Six Years of Development: A Summary of Achievements

"Right! How could I have forgotten that you, brat, possess the exact special genes combining the purest divine beast bloodline with spirit master spiritual body genes!"

Cang Ming slapped his forehead, his mind instantly clearing: "As for your spiritual body genes not yet reaching the god-level, that doesn't matter. Your genes don't differ from those of gods or divine beasts in quality, only in tier. Fundamentally, it should only be limiting the age of the soul rings you can create and your ability to modify soul ring ages."

"And since your spiritual body genes possess a spirit master form, it means that by extracting a small portion of your spiritual body genes and combining them with others, your spiritual body genes can rapidly grow by devouring those other genes."

"Once they grow to a certain level, combining them with spiritual body genes extracted from a target soul beast could potentially lead to the development of a new type of spiritual body gene capable of creating artificial soul rings."

"Next, all we need to do is stimulate this spiritual body gene to absorb external soul power until it reaches a saturation state, and a true artificial soul ring will be formed! No! You must come with me to conduct the experiment immediately!"

Having said that, Cang Ming didn't wait for Xu Mochen to respond; he hurriedly dragged Xu Mochen into the laboratory and slammed the door shut with a "bang," leaving Kong Dehan standing in place, disheveled and bewildered.

Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, another five years had passed.

Xu Mochen was now twelve years old. It had been a full six years since he first transmigrated to the Sun Moon Continent.

Over these six years, aside from cultivation and handling government affairs, Xu Mochen had dedicated most of his time to driving the rapid development of the Sun Moon Empire's industry, technology, and economy. With the help of the Sun Moon Empire's top experts and the information within his own Smart Brain, the pace of the empire's development was more exaggerated than riding a rocket!

Today, exactly six years after his arrival, Xu Mochen was in the Sun Moon Empire's Parliament Building, presiding over the annual Sun Moon Empire Development Report Summary Meeting.

This was a mandatory annual meeting for the Sun Moon Empire. Every year, members of the Imperial Parliament, high-ranking officials from central and local governments, top military commanders, and titans of industry and academia would attend to report on the empire's development, raise critical issues, negotiate, and jointly formulate the nation's general governing policies and development plans for the future.

Normally, the highest authority at these meetings should be the Emperor of the Sun Moon Empire, but as the Emperor was unable to attend for other reasons, the heavy responsibility of hosting the meeting naturally fell upon the shoulders of the current Crown Prince and Regent of the Sun Moon Empire, Xu Mochen.

During the meeting, Xu Mochen provided a general summary of every aspect of the Sun Moon Empire, while also taking a moment to appreciate the rapid development he had brought to the nation.

In terms of technology, as Xu Mochen shared almost all the useful knowledge stored in his Smart Brain with Kong Dehan, Cang Ming, and other experts for discussion and experimentation, the Sun Moon Empire's inventions emerged one after another. In industry, the Soul Guidance Steam Engine had been widely promoted and applied across industrial, agricultural, and other fields. Even the newly developed Soul Guidance Internal Combustion Engine had finished its final testing phase, with official announcements confirming it was ready for mass production to replace some Soul Guidance Steam Engines.

Various supporting Soul Tools also sprouted like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, such as the Soul Guidance Textile Machine, Soul Guidance Crusher, and Soul Guidance Printing Press for light industry, covering sectors like textile manufacturing, agricultural and sideline food processing, plastic manufacturing, fine chemicals, and daily necessities.

In heavy industry, the Sun Moon Empire achieved incredible results. Technologies and devices like Soul Guidance Machine Tools, Soul Guidance Tractors, Soul Guidance Harvesters, and Soul Guidance Smelting Furnaces for steel metallurgy, mechanical manufacturing, energy extraction, construction, transportation, and chemical materials were also being popularized and developed at a rapid pace.

It could be said with certainty that the Sun Moon Empire's industry had gradually completed its transformation, with Soul Guidance machinery replacing a vast amount of manual labor and significantly increasing production efficiency.

Furthermore, it must be mentioned that the Sun Moon Empire had officially developed large-scale Soul Guidance Power Generation and electric machinery. Prototypes for supporting inventions like Soul Guidance Lamps, Soul Guidance Messengers, Soul Guidance Communicators, and Soul Guidance Phonographs had already been manufactured. Once completed and popularized, the Sun Moon Empire's industrial and technological development would surely usher in a new wave.

Xu Mochen's contribution to this development was immeasurable. Although this once led Kong Dehan and others to deeply suspect how Xu Mochen's wisdom could be so profound, they could only attribute it to Xu Mochen being a prodigy born of heaven and earth, a once-in-ten-thousand-years genius, after Xu Mochen used the excuse of "guidance from ancestors" and they failed to come up with any other explanation.

At least within the Sun Moon Empire's scientific and academic circles, Xu Mochen's reputation had even surpassed that of Kong Dehan, becoming the recognized, unprecedented leader of the field!

