The Azure Empire's reaction came as no surprise to Shen Bing.
Once news of the Spirit Crystals and Firmament reached the Home Planet, the Azure Emperor immediately endorsed Marshal Qinglan's approach and ordered him to return to the Home Planet with a batch of virtual world connection devices as soon as possible.
As a civilization that had waged wars across the universe for tens of thousands of years, they understood the importance of strength better than anyone.
Giving Earth Civilization exactly what it wanted might have seemed spineless.
But... what was backbone worth? In a clash between civilizations, it was utterly worthless!
Strength alone mattered.
Naturally, Shen Bing did his best to accommodate the Azure Empire's requests. He could hardly wait for everyone in the empire to start using Game Pods.
As more players connected to Firmament, the UI dark energy they generated could reach higher energy tiers, offering tremendous benefits for producing certain special materials.
For instance, the fifth-tier black technology he had recently acquired for enhancing the body and brain required high-tier dark energy across the board.
Producing such high-tier dark energy solely through Mass-Energy Conversion Devices was not only extremely inefficient but also consumed enormous amounts of energy. Converting high-tier UI dark energy, on the other hand, was ideal, improving efficiency at least tenfold.
At present, however, Firmament's concurrent player count could only support the production of fourth-tier UI dark energy. Mass-producing fifth-tier UI dark energy was still some way off. But if everyone in the Azure Empire joined, there would be enough players, with plenty to spare.
Moreover, the more players were online, the more efficiently UI dark energy could be collected.
As for meeting the Azure Empire's needs, that was actually quite simple.
The Spirit Crystals that the Azure Empire's people treasured so highly were