The new director had already arranged for people to squat in the special passage of the cruiser's ship and met with Chen Ming to say hello.

The new director is not the deputy director who was demoted, but a new director sent by the Xinda Company headquarters.

He was obviously very clear about the situation of the previous term, so his attitude towards Chen Ming could be said to be quite respectful.

Don't hit someone who smiles at you.

Since others gave him face, Chen Ming also gave it and greeted and got to know him normally.

Anyway, as long as he and the people he knows are not offended, he doesn't care who is the director or what the distribution of interests is like within the company.

After politely declining the new director's invitation to dinner.

Chen Ming did not find the factory director and Old Wu in the maintenance shop.

Instead, the bald man whom he had given money before and the only newcomer who survived the military attack and whom he had trained for two days were working in the factory.

After chatting with them for a few words, Chen Ming ran directly to the hardware store of Space Arm No. 2, ready to find the boss.

However, when Chen Ming arrived, he found that the hardware store was closed.

It was then that he suddenly remembered that Baiquan's promotion ceremony would be in less than two weeks, and the boss had already been invited to attend, so it was normal for him not to be there.

Chen Ming turned around and ran to the administration building again, only to find that the door of the factory director's office was also closed. He might have gone out for something.

So Chen Ming ran all the way to the bar again.

The security guard at the door whom Chen Ming didn't know obviously knew Chen Ming and walked into the bar with a respectful look.

After all, Chen Ming was not wearing protective clothing or power armor this time, so it was normal for the security guard to recognize him.

In the past, Chen Ming was worried about his identity being exposed and his personal safety, so he wore various protective suits and power armor.

But now that his identity has long been made public.

Moreover, with his current mental strength, even if he does not have any protective equipment on him, he is enough to react to any sneak attack from any weapon and manually make armor, so his safety is guaranteed.

There is really no need to wear these things.

Chen Ming entered the bar and scanned the entire bar. This time he did not miss anything.

Chen Ming asked the bartender for a glass of orange juice, walked a few steps to the corner of the bar, and sat down next to Old Wu, who was drinking there as usual.

Old Wu, who was drinking with his head down, noticed Chen Ming at this time and asked in surprise, "Are you back?"

"Yeah, I was chased and beaten outside, so I came back to hide for two days."

"What can chase you and beat you up?"

"More than eighty mechanical cruisers."

Old Wu almost spit out his wine. He felt that what Chen Ming said was true.

"Did you dig up someone's ancestral grave?"

"No, I dug up the foundation of someone's new house. Nothing else. How have you been lately?"

Old Wu raised the cup in his hand and said, "It's still the same as always. I just live like this every day. I do what I need to do. It's like I have a sister waiting for me to have dinner later. Otherwise, why would I drink such a light drink?"

Just a quick chat.

Chen Ming changed the topic and asked, "Have the number of pirates in the star field increased in the past half month?"

Old Wu nodded and said, "It's a little more, and there may be more later."

"What do you mean?"

Old Wu took out his terminal, placed a few articles on it and said, "Have you read the news recently? There are more and more deformed babies being born in the hospital."

"And this is not just in one or two places. This situation has occurred in most areas of the empire."

"Then, there are rumors that the wave of deformed babies from decades ago is coming again."

"This kind of thing will cause endless trouble, so it makes people panic."

"The whole environment is in chaos, so it's normal for pirates to increase in number."

While Chen Ming was watching the news report on Old Wu's terminal, Old Wu continued, "Moreover, Zuo Jing's people have also been active within the empire in recent times."

"They preach that the god of their evil cult has punished humanity because of their blasphemy. Tsk tsk tsk tsk..."

"But some people just believe this nonsense. What can we do?"

Chen Ming shook his head slightly and said, "Zuo Jing is really a troublesome thing."

"Who said it wasn't?"

"By the way, is there no movement from the top brass of the empire?"

"It seems that there is no solution at the moment. The propaganda department has only slightly blocked some news about deformed babies, but no substantive solution has been proposed yet."

Chen Ming had nothing to complain about the lack of a solution. After all, even if the empire wanted to, it couldn't.

The gaze from another dimension that Yu Hui came up with some time ago didn't work for anyone.

Even the president of the psychic association, who had personally experienced the dimensional infection, was unable to deal with the gaze from another dimension, so other inexperienced psychics would be no exception.

In the next twenty years, various conflicts will inevitably erupt within the empire.

If you want to spend these twenty years in peace and stability, you have to rely on the above methods.

But this has nothing to do with Chen Ming. Anyway, the gaze from another dimension can only affect the fragile newborn, and he has no intention of getting married and having children yet.

Moreover, he will continue to expand outward, so he will naturally not be affected if he is not within the empire.

So Chen Ming didn't talk much with Lao Wu on this topic, and instead talked about the factory director.

"I just went to the factory director's office. Where is he?"

