Chapter 227: Never Has the Weak Overcome the Strong in the World (13)

Bang~~~

The car door closed gently, shutting out all the world's clamor.

The interior became unusually tranquil.

This is the latest electric car built for Duke Weilan by Weilan's First Car Factory in conjunction with the major weapons research bureaus, at great cost.

Luosen personally drove, while Naya sat in the passenger seat.

Both used the Legendary Transformation Technique to disguise themselves, appearing as an ordinary middle-aged couple.

The car's exterior also used Transformation Technique to conceal it, making it look exactly like an ordinary civilian electric car.

"Is this a Black Stone Car?" Naya exclaimed in surprise.

Luosen shook his head, pressed the accelerator, and drove onto a newly opened tempered clay avenue.

In the passenger seat, Naya carefully felt the vehicle Luosen was showing her.

First, its safety is very high, with all kinds of shielding and defensive formations complete, and the body is extremely sturdy, not at all inferior to her Black Stone Car.

Second, its ride comfort is astonishing, far surpassing her Black Stone Car.

The thick leather seat beneath her was not only soft and sturdy, but also like a wide embrace enveloping her, and the car's constant-temperature airflow formation completely shut out the summer heat.

Even with a great increase in speed, the interior remained just as quiet as before, and she could smell no trace of burning Black Stone.

That aside, as long as one is willing to spend money, Nawate's Black Stone Car can also achieve that.

What shocked Naya most was that, although the car's acceleration was extremely rapid and the rapidly changing scenery outside the windows fully demonstrated this, she hardly felt any jolt.

At one moment, she even experienced sensory distortion, feeling that the moving scenery outside the window did not truly exist but was a magical illusion.

The sensitivity of a legendary mage let her quickly find the cause.

"It is a legendary crystal-driven force energy technique!"

She discovered that whenever the car accelerated, a completely opposite force energy acted on her, almost perfectly canceling the discomfort of acceleration.

Likewise, the same phenomenon occurred when turning or braking suddenly.

She directly asked: "How can the adjustment speed of the force energy technique be so fast?"

Luosen smiled slightly: "It is a brand-new technique achievement called the Force Energy Vector Control Technique. It is a military technology, a system technique formed by combining multiple sub-techniques; the basic principle is not difficult, but the structure is very complex."

I personally think there's no need to install it on the car, but those research mages, eager to show off their results to me, insisted on installing it.

This technology comes from the Aircraft Research Bureau.

It is very powerful; currently it is widely used on high-speed blast unmanned aircraft, able to greatly stabilize the flight attitude of high-speed aircraft, and installing it on a car is truly using a cleaver to kill a chicken.

He paused, then explained: "This is the masterpiece of our Weilan First Car Factory, academically called the Black Oil Lightning Car. It has not yet been widely promoted, but the technology is already mature."

The car's driving force comes directly from a lightning arcane device, ultimately derived from an oil extracted from Black Stone, which we call 'Black Stone Extracted Light Oil', shortened to Black Oil. Of course, it is actually not black but transparent and slightly yellow.

Because it is a liquid, it can be conveyed via pipelines into the combustion chamber, avoiding the hassle of manually adding Black Stone.

At the same time, the products of burning the oil are all gases, so there is no need to repeatedly clean the combustion chamber.

Finally, the car body is formed in one piece using a large-scale engineering-specific Transformation Technique, which as much as possible avoids loosening of structural joints from long-term use, thereby increasing the body's sturdiness and to the greatest extent avoiding various annoying noises.

As they spoke, Luosen stomped the accelerator, and the electric car surged violently, exceeding 100 kilometers per hour in just a few seconds.

Even at such high speed, the cabin remained very quiet, and the body remained stable.

This is both due to the electric car's excellent quality and because the road surface is extremely wide and flat.

Anyone with eyes can see that this transportation quality leads Nawate by several eras! What shocked Naya even more was that they were not the only vehicles on the road.

In fact, there are quite a few vehicles on the road, and their speeds are not slow either, but large and small vehicles each follow their own lanes, orderly and well-organized.

"Is the whole of Weilan like this?"

Luosen shook his head: "Of course not."

This road was just opened, stretching 150 kilometers in length. Most of the vehicles on it are public assets, and the drivers have undergone rigorous training.

Only a very small number of vehicles are private property, accounting for less than one percent.

