Dragon Raja: Dragon Slaying Begins with System Hosting

Page 146

Meanwhile, in the lab, Lu Mingfei looked at Old Tang, who appeared extremely exhausted, and said, "Take a couple of days off. I feel like you're going to die of exhaustion if you keep going like this. These two days of rest won't count towards the time limit."

"It's not about staying up late or anything, it's mainly because I've been having nightmares lately," Old Tang shook his head.

He's only a few years old, in the prime of his life. He doesn't not sleep most of the time; he just spends most of his time working.

What truly affected his mental state was that little brat's voice, calling him "brother." Sometimes he really felt like he was encountering a ghost... Before, it would only appear once every year or two or three years, but now the little brat's voice was appearing at an exponential frequency.

It's happened three times in the past month or so, and it's getting clearer and clearer. He can even see the little kid's figure now... It's terrifying, like watching a horror movie, a combination of Eastern and Western elements...

He pondered and reviewed his recent actions, wondering if this little brat knew he was about to make a fortune and was therefore clinging to him?

After all, the biggest change that has happened to him during this period is that he went from the United States to Japan, and then came to China. After arriving in China, he was forced to learn alchemy in order to survive. And then, he is about to make a fortune!

He had already reached the late stages of developing the alchemical matrix applicable to the human body. Boss Lu had given him a three-month schedule, but thanks to his relentless efforts and the increasing ease with which he worked, the timeframe was essentially halved.

In just a few days, it will be ready for human use! His five million dollar prize should be arriving soon! At this exciting moment, how could he bear to stop and take a break?

"Nightmares?" Lu Mingfei thought for a moment and agreed with this statement.

Mental strain isn't as obvious as physical torture, but it still causes considerable harm. However, if the impact isn't significant, given Old Tang's alchemical skills, it shouldn't affect the progress of the plan at all.

Besides, it's only a few days left. Once the alchemical matrix inside the human body is connected, the project will be finished. A few more days shouldn't be a problem, right? At worst, we can give Lao Tang some paid leave to rest properly.

Old Tang, hang in there a little longer, dawn is just around the corner!

It's only a few days, so nothing major should happen.

They continued to finalize the advanced human alchemy matrix technology in the laboratory. After immersing himself in the work on the alchemy matrix, Old Tang had little time to think about the little brat who called him "brother" anymore, and instead devoted all his energy to his work.

He was getting more and more adept at using the alchemical matrix. To be precise, he wasn't learning or exploring; sometimes it was more like a forgotten instinct was being gradually awakened, as if he had been doing this kind of work in his past life, and he was doing it with ease.

"The parallel switch here needs to be fitted with a check valve, and a compensation route also needs to be designed. We can't let a small damage lead to a large-scale failure. The compensation mechanism must be strong enough to allow a person to run away..." Lu Mingfei looked at the alchemy matrix blueprints and recalled his physical condition during his last battle with Erii.

In a battle of this intensity, the human body will definitely be injured. If there is only one single-line alchemy matrix operating, and the body is injured, causing that line to be broken and resulting in the paralysis of the entire chanting matrix, then things will get really messy.

The system believes that no matter how sturdy it is, a backup plan should be prepared. Even if the backup plan has the same powerful effect as the main plan, it should at least be able to support the human body to escape from the battlefield.

Old Tang frowned at Lu Mingfei's request, stroked his chin thoughtfully, and said, "It's a bit troublesome..."

To grant the human body immense power, a vast amount of sophisticated alchemical matrices are required. The current system almost covers the entire human body, including flesh and bones, and now another compensatory system needs to be developed…

With his hand on the blueprint, Old Tang pondered for a while before saying, "To create a full-body compensation mechanism, the requirements for human strength are extremely high. Even the bodies of top-tier hybrids can't withstand it unless they can transform into dragons and further strengthen their bodies... However, if we only focus on escaping, modifying the alchemy matrix in the official plan will have the same effect."

Old Tang's performance was like that of a top student solving a problem. After reading the question, he immediately understood the key points and then started to solve it directly.

Seeing that Lao Tang was starting to revise the plan, Lu Mingfei waved and told his men to bring up another person to put the plan into practice.

"Try it first."

……

"Baidi City..."

Xia Mi walked through the ancient city at the gateway to the mountain city, her eyes casually glancing left and right, as if searching for some unknown details, or perhaps for some unknown and amazing treasure!

Two tall men and two tall women followed behind her, saying nothing, but their imposing stature and occasional flashes of ferocity... they were undoubtedly bodyguards.

Such a bodyguard was quite fitting for Xia Mi. She was such a beautiful girl, and with her elegant attire, she looked exactly like a young lady from a wealthy family.

After looking around, Xia Mi turned to her four subordinates and asked, "It seems there's nothing left. Did you search the area where the fragments were found? Did you discover anything else?"

One of his men shook his head: "We've searched every inch of that area with metal detectors and other equipment. There's really nothing five meters underground. We're expanding the search area."

