Shi Fen knew that the big shot who had brought him here was a major figure in the Treasure Refining Realm.
This big shot was nothing like the immortal Treasure Refiners of mythology, though. These tools were far too high-tech. Sometimes Shi Fen wondered whether the Mechanical Flow of the Origin Continent had technology that could match this big shot's.
These "tools" didn't just have heaven-defying functions; they also worked with incredible efficiency.
Here were a few of the most obvious examples:
The first was the Iron Refining Device.
Shi Fen only needed to toss a certain amount of iron ore into the furnace and press a button. One second later, he'd get a square block of pig iron. If he wanted a bigger block, he could add more ore; if he wanted a smaller one, he could add less.
They all took just one second to refine!
The second was the Raw Material Platform.
Shi Fen could get unlimited quantities of whatever resources he needed from it. Iron ore, coke, limestone, rare metals, and all kinds of other raw materials were supplied without limit.
At first, iron was the only "iron-based" raw material available on it: iron ore.
After Shi Fen used the Iron Refining Device to make a block of pig iron, a block of pig iron immediately appeared on the Raw Material Platform. He no longer needed to refine iron over and over again; from then on, he could take as many blocks of pig iron as he wanted. Once he noticed this, Shi Fen immediately used the Purification Device to make a block of wrought iron, and a block of wrought iron appeared on the platform at once.
Every time Shi Fen refined a new material, another kind of raw material appeared on the platform.
This convenience was what allowed Shi Fen to experiment as he pleased with forging 52 kinds of "Nine-Fold Iron."
The third was a special ability: One-Key Reset.
Shi Fen didn't need to tidy anything up himself. He only had to press the button in the Qualification compartment, and everything in the Virtual Trial Space would be restored to its cleanest, tidiest state.
After all, this place was called the Virtual Trial Space.
Shi Fen strongly suspected that, like the Virtual Universe, it was completely virtual. That was the only way it could be so miraculous.
And these were just the most ordinary examples.
There were also many advanced-tech "finished products" that really existed and had nothing to do with the Virtual Trial Space.
Of them, three particularly outrageous examples had left the deepest impression on Shi Fen.
Because he'd often dealt with ore in his previous life,
the Mining Vehicle had made the deepest impression on Shi Fen.
The Mining Vehicle was 66 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 26 meters tall. It looked like a cross between a "space shuttle" and an "SUV." It had no wings or wheels, and from a distance it looked like an exceptionally sleek "concept car."
Its entire body was silver, with black decorative stripes along the edges. Its body had a perfect streamlined shape, with two doors on each side and a hatch at the rear.
This little thing had enough mining power to scare the life out of anyone.
Inside the Mining Vehicle were four separate areas.
Its layout was a little like that of a passenger plane, which had a cockpit, passenger cabin, cargo hold, and so on.
The vehicle's interior was much the same.
At the front was the Core Control Cabin, accessible through either of the two front doors. The rear section was the Living Cabin for the people traveling with the vehicle, accessible through the middle doors. The other two areas were spatial storage cabins, both "embedded" inside the vehicle. The hatch at the rear connected to these two spaces.
The four cabins were connected by doors. They could only be opened with authorization from the Core Control Cabin.
The interior spaces of the Core Control Cabin and Living Cabin could be adjusted to suit the user's needs.
Generally speaking, the Core Control Cabin could seat up to a hundred people. The Living Cabin's normal capacity was one hundred million people!
That's right!
The "instruction manual" said exactly that: one hundred million people.
Shi Fen had tried it himself, and he really could alter the interior spaces of the Core Control Cabin and Living Cabin. At the moment, the maximum capacity he could set was a hundred people.
What was ridiculous was that both cabins had transformed to include a hundred seats, as well as a fairly large common lounge.
Small on the outside, huge on the inside.
The Mining Vehicle's flight capabilities were just as outrageous. It could easily exceed the speed of light, and its protective shield could easily withstand harsh conditions in space.
As for the upper limit of its flight capabilities, Shi Fen's materials didn't say.
How could this thing be a "Mining Vehicle"?
For a while, Shi Fen thought the Mining Vehicle looked a lot like a "flying palace-type treasure." All four of its cabins were "Small Worlds," and "mining" was just one of its auxiliary functions.
After thinking it over, Shi Fen understood.
The Mining Vehicle's mining capabilities were so outrageous that it would be dangerous to collect such a vast quantity of ore without bringing along some combat personnel. Otherwise, wouldn't all those hard-won resources just end up benefiting someone else?
The Mining Vehicle's most important function was mining.
The Mining Vehicle didn't need its passengers to do a thing. It could complete the mining tasks on its own.
The Mining Vehicle's two spatial storage cabins were the Mineral Cabin and the Mechanical Cabin.
