. Its volume exceeded thirty million cubic meters. If he packed it tightly, he could fit it all.

But why not use Babata’s storage space? It would be a waste not to!

“Cunning Luo Feng! Fine, I’ll handle it,” Babata agreed cheerfully.

Flash! Flash! Flash!

Visibly, the mountain of Xuan Tie before them rapidly vanished pile by pile. Within moments, the entire warehouse grounds, including the massive courtyard outside, were emptied of their Xuan Tie mountains, all absorbed into Babata’s storage space.

“Hmph, a total of 118 million tons. Too little, far too little. Barely enough to construct a smaller interstellar warship,” Babata remarked.

Luo Feng smiled and strode forward toward the warehouse.

With the obstructing piles of Xuan Tie gone, the warehouse’s exterior was now visible. It was a massive rectangular building with tightly sealed doors.

“Break it!”

Luo Feng stared at the thick, heavy Xuan Tie door. A fragment of the Chi Hun Copper Core shot forth like a streak of light, slamming into the door and slicing into it.

“Damn, it’s thick,” Luo Feng muttered, clearly feeling the drain on his mental force. While the Chi Hun Copper Core fragment could cut through Xuan Tie without difficulty, the sheer thickness of the door consumed considerable energy.

After half a minute, a hole large enough for a person to pass through was finally cut.

Inside the warehouse.

Same old method—Babata absorbed all stored Xuan Tie into his storage space.

“Hmm, deep red?” Luo Feng’s eyes landed on a small pile of deep red metal in the distance. From his vast inherited memories, he quickly retrieved information on Xuan Tie and identified the metal—refined Xuan Tie!

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

The ‘Inner World’ of the Gold-Horned Giant Beast required the consumption of B-grade pure metals to accelerate its growth rate!

“Babata, check how much refined Xuan Tie there is here?” Luo Feng approached the pile. In a flash, a liquid silver guardian materialized beside him. The guardian stared at the refined Xuan Tie, its eyes gleaming as it gathered data.

“Approximately 35 cubic meters in volume, totaling around 1,200 tons,” Babata reported.

“Oh?” Luo Feng was about to praise the find, “1,200 tons? The beast can consume nearly 100 tons of B8-grade metal per day. That means this is only enough for about ten days’ worth of food?”

Needless to say—

At Star Level Three, the Gold-Horned Giant Beast could consume metal by the hundreds of millions of tons per day if it were ordinary steel or Earth-based metals. For instance, a war base over five hundred meters in length and width could contain millions of tons of metal. Back when it was Star Level One, it required several such bases to feel ‘full’.

Now at Star Level Three, its appetite had increased even further.

For A8-grade metal, it could consume several ten thousand tons daily. For B8-grade, around a hundred tons sufficed.

“Too little, far too little,” Luo Feng shook his head.

He cleaned out the entire warehouse of Xuan Tie but found no other refined Xuan Tie.

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

“It’s not that there’s little—it’s that your Gold-Horned Giant Beast eats too much! 1,200 tons isn’t enough?” Babata replied. “The peak bloodlines among the Star Beasts are all monstrous. The Flame Star Beasts devour stars! Your Gold-Horned Giant Beast may not eat stars, but its demands are still extremely strict. Once you become a Realm Lord, you’ll be consuming E-grade metals by the ton daily… Even your teacher, the master of the Yimo Star Sect, would be bankrupted feeding you!”

Luo Feng smiled bitterly.

Indeed, the higher the grade of metal consumed, the greater the cost. Unless he was willing to grow at the slowest possible rate, which would save money.

But if he wanted rapid growth, simply purchasing pure metals would cost a fortune.

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

…

A large-scale scavenging operation!

The entire city was constructed from Xuan Tie, though many of the houses and residential buildings were not. Most had decayed over time.

As Luo Feng scoured the city, he occasionally discovered small pieces of refined Xuan Tie hidden in the ruins of old homes—clearly treasures hoarded by miners. Each find was small, but with many such discoveries, the total accumulated to over a thousand tons!

