Space Odyssey from Abandoned Mining Space Station

”My Spiritual Energy doesn’t do much to enhance my physical fitness.”

”Then I owe you an apology.”

Cheng Xinghai suddenly let go of Chen Ming’s arm, stood up, and stepped in front of him.

She bent down and lightly tapped his lips with hers.

In the next instant, her figure vanished without a trace.

The next day.

After Chen Ming sent Cheng Xinghai to school early in the morning, he appeared at the parking lot of the military dependents’ residential area.

Since he had slept on the floor last night, nothing had happened.

So today he was in good enough shape to make a trip to the Spiritual Ability Research Institute.

Time to carry out his earlier plan of going to the Spiritual Ability Research Institute whenever he had the chance.

However, the Spiritual Ability Research Institute wasn’t actually located on the Legion headquarters’ Planet.

After all, some of the things related to Spiritual Energy were simply too dangerous.

If an accident occurred in certain experiments at the Spiritual Ability Research Institute, the consequences could be quite disastrous.

Therefore, the site of the Spiritual Ability Research Institute was chosen elsewhere.

The Fourteenth Legion’s headquarters Planet had two moons.

One of them had been selected as the location of the Spiritual Ability Research Institute.

Although Chen Ming, as an honorary member of the Spiritual Ability Research Institute, could go there directly,

having someone to take him there was clearly more appropriate for a first visit.

So yesterday he had told He Gu to come pick him up.

He Gu of course didn’t mind taking Chen Ming up into the sky.

Thus, right after Chen Ming dropped off Cheng Xinghai at school, he saw that He Gu was already waiting by the parking lot.

From afar, He Gu greeted Chen Ming and asked, ”Didn’t you just finish your engagement banquet yesterday? You already have time to come today?”

Chen Ming replied, ”Yeah, there are always a lot of things to take care of.”

”Today I’ll go over first and pick up what I’m supposed to, and then get to know the Spiritual Ability Research Institute a bit. You don’t mind playing tour guide, do you?”

”Of course not.”

He Gu gestured toward the Shuttle Boat beside him, signaling Chen Ming to board. ”The goods and the tour guide are both ready.”

The Shuttle Boat lifted off.

Not long after, it left the headquarters Planet’s atmosphere.

When the white mist of the atmosphere dispersed and the dazzling starry sky unfolded before him,

Chen Ming saw the moon orbiting the Planet.

Because the timing hadn’t been very ideal the last time he came, he hadn’t actually seen what the moon looked like.

It was only now that he saw the moon where the Spiritual Ability Research Institute was located: a Planet with roughly twenty percent ocean coverage, and land that was mostly a blend of emerald green and orange-red.

This was also a habitable Planet, a habitable moon.

Chen Ming hadn’t been very clear about the local geography before, so when he saw two habitable Planets, he remarked with some emotion, ”So the moon is also a habitable Planet. This Star System really has a god-given advantage.”

He wondered whether the Star System he would find in the future could have conditions like this.

But He Gu had something to say about that. ”Not exactly, because that Planet went through climate Transformation.”

”Back then, the scene of collecting water-rich asteroids from across the entire Star System and the neighboring Star Systems was really spectacular.”

Climate Transformation technology.

Chen Ming had heard of it.

It was a technology to Transform non-habitable Planets that had the potential to become habitable into habitable ones.

The theory for this technology had been proposed many years ago, but the number of actual Transformations carried out could be counted on one hand.

Because the difficulty of implementing planetary Transformation—especially climate Transformation—was extremely high, there were very few successful cases.

On top of that, the Empire had mastered Superspace Channel technology a long time ago and expanded itself to previously unimaginable bounds, so habitable Planets were no longer rare.

The value gained from simply Transforming a non-habitable Planet was nowhere near proportional to the costs consumed.

Investment in this type of technology hadn’t really changed all the way until the end of the age of expansion; the technology itself had made no obvious progress and remained at its former level.

Only some Star Systems that were already highly developed might have a real need to Transform certain non-habitable Planets into habitable ones.

Such as this moon that He Gu was talking about now.

The fact that this Planet was a moon had, to some extent, reduced the difficulty of climate Transformation.

And this technology was quite interesting—and one he could actually make use of.

He could find an opportunity to learn it.

Just as Chen Ming caught sight of the moon where the Spiritual Ability Research Institute was located,

the other moon orbiting the headquarters Planet happened to peek out from the edge of the Planet.

And this moon, which had just entered Chen Ming’s view, was completely different from the one with the Spiritual Ability Research Institute.

Compared to the Spiritual Ability Research Institute’s moon, this moon was smaller in size.

But around it, two artificial ring structures of unequal size encircled it.

Those were two rings of highly developed orbital industrial facilities.

And under the encirclement of the orbital industrial facilities,

the surface of that moon showed only the sheen of metal.

The entire Planet had already become part of a mechanized whole.

Chen Ming didn’t know whether the entire Planet had been completely turned into machinery, but perhaps he would find out later.

Because that moon belonged to the Ship Research Institute.

The Ship Research Institute’s basic duty was designing starships, so naturally it also needed to test the ships it designed.

As one of the three major giants among the Legion’s research institutes,

the Ship Research Institute, like the Spiritual Ability Research Institute, enjoyed the privilege of having a moon as its research base.

Thus this moon had, quite naturally, become the testing ground of the Ship Research Institute.