Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 344 Investigation of An Wuping

Soon Chen Ming turned his attention to the motherships that were stained with the blood of Zerg units.

The gray-green blood was the mark left by the Zerg fleet as it desperately crossed the battleship's shield.

The Zerg blood, like everything else controlled by Chen Ming, can provide him with vision as long as Chen Ming wants, and can also mark the location of the mothership.

He could even use the Zerg blood to send the afterglow core, which originally belonged to the mechanical structure, over.

It's self-evident what this means.

But so far, Zerg blood has only infected four motherships.

It was only a little less than half of the number of motherships that the Mechanical Clan had speculated to have.

If he did things too early, Chen Ming felt that he might lose some things that he could have obtained.

Moreover, he did not notice the foreign mechanical fleet assistance that was supposed to appear.

The three battleships that the Mechanicals had used to ambush him and the other fleets that followed behind did not seem like external reinforcements.

It might be because he acted too quickly and the Zerg fleet was too large, which resulted in the Mechanical reinforcements not rushing out when they realized something was wrong.

Well, since the foreign mechanical race has not been exposed yet, there is really no need for Chen Ming to be so anxious to control those motherships.

It goes without saying which one is more valuable, four ships or ten ships.

He continued to observe in secret.

After just finishing the sweep of the Zerg fleet.

For some reason, the four motherships started their jump engines again and dispersed to four different galaxies within the mechanical star field.

Chen Ming speculated that they were probably going for maintenance.

Although they did not suffer much damage, they must have consumed a large amount of war supplies after destroying hundreds of thousands of Zerg cruisers, so maintenance was a necessary procedure.

But the specific situation was somewhat different from what Chen Ming had thought before.

They did not jump again or enter hyperspace to return to the giant dock.

Instead, they each directly found a planet in the galaxy they jumped to and landed on it.

Through the Zerg blood remaining on the mothership, Chen Ming could see that the planets where the motherships landed had one thing in common, that is, there were large-scale mechanical buildings that looked very similar.

It looks like a factory.

The mothership landed in the center of the factory-like buildings on the surface of the planet.

There are large empty areas inside the similar colonial complexes on these different planets.

Just enough to accommodate the mother ship docking.

And just after the mothership landed.

Immediately, logistical mechanical people came from all directions to repair the hull and replenish supplies.

It looks like these places are maintenance centers designed specifically for the mothership, and they also serve as factories when the mothership does not need maintenance.

There should be many places like this throughout the star field, so that motherships can land and be repaired at any time, instead of having to return to a giant dock for repairs.

Chen Ming felt it was a bit of a pity.

He would be happy to hear it if he went straight back to the giant dock.

But it’s okay, at least such a place is still valuable. After all, it is a factory that can be used to repair battleships, and there should be some technologies related to battleships preserved there.

After learning the cruiser technology some time ago, Chen Ming has begun to move towards a higher level.

So the technology in this factory is also valuable to him.

After confirming that there were no devices detecting psychic fluctuations near the factory, Chen Ming used psychic power to send some iron atoms to the mothership.

These iron atoms were completely undetected.

Some of them moved easily into the underground.

And when these iron atoms reached the deepest part of the underground, Chen Ming continued to use his spiritual power to send several insect eggs there as well.

The queen insect immediately took over the eggs and began a new round of hatching and reproduction.

Since the flesh and blood of the Zerg can send iron atoms to the battleship under the influence of Chen Ming's psychic power.

Then metal can also deliver the flesh and blood of the Zerg here under the same conditions.

This operation, which avoided the eyes of all the mechanical race, would soon bring him unimaginable advantages that the mechanical race could not imagine.

The remaining iron atoms are scattered throughout different corners of the maintenance center.

Chen Ming planned to look for an opportunity to take control of the maintenance center and the entire colony that it belonged to.

However, just as he did not intend to directly control the four motherships, he also did not intend to control the mechanical units in the facility.

