Spirit Insect Hall, Deep-Sea Enemy Traces

Song Youping's voice echoed through the great hall, and everyone fell into thought as they looked at the wooden box in Song Changsheng's hand.

Song Changsheng did not rush to make a decision. Instead, he looked at the others present and said, "What do you elders think?"

"In my view, using Metal Devouring Beetles for mining has equally obvious advantages and disadvantages.

"The advantage is that it reduces manpower investment. As long as the insect swarm's numbers are maintained, efficient extraction can be achieved. There is also no need to worry about attacks from Water Demons, because these insects reproduce very quickly and can rapidly replenish their numbers after losses.

"Most wonderfully, compared to humans, Metal Devouring Beetles have much simpler minds. They only act according to commands, which means they will not waste any precious time.

"Moreover, the ores can be refined within their bodies, which can likewise save vast amounts of manpower and resources.

"Of course, it is not all advantages. Metal Devouring Beetles only consume metals, while there are still great quantities of nonmetallic spirit materials beneath the sea that must be gathered manually.

"However, compared to its advantages, I believe this shortcoming can be completely ignored.

"I already had Youping calculate it in advance. The clan currently only needs to raise around one million Metal Devouring Beetles to meet its mining demands while doubling extraction efficiency.

"Only one hundred people would be needed to control an insect swarm of this scale. At the limit, even ten people would work, but in that case, it would certainly be impossible to achieve anything too precise. It could only be used for swift, destructive mining.

"One person controlling ten thousand Metal Devouring Beetles is the most reasonable figure.

"If converted to manual mining, we would need at least fifteen