But everything is rapidly improving.

Soon, roads like this wide and flat will spread throughout Weilan, also greatly boosting the efficiency of cargo transport between regions.

This is obvious; Naya nodded in agreement.

After driving for about an hour, Luosen turned the steering wheel, entering from the tempered clay avenue onto another equally flat and wide side road.

"Where are we going now?"

"There is a river ahead; a new-style shipyard has recently opened on its bank, capable of quickly producing various medium and small vessels."

"Fast?"

Naya somewhat did not understand the meaning of 'fast'.

Not long after, the car arrived at a high ground by the river.

Luosen parked the car at a roadside open space, then used a 'Radiant Eye' to display the shipyard below the high ground inside the car.

"Look at this pillar covered in runes. This is the shipyard's most core manufacturing arcane device, called the 'Pillar of Creation'."

"You see, a large amount of shipbuilding raw materials are sent to the slipway beneath the Pillar of Creation; these materials weigh about 100 tons in total."

"Under the joint control of several engineering mages, these materials can be fused and transformed in one go, forming the main hull of a small vessel."

"If materials are sufficient, such a shipyard can build fifteen inland cargo ships per day, each with a cargo capacity exceeding 200 tons."

"The Arcane Transmutation Formation has two applications: one is food creation, the other is transformation."

"The Pillar of Creation is an application of large-scale transformation."

"The one before us is a civilian shipyard, and its Pillar of Creation is far from the largest."

"The largest is at Weilan's First Shipyard; it can transform 5,000 tons of material at once, directly producing a warship."

"Weilan's First Shipyard currently has two Pillars of Creation built, with plans to construct twenty."

By then, with full horsepower, a 5,000‑ton Black Stone warship can be launched in one day, and in a month you could produce 30 of them—faster than even making dumplings.

Naya watched the various artisans and mages bustling around the Pillar of Creation, and also watched the swiftly forming small cargo ship, feeling greatly shocked.

So, this car is also transformed in this way?

Similar, this car uses a high-speed precision transformation platform, much smaller in scale than the Pillar of Creation, but its advantage is speed and precision.

In short, we have developed many magical devices based on the same principle to suit various application fields.

He paused, then briefly revealed: 'Similar technology, we also use it in various weapon manufacturing.'

Naya's heart gave a slight jolt.

She also understands the Arcane Conversion Array.

Nawate also has many applications, but it is far inferior to Weilan's use, and its application is not widespread.

Because she sees clearly, the Arcane Conversion Array is merely the basic principle, and various ingenious ideas in subsequent engineering applications are also very important.

A single ingenious idea is merely a small improvement, but when countless ingenious ideas coalesce, a qualitative leap emerges.

For example, at the private shipyard before her, Naya discovered that the workers' mutual cooperation was extremely tacit, each worker responsible only for a small part of the work.

The advantage of this is that each worker is very familiar with his own task, resulting not only in extremely high work efficiency but also very stable product quality.

And such ingenious ideas happen to be exactly what Nawate lacks most.

Because Nawate invests too many resources into fighting demons, it consequently lacks sufficient resources to encourage innovation.

The populace also constantly lives in a state of vigilance against demons, their spirits constantly tense, naturally resulting in far fewer sparks of inspiration.

All these factors combined cause Nawate to be far ahead in demon defense, yet it has an obvious shortcoming in the creation of societal wealth.

All these thoughts turned into a long sigh: 'The De Rui Tan plane is fortunate, able to long avoid being probed by demons.'

Luosen nodded in agreement: 'But this fortune will not last forever; in the foreseeable future, the incursion of demonic power should definitely increase dramatically.'

Naya felt relieved to hear this, she raised her head and gazed at Luosen.

'Mage Luosen, I'm very glad you have such a sense of crisis, but if a powerful demon like the Lord of Nether Shadow were to descend upon the Natural Alliance, how would you respond?'

After all, here there is no Nawate Blood Soul Legion, no universal conscription vigilance, and at the same time, experience in fighting demons is extremely scarce.

Relying solely on a legendary mage is far from being a match for the six legendary great demons.

Luosen, however, is not at all worried about encountering the Lord of Nether Shadow; he smiled and said: 'Mage Naya, don't forget, my Weilan has sufficient mana crystals.'

Naya startled, then lightly patted her forehead: 'Oh~ I actually forgot such a good thing.'