"He should be in..."

Before Old Wu could finish his words, the terminal on Chen Ming suddenly rang.

The factory manager’s phone number.

Chen Ming picked up the phone and immediately heard the factory director's voice: "Xiao Ming, I heard you're back. Can you come to my office?"

"OK."

Chen Ming agreed, shrugged at Lao Wu, then stood up and turned to the door of the bar.

But before he had taken two steps, he suddenly remembered something. He turned around and looked at Old Wu with a smile and said, "I almost forgot."

Chen Ming took out the backpack he was carrying when he got off the spacecraft, then took out a green gel-like substance in a refrigerated box and handed it to Lao Wu.

Old Wu took it and asked, "What is this?"

“The local specialties brought from outside taste good.”

Although Old Wu usually investigates various aspects of intelligence, he obviously does not have a very in-depth understanding of the food of the Thorn Zerg, which is already an endangered species.

Even if one of the reasons why the space station where Chen Ming had stayed before was destroyed was partly due to the Zerg.

That's enough to know what kind of creatures the Zerg are, and there is really no need for a more in-depth investigation.

It was only because Chen Ming happened to have seen shellac before and had Zerg on hand that he wanted to know what food ordinary Zerg individuals usually eat.

Old Wu obviously wouldn't do this on purpose.

That's why he is not clear about what Chen Ming gave him.

Seeing Old Wu's suspicious expression, Chen Ming simply waved his hand and said, "I just have to go find the factory director. I'll give him a copy when the time comes."

"If you want more, come to me. I have some on hand."

Watching Chen Ming turn around and leave the bar, Old Wu touched his chin, opened the refrigerator box, and Chen Ming's smile, which seemed to be filled with some cunning, flashed through his mind again.

However, this food should not be enough to cheat him, so he opened his mouth and took a bite of shellac. An expression of surprise and joy appeared on his face, and he quickly ate the whole ball of shellac.

After staying in the bar for more than ten minutes, Lao Wu covered his stomach and went into the bar's bathroom.

Of course, at that time Chen Ming didn’t know that Lao Wu was also very lucky to be among the 0.2%.

He had just arrived at the administration building and came to the factory director's office.

Here, Chen Ming saw people from Xinda Company again.

The factory manager spread his hands and said, "They said they wanted to send you money, so I called you here."

Upon hearing this, the person from Xinda Company immediately handed a card to Chen Ming, holding the edge of the card with both hands, and said, "Mr. Chen Ming, this is your first installment of patent fees. The antimatter engine has begun mass production and large-scale testing."

Although Chen Ming already knew about this, he still cooperated and said, "So fast?"

"Yes, the antimatter engine currently seems to be the most promising technology in the Empire. Many people are now waiting for the results of this large-scale test."

"If the results are good, antimatter technology will be widely promoted throughout the empire, and the empire may experience another technological explosion."

“I see.”

Chen Ming nodded slightly. It seemed that the importance of the antimatter engine was more important than he had imagined.

Then his previous decision to keep the antimatter engine patent was indeed correct.

Chen Ming inserted the card into the terminal. When he saw the 30 billion in it, Chen Ming's breathing became a little heavier.

It was more money than he had imagined.

After all, the patent for antimatter technology is not in his hands alone. Instead, other researchers and companies themselves hold a much higher proportion of patents.

Having 30 billion is already a pleasant surprise, not to mention that the people from Xinda Company said that this is only the first phase and there will definitely be more in the future.

So Chen Ming happily accepted the money, which would relieve his pressure for a long time in the future.

Seeing that Chen Ming had confirmed the situation of the savings card and there was no dissatisfaction on his face, the people from Xinda Company bowed to Chen Ming and said, "Then I won't bother you any more. Goodbye, Mr. Chen Ming."

Having said that, he left the office very decisively.

"Forehead……"

Chen Ming stared at the closed office door in stunned silence.

He thought that Xinda Company was going to take this opportunity to talk to him, but they just left.

You could just transfer the money directly to his card. I don't know why he made a special trip.

But since everyone had left, Chen Ming didn't say much and turned around to sit in front of the factory director's desk.

The factory manager handed Chen Ming a cup of tea and asked, "How long do you plan to stay this time?"

Chen Ming took a sip of tea and replied, "The situation outside is good. It doesn't matter whether I'm outside or not."

"So I'm going to stay on the space station for two days and do something."

Although as the exploration progresses at the temporary base, it is almost always necessary to fly outside at the highest point to open up new routes.

However, Chen was aware of this, so during the week of preparation before attacking the mechanical city, he had the Highest Point working day and night to open up routes at a high intensity.

It should be enough for the low-level afterglow ships used in subsequent explorations to last for half a month.

It’s not a big problem if I don’t go back during this period.

And he was really bored to death outside.

The exploration was exciting at first, but it became more and more boring day by day.

