Buying Time

A few days later, the number of Armed Clones Li Qingsong had assigned to the ten Mining Bases had reached twenty thousand, an average of two thousand per base.

In addition, there were another four thousand Armed Clones at the Main Base. Meanwhile, complete sets of new equipment were still being produced at an average rate of 3,200 sets per day, meaning that an average of 3,200 Armed Clones could be born every day.

By then, the monster birds, numbering over seventy thousand, had finally reached the outskirts of the base cluster. From all directions, without overlooking a single one, they launched attacks on Li Qingsong's eleven most vital bases.

Eleven battlefields erupted into brutally fierce combat at the same time.

But fighting did not break out only at those eleven bases. Smaller-scale battles were taking place in many more locations.

Those locations were the railway lines.

The electrical systems on the railway lines had already been destroyed by the monster birds. With no other choice, Li Qingsong urgently activated a batch of steam locomotives to take over the coming transport duties.

Li Qingsong knew that he could not outlast the monster birds in a war of attrition.

The only way to defeat them was to use the Clones' lives as the price to hold the front lines in a stalemate, buying himself time to develop and manufacture firearms.

And if he was going to manufacture firearms on a massive scale, supplies were indispensable.

These railway lines had to be held! Production at the Mining Bases had to continue too—not for even a moment could it stop!

Thus, a strange sight appeared at the ten Mining Bases.

Outside the bases, thousands of Armed Clones fought desperately, heedless of death, as flesh and blood flew everywhere.

Inside the bases, the original mining Clones continued working with meticulous focus, extracting vast quantities of minerals, utterly unaffected by the battle outside.

The minerals were then loaded onto trains. Great steam locomotives belched thick smoke as, under the protection of the Transport Battle Squads Li Qingsong had specifically organized, they set off for the Main Base.

They fought the monster birds while repairing the damaged railway lines. The trains' speed had slowed to less than ten kilometers per hour, yet even so, train after train departed from the various Mining Bases and converged on the Main Base.

After unloading the minerals, large numbers of Armed Clones boarded the trains with massive quantities of supplies and returned to the Mining Bases. The moment a frontline Clone died, a replacement was immediately sent in.

The battle settled into a stalemate.

To maintain the current situation, Li Qingsong had no choice but to commit sixteen thousand consciousness-link slots to the battle. He controlled an average of one thousand at each Mining Base, four thousand at the Main Base, and a total of two thousand across the railway guard squads—sixteen thousand Armed Clones joining the fight altogether.

For the moment, the situation stabilized. But that so-called "stability" was likely only from Li Qingsong's perspective.

To the monster birds, they probably believed they were winning continuously.

After all, under their attacks, two to three thousand delicious enemy corpses were swallowed by their side every day. If that was not victory, what was?

"If you want to eat, then I'll let you eat!"

The deaths of several thousand Clones every day filled Li Qingsong with savage fury. "Just wait. One day, you won't be able to stomach it anymore!"

At this moment, a total of four thousand Clones were performing all sorts of tasks at the Main Base and the important Mine Bases—mining, planting, breeding, transporting, and more. They supported the entire base system's operations while continuously sending cold weapons and food to the front lines.

But aside from those four thousand Clones, Li Qingsong still had his final thousand-odd Clones. Despite the extremely deadlocked battle and immense combat pressure, he had not put them into combat or logistical production.

They were doing something else.

In the laboratory located among the Metal Smelting Factory, Processing Plant, Chemical Factory, and various other factories in the Main Base's core area, Li Qingsong divided these 1,066 Clones into one hundred teams and devoted them all to the development of Gunpowder Weapons.

Li Qingsong knew almost nothing about firearms, especially modern guns.

Other than knowing the basic principle behind modern firearms—that gunpowder burned intensely inside the chamber to produce gas that propelled bullets out at high speed—and that guns consisted of barrels, bullets, and grips, Li Qingsong knew nothing.

Nor did the Deep Space spacecraft's database contain any relevant knowledge.

You were sent to Luoshen Star for scientific research. Why would humanity put that sort of knowledge into the database?

But the same thing still held true.

It doesn't matter! Knowing the basic principles is enough! I'll research everything else myself!

Thus, all one hundred firearm research teams threw themselves into gun research.

Li Qingsong had every team choose a potentially viable research direction. From chamber materials, internal mechanical structures, bullet designs, powder loads, gunpowder types, and firing mechanisms to every other aspect of firearm construction, they conducted experiments simultaneously to find the most suitable materials and structural designs.

Of the ten people in each team, one person specialized in studying different gunpowder ratios to find the most suitable propellant materials. Another operated metal-drilling equipment, attempting to drill through various metals to find the best material for a gun chamber.

Another specialized in firearm structures, constantly machining component after component and trying to assemble them. Others researched bullets, studying how to combine gunpowder with projectiles.

All ten members of every team had clearly defined duties and worked together in perfect order.

Most importantly, there was also a coordination mechanism between different teams that had neither delay nor communication cost.

A gunpowder experimenter from Team 66 happened to discover a formula relatively suitable for use as firearm propellant. In an instant, every gunpowder experimenter in every other team knew about it.

They immediately stopped testing the formulas they were working on and discarded them. Then they immediately replicated Team 66's formula and carried out further research and trials based on it, seeking to improve its performance even further.

When someone from another team made a new discovery, everyone else learned of that progress at the same time. The same process played out again: everyone abandoned their own formulas and began further research based on the latest advancement.

The same was true not only for gunpowder, but for every other aspect of firearm construction.

Barrels, gun bodies, hammers, firing pins, springs, gun body structures, bullets...

With the cooperation of those one hundred teams, Li Qingsong's once nearly blank knowledge of firearms expanded at astonishing speed, like an inflating balloon.