Gene trading was already an open business in the Great Universe Federation, and an important means by which interstellar lords colonized worlds!
The cost of directly hiring superior races was exorbitant. Normally, this was only done when a lord was first building his core forces and had no choice. Once they possessed a mature army, interstellar lords would naturally explore outward into Life Star Systems, directly invading and colonizing any civilizations they discovered.
Of course, there were also poor lords like Lord Xi Ye, who did not even have a single grunt and could only come over to trick the natives into signing contracts.
Regardless of which type they were, they all needed the support of a gene bank.
The genes in the Cosmic Federation were superior genes collected throughout the universe over billions of eras by the Grand Federation. They possessed all kinds of powerful biological traits and evolutionary abilities, and were absolutely incomparable to the natives of ordinary planets. For a lord who wanted to develop his forces rapidly and improve the basic qualities of his subjects, biological modification through gene transplantation was the most efficient method!
When Xi Ye left back then, he had also bought a massive stockpile of genes. However, because he was poor, he had bought nothing but cheap, low-quality goods. The Green Titan was one of them...
Green Titans were tall, with powerful bodies and high muscle density. They could adapt to most basic labor, making them the first choice for many down-and-out lords looking to produce miners and basic soldiers.
The surgery went smoothly—so smoothly that even Xi Ye found it hard to believe!
The young fellow succeeding was one thing, but those two bald men had actually completed the transplant just as smoothly in a single attempt. What was more, their assimilation rate had reached a staggering ninety percent?
After the data came out, Xi Ye even wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him!
"Cool!!" Xiao Chen walked out of the biological incubator and stared at his explosive muscles, which made him look just like the Hulk. His eyes were filled with wonder!
He clenched his fist slightly. The veins on his arm bulged faintly, and he felt as if his entire body were filled with strength. He even felt that if someone gave him a steel bar right now, he could twist it into a pretzel without the slightest effort. He swept his gaze around, eager to find something to test his new strength on!
"Lao Yang, can you feel it?" One of the bald men walked out shortly afterward. After the modification, he had actually grown a thick head of black hair. He excitedly felt his new body and said, "This improvement in attributes and the sensation processing from the one-hundred-percent mental connection are so smooth. There's practically no sense of incongruity at all!!"
In virtual games, leveling games still dominated the market. Players could also improve their attributes through leveling up, changing classes, and other methods, but it always felt unreal. For example, when strength increased, it was usually only a change in the data, and players basically had no actual sense of the improvement.
Only a handful of high-quality games tried to incorporate the sensation of improved attributes into the players' mental perceptions, giving them a more realistic gaming experience. In reality, however, this technology was not mature. Adjusting a player's mental sensitivity and hypnotizing them into feeling stronger or faster was not easy. Many times, because the technology was underdeveloped, it instead gave players a sense of incongruity.
But the experience now was completely different. There was not the slightest sense of incongruity in this surge of strength. It felt as though the power truly belonged to them, real and tangible. The sensation was simply wonderful!!
Lao Yang, who had also been modified, had now become a tall and imposing Green Titan. He stared at his body in shock and said excitedly, "This definitely surpasses the technology on the market. This game was probably not designed by a private developer. It might be the work of a studio filled with top talents—and one backed by a powerful financial consortium at that!"
The three of them were shocked by the game's technology, while Xi Ye was shocked by their physical qualities!
If there had not been outsiders present, he would even have wanted to take off his helmet and knock his skull against the metal handle beside him to see if he was dreaming.
A ninety-percent assimilation rate!
How was that possible?!
Even the Westans, said to have the strongest assimilation rate in the Grand Federation, could only achieve an assimilation rate of at most fifteen percent when using this unprocessed, primitive Green Titan gene, right?
For other races with poor assimilation rates, achieving even 0.5 percent after their first surgery was already an excellent result. What did ninety percent mean?
Under the monopoly of the Federation's Fourth Lord, Black Gore Targaryen, a single Westan sold for ten thousand God Coins—equivalent to twenty years of living expenses for a lord like him!!
Ninety percent... If word got out, a single D-Earthling would probably sell for an astronomical price!
And there were actually tens of billions of people like this?!
This was no longer the sort of luck one could stumble into by stepping in dung. Someone in his ancestry must have saved the entire universe, right?
"Great Lord!" Xiao Chen asked eagerly, "What do we need to do next?"
