Su Chang smiled. "The war base is not as useful as it seems. Don't be intimidated by our high efficiency. [
”
"Since you are a refiner, you should know that there is no such thing as turning stone into gold or making something out of nothing. The war base has only been highly automated. Everything else is the same as a common magical equipment factory. A lot of water, air, spiritual energy, raw minerals, and other complicated resources are consumed.
"Only in the relics of the Pangu civilization, where treasures are everywhere, can the war base function with such a high efficiency and produce tremendous spiritual puppets instantly. If we had landed on a common planet with few resources, we would've had to hibernate for another twenty years before we could gather a troop of the smallest scale and start the exploration!"
"That's not a problem."
Li Yao said, his eyes glittering. "Senior Su, you only need to tell us how to operate the war base and how to dismantle and maintain it."
Pondering for a moment, Su Chang said, "I can tell you how to operate the war base slowly, but I'm very sorry about the dismantling and maintenance. Even I don't know how to dismantle and maintain the tremendous units of the war base, much less figure out the mechanism of the war base and copy them."
Li Yao was surprised. "Senior Su, as the captain of 'Flourishing Sun', shouldn't you know everything about the war base?"
Su Chang smiled bitterly. "You may not know this, Fellow Cultivator Li. Both the war base and the Colossus are strategic magical equipment of the Imperium of True Human Beings. The greatest feature of such magical equipment is that it adopts a lot of rune arrays and units from the Star Ocean Imperium, the age of ancient Cultivators, and even the primeval age.
"The ancient magical equipment was excavated from various relics. After thousands of tests, we finally determined the performance, function, power, and operation methods of the equipment!"
"For us, all the units are in the 'black box state'!"
"Do you understand what a 'black box state' is? It means that we know what the result of inputting a command into the magical equipment unit will be. We are very clear about that!
"However, how the command turns into the result, and what the process and mechanism is, we have no idea at all!
"Even if we dismantle the 'black box', we will not be able to figure out what is going on inside. Also, once it is dismantled, we will never be able to assemble it again. A precious unit of ancient magical equipment will be wasted for nothing!"
"Therefore, even if you get one war base, it will be difficult for you to replicate a second or a third one. Even in the Imperium of True Human Beings, such 'national treasures' can only be built by hand and cannot be mass-produced. Every one that is consumed means one less!"
Li Yao was dumbfounded. "How could this be?"
"In the Imperium of True Human Beings, we like to explain the phenomenon with the story of 'monkey and gun'.
"Let's say that the civilization of mankind has been extinct for tens of thousands of years, and monkeys have taken over the entire world. At this moment, a very smart monkey accidentally discovers a usable storm bolter that is buried deep below the ground.
"Because this monkey is very smart, or perhaps it is very lucky, it might pull the trigger and shoot a spiritual energy bomb. When this spiritual energy bomb breaks a towering tree in half, it will understand how to use the gun."
"Pulling the trigger is something that even monkeys can learn. Don't you think so, Fellow Cultivator Li?"
Li Yao pondered for a moment and nodded his head.
"It is not difficult to pull the trigger. If the monkey is really very smart, chances are that it can go one step further and learn to use the scope or shoot accurately. Then, it will be a dominator in its forest!"
Su Chang continued. "However, learning how to pull the trigger is one thing, and being a sharpshooter is another thing, but dismantling the gun and copying it is a whole other thing, isn't it?"
"Yes," Li Yao said. "Even if the monkey does become a sharpshooter and is smart enough to dismantle the gun and figure out all the components, it will still be impossible for it to copy the gun because it lacks the entire refining system from metal smelting to crystal processing!
"To build such a system from scratch, it would take thousands or even tens of thousands of years!"
"Fellow Cultivator Li, you are indeed wise."
Su Chang complimented him half-sincerely. "Assuming that the monkeys have indeed established the refining system from metal smelting to crystal processing after thousands of years and are able to copy the components exactly and assemble them into a second gun, there will still be a long way to go for them to completely understand the concept of 'spiritual energy' and the mechanism of the storm bolter. They can only say that they know what they do but not why they do it. Do you agree?"
Li Yao nodded. It was self-evident.
Not just the monkeys, he had become an expert of magical equipment maintenance when he was a teenager, but he had merely copied the models.
Even if he could fix a crystal processor, it did not mean that he understood all the mechanisms of the crystal processor.
"Right now, if you imagine us as monkeys and the Pangu as us, Fellow Cultivator Li, you should understand where we are in our exploration of the primeval treasures," Su Chang said.