The main reason is that the mechanical units he controls will become abnormal sub-individuals and can be easily discovered by the mechanical race.

Anyway, the iron atoms are now on the planet and the eggs are developing underground.

Unless the mechanical race has the ability to examine every inch of land and every atom of an entire planet, it is impossible to erase his influence.

If the influence cannot be eliminated, the mothership and the colony of this mechanical race will sooner or later become his.

Moreover, for Chen Ming, the importance of the mechanical mothership is quite high.

Since it is unlikely that he will come into contact with the two giant docks of the Mechanical Clan in a short period of time.

Then controlling these maintenance centers can be considered a replacement. By controlling the maintenance centers, there will be more opportunities to come into contact with more mechanical warships and more mechanical motherships.

If you hold on, you will gain more.

Of course, the prerequisite is that the mother ship needs to enter the port for maintenance. If the mother ship does not enter the port for maintenance, Chen Ming will not be able to influence it through the maintenance center.

The Mechanical Clan's mothership is different from the Empire's afterglow's main battleship.

The mechanical family's mothership also serves as a mobile factory to a certain extent.

It can use factories to manufacture war supplies and various mechanical families, and can also use factories for self-repair.

As long as the supplies are sufficient, the mechanical mothership can operate outside for a long time without having to return to port frequently to replenish combat readiness.

Unless they run out of supplies or suffer serious damage that is difficult to repair themselves, they generally will not return to the giant dock or maintenance center.

The reason why four motherships landed this time was because Chen Ming's hundreds of thousands of Zerg cruisers were almost running out of supplies after being attacked by the Mechanical Clan.

Therefore, Chen Ming had to create more opportunities to force the mothership to take action.

Not to mention the problem of material consumption, just the increase in the number of battles between the mothership and the Zerg will increase the probability that Chen Ming will be able to influence the mothership through the Zerg's blood tissue.

The method to force the mothership to take action is simple: create a situation where only the mothership can solve the problem.

Chen Ming opened the star map on the console at the highest point in front of him.

Compared to the last time he looked at the star map, there were some more things on the star map in front of him. Some marks marked out the important land surfaces that Bai Quan had told him about before.

Among them, the ten most obvious signs are the mechanical clan's psychic signal generator, two giant docks, and seven star gates.

These ten galaxies are the most important information for the mechanical race.

If you want to force the mechanical mothership to take action, it would be easiest to cause trouble in these places.

And it just so happens that these places, whether it is the star gate or the giant dock, or the generator that releases psychic signals for the mechanical race, are all things that Chen Ming thinks are very valuable.

Especially the stargates and giant docks.

The former is of great significance to Chen Ming's colony.

After all, the location where Chen Ming’s colony will be built in the future is absolutely extremely far away from the empire, and the existence of the star gate can shorten this distance.

And as long as both ends of the star gate are controlled in his hands, the distance can be shortened even in one direction.

Although the star gate has problems such as high energy consumption.

But for Chen Ming, energy is the least important issue.

With the existence of the Zerg, he can use planets as fuel and transform them into energy crystals.

Make up for the shortcomings of using star gates.

As long as he is given the opportunity to access the star gate, he can directly take away the entire star gate.

As for the latter's giant shipyard, as a production base for battleships, its value is beyond reproach.

After the Zerg's cruiser fleet of more than 100,000 chose to fight to the death against the combined forces of the three battleships, the biggest result in the end was that the rest of the lower-level fleets following the three battleships were completely destroyed, while only a small part of the armor of the three battleships was damaged.

Chen Ming's desire for the battleship has turned into a desire to obtain it.

Not to mention the giant shipyard capable of producing battleships.

Although he had a blueprint, the blueprint he obtained was from an early year and the technology was relatively backward.

What's more, the cost of making is not as low as the cost of robbing.

Why build it if you can steal it?
However, all these important places on the star map are within the mechanical clan’s star domain.

