Chapter 316 Giant Psionic Drilling Machine

Near side of the Moon, Mare Tranquillitatis.

This is a flat basin twelve kilometers away from the core transformation center of the [Great Sun Spirit Drawing Array]. Without the refraction of the atmosphere, against the dark backdrop of the universe, the stars appear like shattered diamonds embedded in black velvet, cold and clear.

Old Liu and Chen Shi, along with three hundred other spacefaring monks belonging to the engineering development sequence, stood in formation at the edge of the designated coordinate point, wearing full-coverage [Xuanwu-II Type Sun Chaser] armor.

They looked up at the deep sky.

"Orbital entry point confirmed. Jinghai guidance group beacon array activated, requesting airdrop." Old Liu's voice rang out in the encrypted channel, devoid of any emotional fluctuation, like the cold operation of a machine.

"Received. Modules one through six of 'Titan' have detached from the high-orbit tethering zone and entered their final landing orbit." The Earth-based control room's reply was equally crisp and efficient.

Above the sky, six fireballs, each with a ghostly blue plasma tail, brutally sliced ​​through the tranquil Milky Way.

In the early blueprint design, the Academy of Sciences once dreamed of building a single giant mining machine weighing 20,000 tons. However, this plan was rejected by the court and the heavy industry department in the first round of demonstration - sending a 20,000-ton single structure into the sky would not only be impossible to carry, but the physical inertia during landing would also directly tear the machine itself in two.

The true aesthetics of heavy industry lie in modular assembly, breaking down the whole into parts.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Six massive airdrop pods, each half a meter thick in armor, slammed into the basalt of the Tranquil Sea one after another, thanks to the extreme cushioning provided by the anti-gravity runes. The muffled seismic waves traveled along the lunar crust, causing the shock absorbers of the armored armor of the three hundred engineering cultivators to groan under the strain.

The hatch exploded open. Three hundred steel cultivators, like a swarm of soldier ants returning to their nest, swiftly pounced on the scattered giant modules.

"Squads one through three are responsible for the formation engagement of the main chassis and load-bearing tracks!"

"Squads four to seven, immediately set up the temporary gantry crane! Prepare to erect the core of the Spirit Gathering Internal Combustion Engine!"

"Sword Cultivator Task Force, seal off the work area, use sword energy to shred the surrounding obstructing meteorites, and clear the assembly area!"

Old Liu's commands were frantically weaving through the communication channel.

The true grand infrastructure of the cultivation world is displayed on this harsh celestial body, where the temperature alternates rapidly between absolute vacuum and below -100 degrees Celsius.

Without the need for traditional heavy-duty cranes, the hydraulic servo motor of the [Xuanwu-II] armor, combined with the profound true essence of Foundation Establishment cultivators, turns each cultivator into a miniature crane.

"True energy output at 80%! Anti-gravity array overload! Lift!"

Chen Shi and twelve engineering cultivators used their armored mechanical arms to firmly grip a high-strength titanium alloy tracked chassis weighing over a hundred tons. With the combined support of true energy and array formations, this behemoth slowly levitated in the low-gravity environment and was pushed with extreme precision into the slots of the main frame.

"The chassis physical clips are in place! Array Master, weld it shut!"

Ten high-level array masters rushed forward with heavy psionic welding torches. Plasma fire at tens of thousands of degrees silently spewed out in the vacuum, completely fusing the molecular structure of the two special alloys together, and casually etching the [Diamond Array Pattern] on the surface for reinforcement.

This was an extremely brutal battle of physical and mental exhaustion.

The continuous, high-intensity assembly work drained their sweat again and again through the armor's internal circulation system. Relying on the spiritual mist drawn from the Great Sun Spiritual Draining Array, the engineering cultivators absorbed and assembled the armor, painstakingly piecing together a terrifying steel behemoth on this desolate lunar plain.

Titan-class first-generation modular psionic drill.

It is 65 meters long and 22 meters wide, and its net weight after assembly is 5,200 tons.

Its entire body is forged from dark black iron and aerospace-grade titanium steel. The outer layer lacks any streamlined aesthetic; instead, it features obtuse-angled geometric surfaces designed to withstand deep-space radiation and the pressure of rock strata. Supporting its movement are four special tracks, each four meters wide, with the [Shrinking Earth Array] and [Lightness Array] deeply imprinted on the track plates to disperse the terrifying pressure of its five thousand tons of dead weight on the lunar soil.

At the very front of the vehicle is the core of this drilling rig—a composite shield drill bit with a diameter of eight meters.

"All modules are assembled. Armor integrity is 100%. Hydraulic joint resistance test passed."

"Requesting power connection."

The data stream from Titan's master AI scrolled across everyone's goggles.

Old Liu glanced into the distance, in the direction of the [Great Sun Spirit Guiding Array]: "Guidance team, establish the array's microwave transmission channel!"

No physical pipelines that are easily worn away by rocks were used. At the rear of the drilling rig, a four-meter-diameter "energy receiving array" slowly rose, pointing into the distance like a radar.

Om-!

Twelve kilometers away, the conversion furnace in the center of the Jinghai Plain emitted a deep resonance.

The next second, a beam of pure, dark blue high-energy light, composed of highly concentrated psionic energy, crossed a vacuum of twelve kilometers and struck the energy receiving array of the Titan Drill with extreme precision!

This beam of psionic energy did not attenuate in the vacuum. At the moment of contact, the vacuum frequency band around the energy receiving array seemed to be forcibly twisted by this high-level energy, creating visible ripples in the void.

"Power connection successful. Main engine, ignition."

