Chapter 112: Floating City?
But theory is just theory, in reality...
"You're almost ready for promotion!"
These main conditions have been met, and now you can really start your extraordinary advancement.
But the reason why Li Qing did not do so immediately was mainly because he felt that he was still a little short of accumulation.
To put it simply, the stage below the extraordinary stage is the foundation-laying stage, and the foundation will determine the potential and upper limit after the extraordinary stage.
To put it simply, after being promoted to the extraordinary level, one can no longer awaken new bloodlines. At the same time, if one wants to strengthen the existing bloodline, the difficulty will be much higher than before becoming extraordinary.
To give a simple example, before being promoted to the extraordinary level, one only needs one dragon bloodline to easily awaken the dragon bloodline.
But if one wants to obtain dragon blood after becoming extraordinary, it will take at least ten giant dragon bloodlines to awaken.
Moreover, the dragon blood essence required to achieve transcendence must be of a higher purity.
Of course, this is not a problem for Li Qing.
The main problem is that what he wants to awaken is not the blood of an ordinary dragon, but the blood of an ancient dragon, which requires a ray of original light to stimulate awakening.
To awaken before becoming extraordinary, one only needs a ray of original light. To awaken again after becoming extraordinary, one needs ten such ancient dragon bloodlines.
So, why would it take ten rays of original light to solve a problem that can be solved with just one?
It would take at least one and a half years to accumulate all ten skills, and at a slower rate it might take three years.
Of course, Li Qing now has enough dragon blood and original light, but he only has a few hero skill points and has not used them for the time being.
To awaken the bloodline of the ancient dragon, you have to upgrade all the bloodline talents that come with it, such as dragon breath, dragon scales, and dragon wings. At least fifteen hero skill points are required.
There is no need to rush. It has only been a short time. By the time this training is over, it will be basically done.
A month and a week later, Xie Zhu's trading team returned. At this time, Li Qing was in the canyon base on the surface.
Upon hearing the news that they had returned, he stopped his experiment and met him.
After not seeing each other for a month, Xie Zhu's face was already wrinkled.
"Thanks for your hard work!"
Li Qing pushed the hot tea in his hand over, sat down in front of him and asked:
"So, what did you gain from this trade?"
Xie Zhu took a sip of hot tea, sat up straight and replied:
"The underground of this plane is quite complicated. It is a good idea for us to give up the use of force and switch to trade. In addition, I found traces of a Scourge Lord when I was heading to those human city-states."
"Well!"
Li Qing sat up straight and asked in a deep voice:
"Tell me more details."
"It's like this. In the past month, I have visited several major clans underground and found..."
Xie Zhu talked freely in front of him and told Li Qing everything he had seen and heard along the way in an orderly manner.
Li Qing tapped the tabletop lightly with his fingers while listening, his brows furrowed.
The information was not much different from what the dwarves had given. The underground world of this plane was mainly ruled by four major ethnic groups: humans, dwarves, orcs and gnolls. They formed the United Kingdom of Underground Tribes and have been fighting the Snake Kingdom for many years.
These large tribes generally exist in the form of city-states or tribes. The population of each large tribe or city-state ranges from 20,000 to 30,000 to more than 100,000. The total population of the entire Underground United Kingdom is about one million.
Thanks to the complex underground terrain, even though the war with the Snake Kingdom in recent years has been unfavorable, there is no need to worry about the Snake Kingdom attacking.
However, with the invasion of the Scourge, a large number of Scourge heroes and Scourge lords descended directly into the underground world, and their days became difficult.
The big city-states are fine now, but the small tribes scattered in small underground spaces are in big trouble. Some of them can't even stop the large number of wild wandering undead.
Up to now, no large city-state has been conquered, but it is unknown how many small tribes have been destroyed.
And this situation is also spreading to the large tribe. The previous attack by the Scourge hero on the dwarf tribe was a test.
In addition, several human city-states on the other side of the underground were also facing direct threats from the Scourge Lord.
It is precisely because the overall environment is so bad that Xie Zhu's trade route is so smooth. With the dwarves as guarantors, other city-states are quite interested in Li Qing, who has strong strength. After this trade trip, several large orders have been booked.
Most of the time, they exchanged the most scarce food in the underground world for the most abundant minerals in the underground world.