Go mining... Xi Ye really wanted to say that, but he felt that something was wrong. A Green Titan with a ninety-percent assimilation rate, used for mining?
What kind of extravagant lord would do something so wasteful?
Green Titans possessed the name Titan, yet they were the first choice for miners. Beginners might not understand this, but anyone who had lived in the Grand Federation knew the reason. Green Titans were not a low-end race. On the contrary, their rank was quite high. Advanced Green Titans had always been the darlings of arenas and armies. Their drawback, however, was obvious: they were too expensive to raise!
The value of a gene was not determined solely by how superior the species was. It had to be assessed according to the overall circumstances. Mature Green Titans were excellent warriors, but Green Titans with only one percent or less bloodline power were very ordinary—at most, they were somewhat stronger and more thick-skinned.
Evolution required massive quantities of gene evolution potions. As a result, apart from the major arenas with abundant financial resources, very few people would raise advanced Green Titans. Unless Federation free citizens came from extremely wealthy families, they would not spend money taking the Green Titan evolutionary path either. With the same resources, Wood Elves, the Rune Clan, and the Thunder Clan were all better choices.
Under these market conditions, the price of Green Titan genes kept falling until they ultimately became cheap goods used by impoverished lords to raise miners.
In fact, the Federation had many genes like the Green Titan's. Because of their extremely low assimilation rates, the powerful biological traits and evolutionary abilities within the genes could not be brought out, causing them to become cheap goods.
"Lord?" Seeing that the lord had not replied, Xiao Chen asked curiously.
Xi Ye looked at Xiao Chen's perfectly defined muscles and thought, With this quality, even if I concealed their terrifying assimilation rate and sold them, I could probably set the price at a hundred thousand God Coins each, and plenty of arenas would fight to get them, right? Damn, a Green Titan gene only costs one and a half coins. What kind of insanely profitable business is this?
However, he knew that he could not contact any arenas. Once his treasure trove was exposed, he would be wiped out in an instant. He understood the principle that possessing a treasure brought disaster.
Why could Black Gore monopolize the Westan market? Aside from having been lucky enough to discover the native Westan race, it was also because he had a powerful army backing him—one that others did not dare entertain crooked ideas about!
As a beginner-level god, without the faith of many subjects, Xi Ye could probably be beaten to death by a group of Black Goblins!
Since he could not sell them, and his base was still in its primitive state, then in this situation... it seemed he really could only have them go mining.
How damn extravagant!!
Xi Ye sighed inwardly, but on the surface he deliberately put on a solemn expression and said in a deep voice, "Because your overall qualities are poor, you can only work as miners for now. However, as long as you work diligently and perform well, once you accumulate enough points, you can apply to me to become warriors!"
"Start out as miners?" The three of them froze and thought, The entry requirements are this low?
It was rare to see such a slow pace, but they could understand it. Although the market now favored fast-paced games, that was merely the style of cheap Korean games. True major productions often slowly attracted players with a relaxed pace. Though they might not be appealing at first, once players calmed down, their playability was extremely high.
It seemed to be just as Lao Yang had thought: this was probably a major production backed by some large financial consortium, not a half-finished product. They had to hurry back and rewrite their evaluations. However, since the game was so interesting, the two veteran testers naturally had to stay and continue experiencing it. Thus, the task of returning to rewrite the review naturally fell to Xiao Chen, who had only been working for a short time...
Though Xiao Chen was utterly unwilling to accept his leader's solemnly stated reasoning, he could only head to work in tears, unable to stay here and happily mine.
Beep! Green Titan genes were the private property of Lord Xi Ye. Unauthorized teleportation without the lord's consent was prohibited!
"Huh?" Xiao Chen froze when he heard this sound come from the Teleportation Device, completely baffled.
"Player, please enter the Biological Storage to convert your original body and return!"
Following the instructions, Xiao Chen entered the Biological Storage. A few minutes later, his consciousness grew hazy, and he discovered that he had returned to his original body. As for the tall Hulk body, it was lying quietly inside the Biological Storage!
"Wow!" Xiao Chen looked at the Hulk in the Biological Storage, whose facial features were eight-tenths similar to his own, and could not help exclaiming again. It was simply too lifelike!
"But why is this game's logout process so troublesome? What does it mean? It's acting as if this body can really be brought back to D-Earth..." Xiao Chen could not help grumbling.
He failed to notice the strange look that flashed through the eyes of the great Lord Xi Ye behind him.
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