The Mechanical Cabin was relatively "small."
It contained two hundred million robots: one hundred million Mining Robots and one hundred million Ore Processing Robots. Besides the robots, there was also a Mechanical Maintenance Station in the center, responsible for maintaining the robots and transmitting energy.
The two kinds of robots looked exactly alike. They were entirely silver and about three meters tall.
They were made of excellent materials and could withstand all kinds of harsh working conditions in space. Each one had an auxiliary intelligence system, making it a clever "intelligent robot." They also had storage spaces containing the tools they needed.
The conditions under which the robots could work were irrelevant. They really could operate anywhere.
Somewhere ordinary, like from the surface to the planet's core.
Somewhere slightly trickier, like amid turbulent currents in space.
Somewhere even more difficult, like inside a black hole...
As long as there were resources to extract, they could mine them.
The Mineral Cabin was incredibly "large," made to hold vast quantities of ore.
Once the mined ore entered the Mineral Cabin, one hundred million Ore Processing Robots would go inside and perform preliminary processing, separating impurities from the minerals.
The finished ores and the separated impurities were sorted into two separate areas in the Mineral Cabin.
When the Mining Vehicle went to mine,
its General Intelligent Control System first used the vehicle's built-in detection equipment to scan the entire ore deposit, determine the distribution and approximate locations of the target minerals, and calculate the optimal mining plan. Once the General Intelligent Control System had issued its instructions, it released a large number of Mining Robots to get to work.
After the Mining Robots reached their assigned areas,
they first used their own miniature detection devices to gather information about all the substances in the designated areas. Then they headed straight for the target ore and mined it. Once they finished mining one area, they immediately moved on to the next, continuing until they had extracted all the target ore from their assigned areas.
After the General Intelligent Control System had worked out the plan, the Mining Robots would generally finish their tasks at the same time.
When Shi Fen used the vehicle, he only needed to specify the exact substance to be mined, the work area, and the total amount to collect. Once he'd set that, the Mining Vehicle's intelligent control system would send out a large number of Mining Robots to mine until the job was done.
Shi Fen didn't need to lift a finger.
It was the ultimate "foolproof machine"!
Compared to that, its working efficiency was what really frightened Shi Fen.
Generally speaking, when mining an ordinary ore deposit, the minerals weren't very dense. Under those conditions, one hundred million robots working at full capacity could mine at least one cubic kilometer of material per minute.
That was the rate for a deposit with very sparse mineral distribution.
For an extremely poor deposit, the efficiency would drop considerably.
For a rich deposit, the efficiency would increase greatly.
At least one cubic kilometer of material per minute. And that was just its ordinary mining rate. It was utterly ridiculous!
That was one cubic kilometer!
Not one cubic meter!
One cubic kilometer was equal to one billion cubic meters!
In other words, it could mine one billion cubic meters of material in a single minute.
No matter how large a deposit was, it couldn't withstand that kind of mining.
And that was every minute!
At that rate, even digging through the entire Earth wouldn't be all that difficult.
In fact, the Mining Vehicle's actual maximum efficiency was unknown.
After all, the density and overall distribution of the minerals, as well as the properties of the materials themselves, varied completely from one case to another.
Under the most ideal conditions,
its theoretical maximum mining capacity was ten thousand cubic kilometers per minute. But such ideal conditions were almost impossible to find. One of those conditions, for example, was a mineral density of one hundred percent.
How could that be possible?
Even if you were mining stone on Earth and only digging up quartz,
there couldn't possibly be a place on Earth with a quartz density of one hundred percent. Quartz deposits were bound to contain impurities, and encountering impurities would inevitably reduce efficiency. Reaching maximum efficiency was completely impossible.
That figure was purely a "theoretical value," meant to show the machine's maximum capacity.
The theoretical upper limit for the Ore Processing Robots' working capacity was almost the same as the Mining Robots'. They were just as powerful!
These two theoretical figures fully demonstrated how terrifying the Mining Vehicle was.
The Mining Vehicle had opened up an entirely new technological perspective for Shi Fen.
He'd learned a great deal from it!
The Mining Vehicle's outrageous efficiency
was partly due to the number of robots involved in the work. After all, it had a base of one hundred million robots.
The other reason it could maintain such high mining efficiency was its unique way of retrieving the ore: "spatial transmission"!
The robots didn't need to return to the Mining Vehicle.
Each robot carried its own spatial storage device. Once the harvest inside reached a certain amount, the device automatically activated "spatial transmission" and sent the harvest straight to the Mining Vehicle's Mineral Cabin.
After seeing the Mining Vehicle's miraculous way of working, Shi Fen didn't need to calculate to know that its energy consumption had to be astonishing.