Or use finished war weapons to exchange for some rare magic materials, especially the refined gold and mithril that Li Qing needs most.
At the same time, it comes with a large intention order.
The Mage City-State, one of the three major human city-states, is willing to offer two hundred kilograms of refined gold and one hundred kilograms of mithril, as well as some mage-related knowledge, in exchange for Li Qing sending a group of no less than five thousand mercenaries to support the war between the Mage City-State and the Lord of the Scourge.
Two hundred kilograms of refined gold and one hundred kilograms of mithril, which is enough to make twenty iron golems.
But this is definitely not enough to recruit all his troops to fight.
Of course, there is also some knowledge related to mages.
But Li Qing didn't think the mage knowledge in this small plane fragment would be very good. There might be some new things, but Li Qing didn't think they would be of much value.
So after careful consideration, Li Qing told Xie Zhu to reject the deal next time he went there.
Just normal trade, don't get too involved in their wars with Scourge heroes or Scourge lords.
Li Qing thought it would be better to stay here honestly and wait for a fight to break out near the snake king's capital on the surface, and then fish in troubled waters.
Whether it is taking advantage of the chaos to kill a Scourge Lord, or taking advantage of the chaos to attack the Serpent King's capital, it is a huge profit.
With a ready-made one, who would be interested in traveling thousands of miles deep underground to deal with a scourge lord of unknown strength?
If we had just started the expedition and a fight broke out on the surface, it would take a month or so to go back and forth, and by the time we hurried back, there would probably not be any soup left.
However, less than half a month after he refused, Li Qing received a surprising piece of news. The Mage City-State built a large portal on the side of the dwarf tribe, and an army of about 5,000 dwarves passed through the portal to support the Mage City-State.
There are large portals that can be used to easily mobilize generals at any time, and more troops can be assembled in a short period of time.
After receiving the news, Li Qing immediately became interested and asked Xie Zhu to ask the Mage City-State whether they would sell the portal construction technology.
Yes, he likes this thing.
A portal is different from teleportation. Teleportation has a duration limit and a strength limit for the force that can be used to travel through it.
The portal is a fixed portal that can continuously teleport troops as long as it is maintained by a mage.
With this, it will be more convenient to open branch mines in the future.
After only one day of waiting, there was a response from the Mage City-State that the portal technology could be sold, but the condition remained that Li Qing needed to send a troop to provide support.
The Mage City-State even produced a trading list, which contained technologies that could be traded, with prices clearly marked, and the trade could take place as long as the conditions were met.
Li Qing brought a list. When he turned to the most valuable page on the list and saw the exchangeable technology, he looked up in shock and asked:
"There is such an exchange? Is it true?"
The envoys of the Mage City State were several middle-aged and elderly mages wearing old robes. The leader looked to be in his sixties or seventies. He smiled and said:
"Your Excellency is as surprised as your fellow tribesmen, this is indeed true."
"Same race?"
Li Qing immediately realized something and asked:
"Do you trade with many like me?"
The old wizard nodded:
"Yes, many outsiders like you are very interested in our magic and want to trade with us."
Li Qing frowned and asked:
"Has anyone made the exchange now?"
The old wizard shook his head and said:
"No, this technology is stored in special spell cards. We don't have the ability to make more now. Some of them are completely out of technology. The existing ones are all left by ancient predecessors. There is only one. The floating city manufacturing technology you mentioned only has one ancient legacy, and it has not been replaced yet."
Li Qing lowered his head. At the top of the exchange list was a complete set of floating city manufacturing technology, including all supporting technologies and technologies related to magic runes and magic circles.
The redemption condition given by the Mage City-State is to kill the Scourge Lord who is attacking the three human city-states.
The difficulty of this exchange is simply explosive.
But because of this, none of the twenty or so war lord apprentices lurking near the underground human city-state has been able to accomplish this feat and obtain the blueprints of the floating city.
Li Qing also said that this was too difficult. Even if he put all his efforts into it now, he might not succeed.
Pursing his lips, he looked at the other exchange items below.
A complete set of magic rune systems, including hundreds of basic runes, nearly a hundred rare runes, and a dozen super rare runes.
