Chapter 629: Sweeping the Withered Serpent Floating-Land

It wasn’t just Song Chi and his companion in the eastern Holy City—things were just as intense up north and out west.

The north barely needs mentioning. The Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang battleship clone alone could crush everything. As for the west, Song Shiyuan and Song Yan had the Starry Sky Dragon Shark with them.

The Starry Sky Dragon Shark was a seventh-tier enslaved creature under Song Chi’s command, but it hadn’t appeared in public yet, so Song Chi’s group didn’t worry about its exposure.

They had already discussed it beforehand—moving forward, the Starry Sky Dragon Shark would only act alongside the battleship clones or be sent back to the Red Star Superdimensional Continent. Basically, they wouldn’t summon it openly again. With two Dominator Worms, they had enough power.

“Ru Zu, shrink these corpses and send them to the Market. They’ll be perfect for extracting source blood or feeding to Empress Iris. Don’t forget—if Iris wants to keep breeding new Dominator Worms, she’ll need massive amounts of energy-rich flesh like this!”

After that, Song Chi and his partner began a thorough sweep of the entire eastern royal city, leaving no stone unturned—not the royal vaults, not the private stashes of high-ranking serpent demons.

Half a day later, five warships converged at the very heart of Withered Serpent Floating-Land, in Withered Serpent Holy City.

One Star-Annihilator-class Ship, a Dominator-class Starry Sky Dragon Shark, four Dreadnoughts, and Song Chi freely making use of the Market Projection Token.

With this lineup working together, Withered Serpent Holy City held out for less than two minutes.

In the end, the five warships stayed in Withered Serpent Holy City for three hours. Only when they’d looted every last good thing did they make a swift escape from the floating-land.

No one would have expected a Seventh‑Tier Floating-land to be ransacked in under a single day.

It wasn’t until half a month later that a higher-ranked serpent demon arrived at Withered Serpent Floating-Land—but by then, the place was long cold and empty.

But that’s all just an afterthought now.

Back on the day of the raid, when the five battleship clones left Withered Serpent Floating-Land and slipped into deep space, they didn’t hurry to tally their gains, but moved on to their next plan.

A surge of spatial waves rippled from the Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang battleship clone. The next second, a swirling vortex of space began to form in the starry sky ahead.

Time passed, but instead of closing up, the swirling vortex only grew wider, unhealed by the Sea of Stars’ laws.

Finally, the spatial vortex turned into a massive artificial wormhole—created by the High-Dimensional Wormhole Generator.

“Let’s go. The other end of this wormhole opens in the Arakawa Star Domain. Once we’re through, I’ll shut it down right away, so don’t waste any time.”

“This Withered Serpent Floating-Land incident may not spread fast, but if the Eight-Armed Serpent Demons in the Serpent Galaxy have advanced communication Oddities, even with the Arakawa Star Domain forty thousand light-years away, the longer we linger, the likelier something unexpected could happen.”

Once Song Wujian finished, Song Shiyuan quickly added:

“Also, once we’re done looting Arakawa Floating-Land, jump straight north. We’ll regroup at our rendezvous point.”

Suddenly, Song Xingru chimed in.

“Right! We still need to hit the other battlefields where the advance fleets are. These behind-the-scenes snatch-and-grab sprees boost not only ourselves but the entire family’s foundation. We can’t let these rare chances slip by!”

Everyone burst out laughing in the group chat when they heard Song Xingru.

Of course, it wasn’t a mocking laugh. Song Xingru’s words might’ve been blunt, but she made perfect sense. She’d voiced what everyone else was thinking.

After passing through the wormhole, Song Wujian immediately closed it.

Every time a spatial wormhole is made, it causes a huge commotion. That’s why Song Wujian hadn’t set the exit right next to Arakawa Floating-Land—it was several thousand light-years away in a dark and empty star domain.

The moment the wormhole was gone, the five warships kicked off another warp jump.

What followed was a repeat of how they’d dealt with Withered Serpent Floating-Land.

Once again, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Since less than 24 hours had passed since the raid on Withered Serpent Floating-Land, even if the high-ranking Eight-Armed Serpent Demons in the Serpent Galaxy had top-tier communication Oddities, there was no way news could’ve spread that fast.

Once more, in less than a day, the five-person team scoured Arakawa Floating-Land at top speed.

Of course, given the vastness of a Seventh‑Tier Floating-land, five people working for less than a day couldn’t really take much—barely even one ten-thousandth.

But remember, they’d only targeted the floating-land’s most essential Holy Cities. These had stood atop the floating-land for thousands or even tens of thousands of years and held nearly all its rarest resources.