But Shi Fen had no idea what kind of energy source the Mining Vehicle used to provide such vast amounts of energy. His "instruction manual" didn't mention anything about it.
However, the "instruction manual" had reminded him that in this Virtual Trial Space, he didn't need to worry about anything related to energy consumption.
Shi Fen had carefully checked the full specifications of the Mining Vehicle's internal spaces.
The Mechanical Cabin was a Small World one hundred thousand kilometers long and wide, and one hundred kilometers high.
Its volume was equivalent to that of a Small World ten thousand kilometers long, wide, and high.
The Mineral Cabin was an enormous world one hundred quadrillion kilometers long and wide, and ten thousand kilometers high.
Its volume was equivalent to that of an enormous world one trillion kilometers long, wide, and high.
The Mining Robots' storage spaces were Small Worlds ten thousand kilometers long and wide, and ten kilometers high.
Their volume was equivalent to that of a Small World one thousand kilometers long, wide, and high.
To make it easier to transport and process ore inside the work cabin, the Ore Processing Robots' storage spaces were considerably larger than those of the Mining Robots. They were Small Worlds one hundred thousand kilometers long and wide, and one hundred kilometers high.
Their volume was equivalent to that of a Small World ten thousand kilometers long, wide, and high.
Not counting anything else on the Mining Vehicle, the two hundred million-plus world-scale spatial storage devices alone were of terrifying value.
Shi Fen knew full well that the most "expensive" part of the Mining Vehicle was its "manufacturing technology." The value of such heaven-defying technology far exceeded that of two hundred million spatial storage devices.
Top-of-the-line robots, paired with top-of-the-line technology, all coordinated by the Mining Vehicle's intelligent system and operating without any concern for energy consumption—this miraculous combination had created the heaven-defying Mining Vehicle.
It was a technological masterpiece of "outrageous extravagance"!
Any scientific worker who encountered such a technological masterpiece would want to see its full power with their own eyes. That went double for Shi Fen, who had spent his entire previous life doing scientific research.
Unfortunately, Shi Fen's authorization level had been too low.
He couldn't control its flight, and he couldn't enter either the Mechanical Cabin or the Mineral Cabin. All he could do was look at the Core Control Cabin and Living Cabin.
At first, Shi Fen hadn't cared much about it.
But he hadn't expected that he'd still be unable to see the Mining Vehicle unleash its full power, even when he was "dying."
Such an incredibly powerful technological masterpiece.
Among all the "tools," the Mining Vehicle only ranked in the middle. It counted as fairly "unremarkable."
Naturally, if there were "tools" capable of "mining," there would also be "tools" capable of "refining ore."
This was different from the simple Iron Refining Device. The Iron Refining Device was merely a "technological tool" that had been "heavily simplified" from this technological masterpiece.
This technological masterpiece was called the Refining Furnace.
It looked a little like the Eight Trigrams Furnace of the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord, like a completely enclosed cauldron. It had a certain immortal, otherworldly air.
On the front of its furnace wall was an unmistakably high-tech control panel, which completely changed the style of this "otherworldly Eight Trigrams Furnace." It looked like the perfect product born from the intense collision and fusion of classical myths and modern technological civilization.
Its function was "simple": it could refine or purify all kinds of ores, and it could also separate metal alloys into their pure metallic elements.
Its work efficiency was about the same as the Mining Vehicle's.
Different materials meant different work rates.
The Refining Furnace could generally process one cubic kilometer of metal ore or alloy per minute.
Its theoretical maximum efficiency was ten thousand cubic kilometers of metal material per minute.
Since the Mining Vehicle had already set the bar, Shi Fen hadn't been too shocked by this. Only its ability to separate alloys had surprised him somewhat.
The Refining Furnace's storage system
had once again reorganized Shi Fen's understanding of technology.
On the silver control panel's border, there were three conspicuous recesses, one on either side. Each recess held a small black metal sheet.
The three metal sheets stored raw materials, finished products, and waste residue, respectively.
Shi Fen had taken the three metal sheets off to examine them. They looked exactly alike. They were extremely thin, about one millimeter thick, and roughly the size of an adult man's fingertip.
When he saw what they could do, Shi Fen was dumbfounded.
This little thing was about one centimeter wide, two centimeters long, and one millimeter thick.
Inside it was a super-large space one trillion kilometers long, wide, and high.
If it had only been a super-large space, Shi Fen wouldn't have been all that surprised.
After all, the Mining Vehicle also came with super-large spatial storage devices. And it wasn't just the Mining Vehicle; many "tools" were equipped with super-large spatial storage devices.
It was as if super-large spatial storage devices were standard equipment in tools.
But this metal sheet was different.
According to the information in the manual,
it could merge into the human body. Unless a supreme powerhouse personally examined someone, no one could detect the slightest trace of it while they were out and about. It was an exceptionally secure spatial storage device.
