Cloud-Mist Information Matrix

"I need an intelligence organization." It wasn't just to investigate the Bei Family, but also because his unfamiliarity with Seacloud City made him feel like a bumpkin who had just arrived in a big city.

The key was that even a modern bumpkin could learn about the world through their phone, but this world had no such thing. The software on the Identity Jade Token was limited, and there was no news, Weibo, or Bilibili.

"It seems there are no newspapers in the city either." Yang Ning wandered around the streets and found that besides shops selling materials, pills, magic artifacts, food, cultivation techniques, and pets, there were also service industries like lodging, flower shops, gambling houses, escort services, and quest givers.

Moreover, the number of flower shops was extremely high. Yang Ning could see one every few steps, with varying levels of quality, and they all seemed to be doing good business.

Besides that, Yang Ning could always see fighting arenas at street corners, with two people fighting on stage while a crowd cheered and people took bets.

Not only were there martial artists fighting, but also women, completely naked, with their chests exposed. Yang Ning stopped and criticized them for a long time before reluctantly leaving.

"Seacloud City has two major forces permanently stationed here: one is the students of Ascension Academy, and the other is the Haiyun Army. Ascension Academy has 30,000 to 40,000 students per year, totaling 200,000 across six academic years. The number of Haiyun Army soldiers is unknown, but it's also around 200,000."

"Each student and soldier requires a large amount of logistical support for their studies, life, and work, such as catering, healthcare, material management, transportation, communication, and technical support. Based on experience, each soldier needs at least 1-2 service personnel to provide these supports.

Therefore, the number of service industry personnel needed for 400,000 people could be between 80,000 and 160,000," Deep Blue said.

Yang Ning nodded and added, "Seacloud City was indeed a service-oriented city in its early years. However, with the settlement of graduates and soldiers' families over the years, a large native population has already emerged. When we arrived, we could see vast farmlands surrounding Seacloud City, so Seacloud City should be a city where the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries are equally important!"

The primary industry goes without saying. There are not many Qi Refining cultivators in Seacloud City, so most of the crops grown are rice and medicinal herbs to supply ordinary people.

The secondary industry is mainly concentrated in the research, development, and manufacturing of weapons and pills.

The tertiary industry is the service industry, primarily dominated by flower shops. After all, the four-person groups in schools consist of three men and one woman, and the number of female soldiers in the Haiyun Army is even smaller. Among the 400,000 permanent residents alone, there are 350,000 single men, so it's natural for this industry to be prosperous.

"Then the most well-informed place for collecting information would naturally be the flower shops. But unless one monopolizes all the flower shops in the city, the information collected will definitely not be comprehensive!" This isn't a place where there's only one flower shop in a village or town. In that case, monopolizing the city's information would be possible.

Furthermore, even if Yang Ning had the capital to open a flower shop, he wouldn't spend his money on such a place.

He considered himself a pure individual whose primary goal was to become an Immortal. His dedication to scientific research was also because it aided in his path to becoming an Immortal.

Once commercial competition is involved, it would inevitably consume a significant amount of his energy.

"All problems in this world, in the final analysis, are problems of capability. Since I am a scientist, I will solve them in a scientific way!"

Collecting intelligence was just a matter of intelligence. The modern SkyNet was a good example.

However, cameras were too conspicuous, and too many were needed. If placed on the street, anyone with eyes could tell something was wrong.

Radar? It's useful for monitoring enemy aircraft, but its effectiveness in monitoring people is much lower.

"Sophon?" Yang Ning shook his head. He wished he had one, but he couldn't create it!

However, he could create something with similar functions.

It just needed to be able to take pictures and record sound. Among the abilities Yang Ning possessed, there was precisely something that fulfilled both effects simultaneously.

Water!

Water can refract and reflect light. The telescopic function of Yang Ning's Deep Blue Eye utilized this principle.

If the city were filled with water mirrors, it could monitor the entire city. This wouldn't be difficult to achieve, as Seacloud City was perpetually shrouded in mist, and the air was filled with liquid water droplets.

Water is an excellent conductor of sound, and sound causes droplets to vibrate. As long as this vibration is recorded, the sound can naturally be restored.

A decoder, the principle isn't complicated.

What Yang Ning needed to do was to create some water droplets and embed them into the mist without being discovered by others.

If these droplets were filled with magical power, they would definitely be discovered. But what if the droplets only contained spiritual power?

Or rather, the spiritual power naturally diffused from the Nightmare Dragon Pearl.

Everyone in this world naturally diffuses spiritual power. Such spiritual power should be everywhere. Yang Ning's spiritual power would be like liquid flowing into the sea, and no one would be able to detect it.

Of course, considering potential failure before success was Yang Ning's habit. So, what if he were discovered?

It probably wouldn't matter to Yang Ning.

This was because he was using spiritual power processed by the Nightmare Dragon Pearl, which was significantly different from his original spiritual power.

After all, his 1 point of spiritual power couldn't conjure 1408 bullets out of thin air.

Then, would the Nightmare Energy be discovered?