Anyway, Chen Ming is only providing spiritual power for the development. People are the same wherever they are, so it is better to run around and do other things.

"Yes."

Chen Ming then chatted with the factory director for a while about what had happened during this period and then left the factory director's office.

After receiving a batch of daily necessities that Lao Wu temporarily transferred to him, he returned to the highest point.

After calling his boss and telling him that he was going back to the space station to stay for a few days.

Chen Ming planned to start directly what he was going to do after his unexpected return.

Although some things can be done anywhere, some things will be more valuable when you return to the Empire.

For example, using psychic powers to deeply repair some technologies.

As for what technology to use for deep repairs, Chen Ming had already thought about it before.

First of all, it must be the technology of antimatter reactors and antimatter engines that the Empire seems to be vigorously promoting now.

It is impossible for all technologies to be mature when they first appear.

It must be gradually updated through a lot of testing and experiments.

Chen Ming's psychic power can skip these steps.

Therefore, when Chen Ming conducts in-depth repairs on antimatter-related technologies, the benefits should be the greatest.

It just so happened that he had a Stardust equipped with an antimatter engine.

And because Chen Ming's deep repair psychic power only works on the target, any parts that can be disassembled at will will not be deeply repaired along with the target of Chen Ming's psychic power.

This means that the Stardust-class engines have not yet undergone deep maintenance and can be dismantled at any time for relevant experiments.

This is also the reason why Chen Ming drove the Stardust-class ship back to the space station instead of following other ships back to the temporary base.

In addition to antimatter technology, there is another thing that Chen Ming also plans to do some in-depth repairs on.

Chen Ming developed his own unstable hyperspace channel jump engine.

Although the inspiration came from the abandoned project of Yu Hui's research that Chen Ming had obtained from Yu Hui before.

But the subsequent creation of this thing mainly relied on Chen Ming's repair psychic ability without fear of loss, his transformation psychic ability to adapt at will, and his understanding of the now popular and not too advanced hyperspace technology.

Chen Ming's initial idea was a good one, which was to use hyperspace to make the spacecraft achieve an effect similar to that of a jump.

It’s a pity that he was still limited by his own technical level some time ago, resulting in the final product being very unstable.

Chen Ming did not achieve the transition effect he wanted, but instead achieved a weird random teleportation effect.

It was only by luck that his long-defunct Refractive Ship landed in the gap between the Mechanical Clan, Yuhui and the Human Empire after carrying this thing. If he had been less lucky, he might have been teleported to some dangerous place.

Chen Ming only used it once, and he never had time to conduct in-depth research and testing afterwards.

So this technology has remained hidden until today.

However, Chen Ming believes that as long as this technology has undergone deep maintenance with his spiritual power, there will definitely be significant changes in the effect.

Of course, with Chen Ming's current technical level, it is not impossible to start researching this thing again, but it will definitely take a long time.

Since everyone has psychic powers that can save time, Chen Ming feels that there is no need for him to study honestly.

Knowing the answer and working backwards is much easier than calculating it yourself.

Anyway, there is definitely no problem with the research results he finally obtained, and he did not steal the fruits of other people's labor, so no one can say that he was wrong.

When the time comes, Chen Ming should publish this achievement in a scientific research journal in the empire under his own name.

After all, Chen Ming still has some aspirations, and gaining widespread recognition for his technology is something he has always wanted to achieve.

Of course, there is another reason why Chen Ming wants to publish his research results.

He is short of money.

Even though Xinda Company had just given him 30 billion, he was still short of it. The cost of development was much greater than he had imagined.

Moreover, the supplies consumed in the previous battle with the Mechanical Clan were far more than he had previously estimated.

To date, Chen Ming has only been out for less than two months, has only made one jump, and has only built a temporary base. He has also explored less than 80% of the galaxies within the surrounding 400 light years.

But the amount of materials consumed can be said to be very huge.

The colonized galaxy that Chen Ming is targeting is at least seven or eight extreme jumps away.

Not to mention that he has another target, the coordinates of the mechanical satellite that transmits the communication signal.

That is beyond the thirteen extreme distance jumps.

Even if Chen Ming's route to find the colony happens to coincide with the route to the coordinates of the mechanical clan, the cost in between would definitely not be just 30 billion.

He can't really live on the patent of antimatter technology. Only the things he develops himself truly belong to him.

the next day.

Before Chen Ming found Bai Quan to start the day's teaching, Bai Quan called him.

And he said right away: "I have already asked about the matter yesterday, and there is a result, but if I want to tell you in detail, you need to sign a contract."

Bai Quan sent Chen Ming an electronic contract, which contained a confidentiality agreement.

Chen Ming looked at it and signed it immediately after confirming that there was no problem.

After confirming it, Bai Quan organized his words and said, "Let me first tell you a basic concept, phase space."