“If that thing came from somewhere else, over a distance of tens or hundreds of kilometers, how long would it take you to expand the search?” Xia Mi shook her head slightly. The exhaustive search was thorough but somewhat time-consuming. “Let’s expand the city range for the artifact search.”

"Okay." The subordinate nodded.

Looking at the surging, rolling waters of the Yangtze River, Xia Mi pondered for a moment and then asked, "Have any strange artifacts been unearthed from the Yangtze River recently?"

What can't be found on the ground might be in the water? She was in Chengdu just two days ago, and even now, rumors of Zhang Xianzhong's Minjiang River treasure still circulate there. Of course, in the rumors, Zhang Xianzhong didn't intentionally put his treasure into the river; rather, it was sunk while being transferred by boat…

Who says the Dragon King won't face a dead end? So far, the human-hybrid race has never truly killed a Dragon King, but it has successfully brought down several Dragon Kings and tripped them up a few times.

Regarding her question, her subordinate said, "The cultural relics unearthed from the Yangtze River are being screened, but progress is slow because we don't have enough manpower and there are many items, mostly small antiques and tribal artifacts, which takes up too much of our energy."

The cradles of Chinese civilization throughout history have mostly been located along rivers, a phenomenon that is common to all living things – the search for water.

Ancient human societies and tribes were mostly located near water. The Yangtze River system has many tributaries, ranking among the world's largest river systems. Abundant water resources have nurtured countless lives, resulting in numerous unearthed and aquatic artifacts. However, most of these artifacts are unrelated to the dragon race, but they still need to be investigated.

"We've almost reached the limit of the excavation area. Continuing with this carpet search isn't cost-effective. We can cut some manpower and send most of the staff to investigate the city's antique center and the unearthed artifacts," Xia Mi said.

"Roger that!"

After instructing his subordinates on this matter, Xia Mi continued to gaze at the surging river. "Now, from Baidi City and Kuimen, further downstream is... the Three Gorges of Badong."

"By the way, it seems that Gongsun Shu's territory has expanded forward?"

Gongsun Shu and Liu Xiu both became emperors in the same year. Although Liu Xiu was a great contributor to the elimination of Wang Mang and later unified the country, it did not mean that he had inherited all the territory of the Western Han Dynasty when he became emperor. After becoming emperor, he spent a lot of time suppressing the various separatist forces in the country.

These separatist forces could not have fixed territories. They may have expanded outwards in the early or middle stages, but Liu Xiu eventually drove them back, leading to their demise.

She made a call to Lu Mingfei: "Hello? Boss Lu? Have you gotten the results of the analysis on that bronze fragment? I'm at a loss, and we're short-handed. There's just too much to handle, and everyone is wishing they had three heads and six arms."

"I came today, but I forgot to tell you. Wait a minute." Lu Mingfei stopped what he was doing, took out his phone, and checked the messages sent by the testing agency.

After taking a few glances, he said to Xia Mi, "After the testing agency conducted a set of tests, they believe that it was most likely buried in water at first. The farmland where this bronze fragment was found should be the secondary crime scene. As for the place where it was originally buried, it was at least in a very damp place such as a swamp."

The corrosion marks on the bronze fragments show signs of corrosion left by a water environment, but the condition is not too severe. In addition, the site of discovery was farmland that was not extremely damp, so the testing experts made some corresponding inferences.

As for carbon-14 dating... aside from errors caused by forgery and unexpected changes, it's only really useful for detecting objects over extremely long periods. While carbon-14 dating of modern artifacts isn't entirely ineffective, it can easily overstate the age of an item several times over, with errors measured in centuries or even millennia. It can only detect vague information from prehistoric times; obtaining highly detailed production dates is practically impossible.

"Buried in water? I see."

Xia Mi hung up the phone and turned to Shouxia, saying, "Let's take a boat down to the Three Gorges and see what the Yangtze River is like in this area."

"Ok."

Xia Mi ordered his men to find a boat.

Finding a boat on the Yangtze River is relatively easy, especially if you have the money. I managed to contact a decent longboat within two hours.

After boarding the ship, Xia Mi said to the captain, "The ship doesn't need to go so fast, go slower, I want to see the scenery of the Yangtze River."

"Good boss!"

The captain, his skin tanned to a bronze color, grinned broadly, revealing his white teeth, to greet God.

After Xia Mi sat down, she casually resumed her information-gathering work, asking, "Boatman, where are you from?"

The boat captain immediately patted his chest and assured him, "I'm a local! A native of this area, born and raised on the banks of the Yangtze River. I know the water conditions of the Yangtze very well, and the boat will sail very steadily."

"Hey locals, have any antiques been salvaged from the Yangtze River recently?" Xia Mi asked.

"Although I don't fish or retrieve much from the water, there are quite a few people in the village who do fish, and they retrieve a lot of things from the water. If you're talking about antiques, they're basically all worthless."

The boat captain said, "Either it's damaged or it's very recent, maybe not even as old as my dad. To be honest, if you're looking to salvage antiques and try your luck, you might as well go to the Three Gorges Dam. The Yangtze River has a huge current, and a lot of things have been washed away. After the Three Gorges Dam was built, the river was blocked up there, accumulating a thick layer of silt. There must be a lot of good stuff in that silt."