It was even more secure than a Space Ring or a World Ring.
Its internal space could also be divided into compartments at its owner's discretion, creating as many separate spaces as desired. The compartments wouldn't interfere with one another.
What's more, the owner could make them as large as they wanted, choose any shape, and create as many as they liked.
There were no restrictions at all.
The only limit was that the total volume of the stored items couldn't exceed the total volume of the internal space.
If you wanted to store the corpse of a strange, oddly shaped monster, you could even create a "Monster Custom Packaging Box" that fit tightly against its skin, leaving no gaps as you "embedded" the corpse inside.
The key was this "Monster Custom Packaging Box." Since it had no gaps, it wasted no storage space. When calculating its volume, only the space actually used counted.
In other words, this metal sheet could truly fill its entire internal space, without wasting even the slightest bit.
A World Ring with an equally large internal space could never be filled completely when storing items. There simply weren't that many materials in the universe that could be stacked to a height of a trillion kilometers without breaking.
Even if the user used his own energy to suspend all the items inside, completely filling the storage space, who would be bored enough to waste his divine power doing that? Wouldn't that be like stuffing himself just for the sake of it?
Besides, even these powerful figures would have a hard time filling that space.
So, with a World Ring measuring a trillion kilometers in internal diameter, stored items would basically just be laid out on the ground and wouldn't be piled very high. Only in special circumstances would someone use divine power to maximize its storage capacity.
That was what made the "metal sheet" so powerful.
Once Shi Fen awakened his Spiritual Force, he could bind it to himself with his Spiritual Force, effectively gaining an enormous storage device that was also extremely secure.
It could hold living beings and all kinds of items!
That wasn't even the feature that excited Shi Fen the most.
Its storage function went far beyond that. This was only the most basic storage capability of a "world-space-type" treasure. Creating separate compartments was simply a way to make storage and retrieval more convenient, allowing different items to be sorted into separate sections.
Its greatest function was to extend the "shelf life" of items.
Its ability to prolong the storage life of items was exceptionally effective.
Even highly perishable things stored inside could have their shelf life extended by at least 100 million years.
This worked on all kinds of nonliving raw materials as well as biological materials.
The "big shot" who had passed the inheritance on to Shi Fen had named this metal sheet the "Storage Card."
According to this big shot, a "Storage Card" was a widely used, basic piece of spatial equipment, manufactured in large quantities. It was generally a "standard accessory" for other "Tech Tools."
The "Storage Cards" fitted into "Tech Tools" were automatically assigned internal compartments by the tools. Normally, each compartment was a small, flat space measuring ten thousand kilometers long and wide, and one kilometer high. This was standard for "Tech Tools."
If circumstances required it, the tool would automatically adjust the compartments to suit the actual needs.
After reading this, Shi Fen was shocked. A thousand "holy craps" erupted in his mind, and the big shot's standing in his eyes rose immeasurably.
Following the same introduction, Shi Fen looked at many other "Tech Tools." They really were all equipped with "Storage Cards," usually three each.
Some "Tech Tools" didn't have "Storage Cards," but still had several slots. These tools shared one feature: they already had one or more enormous storage spaces of their own, with plenty of room inside.
That might have been why "Storage Cards" weren't standard accessories for them.
Take the "Mining Vehicle," for example.
After discovering the "Storage Cards," Shi Fen went to investigate further and found three slots side by side in the Core Control Cabin.
Since there was no information explaining them,
Shi Fen made a bold guess.
One slot was for collecting processed ore, one for gathering waste residue, and one for providing energy.
There was one "Tech Tool" that was an exception.
It was extremely unusual. It had no storage space of its own and normally didn't come with "Storage Cards," yet it had a hundred "card slots."
Its most basic function was to process the waste residue inside "Storage Cards."
It could convert matter, turning waste residue into useful resources.
Its technology was mind-blowingly advanced!
At the time, Shi Fen thought he had struck it lucky.
Back then, Shi Fen believed that with this inheritance, he would surely make a name for himself in this world. He might even become the most powerful being around, catching up to or even surpassing Luo Feng.
At the time, Shi Fen set himself a goal: he had to complete the task assigned by the big shot within eighteen years. Otherwise, if he ever succeeded in meeting the big shot, he felt he wouldn't be able to hold his head up and would have let him down.
Shi Fen was determined to exceed the requirements!
The "bait" the big shot had offered him was simply too tempting, giving Shi Fen incomparable motivation. Combined with his own perseverance and almost obsessive nature, it was enough to keep him going for eighteen years.
In the end, he had actually ended up facing death.
What a damned inheritance. As the memories flashed through Shi Fen's mind, he only had time to grumble before his consciousness sank into utter darkness.
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