So even if Song Chi’s group had grabbed less than a ten-thousandth of the floating-land’s goods, what they took surely represented a huge chunk of its total value.

……

“Look at this, my luck’s pretty good—fifteen strands of Eighth-Tier Floating-Land Origin!”

“Huh, all these Eternal Stone Bricks… Could Withered Serpent Floating-Land have had an Eternal Stone Brick mine?”

Inside the encrypted Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang group chat, Song Chi and the others were counting their haul.

The moment someone mentioned Eternal Stone Bricks, everyone else looked their way.

When they saw the mountain-like pile of Eternal Stone Bricks, their eyes lit up.

A rough estimate, and there was no way this pile contained fewer than thirty thousand standard units.

With so many—even if Eternal Stone Bricks are the most basic strategic resource of their kind—the total value was unimaginable.

You see, these can endlessly boost the hull strength of Torch Battleships. They can even slightly boost a battleship’s natural regeneration. For a Torch Battleship, it’s like having an endlessly upgradeable component—the more Eternal Stone Bricks you feed it, the better it gets.

In the end, each of the five divided up four thousand bricks. The remaining ten thousand plus were sent back to Dragon-Spine Continent—some to Song Shixing, with the bulk placed in the Merit Tower for the clan to exchange over time.

That was just a minor highlight. Their inventory check continued.

For example, this time they picked up two Gold Oddities—both of which could be refitted into battleship components. One was hull armor, the other an energy shield. Song Wujian, Song Chi, and Song Yan didn’t need them, so Song Shiyuan, Song Shixing, and Song Xingru took them.

There were almost twenty Silver Oddities, too. Eight couldn’t be converted into battleship parts and all went to Song Chi. Thanks to that, his stash at the Omniverse Market now had over forty Silver Oddities again.

……

“Only a bunch of moron Eight-Armed Serpent Demons would waste resources like this—what a crime against treasure.”

Suddenly, Song Xingru’s frustrated shout rang out in the group chat, drawing everyone’s attention immediately.

Once everyone heard what happened, their eyebrows jumped. They shared her feeling completely.

In Song Xingru’s hands were three special, crystalline spherical ores.

But these weren’t any ordinary minerals. They were incredibly rare mineral cores.

Each one should’ve been buried deep in the heart of a great ore vein—but instead, the Eight-Armed Serpent Demons had recklessly dug them up.

You see, a mineral core only functions at its peak within the vein it was born from. Once it’s extracted, even if you return it later, its ability to sustain the vein drops sharply.

“Can we tell what types of mineral cores they are?”

“One’s a Celestial Qi Stone core, one’s a Molten Copper core, and the most valuable is a Titanite crystal core!”

The moment they realized there was a Titanite crystal core, the Song Family’s grumbling in the chat got noticeably louder.

A few dozen seconds later, after much back-and-forth, they finally confirmed—the Titanite core came from a top-grade medium Titanite vein with at least a million crystals, and its initial restoration ratio was a solid 10%. That meant it could produce 100,000 crystals per year with zero loss. For the Song Family, who were running short on titanite, that was a lifesaver.

Unfortunately, since the core had been forcibly removed, no one knew how much of that restoration would survive if they tried adding it to another vein of similar size later.

“Whatever. Even if it wasn’t destroyed, we could never really control it here—this Serpent Galaxy has nothing to do with us. At least having the core is something. But to transfer it, we’ll have to find a vein about the same size…”

Song Xuancang, the Song Family Patriarch, quickly jumped in before Song Wujian needed to say more.

“Don’t worry. Our clansmen in the Chipan Galaxy already found more than one Titanite vein. If we actually manage to secure Chipan, we’ll have plenty of chances to merge this core later.”

Everyone nodded.

“No rush. Things are still up in the air—we can’t just assume we’ll take Chipan for sure. Let’s wait and see what happens next.”

“Also, keep a close eye on Storm Calamity Floating-Land. When the time comes, it’ll have to move together with Dragon-Spine Continent.”

“Understood!”

……

Over the following century, the five members of the Song Family moved between countless galaxies, snatching up loot from the rear lines of the Eight-Armed Serpent Demon civilization and the advance fleets.

All told, they raided more than ten seventh-tier floating-lands, piling up so many resources it was almost frightening.

The higher-ups of the fleets took notice, but since the Song Family only ever targeted Eight-Armed Serpent Demon lands that hadn’t yet fallen to the Torch Fleet, they were considered a useful distraction. Most parties decided to just let them be.