"This is a unique space independent of the normal universe and hyperspace."

"Things inside the phase space cannot be observed by ordinary means, but things in the phase space can affect the normal universe and hyperspace under certain circumstances."

"That's the basis for the phased craft we're developing."

Chen Ming interrupted and asked, "Is this technology also a legacy of that civilization?"

"Obviously not. Otherwise, the Mechanical Race, as another legacy of that civilization, would not have had a way to target things in the phase space."

"The source of our contact with the phase space is just an ordinary researcher."

"When he was doing some research in hyperspace, he discovered a special signal similar to a jump wave."

"Following this signal, he discovered something that could not be observed by normal means, and he reported his findings to higher authorities."

"Then the Empire began its research into phase space."

Chen Ming suddenly asked again: "What did the researcher discover?"

"have no idea."

"have no idea?"

"Yes, because by the time our phase technology had developed enough to investigate phase space, the object that allowed us to discover phase space had long since disappeared, and the question of what it was remains unanswered."

"All right."

Chen Ming thought for a moment and asked again: "Who discovered it?"

"He is just an ordinary researcher at Tachyon Technology. He is not involved in the subsequent research, so he has no special value."

After waiting for a while and seeing that Chen Ming had no follow-up questions, Bai Quan said, "Are you done? Then I'll continue."

"According to our research over the years, the interior of the phase space is exactly the same as the normal universe, except that the phase space can affect the normal universe, while the normal universe cannot affect the phase space."

"And we have never discovered anything unique to phase space in phase space."

"So some research institutes came up with the idea of ​​using phase space as a unique environment to create unique spacecraft."

Bai Quan paused for a moment, giving Chen Ming time to digest and absorb what he had said, and then continued, "The situation is different now. Your discovery can basically confirm that something in the phase space is affecting the normal cosmic environment."

"And the way that thing moves seems to be some kind of creature, so it is temporarily named Phase Beast, waiting for a more precise investigation before giving it a scientific name."

"By the way, let me tell you first, we have determined the location of your video based on the conditions of the starry sky in the video you sent."

"So... uh... you know..."

"fine."

Chen Ming said casually: "I had previously warped directly back to the Empire in front of that phase beast."

"If you move faster, you don't even need to analyze the video. You can just go to the location where I jumped back and determine my jump trajectory to know where I came back from."

"Besides, I asked you to help me cover up the traces of the warp before, so it doesn't matter if you know."

"So, how do you deal with this phase monster?"

Baiquan hesitated for a moment and said, "There is no way to deal with it."

"Although our research progress on phase technology is good, the phase ship itself is still in the experimental stage, and the size of that phase beast is at least the size of a cruiser."

"It's just a fantasy to think that we can go to the mechanical tribe to deal with the phase beasts. At most, some spacecraft will go there to investigate and find ways to obtain data."

Chen Ming asked with some concern: "What if it comes to the empire? Is there no way to deal with it?"

"That's not the case."

"Although the research on phased spacecraft has not yet reached the level of practical application, a lot of phased weapons have been developed a long time ago. If all else fails, we still have psykers."

"Besides, in the video, the Phase Beast was attacking the Mechanoid fleet entirely with its body, without any non-melee attack methods."

"If it weren't for the fact that it was in phase space, it would just be an ordinary space beast."

"Although we can't say that we have completely let down our guard against it, it seems that it is just like that at the moment."

Chen Ming asked back: "You mean there's actually no need to worry, right?"

"right."

"That's fine."

"If I encounter a phase monster again later, I will tell you."

After all, Chen Ming himself has no way to deal with this thing. It would not be bad for him if the Empire could find a way to deal with the Phase Beast.

Of course, it would be best if he didn't encounter them. It would be best if the Phase Beast went to cause trouble for the Mechanicals instead of annoying him.

After finishing the topic of the phase behemoth, Chen Ming suddenly said, "Let me ask you something, Baiquan. Does your military accept some spacecraft technology or something?"

"What do you mean? Have you figured it out?"

"No, no, no, it's just that I have a research direction here, which I think is quite special and should be valuable."

Bai Quan blinked his eyes. He knew everything about Chen Ming from birth to today, and knew the approximate level of Chen Ming's technical skills.

Although Chen Ming's technology has surpassed many people now, there is still a gap compared with cutting-edge scientists.

So he said politely: "Just find some official website or magazine to publish it."

"The military has always been paying attention to research in all walks of life, and if it is valuable to the military, they will contact the author directly."

Chen Ming could understand the meaning behind Bai Quan's words, and he didn't find it strange.

After all, who could have imagined that a psychic who was initially only able to control spaceships would one day possess such an outrageous ability to perform conceptual deep repairs on various mechanical equipment and even on living things.

It's normal that Baiquan doesn't completely believe him.

But Chen Ming believes that time will give the answer.

(End of this chapter)