Although Chen Ming can rely on his psychic power to conduct a jump raid into the interior of the mechanical star field, he can also use his psychic power to retreat if he is being chased.

But if he fails to achieve his goal in the first raid and his target is discovered by the Mechanic, then the Mechanic may focus its forces on protecting those important landmarks, which will make subsequent operations more troublesome.

Therefore, Chen Ming’s target for the time being can only be placed on those galaxies close to the border of the Mechanical Clan star domain.

Use attacking these places as a means to attract the attention of the mother ship.

Anyway, the mothership is also one of his targets.

As long as his actions can attract the mothership, then it will not be in vain. He just needs to keep doing it slowly.

Chen Ming's eyes scanned the star map in front of him.

Soon he chose a star region on the edge of the mechanical star field, which was also located in a small nebula.

This star region located in the nebula is rich in mineral resources.

Not only are there various asteroid mineral resources in space, but most of the planets in this nebula also have rich mineral distributions on the surface and underground.

These galaxies are important sources of resources for the mechanical race, and can also be said to be an important guarantee for the mechanical race's logistics.

At the same time, those mineral veins can also become an important source of energy for the Zerg.

After determining the goal of the next action.

Chen Ming turned his gaze towards the Queen of Insects.

The Queen of Worms is still on the hive planet, which is about to begin developing the resources of the planet's core.

And this insect nest planet has now shrunk significantly.

A Zerg fleet, even larger than before, is quietly waiting in orbit.

It feels like it won’t be long before the entire planet disappears into the universe.

It does not matter.

Anyway, there are countless planets in the universe that have no value for development and they are useless just sitting there.

For the Zerg, these planets that have no development value are treasure troves of endless energy that cannot be touched by anyone or anything.

Just when Chen Ming ordered the Zerg fleet to begin the next move.

Something suddenly happened to An Wuping.

"It's really here."

Chen Ming said secretly. He did not rush to let the Zerg fleet set off again, but let the Queen start to reorganize the fleet.

Now that something has happened to An Wuping, there is no need to stay on this insect nest planet that has been mostly mined.

The Queen needs to go somewhere else, to find the next... or the next hundred hive planets.

Perhaps it is near the mechanical clan’s star field, or perhaps it is near the place Chen Ming has opened up.

After assigning the task to the Queen of Insects.

Chen Ming transferred his main consciousness to An Wuping, who had lived peacefully for a period of time.

An Wuping had just opened the door of his own room under the control of his partial consciousness.

Standing outside the door were Liang Fei and Li Wei.

Both of them had serious expressions and seemed to be worried about something.

Chen Ming felt that the person he was specifically worried about was An Wuping.

After all, although his main consciousness has not been here, part of his consciousness has been paying attention to this side, controlling An Wuping to do what An Wuping should do.

For example, when Chen Ming's original body and other prostheses are working hard, they can travel around and enjoy delicious food to relieve mental stress.

And build new relationships with colleagues and friends.

The people who get along best with An Wuping are, of course, Liang Fei and Li Wei, with whom he had a life-and-death friendship on Yunluo Star.

In particular, Li Wei and An Wuping have a close relationship. After all, the reason why Li Wei was able to leave Yunluo Star alive was because An Wuping used his spiritual power to save his life.

So now, after Chen Ming took the initiative to leak information related to the Zerg and An Wuping got into trouble, the two of them behaved like this.

However, Chen Ming still pretended to know nothing and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Someone is looking for you."

"whats the matter?"

"Not sure. It seems that the minister of an independent regulatory department of our government was sent here by someone very high up. Please be careful."

"Row."

Chen Minggang agreed.

His terminal received a call.

It was Liang Fei's boss, who could also be considered An Wuping's current boss, who called and asked Chen Ming to go to a place in the government office building.

Chen Ming nodded to the two people in front of him and set off immediately.

Soon, he arrived at the government building where he had been working for some time, and came to a room in a corner that he had never been to in all his time working there.