Her worries instantly dissipated by half, for the legendary crystal is indeed an artifact that can turn the tide! With this, Nawate will have many mages possessing legendary power, and the Weilan duke before her will surely store vast amounts of legendary magical power.

With his superb combat skills, as long as he has sufficient legendary power backing him, ordinary demons truly are not his match.

Therefore, the emergence of the legendary crystal is a turning point for mortals in their struggle against void beings.

Her mood brightened considerably, she smiled and asked: 'Then, Duke Weilan, what other good things do you have to show me?'

Luosen gave a slight smile: 'You're not worried about the Radiant Empire's aircraft, are you? Then let me show you ours.'

As he spoke, he raised his hand and wiped inside the vehicle; light and shadow shifted, revealing a background of blue sky and white clouds.

'This is the sky above our heads, at an altitude of about eight kilometers.'

'Please wait a moment, about five minutes.'

As he spoke, Luosen raised his hand and touched a rune on the vehicle, saying to the rune: 'Execute Plan One.'

Then Naya heard a concise and solemn reply: 'Received.'

Obviously, this is Weilan's unique communication artifact.

Nawate also has artifacts with similar functions; Naya didn't delve into the principle, so she didn't find it surprising.

She waited patiently.

After the fourth minute, a cluster of light suddenly streaked across the image at extreme speed.

With a 'swish~~' it flashed by, vaguely feeling like a silver-white aircraft, but its speed was so fast that its exact appearance could not be made out.

'What is that? I couldn't see it at all!'

Luosen immediately opened the door and stepped out: 'Come, look at the sky.'

Naya followed him out of the car, and saw a faint white line on the sky rapidly extending toward the distant firmament.

At first glance it didn't seem fast, but considering the other party's altitude of eight kilometers, and after a rough calculation based on the angle difference, Naya discovered that this thing's speed had reached an astonishing degree.

It was a speed unimaginable for Nawate's airships! The white line in the sky appeared for about thirty seconds, then vanished without a trace.

She instinctively asked: 'Where did it go?'

'It's still in the sky, but the invisibility spell has been activated.'

As he said this, Luosen's face showed a hint of ostentatious pride.

'Madam, perhaps the Radiant Empire once led far ahead in invisibility spells, but our Weilan's invisibility spell is not inferior either.'

'I believe that in certain aspects of invisibility performance, it may not be worse than the Radiant Empire's, and could even surpass it.'

Naya did not believe it.

She said seriously: 'The Radiant Empire has over six hundred million people and has developed for many years; Weilan has only thirty million, just starting out, and its total investment in this field is likely a hundred times less.'

'What do you rely on to surpass?'

Luosen immediately felt this was a key question.

Not only is Naya asking, but also the faction behind her is asking.

They are asking themselves: 'What do we rely on to abandon cooperation with the Radiant Empire and instead support your Weilan?'

He knew he must properly explain his advantages.

Thus, Luosen also put aside his casual demeanor and gave a serious answer with a solemn expression.

'Mage Naya, what you said is not wrong, but it does not fully reflect the current actual situation.'

Seeing Luosen change from his earlier affectionate laxity, Naya immediately returned to work mode: 'Mage Luosen, then please point out the actual situation.'

Luosen began to explain them one by one.

First, our Weilan has just begun, but our starting point is not far behind the Radiant Empire.

The reason is that we once captured a batch of advanced Radiant arcane devices from the Radiant Empire on the battlefield, and I, relying on the keen insight of my Legendary realm, studied the Radiant Power in detail. In some aspects of understanding the Radiant Power, I even surpassed the Radiant Lord.

And this is the true starting point of our Invisibility Spell. Obviously, this starting point is not much inferior to that of the Radiant Empire.

Naya nodded in agreement: "You're right."

Luosen continued: "Second, although Weilan has only thirty million people, the entire Natural Alliance totals close to six hundred million. In terms of population scale, the Natural Alliance has no obvious gap with the Radiant Empire."

Naya felt something was off and immediately called out: "Wait, Weilan is yours, but the Natural Alliance is not. You can't count the Natural Alliance as yours."

Luosen smiled: "It's true the Natural Alliance isn't mine, but the flow of talent, trade, and markets within the Natural Alliance are completely open to Weilan."

"Aside from Aaron posing a slight hindrance, other kingdoms and duchies have virtually no barriers."