Xia Mi nodded slightly upon hearing this. "Yes, the Three Gorges Dam has closed the river!"

Chapter 177 The Pseudo-Path to Godhood

"If you can think of it, then others probably can too, right? Has anyone ever salvaged anything from that area in front of the Three Gorges?" Xia Mi asked with great interest.

"Retrieving things from the bottom of the water isn't that easy." The boat captain shook his head: "We can think of it and tell you, boss, but it's just a matter of talking. If we really want to retrieve it, we need money, manpower, and tools."

“That’s true.” Xia Mi nodded gently, deciding to stop discussing the matter and instead go see what the situation was like before making a decision. She sat on the stool and hummed a primary school poem: “Departing from Baidi City amidst colorful clouds at dawn, I return to Jiangling a thousand miles away in a single day…”

In this rainy season, the weather was surprisingly kind today, with no rain in the area. The boat sailed downstream with the Yangtze River, and even though the captain wasn't pushing the engine to its full potential, it didn't go very slowly.

The water area began to expand.

The boat captain said, "Before the Three Gorges Dam was built, the water level here wasn't this high. After the dam was built, the water level rose, turning the area into a swamp..."

The construction of dams will inevitably affect the original ecological environment in the vicinity and change the natural water conditions.

Xia Mi glanced at the Three Gorges Dam in the distance, then told the boatman to stop the boat. She looked around several times in the middle of the water, then told the boatman to bring the boat to shore. After jumping off the boat and going ashore, she looked at the river and then bent down to grab a handful of mud from the riverbank and smelled it.

Her actions, to put it nicely, were adorable, quirky, and unpredictable; to put it bluntly, they seemed somewhat furtive...

"There's something..."

Xia Mi scattered the soil in her hands on the ground, clapped her hands, and slowly washed her hands with the river water by the river. After getting back on the boat, she said to her subordinates, "Send a team of people over here and ask the fishermen at the docks in the nearby villages if they have salvaged anything."

"Okay." The subordinate nodded.

Xia Mi crossed her arms, stepped on the boat, and looked down at the deck. She felt that something was wrong around here, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

Since she has people and money under her command, she should send someone to check if there's anything really wrong.

"Let's go back," she said to the boat captain.

Although her intuition told her that there was something wrong nearby, the area was so vast and surrounded by so many docks and villages that it was impossible for her and her five people to find a needle in a haystack. The efficiency was far too low. This kind of work should be handed over to her incompetent subordinates. They should be put to good use. Otherwise, when would they be used if not now?

We can't really expect this rabble to be able to fight the Dragon King, can we?

Back in the mountain city, Xia Mi learned that there were problems with the Three Gorges Dam area, but before she could even settle in, the people she had sent out for only two days brought her back half a pottery jar with intricate patterns on it.

This isn't from the waters around the Three Gorges Dam; it's slightly different from Xia Mi's initial impression. This thing appeared a little above the Three Gorges Dam.

However, due to the Three Gorges Dam's water storage, the villagers who originally lived there were also submerged and moved away, merging with several other villages. Although they left their original villages, they also took everything they owned with them.

This half-pottery jar was used by the villagers to hold chicken feed. According to the villagers, they found it in the original field. Since the half-pottery jar still had some capacity, they picked it up and put it in the field to feed their newly raised chicks.

When Xia Mi's men asked if they had retrieved any antique-looking pottery jars or metal objects from the water, the farmer said they hadn't retrieved any, but they had picked them up.

So, half of the earthenware pot was taken out of the chicken coop, washed clean, and exchanged for one hundred yuan.

“This pattern…” Xia Mi was silent for a while, then took a picture and called Lu Mingfei, saying, “Boss Lu, I’ve made a new discovery. I need a salvage ship and some divers. When can you arrange for them to be ready?”

Meanwhile, the system on the other side zoomed in on the picture Xia Mi sent. It could roughly tell from the patterns on the pottery jar that it was an old artifact, but it didn't know what kind of artifact it was.

It asked, "What is this?"

Xia Mi said, "Look at the pattern. Doesn't it have a feel of the Alchemy Matrix? I guess it's a replica of the Alchemy Matrix pattern. But the person who made this pottery jar didn't know what the Alchemy Matrix pattern was actually used for, so they just embellished it to a certain extent..."

Goodness, Lu Mingfei was truly amazed when he heard her say that, because she was absolutely right. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the patterns had been altered and beautified by the maker, which had destroyed the original alchemical matrix texture... Xia Mi may not be very skilled in alchemy, but her eye for detail is spot on!

Could she be secretly rolling in money behind my back?

"I'll arrange for a salvage boat and personnel to go there immediately. I won't be going myself; I'm currently unable to go," the system replied.

Xia Mi said, "I know, Boss Lu, you're a very busy person, you have so many things to do..."

After hanging up the phone, the system called Su Enxi again, asking her to help contact a salvage ship, since Lu Mingfei's own connections weren't that extensive.

Then, it turned its gaze back to Chu Zihang in front of it.