There was a man in a suit wearing sunglasses at the door. When he saw Chen Ming coming, he nodded and made way for Chen Ming to enter.

Chen Ming took a closer look at him and felt that this man seemed to be from the empire.

But he said nothing and kept his hand on the door handle.

His movements suddenly froze.

Because he could feel that the door handle in front of him, the entire door, and even the wall next to the door, the entire room was made of silent alloy.

Is it necessary to be so serious?

Chen Ming frowned, but still pushed open the door of the closed room.

There was only a table, two chairs and a lamp embedded in the wall above.

There is also a person sitting in a chair.

There is nothing else.

"Hello, An Wuping, we should have met a few times during this period, right?"

The person sitting there waved at Chen Ming, motioning Chen Ming to sit down opposite him.

Chen Ming nodded after sitting down and said, "Yes, Minister Hou from the National Regulatory Department, do you want to talk to me about something?"

Minister Hou pushed a few photos to An Wuping and said, "Take a look at these first."

Chen Ming took the photos and found that those were exactly the photos that Chen Ming had given to Bai Quan before.

I can only say that the news spreads a little too fast.

And the Empire's response was quite fast.

Chen Ming thought so and made An Wuping look expressionless.

"Did you have any cooperation with Chen Ming? Were those Zerg biological spaceships made by you two together?"

Minister Hou said earnestly, "It's not that you can't cooperate privately, but matters related to the Zerg involve all aspects."

"The Thorn Zerg used to be an enemy of the Empire, but now they have evolved to be able to compete with the Empire and have even begun to expand. So we must figure it out and have countermeasures."

"Personally, based on what you did before, I absolutely trust that you are a good person."

"But the Thorns are not, and the Empire needs to know more"

An Wuping sighed and asked, "What do you think now?"

Hearing the word "you", Minister Hou immediately changed his original attitude of pretending to be stupid and asked decisively and quickly: "Do you know Chen Ming?"

As he asked this, his eyes were fixed on An Wuping's face, trying to use his sudden attack to learn something from An Wuping.

Of course Chen Ming would not let him down, and he immediately performed a show that caused some changes in An Wuping's micro-expressions.

These changes told Minister Hou that An Wuping did know Chen Ming.

Therefore, even if An Wuping is silent now, it does not affect Minister Hou's understanding of some information that he believes to be correct.

Minister Hou continued, "As far as we know, Chen Ming has been using his spiritual power to expand abroad, and he started a long time ago."

"And that insect nest planet is on the route he pioneered, and it's not too far from the empire. As long as we go out and explore it a little, we can easily find it, but..."

"He concealed the existence of this planet and even went out of his way to hide it."

"Even when he was directing the fleet of the Fourteenth Legion, to which he currently belongs, he deliberately avoided it."

"Chen Ming is a psychic who is related to machinery and spacecraft. We can't imagine why he helped the Zerg hide the existence of this planet..."

"But we want to know the reason why he helped you hide it."

"Your psychic powers will definitely allow you to thrive on that planet, and a powerful psychic who is stranded outside and unable to return to the empire is also worthy of Chen Ming's attention."

An Wuping suddenly lowered his head to avoid letting Minister Hou see the expression on his face.

However, the image of his two hands crossing each other under the table was quickly sent to Minister Hou's eyes through the surveillance camera.

Minister Hou still said nothing, but continued to narrate his speculation: "Chen Ming definitely discovered this insect nest planet on his way to development, and discovered you, or you discovered him, and the two of you had a friendly exchange and reached a cooperation."

"He provided you with a spaceship, allowing the Zerg to evolve the same capabilities as the spaceship, and helped you return to the Empire."

"And you agreed to some of his requests or conditions."

"Joining a psychic society should be one of them."

Ah this...

Chen Ming was feeling a little nervous. It seemed that An Wuping's decisive agreement to join the Psychic Society had increased the suspicion of the people of the Empire about the relationship between An Wuping and himself.

