When the Incubation Pool finally began to boil, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
On one hand, the resources were finally in place. God knew how many years' worth had already been drained away. Massive quantities of Rule-level items and rare materials were nonrenewable; if more were needed, there would be no way to obtain them in the short term.
On the other hand, as time passed, the ocean was already showing signs of completely losing control.
This was not because too much power had been invested in this project. With the mobilization capacity of the entire Eastern Kingdom, even the world itself, the resources poured into this project—one Lu PingAn could no longer even comprehend—would not actually disrupt the normal deployment of the overall battlefield. After all, there were dozens of projects on the same level as it, or even beyond it.
It was simply that many projects could no longer continue as they went on. It was not that there was absolutely no hope, but that no hope could be seen in the short term. Time was too tight. Those in the know estimated that if the problem could not be solved within a month at most, then there would be no point solving it at all.
As humanity's high-end combatants grew exhausted and injured, and as those malicious dragon-serpents multiplied beyond measure, the efficiency of hunting was beginning to fall behind the speed of their reproduction.
Humanity's main strategic objective had now become relocating the New Gods, killing the out-of-control New Gods, denying those dragon-serpents any "ingredients," and slowing their expansion. It was visible to the naked eye that they had entered a period of strategic defense.
Or, to put it another way, a stage of stalling for time—holding on for one more day if they could.