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Chapter 682: Raising Pigs
🕑 Added 2023-10-04 06:38:53 +0000 UTCTransformers Begin : Table of Content/Chapter List
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The fallen spaceship had no knowledge of how long it had slept at the bottom of the lake, its surface covered in a coral-like layer of stone.
Sun Cheng approached this spaceship with extreme caution, recognizing the potential it held to alter the balance of power within his faction.
Two beams of light emanated from his eyes as he first analyzed the stony layer. Once he confirmed that breaking it would not significantly impact the spaceship beneath, he gingerly extended his hand and began a methodical, even-paced pounding.
"Bang, bang, bang!"
The muffled thuds echoed beneath the lake for quite some time before finally subsiding. Sun Cheng managed to peel away a substantial portion of the stony layer that had encased the spaceship's surface, sending it flying into the distance.
His ten fingers, now resembling transparent liquid metal tendrils, extended and adhered to the spaceship's outer shell.
Rows of azure data flickered in Sun Cheng's eyes as he prepared to use the unique abilities of the cybertronians to forcefully assess the current state of the spaceship.
Perhaps due to damage to the spaceship's Central Main Control AI or its failure to awaken, his intrusion went unopposed, as though nothing unusual had happened.
The entire process took a good thirty to forty minutes, during which Accel, who stood guard nearby, watched as Sun Cheng slowly exhaled a long string of bubbles.
"Is it this badly damaged?"
His ten fingers quickly returned to their original state, and Sun Cheng furrowed his brow as he gazed at the spaceship before him, a sense of resignation washing over him.
"No wonder that Pathfinders abandoned it!"
This spaceship was essentially beyond repair. It seemed to have suffered an attack from space pirates or had the misfortune of colliding with a meteorite. In any case, a massive breach, over twenty meters in radius, marred one side of the spaceship. Submerged in the lake for who knows how many years, inundated with water and silt, it was nearly completely beyond salvage, with no repairable value left.
Sun Cheng finally understood why the Pathfinders had given up on this precious spaceship.
However, even though the spaceship was no longer worth repairing, it still held significant treasures.
Neither he nor Base Two possessed the experience or technology to manufacture large interstellar spaceships. This damaged spaceship could still yield some structural and materials data, saving them a considerable amount of time and helping them avoid many pitfalls.
Furthermore, due to the spaceship's unique design, not all its internal systems were completely destroyed.
According to Sun Cheng's recent scans, the Core area of the spaceship still had some functional equipment due to its sealed nature.
Among these, what excited him the most was the spaceship's Central Main Control AI.
The universe was a far more unpredictable and perilous place than the open sea. Even the mighty Pathfinders had countless elders who had disappeared silently into the boundless cosmos, leaving no trace, not even their names.
The universe was vast and filled with various dangers and changes.
To navigate the stars, one needed not only a spaceship but also the corresponding star charts to avoid hazardous celestial bodies like asteroid belts, neutron stars, black holes, and wormholes.
Central Main Control AI, as its name implied, was the core control unit of a spaceship.
The cybertron civilization excelled at creating these units, which possessed extraordinary intelligence. In Skyfire's memory, the Central Main Control AI on a cybertronian spaceship was often more intelligent than most scientists, with computational capabilities far surpassing theirs. These AI systems completely controlled large spaceships, allowing them to navigate automatically and avoid the majority of risks during their journeys.
Within the Central Main Control AI of each spaceship lay the most precise data about that particular vessel.
This was why Sun Cheng didn't consider it a stroke of luck that the spaceship was damaged beyond repair. As long as the Central Main Control AI was intact, building a new spaceship was entirely feasible.
With this in mind, he immediately issued orders, "Accel, have the engineers withdraw the robots. This spaceship is severely damaged and beyond repair."
Accel paused for a moment, hesitating before he asked, "Master, does that mean we haven't been working in vain all this time?"
"How could it be in vain?" replied the master. "Just the gold we've retrieved from this lake, known as the Sacred Lake by the Ancient Maya, is already a substantial gain. Besides, while the spaceship may not be worth salvaging, there are still some valuable items inside it. I'll personally go and retrieve them later."
Perhaps due to the presence of Decepticon Pathfinders who had once descended here, Lake Titicaca was revered as the Sacred Lake by the nearby Ancient Maya.
Ancient South America was rich in minerals, especially copper, gold, and silver mines were widespread.
When Base Two excavated the underground tomb built for that Decepticon Pathfinders by the Ancient Maya, the various gold burial items alone weighed over eight tons, as later calculations revealed.
This sacred lake had been sacrificed by the First Generation of Ancient Maya, and countless gold artifacts had been thrown into its waters.
Sun Cheng had already obtained firsthand information from the central AI of Base Two during his journey here. In the past few months, merely the various gold items cleared from the lakebed mud by cleaning robots exceeded twelve tons in weight.
Gold was seen as commonplace by the Cybertronians; they might use it in the construction of mechanical bodies, weapons, and some machinery, but their demand for it was not significant.
Although Sun Cheng had brought several batches of gold back from the Transformers Universe, it was still a drop in the bucket compared to the gold extracted by Base Two and acquired from South America.
There wasn't much gold hoarded within the base; most of it was treated as valuable metals for trade and sold to Moscow and Beidou. A small portion was taken by the humanoid Decepticons controlled by the base to serve as capital weapons, filling the fiscal gaps of the several countries they controlled.
The economies of the various South American countries were generally not good, and lazy and elite lawyers and professionals sponsored by international capital were prevalent.
While Base Two operated behind the scenes, Bo Nation, Secret Country, Bara Nation, and a portion of Brazil had all fallen under Base Two's control.
To maintain stability, Sun Cheng had always implemented the "pig farming policy."
This involved purchasing minerals in large quantities from his own country while reselling essential goods procured in bulk from the Far East and Russia at lower prices in South America. Regular financial and interest subsidies were also provided to the government and politicians under their control, maintaining relative stability in various sectors of their countries and higher welfare benefits.
This approach was devious but highly effective.
Smart people were everywhere, and Base Two's intelligence network covering South America had become increasingly sophisticated.
They had long discovered that in the countries controlled by Base Two, politicians and factions were investigating or had already noticed the changes behind the scenes in their nations.
However, the reason these controlled countries still maintained a façade of normalcy was simply because everyone was benefiting from Base Two's arrangements.
Thus, with another controlling force behind the scenes of their countries, they all chose to remain willfully ignorant of the situation.
In the future, as Base Two continued to corrupt these countries with its tainted influence, even if the elusive "Ghost" working behind the scenes in South America was exposed, it would be challenging to shake Sun Cheng's control over the region.
This was because the economies that were gradually prospering in these controlled South American nations, along with the high welfare benefits being implemented by their governments, were all built on the foundation of Base Two's support.
Once Sun Cheng ceased the procurement of minerals from these Southern United States, the sale of low-priced daily necessities, and the financial subsidies, from the government to the politicians and down to the common people, their good days would vanish into thin air.
This was Sun Cheng's "pig farming policy"!
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Next Chapter >>Chapter 683: New World Explorer (Part One)