"Yes. Many experts among us are adept at using the Colossi. They can even kill the Pangu with the Colossi like Fellow Cultivator Li!
"But it is like a monkey pulling the trigger and killing a human being. It is not a coincidence, but it is meaningless, either.
"Just because we can use the Colossi doesn't mean that we can maintain and copy them. Just because we can modify the Colossi doesn't mean that we have completely figured out the mysterious mechanism that drives them, either! There are many things that we can't find the answers to with our civilization right now.
"The same logic applies to the war bases. So, don't even think about copying them. It is impossible!"
Li Yao took a long breath, not without regret.
His intuition told him that Su Chang was not lying.
When he was faced with the debris of the primeval magical equipment, he was like a monkey faced with a gun. It was easy to learn how to use it, but it was almost impossible to figure out the mechanism.
"By the way," Su Chang said casually.
"I wonder, Fellow Cultivator Li, have you ever wondered why all kinds of experts and powerful magical equipment were flying everywhere in the age of ancient Cultivators forty thousand years ago? Many of the magnificent battles in space and the terrifying damage have left us all dumbfounded and amazed today!" Su Chang said in a relaxed tone. "I wonder … have you ever wondered why?
"It seems that the older you are, the stronger you are, and the weaker you are after each generation?
"Hehe. Of course, it is not because the ancient people were really stronger than us. The reason is simple. In the age of ancient Cultivators forty thousand years ago, a lot of magical equipment and Cultivation arts left by the Pangu civilization were still scattered in the sea of stars. Those ancient people were merely relying on the power of the Pangu civilization's magical equipment to intimidate others!
"It's like an ignorant and incompetent young master who has received a huge fortune left by his father. On the surface, he seems to be enjoying his wealth and spending it like water!
"It's also like the monkey that we talked about just now did not find a gun but an entire arsenal!"
Li Yao was greatly enlightened.
Su Chang's words had indeed solved the puzzle that had been haunting him for a long time!
"It's a shame …"
Su Chang sighed and said, "It's always very fast for the rich young masters to squander. They only know how to spend money, but they don't know how to make money. Even a mountain of gold and silver will run out in no time!
"There's no need to mention the monkeys who have acquired the arsenal. They only know how to shoot guns to their heart's content, but they never consider the entire system of magical equipment behind the arsenal or how the entire civilization was established! There will be a day when the bullets run out, and so will the guns!
"As a result, forty thousand years ago, the 'mountain of gold and silver' was finally eaten up, and all the weapons in the 'arsenal' ran out, too!
"The doom of the age of ancient Cultivators has finally come!"
"I understand what you mean now, Senior Su," Li Yao said. "We may not have as many experts as we did in the age of ancient Cultivators today, and we may not have as many powerful ultimate treasures as we did in the age of ancient Cultivators, but we are fundamentally different from the ancient Cultivators!
"Everything we have has been built by ourselves through hard work. Even if we have the secret treasures of the primeval era, we will still try our best to figure out their structure and mechanism, unlike the ancient Cultivators who were only satisfied with the usage of the treasures without understanding them!
"The ancient Cultivators were just the rich young masters who lived on nothing and the monkeys who dominated the jungle with their arsenal. However domineering they appeared to be on the surface, they could not escape the fate of being worse and worse with each generation until they perished in the end.
"As for us, although we cannot compete with the ancient Cultivators or even the Pangu civilization for now in certain fields, we are making progress, exploring, and learning every day without stopping or even retrogressing. Then, one day, we will surpass the ancient Cultivators, the Pangu civilization, and all the alien species in the sea of stars!"
When Li Yao said that, Su Changyu stared at him without blinking, trying to analyze the guy's real thoughts and feelings from the twitching muscles on his face.
There was no telling which of Li Yao's muscles had touched his nerve, but the old Immortal Cultivator finally sighed and waved his hands. "Invite Director Guo in. I've thought it through. Perhaps, we can discuss some of the details again!"
Li Yao was overjoyed.
Su Changyu's life was not important, but the information hidden inside his head was very important!
As a Yuanying expert, if he was unwilling to disclose the information voluntarily, it would be difficult to force the information out of him through torture!
It was not hard to imagine what had happened to Elder Nether Spring in the past. Even under the cruel 'soul-searching', Elder Nether Spring had still been able to hide the secrets of 'Abyss' deep inside his brain and end his own life.
Torture was the most idiotic choice. It would be best if Su Changyu was willing to cooperate with him!
"I'll invite Director Guo in right now!"
Li Yao rose up abruptly, but he thought for a moment and sat back down.
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