"Because of my personal reputation in the Natural Alliance, top talents from across the Natural Alliance are flooding into Weilan."

"Mage Naya, we all know that in developing high-end arcane arts, ten thousand farmers cannot match a single mage with advanced arcane education."

"And a thousand mages with advanced education cannot match a single mage possessing extraordinary talent."

"The truth is, in terms of the number of top-tier mage talents, our Weilan is already not far behind the Radiant Empire, perhaps reaching half of theirs."

Naya nodded slowly: "I haven't conducted a detailed investigation on this, but given your status and arcane achievements, it's certainly enough to attract many mages to seek refuge; I'll tentatively accept your claim as fine."

"But even if that were true, the numbers would still be off by half. Fifty versus a hundred, you'd still have no chance."

Luosen then extended his third finger: "Finally, it's the institutional advantage of my Weilan."

"The Radiant Empire is an empire, with an emperor and nobility, and the resources controlled by the emperor and nobility are enormous."

"Although reforms have been ongoing these years, the effort has been modest. Resources used for personal enjoyment still account for over seventy percent of national resources."

"Our Weilan's system is not greatly different from that of Nawate, and you surely know the advantages of such a system."

"I can also tell you clearly that Weilan can allocate over ninety percent of national resources to developing strength."

Naya blinked: "Duke, your Swan Castle certainly isn't cheap."

Luosen immediately replied: "Swan Castle isn't just mine; it's the administrative center of all Weilan. I personally occupy less than one-fifth of its area."

"Even if Swan Castle were solely mine, it would still pale in comparison to the Radiant Lord's extravagance."

"The Radiant Empire's Bu Ye Gong—just the area of its horse grounds—is three times the size of my Swan Castle, let alone the numerous noble interest groups domestically."

Naya immediately said: "But Weilan is too small; even if you devote ninety percent of resources to development while the Radiant Empire only uses thirty percent, the actual resources invested are still far greater than yours."

Luosen immediately replied: "Weilan is currently raking in money from the entire Natural Alliance; of course we still fall far short of the Radiant Empire, but the gap isn't enormous."

"At the same time, I have developed some financial means of extracting wealth, allowing future money to be advanced for present use."

"The net result is that while the Radiant Empire can spend one gold coin on developing arcane arts, Weilan can spend two, or even three, gold coins on the same endeavor."

"Of course, Weilan's overall strength is certainly still inferior to the Radiant Empire, but in certain fields we possess unique advantages. These advantages enable us to defend ourselves and even defeat opponents in some areas."

"In truth, there has never been a genuine case of the weak overcoming the strong; it is merely that the wise use their schemes to create local strength, striking precisely at the strong opponent's soft spot, thereby achieving an apparent weak-overcoming-strong."

"But essentially, it is still the strong overcoming the weak."

"Luosen is currently devoting substantial resources to developing high-speed unmanned bombers."

"He also believes this will enable him to win any near‑shore defense battle."

"Naya has indeed conducted some investigations into Weilan and knows that Luosen's statements are not greatly problematic."

"Seeing Luosen speak with such confidence, she also felt greatly encouraged."

"Because voices within Nawate supporting the Radiant Empire are very loud, even many in her faction think there's no need to oppose Duke Weilan and Sasmar."

"But Luosen's record of consecutively slaying demons is truly dazzling, and the arcane achievements he shared are also astonishing, which convinced some people to give him a try and support Luosen."

"But it's merely a trial; if the situation turns unfavorable, they will immediately abandon it."

"Therefore, her journey across planes actually bears great pressure."

"But now, her resolve to support Luosen has become completely firm."

"Seeing this young duke basking in sunlight, full of vigor, she couldn't help but flash a teasing smile: "Grand Duke, if someone unaware heard your words, they'd surely think you've gone mad.""

"Luosen naturally could hear Naya's joke and feel that she had been thoroughly convinced by him, and he felt quite pleased."

"He smiled: "My little sweetheart, the Sage says that valuable information in the world must come from solid investigation, not from idle gossip, and you have perfectly practiced this.""

"You remember the Sage's words quite clearly."

"I remember the words of truly great ones clearly, for their utterances contain the world's most precious knowledge."

"Having said that, he turned and returned to the carriage: "Come on, I'll take you to see our newly opened flour processing plant.""

"It is an honor."

"(End of chapter)"