At this stage, Li Qingsong was well aware that there was no rush to counter-attack.
Because time was on his side.
Before conquering Planet Two, time had been on the enemy’s side. Back then, he had to give it his all and act quickly. Any delay could have left him completely out of resources.
But with the capture of Planet Two, the situation immediately reversed. Time was now on his side.
As long as he could drag things out, his power would grow with every moment that passed.
Under these circumstances, Li Qingsong was in no hurry.
The battle situation was perilous? So what? As long as he could hold the line, it was enough!
He had to stall for as long as possible. The longer, the better!
It was only now, after a period of producing Clones at almost any cost, that the number of Clones under Li Qingsong’s command had finally returned to three billion, matching his previous peak.
But this was not the end. The frenzied production of Clones was still ongoing.
The reason was simple. During his previous voyage, Li Qingsong had achieved a breakthrough in biotechnology. His maximum consciousness connection limit had increased to over three billion.
As for the exact number, he hadn’t been able to test it at the time due to the limited number of Clones.
Now, it was time to find out just how high his maximum consciousness connection limit had risen!
Time slowly trickled by. The situation in the space battlefield was precarious, yet Li Qingsong continued to focus all his efforts on producing Clones.
It was not until the number of Clones exceeded 3.5 billion that Li Qingsong finally tested his maximum consciousness connection limit.
3.5112 billion!
Compared to the 1.5 billion before the biotech breakthrough, this was an increase of more than double!
’And, factoring in the Clones’ rest periods, I’ll need about five billion Clones to maintain a full operational cycle.’
Then... production would continue!
As one clone factory after another went into operation, and as batch after batch of Clones left them, the number of Clones under Li Qingsong’s command continued to climb rapidly.
By now, just to supply the daily consumption of these Clones, Li Qingsong had built tens of thousands of large-scale food factories alone. The accompanying power plants, chemical plants, and other facilities were too numerous to count.
Finally, the number of Clones under Li Qingsong’s command reached five billion!
At this moment, on this ravaged planet, the industrial system was fully established.
This wasn’t the old industrial system designed for a 1.5 billion connection limit, but a new one tailored for his current 3.5 billion connection limit and a total of five billion Clones.
The scale and production efficiency of the two were on completely different levels.
In the interstellar battlefield, facing the Harville Civilization’s relentless attacks that had gone on for decades, Li Qingsong had lost countless Warships. Countless Clones had died from exhaustion at their posts. He had barely held on until this very day.
Even Li Qingsong himself had to admit that the combat effectiveness displayed by the Harville Civilization after the fall of Planet Two had somewhat exceeded his expectations.
They were an already exceptional civilization that had now undergone a spiritual baptism of its entire people. Li Qingsong believed the combat power they now wielded was approaching the absolute limit for a conventional intelligent civilization at their current technological level.
Regardless of their physical form or social structure, it was nearly impossible for any civilization at this tech level to be stronger than the Harville Civilization.
It was precisely because the Harville Civilization had become so powerful that the past few years had been so difficult for Li Qingsong.
But all of that... was about to end.
’Because my industrial system is finally complete, my Clone count has reached five billion, and because I am now fully prepared for war!’
’Now, it’s time to show you the true might of the Cloning Calamity at its full potential!’
At this point, aside from the existing clone factories that were still in production, Li Qingsong stopped building new ones. Instead, he directed every Clone he could control, along with the power of the Blutuk People, into a single area.
Industrial production!
In that instant, all the mines, factories, power plants, food factories, foundries, and other facilities that had been built but left idle due to a lack of manpower were suddenly flooded by a tide of Clones.
Massive numbers of Clones left the clone factories. They traveled by trains and large fixed-wing aircraft, flowing like water from a Water Tower into every home, pouring into the control rooms of every factory. They took their seats at their workstations. Under Li Qingsong’s unified command, they exerted their collective intelligence upon the physical world through the intelligent machinery, general and special-purpose robots, and other production terminals.
In that moment, every aspect of Li Qingsong’s industrial production capacity skyrocketed instantly.
The raw material output of hundreds of thousands of mines surged by nearly a hundredfold. Resource allocation and transport capabilities surged by a hundredfold. The production of basic metals, casting and processing capabilities, chemical production, chips, precision components—every single industrial product—all exploded in an instant.
All of this production was ultimately reflected in the output of his final products.
And what were Li Qingsong’s final products at this moment?
Obviously, they were starships! Interstellar Mines! Interstellar Missiles! Satellites! Cannon Platforms!
And so, the quantity of these final products also skyrocketed in an instant.
On an average day, Li Qingsong was producing over one thousand new Mercury-class Warships, as many as tens of billions of Interstellar Mines, millions of satellites for various purposes, and hundreds of thousands of missiles of all sizes and ranges—long, medium, and short!
Every day, Li Qingsong could produce several thousand large Interstellar Cannon Platforms, each equipped with its own independent nuclear fusion power plant and a high-power Energy Shield, allowing them to float majestically in space like fortresses.
Every day, Li Qingsong could produce over 5,000 Unmanned Warships of various sizes, which he would then hand over to the Wukong AI to control for autonomous combat.
In just one year, Li Qingsong had reinforced the interstellar battlefield with over three hundred thousand Mercury-class Warships and over a million Unmanned Warships. The other various combat-ready facilities and supplies were innumerable.
By this point, the number of Clones sitting in the combat control base, remotely piloting the Warships, had climbed to over fifty million.
He also effortlessly assigned five hundred million Clones to do nothing but contribute their brainpower to tactical formulation.
Thus, in the vastness of space, after only a single year, the tide of battle had completely turned.
After decades of being suppressed, decades of barely holding on, Li Qingsong’s counter-attack had begun.