32 minutes later.

“Boom!”

Luo Feng kicked the door of a grimy, decaying mansion’s basement, sending dust cascading down and revealing the door’s true color—deep red.

“A door made of refined Xuan Tie? What could be inside this basement?” Luo Feng’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Store it!” He immediately absorbed the several-ton-heavy refined Xuan Tie door into his spatial ring and stepped into the basement, untouched for hundreds of thousands of years.

The basement was massive.

“Heavens!”

Luo Feng’s eyes widened. Inside the vast chamber, countless decaying weapons were neatly arranged. The largest space was occupied by tightly packed stacks of deep red metal—far more than what he had gathered in the warehouse! And in the center of this refined Xuan Tie mountain was a piece of blood-red metal!

“R refined Xuan Tie, so much refined Xuan Tie! And in the center—is that Xuan Tie Mother?” Luo Feng was stunned. “It’s even more than the warehouse?”

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

Due to the Pyramid’s influence, Babata could only deploy a liquid silver guardian to visually scan and gather data for analysis.

“Approximately 12,300 tons of refined Xuan Tie and about 360 kilograms of C8-grade Xuan Tie Mother,” Babata reported.

“This is way more than the warehouse,” Luo Feng exclaimed in astonishment.

The warehouse had yielded only slightly over a thousand tons of refined Xuan Tie, with no trace of Xuan Tie Mother.

“Luo Feng, I suggest we head to the central control hub of this underground steel city and connect to the surveillance AI system to retrieve historical records,” Babata suggested. “I suspect that the miners, trapped here for so long, altered the storage locations of the refined Xuan Tie and other resources due to internal changes.”

“Good idea,” Luo Feng agreed.

…

Five minutes later.

The black metal robot acted, directly linking to the surveillance AI system of the underground steel city. With the energy tower still supplying power, the surveillance system had remained fully operational until Luo Feng severed the energy supply earlier.

Invasion successful.

“Data retrieved.”

“Back then, the Master destroyed an entire interstellar fleet with a single move. The miners numbered around 3.2 million and were stranded on Mars. They used the ‘Virtual Cosmic Network’ to request rescue, even offering rewards. However, after retreating underground and receiving no aid for an extended period, internal changes occurred among the miners.”

“The gender ratio among the miners was nearly 20:1.”

“Just like the warring states on your Earth, this population of over three million began internal conflicts. Resources were limited, women were scarce, and beautiful women even scarcer.”

“Valuable refined Xuan Tie and even more precious Xuan Tie Mother were hidden away in the strongholds of various factions.”

“However, with Mars’ limited resources and the difficulty of gathering materials to produce food, the steel city struggled. Without the blueprints to construct a spaceship, they spent thousands of years researching and finally managed to build three ultra-small spacecraft, sending a few elites off-world in a desperate bid for survival. The remaining thousands of other species members entered cryogenic sleep. The steel city lasted over 3,000 years before collapsing completely,” Babata explained.

Luo Feng sighed.

Three million lives, struggling endlessly, yet with no hope due to Mars’ barren resources and lack of supply.

“Luo Feng, come on. I have maps of all the factions’ strongholds. Let’s search each one,” Babata said.

“Good,” Luo Feng’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

They scoured twelve locations. Eight were empty, clearly the ruins of defeated factions.

The remaining four yielded far more than the warehouse.

Thus!

Luo Feng thoroughly scavenged the entire underground steel city, collecting nearly all the refined Xuan Tie and Xuan Tie Mother.

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

“Over thirty thousand tons of refined Xuan Tie—enough for nearly a year of the beast’s consumption,” Luo Feng stood at the city’s entrance, gazing into the dark expanse of the city, troubled. Accelerating the Gold-Horned Giant Beast’s growth came at a steep price. “Once I reach the Cosmic Level, the consumption of a Cosmic-level Gold-Horned Giant Beast will be even more absurd. At that point, even this Xuan Tie Mother might not be enough for a single day’s consumption!”