But this is also a good thing. At least in this way, the possibility that An Wuping is Chen Ming is further reduced.

At least for now, no one in the empire except the boss should doubt this.

Who would have thought that Chen Ming, who had a close relationship with machines, would suddenly have a relationship with creatures like the Zerg.

An Wuping continued to lower his head and said: "What exactly do you want to say?"

Minister Hou's tone became serious, but considering An Wuping's performance, he subconsciously softened his tone and said, "I just want to confirm something. Is the Thorn Zerg a threat to the empire?"

"..."

An Wuping was silent for a while, and then responded, "No, at least not mine."

"Oh? The ones you control?"

"Tsk."

An Wuping raised his head and said, "Let me start from the beginning. I concealed some information last time."

"I am not just a worker on that hive planet. I have actually established a spiritual connection with the queen of that hive planet."

"I lived like a duck in water on that planet, but it is not a planet for humans after all."

Minister Hou saw that An Wuping was quite cooperative, so he immediately relaxed his tone and asked softly, "So what I just said..."

"Almost. But my bug had some conflicts with Chen Ming at the beginning. We got to know each other after the conflict. It can be said that we got to know each other through fighting."

"After he knew my ability, he gave me a spaceship and asked me to use the Zerg to transform into biological spaceships for him. Then he gave me the opportunity to escape from that planet and return to the Empire."

"Ask whatever else you want to ask. I'll tell you everything I can."

Minister Hou was very satisfied with An Wuping's attitude and immediately asked a key question: "Can Chen Ming's psychic power control biological spacecraft?"

"Chen Ming originally asked me to build a biological spacecraft for this purpose, but it didn't work."

"The biological spaceship only looks like a spaceship. It is actually a giant Thorn Zerg, so Chen Ming cannot control it."

"All the Zerg on that planet, all the Zerg biological spacecraft, only obey the orders of the Zerg Queen who is connected to my mental power."

"Wait a moment."

Minister Hou was holding a terminal and recording what An Wuping said. When he heard about the mental link, he immediately stopped and asked, "You have a mental link with the Queen Insect, so are you okay now?"

"It's okay. Chen Ming and I have done many experiments in cooperation before. We have also tested the temporary disconnection of the mental connection. Basically, I don't have a big impression. But I don't know what the Queen of Insects will do if it takes too long."

As a member of the ruling party of the empire, Minister Hou happened to know some of the conflicts between Chen Ming and the Fifth Legion.

After hearing that An Wuping and Chen Ming had conducted many collaborative experiments, I suddenly understood why Chen Ming had conflicts with the Fifth Legion.

Chen Ming must have played a role in An Wuping's return to the empire.

And An Wuping, a former commoner, had such a great hatred for Zuo Jing, and was able to accurately find Zuo Jing's location after returning to the empire. Chen Ming must have contributed to it.

The relationship between the two is definitely more than just partners, at least it is something much closer.

Therefore, when Chen Ming learned that what the Fifth Legion did might lead to An Wuping's death, he would of course be angry.

Connecting the circumstances before and after, Minister Hou became even more convinced that the facts were exactly what he was thinking.

Although Chen Ming himself is considered a dangerous element, what is dangerous is his psychic power, not him as a person.

Chen Ming's personality has always been very good in the eyes of most people.

Except for the last incident with the 14th Legion, which was a bit too aggressive.

But once they understand the reasons, most people will realize that the biggest problem lies with the Legion itself.

Although An Wuping is extremely violent and even had a mild bout of mania some time ago, he is actually a pretty good person.

Therefore, Minister Hou thought it was normal that these two people did not get to know each other after fighting.

The doubts he had always had about the relationship between An Wuping and Chen Ming were gradually disappearing as he asked An Wuping about it.

Of course, even if he disappears, he will never forget the questions that need to be asked.

(End of this chapter)