With a stable spatial structure for sailing through the void and spiritual plant arrays capable of absorbing fragments of lunar and solar power, the foundation for the Myriad Worlds Trade Plan was effectively complete. However, if this goal were to be truly realized, the ship's offensive, defensive, and concealment capabilities would be the real highlights.
The void outside the world was anything but safe. There were natural disasters: void turbulence, void storms, and gold-shredding currents. Then there were void-tier lifeforms—creatures that would frantically attack any living being they encountered, sometimes even invading a world to engage in indiscriminate slaughter.
Furthermore, there were the Void Hunters. These were an even more complex demographic, consisting of cultivators, demons, and various bizarre, specialized lifeforms. They hunted and devoured anything in their path.
A cultivator who reached the Unity stage merely possessed the qualifications to set foot in the void of the universe. Only Mahayana-stage cultivators could be considered true self-protectors with substantial power. Therefore, the offensive power, speed, defense, and concealment of the Void Great Ship were of paramount importance.
It even required countermeasures against causality. Many horrific entities were capable of using the power of cause and effect to track their prey. Without such defenses, one could easily end up as a dish on someone else's dinner table.
'Brother Meng did a decent job building this Void Great Ship. He used the finest materials available in the Star-Sea, and the spatial and energy layouts are quite good, but it is still just a prototype.'
'The final finishing touches will likely have to wait for my awakening.'
Soon, many ideas began to form in Qi Ping's mind. The potential of the current Star-Sea world had been fully released; moving forward, it only needed steady accumulation to recover. However, supporting the birth of Unity-stage cultivators was likely its limit, and even that required waiting for the Seven-Colored Immortal Vein to reach the level of a Rank 7 spirit vein—a process that would likely take another thousand years.
In other words, the Star-Sea world had reached its limit in terms of facilitating Qi Ping's own breakthrough. If he wished to continue his journey, he had to seek resources from the outside. The growth of the Star-Sea world's rank required more external resources, and the world currently possessed absolutely nothing in the way of Mahayana-level techniques or materials.
Right now, there were very few things in the entire Star-Sea world that held value for Qi Ping. There were some, but their effects were minimal. Even the occasional birth of a natural treasure held little value for him.
To Qi Ping, the Star-Sea world was his base of operations, a place where he could protect himself. With the world behind him—even disregarding the strange law that could slay any Mahayana existence—an ordinary Mahayana cultivator would not dare to invade the Star-Sea world against the suppression of the world's will. That would be a suicide mission.
At its current stage of recovery, the world's power was more than enough to suppress several Mahayana cultivators. In the future, if Qi Ping wished to break through to the Mahayana stage, it would be much easier to do so within the Star-Sea world. Outside, the probability of failure would increase several times over.
Aside from these two values, the productivity of the Star-Sea world had exploded. The hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of cultivation arts were in full bloom. The goods produced there might not be worth much to Qi Ping, but they certainly would be to other worlds!
Using an entire world as a factory to produce trade goods, with himself as the head of trade—letting the entire world benefit while he extracted appropriate profits and required items for himself—this was Qi Ping's goal for his new stage!
Interests and mutual benefit were the foundations of cooperation and survival. Coupled with his prestige and near-invincible strength within the Star-Sea world, there was no better world-factory suited for him than this one. Moreover, the Star-Sea world was vast, with plenty of room for development.
Once these matters were clear, Qi Ping understood how his future path of cultivation should be walked. He would use the Star-Sea world as his sanctuary and foundation, then reach outward to seek breakthroughs to the Mahayana stage and the items needed to knock upon the gates of the Long-Life Immortals!
For some reason, Qi Ping had a premonition: if he missed the opportunity to use external worlds for development and instead huddled cowardly within the Star-Sea, it would be equivalent to a slow death. Clearly, those powerful worlds were not only strong in their own right but also possessed special connections with one another.
Isolation was a dead end. Only by obtaining newer things or finding suitable allies could he find a path forward.
'Perhaps, later on, I can go visit Crow and the others. I wonder how they have fared after three thousand years.'
But for now, what Qi Ping wanted to study most was the Void Great Ship. Externally, the ship appeared only a few thousand feet in size—just slightly larger than Coal Ball—but its true space was within. It contained an entire small world! It had been built by the Void-Aether Fish tribe using their collective strength; in this regard, even Qi Ping could not hope to match their innate ability.
'To ensure the ship's offense and defense, I must start with arrays. By leveraging the power of the entire Star-Sea world, I can arrange a large number of Unity-stage or even Peak Unity-stage array foundations. When outside the Star-Sea world, these foundations can be linked together. Perhaps then I will have a chance to possess Mahayana-level power?'
'Material Foundations... Living Foundations...'
'As for Material Foundations, given the current resource situation in the Star-Sea world, crafting about ten Unity-stage spiritual item foundations is likely the limit. I cannot afford to build too many, nor can I drain too many of the world's resources.'
'Material Foundations below the Unity stage are of no use to me. Thus, I can only focus on Living Foundations.'
Living Foundations, as the name implied, were array foundations composed of living beings. For instance, the Yin-Yang Five Elements Array and the Azure Spirit Army Formation used during the war against the demons were primarily composed of Living Foundations, supplemented by Material Foundations.
The flexibility and sustainability of Living Foundations far exceeded those of Material Foundations. (Arrays that used the heaven and earth as their base were an exception, but those weren't considered Material Foundations either.) Furthermore, a Living Foundation array would grow stronger as the individual components increased in strength.
The only difficulty was that Living Foundations were hard to arrange and required the individuals to have a deep comprehension of the array. However, for Qi Ping, who specialized in arrays, this was not an issue as long as he had the support of the world's power.
The true factor determining the power of the array was the choice of the Living Foundations. They couldn't be too weak. Although a larger number could provide more support, arrays suffered from diminishing returns; it wasn't always a case of 'the more, the better.' If the components were too weak, they would simply become weak points or collapse points for the array.
Therefore, the individual strength had to be outstanding, and they had to be completely of one mind. Finding such beings was extremely difficult.
However, Qi Ping soon made a decision. Over three thousand years ago, he had planted the spiritual wood seeds that the Star-Sea world had accumulated over countless years. Now, it was time to reap the harvest!
As a Treant-Herder (the second manifestation of the Myriad Manifestation Druid), was there any being better suited to serve as an array foundation than powerful Treant Warriors?