Chapter 2068: The Gloomy Earth Sea

Because a weak point in the ley lines had been discovered, the desire for simple sightseeing faded for both Niya and Xia Duo; upon returning to the Floating City, Niya controlled it as it wandered around the Basin Lake in a somewhat distracted manner.

Xia Duo, meanwhile, retrieved the Ley Line Detector that he had already improved many times, preparing to take this opportunity to thoroughly survey this land in Nan Jing.

Besides weak points in the ley lines, certain mineral deposits were also key targets for exploration.

However, for the time being, Xia Duo had only completed the feedback characteristic models for detecting Mithril Mine, Silver Mine, and Iron Mine, because previously the Savile Territory only had iron and silver mines, and the Mithril Mine model was established with the help of mineral vein data from the Leisen Territory, after which a Mithril Mine was discovered in his own territory.

To this day, the Task Management Office of the Tower of Time still has a geological exploration task posted!

It is just that the nature of the Tower of Time today is more like a School, a research institute, and a factory; the members of the Tower of Time do not have many opportunities to go out for exploration.

Now that they have the Floating City, it can be considered as fulfilling the wish Xia Duo has always had: "driving the Floating City to go prospecting."

"It's fortunate that I prepared many Ley Line Detectors for the Mages of the Tower of Time to complete tasks; otherwise, they really might not have been able to withstand the tossing of the Floating City!"

Connecting the Ley Line Detector, originally intended for individual use, to the Floating City Mythallar would not in itself cause any adverse effects to the Ley Line Detector, but the excitation frequency of the Mythallar and that of a single Spellcaster are definitely not on the same order of magnitude.

For any Magic Item, the higher the excitation frequency, the greater the impact on its lifespan.

Especially since Xia Duo, in order to enhance the detection effect, combined them into an array similar to a phased-array radar, which increased its excitation frequency by another notch.

As the Floating City flew at a low altitude, having only surveyed the area from the Basin Lake to the Wolf God Mountain, the Ley Line Detectors began to break down one after another, which left Xia Duo very dissatisfied, yet he was helpless to stop it.

If one wants efficiency, one must pay a price; if done by manual exploration, not to mention whether there would be omissions, the wear and tear on the ground-based detectors might not necessarily be lighter than it is now.

It is just that the wear and tear that would have occurred over a longer period is now concentrated into a very short time.

However, although this period caused great wear and tear on the ground-based detectors, the results were extremely gratifying; just in the area from the Basin Lake to the Wolf God Mountain, two silver mines were discovered, one of which also contained a significant amount of associated Mithril.

As well as an unknown mineral vein, but judging from the fact that it also had associated Mithril, it should be a Copper Mine if nothing goes wrong.

Such discoveries made Xia Duo look forward to the subsequent exploration results even more, but the number of Ley Line Detectors was already insufficient and needed to be replenished before continuing.

"Niya, you fly around and look, I'm going to prepare some things."

After saying this, Xia Duo left the Control Room; he was going to craft a set of Ley Line Detectors specifically for the Floating City.

To withstand high-frequency excitation while also having a relatively long service life, there are basically only two choices: one is to use High-Grade Mithril as the core component of the detector, and the other is to use special materials like Daiwei String, which is nearly a Magic Energy superconductor.

Xia Duo undoubtedly chose the latter; Mithril has extremely wide uses, but the uses for Daiwei String material are relatively limited, so when Daiwei String material can be used, he prefers to use Daiwei String.

Previously it was for the Portal, and now it is for the Ley Line Detector.

Since the design of the Ley Line Detector was already mature, now that he was using Daiwei String material to craft it, Xia Duo only needed to consider the stability of the Daiwei String material itself, and there was nothing else to worry about.

About an hour later, Xia Duo obtained two massive Ley Line Detectors, each integrated with a Ley Line Detection Array; using the two in rotation should last for a very long time.

After connecting them to the Mythallar, Xia Duo returned to the Control Room; during this time, Niya had not driven the Floating City to fly anywhere else, remaining at the spot where Xia Duo had previously stopped.

Seeing Xia Duo now, Niya immediately asked about the detectors: "Are they all ready?"

"Yes, they are all ready. Weak points in the ley lines were also discovered near the territory before, so now I will thoroughly comb through them. I hope there won't be any new discoveries; I hope to discover ten more Mithril Mines!"

Of course, wishes are beautiful, but reality is cruel.

Past the Wolf God Mountain to the north, all the way to the Daxia Territory, from east to west, Xia Duo only discovered one small silver mine near where he had previously found a Mithril Mine, and nothing else was found.

It seemed that all his previous luck had been used up.

Of course, no new weak points in the ley lines were discovered either.

Next, Xia Duo and Niya continued north to survey the vast area between the Daxia Territory and the Savile Territory, but this time there were no new discoveries either.

The only weak point in the ley lines was the one discovered earlier, near the Quarry on the east side of the Savile Territory, but Xia Duo had already implemented security measures there, so there was no need to do anything extra this time.

By the time the entire Nan Jing had been surveyed, they had only discovered one additional silver mine, one iron mine, and one unknown mineral vein suspected to be copper.

Although there is still significant room for improvement in the Ley Line Detectors, judging from the current exploration results, Nan Jing does not seem to be a treasure land rich in resources.

"To think I originally held such high expectations for the Green Pearl Forest! I didn't expect that it was already the peak at that time! The entire Nan Jing is nothing more than this!"

After sighing, Xia Duo gradually calmed his mindset; the original intention of this impromptu full-territory survey was to find potential weak points in the ley lines, and now, including the Basin Lake, there were only two, which is a result that can be considered barely satisfactory.

Those discovered mines can be considered extra gains.

Thinking about it this way, Xia Duo felt that such a result was not hard to accept.

After the survey ended, Niya continued to practice operating the Floating City, while Xia Duo returned to the Research Zone, supervising the Mages of the Tower of Time in infrastructure construction while organizing the design ideas for the Creation Machine in his consciousness.

Moving forward, whether for Plane Crystal or for conducting research related to Planes, a large number of Semi-planes will be needed; if he were to continue manufacturing them manually as before—one a day, perhaps slightly faster once skilled—Xia Duo really does not have that kind of patience.

He must create a Creation Machine that automatically manufactures Semi-planes, allowing precious human labor to be used only on the most critical creative work.

Currently, the difficulty of the Creation Machine does not lie in the design itself, but in the fact that the Spells involved are extremely complex, and unlike the Mythallar where the machine is built first and then just started, the Creation Machine requires precise control over the shaping of the Plane Root; because there are so many steps, even the slightest omission will be magnified to near infinity by the end.

This is actually an engineering problem.

Recently, in his spare time, Xia Duo has been considering whether there is some way to bypass the precision problem; even if the resulting Semi-planes are all deformed, it wouldn't matter, as long as they can exist stably for a period of time.

But after much thought, no matter what shortcut he adopts, he cannot bypass the precision problem, or rather, the precision problem is inherently one of the key elements of magical manufacturing.

"No matter what, let's first build a test machine, and then slowly improve it!"