A set of magic rune construction designs, including all one-star basic runes, several two-star runes, two three-star runes, and one one-star rune set.
More than a dozen war magics, including three second-level war magics and one third-level war magic.
Further down, there is all kinds of mage-related knowledge, including some that Li Qing already has, such as the design drawings of the mage tower, iron golems, gargoyles, rock golems, and so on.
From this we can see that this wizard city-state still has a lot of good things on hand.
It can also be seen from this that this plane should have had an extremely splendid magical civilization heritage before it was broken in ancient times. However, as the plane was broken, the heritage was gradually lost, it became increasingly difficult for mages to advance, resources became increasingly scarce, and many powerful heritages could not be reproduced.
For example, a powerful weapon like the floating city cannot be built even if the entire plane is hollowed out due to the fragments of this plane.
Not to mention the strength requirements, there are no legendary wizards in this plane, so it is impossible to cut down the peaks and build the foundation.
The basic resource requirements alone cannot be met by this plane.
Various rare magic materials, mithril demanded in tons, various magic gems, various enchanting materials, and manually drawn magic arrays throughout the floating city all require magic conducting materials, mithril, and some more precious magic materials.
In addition, a floating city also needs a core main wizard tower and a bunch of subsidiary wizard towers.
Coupled with various powerful vassal modules, whether it is offense, defense, energy system, etc., they are all very complicated and expensive.
The cost of building an advanced floating city for human civilization is at least over one trillion.
This is just the cost of materials, not to mention the labor cost. It requires at least a legendary wizard to preside over the production, as well as a group of great wizards above the extraordinary level to collaborate on the production, not to mention cutting off the mountain and then carving it into the desired shape.
It is time-consuming, costly and labor-intensive.
Building a floating city from scratch often takes hundreds of years , at least hundreds of years to complete.
And once we can successfully build a floating city, it would be awesome.
The floating city is the wizard's strongest base, and is equivalent to a general void fortress. It can directly cross the void to expedition to other planes.
This thing combined with the War Lord's divine domain is a perfect match.
Fixing the gate of the divine domain on the floating city is equivalent to opening up a huge independent space above the floating city, which can be completely self-sufficient. The energy pool inside the divine domain can also charge the floating city, which is equivalent to the floating city having two energy pools supplying energy.
The power of the floating city is directly related to the energy provided by the energy core. The more energy the energy core provides, the more weapons and defense modules can be configured, and the stronger the combat power will naturally be.
To give a simple example, a legendary , with sufficient preparation, can challenge a true god who has just been deified and owns a kingdom of God.
Of course, Li Qing would definitely not build a floating city now, that is not realistic.
But that didn't stop him from getting the design drawings of the floating city first and starting preparations in advance.
So, at this time Li Qing was already somewhat moved.
In addition, the Mage Federation has opened a large portal in the Dwarf Tribe, which makes travel and information transmission very convenient, and this provides room for maneuver.
"Then, can I exchange it for a manufacturing blueprint for the Gargoyle Golem first?"
Gargoyle is also a kind of stone golem. Its individual hard power is not as strong as that of rock golem, but this thing can fly. It is an extremely rare flying golem and its strategic role is stronger than that of stone golem.
The three representatives of the Mage City-State bowed their heads and discussed for a while. The leading old mage nodded and said:
"If you are willing to provide 50 million kilograms of food, you can exchange this gargoyle statue for it."
"Well, I'll have to wait another two or three months before I have that much extra food."
The old wizard nodded:
"We can wait."
Li Qing shrugged and said nothing else.
The annual output of the first floor of the Divine Domain Farm is 60 million square kilometers. Now the first and third floors of the Divine Domain Farm have been developed into farmland, but the third floor has just been planted and is not yet mature, so there is not enough grain storage.
It will be enough to wait for another two or three months for it to mature and be harvested.
Of course, if we really wait for two or three months, the war with the Lord of Scourge will probably be over, and by then we may not need to exchange food.
Next, they simply signed an agreement. If Li Qing could kill the Lord of the Scourge and wipe out the undead underground that threatened the human city-state, he could obtain a complete set of floating city technology provided by the human city-state.
After seeing off the representatives of the Mage City-State, Li Qing gathered his men and began to prepare for the upcoming battle.
