"Exactly! How did I forget? You've got just the special genes we need: the purest divine-beast bloodline combined with a Soul Master's spiritual-body genes!"
Cang Ming slapped his forehead, and the answer suddenly clicked into place. "It doesn't matter that your spiritual-body genes haven't reached the divine level. Compared with those of gods and divine beasts, your genes aren't inferior in quality, only in level. Essentially, that should only limit the age of the Soul Rings you can create and your ability to modify their age."
"And since your spiritual-body genes have a Soul Master form, we'd only need to extract a small portion of them, then combine them with some other spiritual-body genes. Your spiritual-body genes can rapidly grow by devouring other spiritual-body genes."
"Once they've grown to a certain degree, we can combine them with spiritual-body genes extracted from the target Soul Beast. That might let us develop a new type of spiritual-body gene that can be used to create Artificial Soul Rings."
"Next, all we have to do is stimulate those spiritual-body genes until they absorb Soul Power from the outside world and reach saturation. Then they'll form a genuine Artificial Soul Ring! No, this won't do! You have to come with me to run the experiment right now!"
Without waiting for Xu Mochen to say a word, Cang Ming grabbed him and rushed into the laboratory in a panic. The door slammed shut behind them with a bang, leaving Kong Dehan standing there, utterly bewildered and at a loss.
Time flew by. In the blink of an eye, another five years passed:
Xu Mochen was now twelve. Six whole years had passed since he'd transmigrated to the Sun Moon Continent.
Over those six years, aside from cultivation and handling government affairs, Xu Mochen had devoted most of his time to driving the rapid development of the Sun Moon Empire's industry, technology, economy, and other fields. With help from the empire's top experts and the information in his Smart Brain, the Sun Moon Empire's progress had been more outrageous than riding a rocket!
On this day, six years after his arrival, Xu Mochen held the Sun Moon Empire's annual development review meeting in the empire's Congress Hall.
This meeting was held every year without fail. Each time, members of the Sun Moon Empire's legislature, senior officials from the central and local governments, high-ranking military officers, and leading figures from business, academia, and other fields all attended. They reviewed the empire's progress in every area, raised important issues for discussion, and worked together to set broad government policies and development plans for the future.
The Sun Moon Empire's emperor should have presided over the meeting, as he had every year. But for other reasons, he couldn't attend, so the duty naturally fell to the current crown prince and regent of the Sun Moon Empire, Xu Mochen.
At the meeting, Xu Mochen gave a broad overview of every aspect of the Sun Moon Empire. He also took a moment to admire the rapid development he had brought to the empire.
In science and technology, Xu Mochen had shared almost all the useful knowledge stored in his Smart Brain with Kong Dehan, Cang Ming, and the other experts, discussing and testing it with them. By now, the Sun Moon Empire was producing one invention after another. In industry, Soul Guidance Steam Engines had been widely adopted across manufacturing, agriculture, and many other fields. Even the newly developed Soul Guidance Internal Combustion Engine had completed its final trial phase and was officially ready for mass production, replacing some of the Soul Guidance Steam Engines.
All kinds of supporting Soul Tools had sprung up like bamboo shoots after the rain. These included Soul Guidance Textile Machines, Soul Guidance Crushers, and Soul Guidance Printing Presses for light industry, along with a whole range of technologies and equipment for textiles, processing agricultural and food products, manufacturing plastics, fine chemicals, daily necessities, and more.
In heavy industry, the Sun Moon Empire had achieved even more astonishing results. Soul Guidance Machine Tools, Soul Guidance Tractors, Soul Guidance Harvesters, and Soul Guidance Smelting Furnaces, along with a whole range of technologies and equipment for steelmaking, machinery manufacturing, energy extraction and processing, construction, vehicle production, chemical materials, and more, were spreading and developing at breakneck speed.
It was fair to say that the Sun Moon Empire's industry had begun to transform. Soul-powered machinery was gradually taking over a huge range of manual tasks, greatly increasing production efficiency.
Another development worth mentioning was that the Sun Moon Empire had officially developed large-scale Soul Guidance power generation and electric machinery. Soul Guidance Lamps, Soul Guidance Messengers, Soul Guidance Communicators, Soul Guidance Phonographs, and a whole range of related inventions had also reached the prototype stage. Once they were completed and widely adopted, the Sun Moon Empire's industrial and technological development would surge into a new era.
Xu Mochen's contribution to this progress was impossible to overstate. It had also led Kong Dehan and the others to wonder repeatedly how Xu Mochen could possibly be so wise.
But Xu Mochen brushed off their questions by saying, "It's all thanks to our ancestors' guidance." And since Kong Dehan and the others couldn't puzzle out any other explanation, they could only conclude that Xu Mochen was a once-in-ten-thousand-years prodigy, a child of heaven and earth, born of creation itself!
At least in the Sun Moon Empire's scientific and academic circles, Xu Mochen's reputation had already surpassed Kong Dehan's. He had become widely acknowledged as the greatest scientific mind in the empire's history!
Of course, the Sun Moon Empire's rapid industrial development owed much to the empire's accumulated wealth over thousands of years, the generous support of the great financial clans, and the help of the supernatural forces found in the Douluo World. But it also depended on the advanced financial system that had supported the empire's industrialization. The Sun Moon Empire had now begun issuing a new kind of paper money and coins to replace its gold, silver, and copper currency.
