Chapter Twenty-Eight: Buying Time

Within a few days, Li Qingsong had increased the number of armed clones across his ten mining bases to twenty thousand, averaging two thousand per base.

In addition, there were four thousand armed clones at the main base. With new equipment sets being produced at a rate of 3,200 per day, this meant that 3,200 new armed clones were being deployed daily.

At this point, a swarm of over seventy thousand strange birds finally arrived at the perimeter of the base cluster, launching a comprehensive assault on Li Qingsong's eleven core bases from all directions.

Eleven battlefields erupted in intense, brutal fighting simultaneously.

However, the conflict was not limited to these eleven bases; smaller scale engagements were breaking out elsewhere—specifically, along the railway lines.

The birds had already destroyed the electrical systems of the railways. With no other choice, Li Qingsong urgently commissioned a fleet of steam locomotives to take over the burden of logistics.

Li Qingsong knew that he could not win a war of attrition against the birds. The only way to prevail was to use the lives of his clones to stall the front lines, buying time for the research and production of firearms.

If he was to mass-produce firearms, the supply chain was non-negotiable. These railway lines had to be preserved, and the mining operations had to continue without a single moment of pause.

Consequently, a surreal scene unfolded at the ten mining bases. Outside the perimeter, thousands of armed clones fought with reckless abandon, a scene of gore and carnage. Inside, the original mining clones continued their work with meticulous precision, extracting vast quantities of ore, completely unaffected by the fighting raging just beyond the walls.

Once loaded, the trains—pulled by massive steam locomotives belching thick smoke and guarded by dedicated transport combat units—set off for the main base.

Between fending off the birds and scrambling to repair the sabotaged tracks, the trains moved at a crawl, sometimes less than ten kilometers per hour. Yet, train after train continued to depart from the mining bases, converging on the main base.

After offloading their minerals, the trains would be loaded with fresh armed clones and supplies to return to the mining bases, instantly replacing any casualties on the front lines.

The situation reached a stalemate. To maintain this, Li Qingsong had to commit sixteen thousand conscious links to the conflict: one thousand per mining base, four thousand at the main base, and two thousand assigned to the various railway guard units.

For now, the front had stabilized. But "stability" was a relative term—it existed only for Li Qingsong. To the birds, they likely believed they were winning. After all, their relentless attacks provided them with two to three thousand delicious, fresh corpses to feast upon every single day. If that wasn't victory, what was?

"You want to eat? Then I'll let you eat!"

The daily loss of thousands of clones filled Li Qingsong with a grim, savage resolve. "Just wait. The day will come when you can no longer stomach what I serve."

Currently, four thousand clones were engaged in essential labor across the main base and the primary mining sites—mining, farming, animal husbandry, and logistics—supporting the entire system and funneling cold steel weaponry and food to the front.

But beyond these four thousand, Li Qingsong held over a thousand clones in reserve. Despite the desperate, high-pressure state of the war, he had kept them out of the fighting and logistics.

They were doing something else.

In the core of the main base, tucked away in a laboratory surrounded by metal refineries, processing plants, and chemical factories, these 1,066 clones were divided into one hundred teams, all dedicated to the research and development of gunpowder weaponry.

Li Qingsong knew almost nothing about firearms, especially modern ones. Beyond the basic principle—using the rapid combustion of gunpowder to generate gas that propels a bullet at high velocity—and the rudimentary knowledge that guns consisted of a barrel, ammunition, and a grip, he was blank. The knowledge base of the deep-space vessel *Deep Sky* contained no such information. He had been sent to the planet Luoshen for scientific research; the human world would never have included such data in his archives.

But, as he had reasoned before: It didn't matter. Knowing the basic principles was enough. Anything else, he would discover himself.

The one hundred research teams were unleashed. Li Qingsong had each team select a specific area of study: barrel metallurgy, internal mechanical structures, projectile design, propellant ratios, gunpowder chemistry, firing mechanisms—every aspect of firearm construction was subjected to simultaneous testing to find the optimal materials and designs.

Within each ten-man team, one member focused on gunpowder chemistry, another operated metal-drilling equipment to test materials for the barrel, another studied structural mechanics, and another worked on integrating the propellant with the projectile.

Every member of every team had a clear division of labor, working in perfect, orderly harmony. Most importantly, there was a coordination mechanism between the different teams that functioned without a millisecond of delay or communication cost.

When the gunpowder specialists of Team 66 stumbled upon a promising formula, every other team's gunpowder specialists instantly knew. They immediately abandoned their own failing experiments, adopted the new formula, and began iterating upon it to further optimize its performance.

Whenever any team made a breakthrough, the progress was instantly shared with everyone else. This cycle repeated endlessly, with all teams consistently pivoting to build upon the latest, most effective findings.

This applied not just to gunpowder, but to every component—barrels, frames, hammers, firing pins, springs, and ammunition.

Under the synchronized efforts of these one hundred teams, Li Qingsong’s near-total ignorance regarding firearms began to expand with the explosive, rapid growth of a rising balloon.