There was no earth-shattering engine roar. But Chen Shi clearly felt a strong physical resonance in his jaw and bones. The massive [Spirit Gathering Internal Combustion Engine] inside the Titan Drilling Machine began to surge at a terrifying speed, the huge mechanical gears meshing tightly under the lubrication of true essence.

This 5,000-ton steel behemoth has come back to life.

The eight-meter-diameter composite drill bit in front of us slowly began to rotate amidst silent, violent tremors.

"Parameter alignment. Target coordinates: No. 1 ore ridge of the Jinghai deep ilmenite vein. Begin diving operations." Old Liu coldly and firmly issued the start-up order.

The main tracks of the Titan drilling rig roared to life, crushing the rock formation towards the designated node with overwhelming force.

The basalt layers on the lunar surface, due to the lack of tectonic plate movement and water vapor erosion over billions of years, have a density and physical hardness far exceeding that of ordinary rocks on Earth. In the past space age, even with the most advanced tungsten carbide drill bits, drilling to a depth of a few meters often resulted in drill bit wear, jamming, or even breakage.

However, in the face of industrialized cultivation, this kind of pure physical hardness seems extremely powerless.

This eight-meter-diameter drill bit is not only inlaid with deep-sea cold iron and star rock fragments, but also has the most powerful [Armor-Piercing Array Pattern] and [Rock-Shattering Array Pattern] personally branded on the edge of each cutting tooth by a grandmaster swordsman from the military.

The moment the drill bit touched the lunar basalt, the array patterns were fully activated by the immense stellar energy.

That's no longer just simple friction cutting.

Countless highly concentrated Gengjin sword energies, mixed with the plasma spiritual fire spewed from the center of the drill bit, formed a visible white high-frequency oscillating blade on the surface of the drill bit.

The incredibly hard lunar rock, upon contact with this sword-qi vibration blade, didn't even have time to shatter. Its molecular bonds were severed at the microscopic level, instantly vaporizing, liquefying, or even pulverizing into micron-sized powder!

It was like a red-hot steel pipe being plunged into a block of cold butter without any resistance.

The drill bit plunged into the earth at a terrifying speed of fifteen meters per hour without any hindrance.

"The diving attitude is stable. The cutting torque is normal."

"High-density star rock zone encountered ahead... [Armor-piercing array] Full power overload... Cut through complete."

As the massive drilling rig slowly sank into the lunar crust, the 60-meter-long rock-discharge conveyor belt behind it began to operate frantically. To prevent debris from scattering in the low-gravity environment, small gravity anchoring patterns were installed on both sides of the conveyor belt.

Boom, boom.

Large chunks of deep lunar soil, along with dark-colored raw ilmenite ore that has undergone preliminary physical crushing, are continuously ejected from the depths of the earth by conveyor belts.

Earth, Kyoto Joint Control Room.

Wang Mingyuan stared at the giant drilling rig on the monitor screen, which was munching away at the lunar crust like a hot knife through butter, and the black mine that was rapidly rising behind it.

"The physical drilling data has been verified."

The chief scientist of the Academy of Sciences looked at the computing power jade slip in his hand, his voice trembling with extreme shock. "Professor Wang, the Titan Drill's drill bit has a diameter of eight meters and a cutting area of ​​about fifty square meters. At a diving speed of fifteen meters per hour, it can cut out about seven hundred and fifty cubic meters of raw ore per hour."

"The moon's deep, high-density, mineral-bearing rock layers have an extremely high density. After deducting the waste residue..."

"This 5,000-ton mining machine can provide us with nearly 30,000 tons of high-quality raw ore every day!"

The entire joint control room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

High-quality raw ore with a daily output of 30,000 tons.

This is a number that could bring any heavy industry on Earth to its knees. At this moment, whether they were meticulous scientists or once high-ranking cultivators, looking at that steel behemoth that had burrowed into the ground, they all felt an indescribable sense of dread.

This is not cultivation of immortality; it is the ruthless solidification of the most prized core of cultivation civilization—the killing and ruthlessness—into the industrial cutting force of an assembly line!

Wang Mingyuan stared at the black mine that was constantly rising on the screen, his fingers tapping lightly on the metal edge of the control panel.

"Digging it out is just the first step in a long journey."

His voice was extremely calm, yet it revealed an ambition to devour the world: "To build the array of 100,000 [Great Sun Spirit-Attracting Array] panels, we need a massive amount of special metals as the framework; to begin the next stage of space teleportation array research, we need a massive amount of helium-3 as the fusion primer. The era of relying on Earth for life support must come to an end."

Wang Mingyuan turned around and faced all the commanders present:

"The third phase of the Taiyin Outpost Phase I Project: on-site smelting and fuel extraction has officially commenced."

"Order the engineering team at Guanghan Base to immediately move that prefabricated 'Taiyi Bagua Furnace' to the side of Mine No. 1. Fill it with the excavated ore."

"If we lack titanium steel plates, we'll smelt them on the moon; if we lack high-energy fuel, we'll extract it from lunar soil!"

Wang Mingyuan's instructions were rapidly transmitted via the quantum frequency band to the Jinghai Plain, 380,000 kilometers away.

On the moon, looking at the mountains of ore and the drilling rigs emitting silent vibrations from underground, Lao Liu pressed the full-band broadcast button:

"Attention all formations. Cease escort and alert duties, switch to heavy-load transport mode. Formations five through ten, begin constructing the Taiyi Furnace foundation. Prepare to take over Mine No. 1."

The three hundred heavily armored engineering monks immediately turned around, their heavy mechanical boots leaving neat tracks on the lunar surface as they walked towards the mountain of black ore.

The Titan-class drilling rig continued to emit terrifying tremors underground, relying on the "relay array stakes" it had driven along the way to continuously receive psionic beams from afar. Like a tireless, greedy beast, it frantically devoured the moon.