Of course, the Sun Moon Empire's rapid industrial development was not only due to its thousands of years of accumulated wealth, the active support of major financial groups, and the help of supernatural forces within the Douluo world view, but also inseparable from the advanced financial system that fueled its industrialization. The current Sun Moon Empire had begun issuing a new type of paper currency and coins to replace the original gold, silver, and copper coins.

This currency, named "Ming Yuan" by Xu Mochen, was the legal tender of the Sun Moon Empire. Coins were divided by face value from high to low into 2 Ming Yuan, 1 Ming Yuan, 50 Ming Fen, 20 Ming Fen, and 10 Ming Fen (1 Ming Yuan = 100 Ming Fen).

Paper notes were issued in denominations of 100, 50, 20, 10, and 5 Ming Yuan. Both coins and paper notes utilized special materials and advanced anti-counterfeiting technology, jointly issued by the four major banks led by the Sun Moon Royal Bank, with simple methods available for verifying authenticity.

Additionally, the booming development of financial industries such as insurance companies, trust companies, leasing companies, and stock exchanges brought about huge economic changes, allowing commercial groups to aggregate wealth from the public and invest it into industrial development, further stimulating the empire's social transformation.

Furthermore, although agriculture in the Sun Moon Empire did not develop as terrifyingly as other industries, it still made significant progress. A large number of Soul Guidance Steam Engine-powered agricultural machines were used in production. Given the Sun Moon Empire's vast, sparsely populated plains, and the fact that the Douluo Continent's environment was rich in spiritual energy, the farmland was generally much more fertile than the prime fields on Earth.

Coupled with the Sun Moon Empire's strict legal punishment for land annexation and protection of farmers, and the fact that industrialization attracted a large number of farmers to become workers, the only issue the empire faced was uncultivated land, rather than the displacement of people caused by land annexation in feudal dynasties on Earth.

Many farmers (or more accurately, farm owners) possessed large tracts of arable land, pastures, and farms, living relatively affluent lives. Although these agricultural machines were expensive, it was not a problem for farmers to pool their resources to purchase and use them collectively.

With the Sun Moon Empire's professional agricultural research institutes and colleges continuously selecting superior seeds, seeking more advanced production and storage methods, and the birth and promotion of new agricultural chemical products like fertilizers, the already decent agricultural output was further increased.

Based on the current grain production, the Sun Moon Empire had more than enough to feed its citizens, with large surpluses appearing every year.

Regarding the military, Xu Mochen and the military leaders finally convinced the Parliament that a magical Douluo Continent existed to the east, officially gaining their approval to increase military investment, though limited to upgrading equipment and boosting military-industrial spending.

However, expanding the army remained a distant prospect. The Parliament's reasoning was simple: if everything on the Douluo Continent was as Xu Mochen described, then this continent across the ocean—internally divided, technologically backward, and lacking ambition—could not pose a direct threat to the Sun Moon Empire in the short term.

Although they possessed absolute advantages in many innate aspects like population, territory, resources, and martial souls, these were all empty talk until they truly developed. Since the Sun Moon Empire had urgent needs for economic investment in other areas, military preparations remained focused on other aspects for the time being.

Of course, one must not forget the considerable progress the Sun Moon Empire had made in soul master cultivation products. Thank goodness, ever since that meeting with Cang Ming five years ago, Xu Mochen had repeatedly begged him to come out of seclusion, even promising that once their biotechnology reached a certain level, the soul beasts of the Sun Moon Empire would no longer be slaughtered, allowing soul masters to cultivate without hunting them.

Under Xu Mochen's painstaking persuasion and the beautiful future he constructed, Cang Ming was swayed and finally agreed to Xu Mochen's request, officially joining the Sun Moon Royal Group's Biological Gene Research Institute.

Over these years, Cang Ming demonstrated unparalleled talent. With the joint efforts of Xu Mochen and other relevant researchers, they finally succeeded in researching the first artificial soul ring three years ago. Although this ring was only ten years old, it completely changed the history of soul master cultivation in the Sun Moon Empire!

From then on, soul masters in the Sun Moon Empire no longer needed to risk their lives going to soul beast forests to obtain soul rings; they could purchase them directly. Although the cost was still relatively high, it was a huge step forward. Moreover, just a year ago, the Sun Moon Empire's first hundred-year artificial soul ring was successfully produced, opening a new chapter in the development of artificial soul rings.

The Sun Moon Empire's Parliament had also agreed to invest in the development of artificial soul rings and provide subsidies to soul masters who purchased them for cultivation.

In fact, prior to this, many in the Parliament and elsewhere had questioned the practicality of artificial soul rings, arguing that the cost of ten-year and hundred-year artificial soul rings was too high.

While safer than hunting soul beasts directly, the Sun Moon Empire also had many artificial soul beast forests scattered throughout the country, primarily containing ten-year and hundred-year soul beasts, which were quite safe and cost significantly less.

Given the ratio of soul masters to soul beasts in the Sun Moon Empire, there was no issue with supplying the soul rings needed for cultivation, so they questioned whether it was appropriate to vigorously promote such high-cost rings.

There were even radical opposition groups who openly disparaged artificial soul rings, believing them to be a foolish waste of time and resources!