The Dominance of AI

Li Ming ran while gripping the Satellite Spirit in his hand and injecting it with Soul Power. A faint flame immediately burst from the satellite's tail.

The flame was not harmful. It merely propelled the satellite through the air and was an innate trait of the Satellite Spirit.

But at this moment, Li Ming held the satellite in his hand and controlled it as it flew ahead, constantly releasing flames.

The satellite dragged his entire body forward at high speed, causing his speed to surge once more.

Of course, he could have used this to fly, but he felt that flying was too conspicuous. Before his strength became great enough, it was better to remain cautious.

He was not traveling along the main road at the moment. He held a small satellite firmly in his hand, and it would not matter even if someone saw it.

He had already possessed such a trump card when he faced the Beast Tide in the Star Dou Great Forest.

The speed of a single satellite was not enough. When facing flying Soul Beasts, he might become a target instead.

That was why, before entering the Star Dou Forest, he had already arranged for several satellites to remain high in the sky, ready to descend at any time.

They could be used as Planetary Devastation, or he could use the satellites to escape at any time.

With the satellite's propulsion, Li Ming returned to Heaven Dou City in just one day.

Although this differed slightly from his original schedule, he had requested extra leave before departing.

When his parents saw him return, they visibly relaxed. Clearly, it would have been a lie to say they had not worried.

After enjoying a good meal and taking a bath, Li Ming returned to his bedroom.

Now that he had become a Spirit Elder, coupled with the massive increase in his spiritual power, Nightmare's strength had naturally risen significantly.

He could now use his Dream Soul Skill to pull multiple people into a dream at once.

Although this would lower the dream's quality, such as removing its compulsory force, there was no problem if it was merely used to guide people into Dream Space.

Thus, Dream Space's Public Beta was finally coming!

In the blink of an eye, several days passed.

Li Ming continued going to school and coming home as usual, living the ordinary life of a Soul Master while researching his Public Beta plan.

The results were quite good!

At first, he discovered that his Nightmare could pull at most ten people into dreams simultaneously. In other words, Purple Heaven City could accommodate over ten thousand people at once.

That might have seemed like a lot, but he was not satisfied. There were plenty of Soul Masters.

A mere ten thousand slots truly could not support a city as vast as Purple Heaven City.

So he kept searching for ways to increase the number of people he could pull in.

And he actually found one.

For that, he had to thank his Satellite AI.

Clearly, after receiving the Star Dou Great Forest's investment of fortune, the Satellite AI's computing power had improved dramatically.

Li Ming discovered that if the Dream Soul Skill was controlled by the Satellite AI, it could be made far more precise.

For example, he could divide one Dream Soul Skill into ten portions. The quality would naturally decline, but the quantity would increase.

And ten portions were already the limit of his spiritual power.

But if the Satellite AI handled the precise control, the situation would be vastly different.

When it came to controlling details, the Satellite AI was obviously beyond comparison to him alone.

Right from the start, it divided the Dream Soul Skill's power into twenty portions—twice as many as he could manage.

But that was only the beginning.

He then gave the Satellite AI an order to generate a program that would divide the dream power into as many portions as possible.

Over the past few days, the Satellite AI had continuously optimized the program, splitting the power into ever more portions.

By today, after the Satellite AI executed the program, the number of divided dream powers had exceeded one hundred!

In other words, Purple Heaven City's Public Beta would have one hundred thousand slots!

Only with one hundred thousand Soul Masters would his Dream Space truly be up and running.

And once the Public Beta began, not only could he continue harvesting wealth, he could finally cash out part of that wealth.

After all, more and more Dream Coupons were circulating within Purple Heaven City. This meant that its residents were continuously putting money into Purple Heaven City.

But that money was not in Li Ming's hands. It was in the hands of the two great empires.

Who knew how many Gold Soul Coins were piled up in their Banks? Nominally, those Gold Soul Coins belonged to him, or rather, to Purple Heaven City.

But only nominally. Over the past half year, Li Ming had never exchanged Dream Coupons for Gold Soul Coins offline.

He was simply worried that the Heaven Dou Empire might harbor ulterior motives.

Of course, the Heaven Dou Empire definitely harbored ulterior motives. After all, he possessed detailed intelligence on the deployment and movements of their military forces. It was practically like gripping them by the throat.

They probably wished they could capture him and obtain intelligence on the enemy empire's troop movements from him.

But Li Ming gave them no such opportunity. He never visited their Banks and only used Dream Coupons within Purple Heaven City.

He spent Dream Coupons in Purple Heaven City as if they were Gold Soul Coins. Those who received the Dream Coupons could simply go to the Bank and exchange them themselves. To Li Ming, Dream Coupons were money.

He was not worried that the two great empires would embezzle his Gold Soul Coins and make Dream Coupons impossible to exchange. If Soul Masters could not redeem them, they might not be able to find him, but could they not find the imperial families of the two great empires?

If the Heaven Dou Empire and Star Luo Empire were not afraid of being directly stormed by Soul Masters across the world, they were welcome to try swallowing the Gold Soul Coins in their Banks.

Of course, Li Ming knew this system still had a loophole.

That was the Heaven Dou Empire and Star Luo Empire's top-up registration records.

Soul Masters who exchanged or topped up offline would inevitably need to provide their Purple Heaven City resident ID numbers. Privately, the two great empires would likely collect information on the people behind those numbers.

Under normal circumstances, someone with exchange records but no top-up records would be suspicious. But merely suspicious, since people could earn Dream Coupons in Purple Heaven City even without topping up. Still, suspicious people would inevitably attract the empires' investigations.

That was why Li Ming had never gone to exchange them.

But once the Public Beta began and the number of Soul Masters increased, it would become difficult for them to keep tracing him through that clue. Then he could make small withdrawals, or even fabricate an industry to legitimize the source of his Dream Coupons.

Moreover, although the Heaven Dou Empire and Star Luo Empire each possessed a registry, unless the two empires shared information, the registries in their hands would be incomplete.

They did not possess the other empire's registry, and Soul Masters were mobile. Someone without a top-up record might have topped up in the other empire.

Of course, this was only him lying low while his strength was insufficient. Once he became strong enough, the two great empires would merely be keeping this money for him.

And he believed that day was not far away.

After all, his Pulsed Scorching Beam was nearly complete!

Over the past few days, he had not given up his research into the Scorching Beam, because this was his true ultimate weapon.

Only, the research method was slightly different. He directly handed the experiments over to the Satellite AI.

That was indeed much more convenient. He only needed to wait for the Satellite AI's results.

And with its enhanced computing power, the Satellite AI was simply invincible in this regard.

It constructed numerous plans and used a thousand satellites to carry them out separately, testing the feasibility of each plan.

In just a few days, it had preliminarily found a solution to the problem of the beam weakening in the atmosphere!

That was to mix a certain amount of Soul Power into the Scorching Beam!

Experiments showed that when the Scorching Beam was released using only solar energy as its power source, it weakened rapidly upon encountering the atmosphere.

But if a little Soul Power was added during the release of the Soul Skill, the result changed noticeably.

The Satellite AI believed that Soul Power made the beam's structure more stable. During the beam's passage, it acted like a protective film. Since it was essentially Soul Power rather than light, it could effectively resist this weakening effect.

And now, through a large number of experiments, the Satellite AI was calculating the optimal ratio of Soul Power to add, how to avoid wasting Soul Power, reduce the amount required, and allow the Scorching Beam to successfully reach the ground.