Regarding Ling Qi's speculation about the disappearance of insects, Chu Hong also joined in the excitement and put forward his own opinions: "There is also a possibility that the insects are hidden deep in the depths of the floating island, and the detection wave of this prospecting radar can only penetrate the strata at a depth of more than ten kilometers, so it is normal if it cannot be found." ”

"Come on, Lao Chu, insects will eat up all organic matter, if they still exist on this floating island, will they let so many plants grow?" Ling Qi denied his claim, and was sure that there would be no bugs on the floating island.

Xiao Rou analyzed from the perspective of natural evolution: "It may also have encountered natural enemies, but I can't imagine what natural enemies the Zerg will have!" ”

While they were discussing on the maintenance ship, the ship in the valley had cleared a large mountain, and then leaned out another robotic arm with a shield on top and began to dig a hole at a certain location.

At this time, the team that went to other areas to explore successively detected two places suspected of the presence of mucus crystals of the mother worm. Guan Tong couldn't hide his excitement and said a few good words in the fleet channel, thinking that this exploration would have a good harvest.

The excavation in the valley stopped suddenly, and Ling Qi paid attention to the progress report, knowing that they had dug through the original cave inside the mountain.

Immediately afterward, he saw a hundred fighters flying out of the battleship in individual combat aircraft. This kind of individual combat aircraft is like a closed motorboat, and even smaller in size. It is equipped with an automatic energy gun and an energy cannon, which is powered by energy blocks and driven by a force field and an ionic thruster, making it very flexible.

These fighters drove their aircraft into the hole, and they were divided into ten squads, and the team leader's vision was shared with the entire fleet, so that the rear could keep track of the situation at the front line.

Ling Qi saw through their field of vision that the ten squads had passed through the entrance of the cave and entered a cave more than twenty meters wide, zigzag into the depths of the mountain. On the way, they saw some forks in other directions, but they didn't disperse, they just placed a monitor at these forks and continued to go deeper.

After going up and down six kilometers, ten pathfinder teams entered a vast underground space. The inner diameter of this space is more than one kilometer, irregular shape, and there are a large number of openings around it, one of which is more than 200 meters wide.

Under the illumination of the searchlight, the light reflected from the middle of the ground, some of the walls of the cave, and the inside of the largest hole. Looking at this pattern, it is not necessary to confirm further to determine that these reflections of light are the mucus crystals of the mother worm. They are like binders that penetrate the soil of the cave walls and solidify into a mixture that is countless times stronger than reinforced concrete.

On the ground, a thick layer of mucus provides a comfortable breeding environment for the mother.

"Developed, at least a sixth-level female worm, there are at least thousands of tons of high-purity crystals on the ground alone!" There was a sound of swallowing in the fleet channel, and it was unknown which team member it was.

Ling Qi was a little disappointed when he heard this, if it was only level six, it would be of no use to him. His car doesn't need to be reinforced to the hull and doesn't need these catalyst-grade crystals. What he needed was enough ninth-level or even god-level female worm sticky liquid crystals to comprehensively strengthen all the matrices on the car.

"Now that it has been confirmed, it has been designated as the No. 1 crystal mine, and we will develop it as soon as possible. The largest hole should be the direction the mother worm left off, and two teams should be divided to explore the exit to facilitate the entry and exit of the collection spacecraft. The rest of the squad stood in place. "Guan Tong returned to calm and issued such an order on the fleet channel.

"Roger!" The two teams flew into the largest cave and a few minutes later exited an even larger valley two kilometers away. If the location of the previous detection is here, it will be much easier!

The ships and battleships in another valley rose above the main body of the four ridges and moved to the location of the largest hole. Four small mining ships and twenty transport speedboats flew out of the spaceship, and they flew into the cave. They prioritized going to the underground space to mine the purest crystals, and the mining ship stretched out a mechanical split, cut the crystals into pieces with a plasma knife, and then transported them to the transport speedboat.

On a planet, a conveyor belt would be erected when mining like this, but that time is apparently not available on floating islands. Moreover, the mother worm sticky crystal body in each insect hole is generally not much, and it is relatively concentrated, and when the conveyor belt is erected, it has been mined and transported.

Just like now, at this rate, it only takes two hours at most for them to mine the No. 1 mine.

At this time, two other wormholes were also confirmed, one of which was level 3 and the other was level 5.

The mining work was carried out in an orderly manner, and new wormholes were discovered one after another, the total number of which reached more than eighty, and the content was more or less, of which the highest level was level eight, which was only one level short of Ling Qi's needs, which made his heart scratch like a cat.

Seven days later, nearly 300 crystals were mined, mainly in the outer two-thirds. The spacecraft in charge of monitoring issued a warning, and the floating island was thrown up by the impact of the waves to reach its apex, and began to fall back under the effect of gravitational equilibrium, entering the "high tide" phase. At this stage, it will be hit by the sea more and more, and the height of the rising tide will be higher and higher. When it falls back to its lowest point, the sea can submerge most of the floating islands, leaving only a small amount or even none above the surface.

The fleet seized the time to exploit the outlying tidal areas. After another five days, the total number of mining sites had reached more than 500, large swaths of the outer area were submerged, and the area of the floating islands outcropping from the sea was less than 10,000 kilometers, and it continued to shrink. However, the rate of shrinkage has slowed down.

The fleet began to explore the middle area of the floating island. "There should be a ninth-level wormhole in the middle area!" Thinking like this, Ling Qi's heart was full of anticipation, and he began to think about how to blend into the frontline team.

It wasn't until another day passed that Ling Qi found an opportunity. One of the mining teams' mining boats broke down, and the ship's maintenance engineer entered the scene to try to repair it, only to find that the most troublesome matrix damage was beyond his capabilities.

Just when Guan Tong ordered the mining ship to be towed out and handed over to William, Ling Qi took the initiative to say, "I'll go and see, if the site can be repaired, there is no need to tow it out." ”

"You still have to drag it out, and repairing it in the wormhole will affect the operation." Chen Fan, the leader of the exploration team, said.

"Okay, tell them to drag it out first, I'll go down now." After Ling Qi finished speaking, he drove the maintenance spacecraft to land from an altitude of 100,000 meters. Neither Guan Tong nor William made a sound to stop it, and acquiesced in handing over the job to him.

This wormhole was only level five, and it was in a relatively gentle area, but the cave environment was very complicated, with many twists and turns straight up and down, and Ling Qi didn't want to get into it. As he landed on the surface, the damaged mining vessel was towed out by a transport speedboat.