Chapter 259: Chapter 253: I see you
The night was as thick as ink.
In the open area outside the workshop, a black sphere hovered silently in mid-air.
Its Silent Iron shell devoured all light, with only the occasional glint of red from the observation module behind its crystal lens.
It was a Demon Eye IV, a size larger than the previous generation.
Its body was matte black. The thickness of its Silent Iron shell had been tripled, and the core Rune Matrix and circuit-etching materials within were made from the Deep Sea Silver he had spent a fortune on at the trading conference.
Nineteen days had passed since he acquired the Composite Magic Power scanning technology. He had spent the first few days disassembling the technology and redesigning the adaptation plan for the optical compensation Runes and magic wave reflection modules. Afterward, he spent his time outside of cultivation processing, inscribing, assembling, and debugging.
Allen performed a final data check. The Magic Conductivity efficiency of all Rune Circuits was within the safe threshold.
"Jarvis, prepare to record data."
"Recording. Current time: the third quarter past three in the morning."
"Activate the Anti-Gravity Rune group. Activate the cloaking and camouflage module."
The Demon Eye IV vanished. It made no sound, not even stirring a wisp of air.
It ascended in utter silence, like a ghost that had escaped the Law of gravity, flying straight toward the pitch-black heavens.
Its speed was not fast, about seven or eight meters per second.
A cluster link technique transmitted the Demon Eye’s point of view back in real time.
One hundred meters. The lights of the workshop began to shrink below.
One thousand meters. The outline of the distant Three-way Canyon was clearly discernible, like a scar carved into the earth.
Five thousand meters. The wind speed began to increase, and the Magic Power environment grew unstable. The Demon Eye’s observation module temporarily shut down, while its anti-interference Runes activated to withstand the impact of the Magic Turbulence.
Ten thousand meters. The temperature plummeted. Allen stared at the environmental data relayed by DSeek. At twenty degrees below zero, the conductivity of the Deep Sea Silver Conductor remained unaffected.
Fifteen thousand meters. The peak wind speed reached forty-five meters per second. The Demon Eye’s spherical shell shook violently in the airflow, and the transmitted feed jittered briefly. Allen did not intervene. The self-stabilizing module of the Anti-gravity Array quickly corrected its attitude, and the image stabilized.
Eighteen thousand meters. In the feed, the sky’s color shifted from deep blue to nearly pure black, while the land below was covered by a thin layer of clouds, revealing only mottled patches of the surface through the gaps.
The wind grew violent at this altitude.
The anti-interference Runes operated at full power.
Nineteen thousand meters.
The temperature dropped even lower. Magic Conductivity efficiency: ninety-one percent.
It reached twenty thousand meters.
The Anti-gravity Array switched to inertial suspension mode, drastically reducing energy consumption. The Demon Eye IV was nailed firmly in place at an altitude of twenty thousand meters, motionless.
Allen closed his eyes, linked with the Demon Eye, and reopened its observation module.
The next moment, his perception was yanked above the clouds. Darkness could no longer conceal the earth.
The entirety of Zone 18 unfolded in his consciousness with a precision he had never before experienced.
He saw the mines of Three-way Canyon. Ten Mining Golems moved in and out of the pits like tireless worker ants.
He saw the Freedom Gundams patrolling the sky, their Magic Power jets tracing faint blue trails through the night.
The operational status of every mine, the real-time position of every Mining Golem, the course of every mineral vein—all presented with absolute clarity.
He activated the Composite Magic Power scan, and the once-crude heat-source distribution became much clearer.
The scanning waves pierced the clouds and penetrated the ground, displaying the situation up to fifty meters underground in various waveforms.
He even detected two small wing-bats flying at high speed in the northeast corner of his territory. Their wingspans were no more than thirty centimeters; a flying target of this size would have been impossible to tag with the old model Demon Eye. But now, he could see even the faint fluctuations of Magic Power radiation within their bodies.
More importantly, the coverage area of a single Demon Eye IV was equivalent to five of the Mark III models.
After the experimental data from the first unit came back, Allen quickly made fine-tuning optimizations to seven Rune parameters.
The adjustments focused mainly on the energy distribution for the anti-interference Runes and the switching threshold for the inertial suspension mode. The first unit’s attitude jitter had been caused by setting that threshold too conservatively.
The subsequent manufacturing speed was much faster. Within half a month, eight Demon Eye IVs had rolled off the production line.
Allen didn’t hesitate, immediately issuing a "decommissioning order."
Twenty Demon Eye IIIs were withdrawn from their high-altitude strategic surveillance posts, but they weren’t about to be mothballed. Allen rewrote their mission logic, lowered their suspension altitude to one thousand meters, and deployed them to the various mining areas to act as production dispatch nodes and low-altitude patrol units.
Ore transport efficiency increased by twelve percent—the dispatch nodes could now monitor the load status of each Mining Golem in real time. The higher the computing power, the better they could avoid empty runs and redundant work.
"In my territory, there are no idle hands, and no idle iron."
Jarvis faithfully recorded this guiding principle in its logs.
The deployment plan was run through DSeek for simulation and optimization before being finalized.
Two units would cover the central workshop and the surrounding core area, providing dual redundancy to ensure the command center’s information link was never broken. One would be suspended directly above Three-way Canyon, guarding the throat of the territory. One each to the north, south, east, and west, forming a perimeter early-warning network.
With the seven units in place, the new Celestial Net was complete.
Allen stood before the holographic sand table in his workshop, watching seven blue dots spread evenly across the map of Zone 18. The detection circle extending from each dot, with a radius of one hundred twenty kilometers, overlapped with the others, blanketing his entire territory.
That left two units.
His gaze slowly traced the southern border on the sand table, stopping on a red area marked "Volcanic Cluster." It was the natural dividing line between Zone 18 and Zone 19.
For purely strategic security reasons—Allen mentally emphasized the word "purely"—he deployed the eighth Demon Eye IV into the sky just over the southern border.
The Demon Eye moved into position, and the composite scan began.
The thermal barrier of the volcanic cluster was penetrated, and the northern region of Zone 19 gradually came into focus with each successive scan.
Three medium-sized mines were operating in full swing. Over a dozen Mining Golems of various models were scattered throughout the pits, two of which were clearly larger than standard models—likely custom-built heavy excavation units. A half-finished defensive tower stood to the west of the mines, patrolled by four combat-type Mechanical Bodies.
’My neighbor is quite diligent.’
Allen’s expression didn’t change. He silently had DSeek create a separate database, archiving his neighbor’s force dispositions, mine distribution, patrol routes, and construction progress.
’It’s not that I’m planning to do anything.’
’It’s just that when it comes to information, it’s better to have it than not.’
The last one.
Allen’s gaze turned to the west of his territory.
Zone 18 had neighbors to the north and south. To the east lay his mentor’s vast territory. West of the Black Stone Gobi was a massive, unexplored region.
He still remembered when he first arrived in this plane, the Molten Iron Mountain Range, his mentor had told him that he had operated here for forty-seven years and controlled about thirty percent of the area.
’This means there must be a huge expanse to the west. I should ask my mentor for permission to continue expanding westward another day.’
Allen hesitated for a moment, then made a decision: he would send the last Demon Eye IV flying due west.
’First, I’ll clear some of the "fog of war" and see if there’s anything noteworthy out west. I can consider it building a long-range early warning system and expanding my strategic depth.’
