"Hey, wait!"
"Wang Man, what exactly do you mean by that?"
Tang Hairong's expression darkened, and an edge of anger crept into his voice.
"What do I mean?" Wang Man snorted. "You should know better than anyone how many resources your megastructure engineering project has consumed."
"Let me be frank."
"We have less than ten percent of our Base Metals reserves left in the fleet. At this rate, it won't be long before every construction project has to shut down!"
Wang Man's words stunned Tang Hairong!
"What?!"
Tang Hairong cried out involuntarily.
"How could we be using them up so fast?!"
Seeing that Tang Hairong's surprise seemed genuine, the anger on Wang Man's face gradually faded.
He sighed heavily and shook his head as he explained, "The starship factory consumes enormous amounts of Base Metals every day. As you know, every starship in the fleet is waiting to be upgraded or replaced. You can imagine how fast that burns through our supplies."
As he spoke, he looked up, glanced at Tang Hairong's shifting expression, and continued, "Then there's your project. Your consumption of Base Metals is second only to the starship factory's."
"If the starship factory actually has to shut down because we run out of Base Metals, that's not a responsibility I can shoulder!"
Tang Hairong furrowed his brows and asked Wang Man in bewilderment, "What about your planetary resource exploration and extraction project? Did something go wrong?"
Wang Man rolled his eyes irritably at Tang Hairong's question.
"Come on, Tang. Are you pretending not to understand, or do you really not get it?"
"Mining, sorting, smelting-which of those doesn't take time?"
"Besides, some of the extraction and smelting equipment has to be manufactured on-site."
"Zero only allocated us so much computing power. How are we supposed to keep