Chapter Eighty-Nine: Earth — The Beast Tide, Part Thirty

At the outset, they had known that beneath the entire mountain range lay an inexhaustible sea of rare metals. Yet no matter how fiercely they fought, or how deliberately they tried to strike at the ground, they could never break through that thin crust of soil. The sight of the metals below was precisely why they had come in search of a mine.

Now that the soil layer could finally be breached, it meant they were no longer bound by the limits of the mine.

"Don't celebrate too soon. According to the test results, the metal veins beneath the ordinary soil are harder than those inside the mine. It should be a restriction imposed by the rules," Pix gave them a dose of cold water right after.

"That makes sense! The system wouldn't leave us such an obvious loophole to exploit!" Mu Xingye smiled indifferently. For the three of them, this outcome was already good enough.

"So now there are three ways to obtain rare metals: hunting monsters, mining in the mine, and digging privately. Hunting monsters yields only a small amount, but for contestants of middling strength, it's actually a decent method. Mining in the mine requires not only specialized equipment, but also enough manpower to keep the mine from being retaken by monsters. Private excavation, on the other hand, demands high-end equipment. Three methods for three kinds of people. The system really did think things through," Sun Meng remarked. Mu Xingye and the others nodded.

Still, it was better to have rules. The only fear was having none, and letting the other side act however it pleased.

"So, do we start mining now?" Pix asked.

"Mine," Mu Xingye said. "We can also use this to establish a basic trade outpost. We can use those mining robots from before as bargaining chips. The ordinary contestants will bite." The three of them together could not be said to crush the contestants they had recruited, but they were still the stronger side. After all, three second-rank peak contestants were already among the most elite existences at this stage.

Pix nodded without concern. His ship was here, after all. If they could not win, could they not run? Surely that group could not possibly gather all the other second-rank late-stage contestants to besiege them, could they?

Half a month was not long, nor was it short. Especially after the system announced the effects of this special metal, all the contestants went mad. They believed this metal could rapidly narrow the gap between their civilization and those that had been ahead from the start. As for the civilization mothership, they all thought that as long as they had a basic spaceship, that would be enough. The blueprint was there; once the technology caught up, they could simply use their original materials. The real task was to develop the civilization's technological base itself. It was not as though they were preparing for an interstellar war.

Like Sun Meng and the others, the rest of the civilizations that had already reached second-rank peak or second-rank late-stage had come to understand some of the metal's true value. They had also established their own territories, mined the metal, and incidentally gathered a few underlings.

This situation quickly made the independent contestants realize what was happening. They began trying to unite, banding together in groups of dozens to carve out territories, not seeking to stand against giants like Sun Meng, only hoping to protect themselves. On Sun Meng's side, they did not recruit many underlings; instead, they focused more on inter-civilization trade. Others, however, treated the contestants who came to them as nothing more than prey to be exploited.

Even though death here meant resurrection, the lost time could never be recovered. So some, in order to keep their income stable, had no choice but to submit.

In the blink of an eye, the ninth month of the assessment arrived. Three-quarters of the trial had already passed, and the rapid advances of many civilizations had begun to slow. Second-rank middle stage and second-rank late stage were each a threshold, and after forcibly pushing a civilization's technology upward through rare metals, one would discover that the civilization had become top-heavy and unstable. Some even suffered from severe imbalance, making it impossible to continue striking for the peak realm. They could only turn back and make up for the weaknesses in their technological tree.

On Earth, eighty percent of the monsters had already been cleared by humanity. Only a few monster strongholds in the deep mountains and the deep sea were still putting up stubborn resistance with concentrated high-end combat power, but their removal was only a matter of time.

Yi Gang looked at Sun Meng. "Do you think this will work?"

He had just shown Sun Meng the Earth Alliance government's mothership plan: a massive spaceship with formidable firepower and a complete ecological environment. It could essentially serve as a miniature Earth. No one knew how they had managed to develop it, even incorporating the abilities of the Five-Colored Soil. The effect was poor, but its endurance was excellent.

"I think it can. It has both offense and defense. But why haven't the number of experts increased yet?" Sun Meng compared it with the form of Mu Xingye's civilization mothership and felt this one was fairly normal. But they were a cultivation civilization. How could personal strength remain weak?

No one knew what had gone wrong on Earth. All kinds of formations and military arrays were being developed with great efficiency, yet in terms of individual cultivation, aside from the veteran powerhouses from earlier on, the newer talents had remained in a slow, steady pattern of growth. This was also the reason the two monster strongholds still had not been eradicated.

The Earth civilization side had only five second-rank late-stage experts, while the monster side had three peak experts and nine late-stage ones. If the monsters had not only banded together when defending, but fought each for themselves when attacking, humanity would not have progressed so smoothly.

"I don't know. Right now, it seems the cultivation system on Earth has split into five schools of thought: body refinement, qi cultivation, arts and spells, beast taming, and contract methods. The system is fairly mature, but it seems to be showing signs of internal conflict," Yi Gang said, somewhat awkwardly. The latter two were created by him specifically to ease relations between the spirit beast race and humanity.

Those spirit beast clans affected by the monsters' blood and unable to take human form either continued to undergo various experiments, or entered these two cultivation systems. Beast taming, naturally, was the method by which cultivators controlled creatures in battle. Contract methods, on the other hand, were a style of combat in which both sides shared power and could even merge into one.

However, the latter was ninety-nine percent spirit beasts, because only they could remain rational after merging, and not be suppressed by overwhelming bestial instinct.

"I remember you already introduced a system for evaluating spiritual roots, didn't you? Why would this still happen?" Sun Meng asked in surprise. He had been more concerned all along with the construction of the civilization mothership, and had not paid much attention to this matter.

"It was precisely the evaluation of spiritual roots and physiques that led to this result," Yi Gang said. "At first it was fine. Later, someone discovered that if the attribute of one's spiritual root was specialized in a single direction, progress would be faster. So a whole pile of relatively extreme cultivation methods and spells appeared. They worked well up until the second-rank middle stage. Then the weakness of severe imbalance emerged. But at that point it only made people a little slower, and since we were busy purging monsters on a large scale, nobody cared. Now that things have calmed down, of course the problem has shown itself."

"Unless the civilization core is in your hands, would you have noticed this?" Sun Meng suddenly asked.

Yi Gang froze. "No."

Sun Meng frowned. "Then this is yet another threshold for civilization advancement. More cultivation methods are not a bad thing, but there has to be a unified direction. Otherwise, internal strife will only waste time and the potential of the civilization."

"So Xu Xiao asked me to come and see whether you had any good solution," Yi Gang said.

Sun Meng sighed. "I've been stuck at half a step into the third rank for half a month already. I suppose I can only hope to break through once the civilization mothership is fully completed." He looked at Yi Gang. "No matter what, the civilization mothership is the key. That absolutely cannot go wrong."

The connection between the two ended, and at that moment Kakelalulu walked in.

"Mu Xingye and the others are looking for you," she said.

She too had already reached the second-rank late stage, and would soon attain peak. However, her civilization had once suffered a severe blow, and its potential score had now dropped to eighty-five.

The four of them gathered together. With a wave of Pix's hand, a huge screen displayed a video: an invitation from another contestant alliance, one that had reached second-rank peak at the very start of this stage, asking them to join forces and explore the mountain's interior. After all, the ores on the outside had already been mined out, and the middle layers would be exhausted sooner or later. Since everyone was stuck on completing their civilization motherships, some people believed the true key lay in the mountain's depths.

"They already have twelve second-rank peak contestants and fifteen second-rank late-stage contestants. What do you think?" Pix asked.