Xu Mochen named the currency "Ming Yuan." It was now the Sun Moon Empire's legal tender. Its coins came in denominations of 2 Ming Yuan, 1 Ming Yuan, 50 Ming Fen, 20 Ming Fen, and 10 Ming Fen, with 1 Ming Yuan equal to 100 Ming Fen.
The banknotes came in denominations of 100, 50, 20, 10, and 5 Ming Yuan. Both the coins and banknotes were made from special materials and used advanced anti-counterfeiting techniques. They were jointly issued by the empire's four major banks, led by the Sun Moon Royal Bank, and could be easily checked for authenticity in several ways.
On top of that, the booming growth of insurance companies, trust companies, leasing companies, stock exchanges, and other financial industries had brought enormous economic changes to the Sun Moon Empire. Its business groups could now gather wealth from the public on a large scale and invest it in industrial development, further spurring social change across the empire.
The Sun Moon Empire's agriculture had not advanced as spectacularly as other sectors, but it had still made considerable progress. Large numbers of Soul Guidance Steam Engines had been turned into agricultural machinery and put to work in the fields. The Sun Moon Empire also had vast plains and a sparse population. And because the natural energy of heaven and earth was so abundant in the Douluo Continent's environment, its farmland was generally even more fertile than the best land on Blue Star.
The Sun Moon Empire's laws harshly punished land monopolization and protected farmers. Industrial growth had also drawn a large number of farmers into factory work. As a result, the empire's agricultural problem was simply that some fields lay fallow for want of farmers—not the land monopolization that had left ordinary people homeless in the feudal dynasties of Blue Star.
Many farmers—or, more accurately, farm owners—had vast tracts of farmland, pastures, and breeding farms, and lived reasonably comfortable lives. Agricultural machinery was expensive, but there was no problem with farmers pooling their money to buy it and share its use.
The Sun Moon Empire's agricultural research institutes and colleges were also continually breeding better varieties and seeking more advanced ways to farm and store produce. New agricultural chemical products, such as fertilizers, had also been developed and promoted. All of this further increased an agricultural output that had never been weak to begin with.
The Sun Moon Empire was currently producing more than enough food to feed its people. In fact, vast quantities of grain piled up every year.
As for the military, Xu Mochen and a group of senior officers had eventually persuaded the legislature to believe that a wondrous Douluo Continent lay to the east of the Sun Moon Empire. The legislature had formally approved greater military investment, but only for upgrading equipment and increasing funding for the military industries.
Expanding the army, however, remained a distant prospect. The legislature's reasoning was simple: even if everything Xu Mochen had said about the Douluo Continent was true, that land across the ocean was divided and backward, with little ambition to advance. It couldn't pose a direct threat to the Sun Moon Empire in the short term.
Though the continent had overwhelming natural advantages in many areas, including population, territory, resources, and Martial Souls, all of that was just talk until it had truly developed. The Sun Moon Empire also had many other areas in urgent need of investment, so for now, it would focus on other military preparations.
Of course, the Sun Moon Empire's impressive progress in products for Soul Master cultivation couldn't be overlooked either. Thank goodness! Ever since his meeting with Cang Ming five years earlier, Xu Mochen had repeatedly begged him to come out of seclusion and help. He had even promised that once their biotechnology had advanced far enough, the Soul Beasts of the future Sun Moon Empire would no longer be killed, and Soul Masters would be able to cultivate without hunting them.
After Xu Mochen's painstaking persuasion and his vivid promises of a better future, Cang Ming had been talked around and finally agreed to come out of seclusion. He officially joined the Sun Moon Royal Group's Biological Genetics Research Institute.
Over the years, Cang Ming had shown unparalleled talent. Working together with Xu Mochen and the other researchers, he had finally developed the first Artificial Soul Ring three years earlier. It was only ten years old, but it had 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 had to risk their lives traveling to Soul Beast forests to obtain Soul Rings. They could simply buy them instead. Artificial Soul Rings were still expensive to produce, but this was a tremendous step forward. And just one year earlier, the Sun Moon Empire's first Hundred-Year Soul Ring had successfully appeared, opening a new chapter in the development of Artificial Soul Rings.
The Sun Moon Empire's legislature had also approved investment in the development of Artificial Soul Rings and subsidies for Soul Masters who bought them for cultivation.
Before that, many legislators and others in the Sun Moon Empire had questioned whether Artificial Soul Rings were practical, arguing that Ten-Year and Hundred-Year Soul Rings cost too much to produce.
Although hunting Soul Beasts directly was more dangerous, the Sun Moon Empire also had quite a few artificial Soul Beast forests scattered around the country. They were stocked mainly with Ten-Year and Hundred-Year Soul Beasts, so they were not especially dangerous—and they cost far less.
Besides, comparing the number of Soul Masters in the Sun Moon Empire with the number of Soul Beasts showed that there were more than enough Soul Rings to meet Soul Masters' needs. Was it really wise to promote these expensive Soul Rings so aggressively?
Some hardline opponents even openly mocked Artificial Soul Rings, calling them a foolish invention that wasted time and resources!
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