Yang Ning felt it wouldn't be. The Nightmare Tribulation happened 300,000 years ago. Has anyone lived from 300,000 years ago until now?

"I've considered everything I could think of. Whether the Nightmare Energy can be recognized, whether the spiritual power modified by Nightmare Energy can be recognized, only fate will tell!" Yang Ning shook his head. He disliked this feeling of being out of control, but with his current abilities, this was all he could do.

After all, he was only feigning indifference, not truly giving up. Development still needed to happen.

Yang Ning walked down the street, seemingly just looking around, but in reality, he silently summoned a water droplet with a diameter of 3 micrometers and attempted to inject spiritual power into it.

He had already experimented last night. The larger the object, the more spiritual power it required.

And it wasn't just his own creations that could have spiritual power injected into them; any inanimate object could.

Ordinary inanimate objects, like soil and metal, became controllable after spiritual power was injected, but the consumption was enormous.

However, for things like wind, clouds, thunder, and lightning, which he could already control, injecting spiritual power not only made them more convenient to use but also extremely energy-efficient due to the abilities granted by the Dragon Pearl, with almost no consumption.

1 point of spiritual power could modify a mass of water with a diameter of 30 centimeters. When atomized, it could produce fifty million mist droplets with a diameter of 3 micrometers.

Each mist droplet could monitor an area of 4 square meters, totaling a monitoring range of two hundred million square meters.

Seacloud City has a total area of 4257 square kilometers. 20 units of water droplets would be enough.

"These water droplets need to be able to hover. My control over water is limited to 46 meters, but water infused with spiritual power is not restricted by this. It seems I can control it from any distance!" Yang Ning began to set the functions for the water droplet in his hand.

Firearms modified by Nightmare Energy can fire bullets infinitely. Modifying a water droplet is naturally effortless, not to mention Yang Ning's added functions weren't complicated.

As for transmitting light, vibration, and deforming, these were abilities water already possessed.

"This is already a kind of micron-robot, isn't it!" After a long while, looking at the droplet before him, which required the Micron Eye to see, Yang Ning exclaimed. The liquid had transformed from a water droplet shape into one composed of countless hexagonal planes. Two long tentacles grew from the sides of the droplet, each bearing countless smaller tentacles, which in turn bore even smaller ones.

These tentacles should scientifically be called flagella.

These planes were used to propagate light, and the flagella were used to transmit vibrations. This form was what Yang Ning called the complete form of the Reconnaissance Droplet.

To prevent some people with exceptionally sharp eyesight from spotting the Reconnaissance Droplet, Yang Ning designed eighty thousand variations of this form. Sometimes only a single plane would appear, sometimes only a single flagellum, and their positions were also random. They shifted at a frequency of 4426 times per second, and the transformations weren't random. The mental power involved would set the changing forms based on airflow and wind direction.

However, there would always be at least one plane and one flagellum present at any given moment.

"Can something like this really be created by someone in the Body Refinement Realm?" Looking at the final product, Yang Ning suppressed a smile. He wasn't happy about the droplet's functions, but rather that no one would suspect him.

The cultivators' abilities and levels in this world were severely bound together. It wasn't like Earth, where the person pressing the nuclear launch button might be a frail old man.

Scientific creations were like that. A child holding a technological creation could kill an adult or bring down a building.

"It really isn't!" Deep Blue's tone was also light. "Without the computational power of the Spiritual Realm, without the superpowers brought by the Dragon Pearl, without the ability to erode through Nightmare Energy, even a Qi Refining Stage cultivator couldn't achieve this!"

"Exactly!" Yang Ning nodded. Even if you gave a Qi Refining Stage cultivator a complete set of technology, they wouldn't be able to handle it.

The images and sounds transmitted by 100 quintillion droplets—let alone a Qi Refining Stage cultivator, even a Spiritual Law Realm cultivator might not be able to process it all!

"Since it's already made, let's, uh, give it a name?" Deep Blue asked.

Even though this thing was for her own use and no one else would know, one should still pursue a sense of ritual in life.

Besides, a micron-robot was still a robot. Giving it a name would help it develop a Machine Soul!

"How about the Droplet Information Matrix?" Yang Ning chuckled. Now he was using a genuine water droplet detector, and he had 100 quintillion of them!

"Then if you were to build a real water droplet in the future, what would you call it?" Deep Blue asked.

"Eh?" That was indeed a problem.

Those who liked science generally liked Da Liu. Yang Ning was also a loyal fan of The Three-Body Problem. Since he had arrived in a world where he could climb the peak of technology, building a water droplet was inevitable.

So the name "Water Droplet Detector" wouldn't work anymore.

"Then let's call it the Cloud-Mist Information Matrix!" Yang Ning thought for a moment. "That's right, the Cloud-Mist Information Matrix. After all, these water droplets converge like clouds and mist. From now on, the information transmitted by this matrix will be managed by you!"

"Okay!" Deep Blue easily accepted the task of consolidating the 100 quintillion cloud-mist matrixes. She had the Spiritual Realm backing her, so computational pressure? Not a problem!