Lakes of liquid metal, both large and small, dotted the planet's surface.
Only elements and alloys with high melting points could remain solid. Everything with a lower melting point had already melted.
The surfaces of these "lakes" even had ripples, and sometimes, "waves."
This planet had no atmosphere. The ripples and waves were not formed by the wind.
They were formed by frequent asteroid impacts.
Even at such a close distance to its parent star, asteroid activity remained frequent. The planet itself was even located within an Asteroid Belt.
The definition of a planet is twofold: first, it must orbit a star, and second, it must possess enough mass to clear its orbit.
By these definitions, this world couldn't technically be called a planet, as it had not cleared its own orbit.
The asteroids sharing its orbit around Pegasus V432 numbered in the hundreds of billions.
In fact, a rough calculation by Li Qingsong estimated that the total mass of the entire Asteroid Belt was as high as 75% of the planet itself! This was roughly equivalent to the mass of a whole Earth.
In contrast, the total mass of all the countless asteroids in the Solar System's Asteroid Belt added up to only about 0.05% of Earth's mass.
This just went to show how massive this Asteroid Belt was.
But despite this, Li Qingsong still considered this rocky planet, designated "a," to be a major planet.
The reason was simple. It didn't lack the ability to clear its orbit of other celestial bodies; it just needed time.
In another few hundred million years, there would likely be no asteroids left in its orbit; they would have all crashed into it.
Those that didn't collide with it would be flung from their current orbit, either crashing into the star or being ejected from the Star System entirely.
By then, its total mass was projected to grow to about 1.3 times its current mass.
It was still in its rapid growth phase.
However, Li Qingsong's arrival was fated to temporarily halt this process.
Industrial development required a stable environment; constant asteroid impacts just wouldn't do.
'Planet a is rich in all sorts of mineral resources. Excellent. I'll make it my industrial center.'
Gazing at the "shimmering" surface of the planet, Li Qingsong made his decision.
From the massive fleet, numerous small spacecraft immediately began to descend. They landed on the surface of planet a, enduring the scorching heat and blinding light of the star, Pegasus V342, which appeared as large as a house. Once on the ground, they immediately began the relevant industrial construction.
Meanwhile, another part of the fleet, stationed beside a gas giant roughly 700 million kilometers away, also began construction under the control of the Divine Craft AI and Li Qingsong's time-delayed decisions.
After the breakthrough in Quantum Supercomputer technology, the Divine Craft AI's performance had been greatly enhanced. Now, a delay of a mere few tens of minutes was well within the acceptable range.
The first things Li Qingsong constructed were basic industries, including only some mines, power plants, and metallurgy and foundry factories.
There were not many higher-level industrial facilities, such as precision foundries or chip fabrication plants, and only a handful of types were built.
The reason for this was that Li Qingsong needed to build an indispensable system in the shortest possible time.
The Celestial Net System, specifically designed to defend against asteroid impacts, just like the one back in the Oriental Star System!
At this moment, every factory was serving this single goal.
In just one year, the initial hundred-thousand-plus factories were completed. Supported by the abundant, nearly infinite resources of the planets in the Interstellar System, countless Thrust Devices were released into space. Resembling metal boxes, they could automatically form a network, seek out targets, and push them away. Within a short time, their numbers had reached the hundreds of millions.
At the same time, on the surfaces of various planets, vast swaths of ground-based defense bases were completed one after another.
Thus, above the fifty-odd major moons, dwarf planets, and planets that Li Qingsong had selected, "Celestial Nets" were raised, blocking all asteroids that attempted to impact their surfaces.
With the problem of asteroid impacts solved, factory construction began on an even larger scale.
Factories rose up from the desolate, silent, and scorching landscapes, and heavy-freight rail lines soon crisscrossed the land. In space, countless heavy-freight vessels shuttled back and forth along established shipping lanes.
Vast quantities of minerals and industrial products flowed between the various planets. Iron ore, titanium ore, and carbon oxides came from the rocky planets, while gases such as deuterium, argon, nitrogen, and methane were sourced from the gas giants. At that moment, it seemed as if the entire Star System had been woven together.
In just 30 years, an industrial system of sufficient scale had been fully established.
Based on the more advanced Divine Craft AI System, it shouldn't have taken so long. However, the sheer, unprecedented scale of the industrial system Li Qingsong was building meant that it still consumed that much time.
By now, Li Qingsong commanded over ten million factories of various types. The number of Quantum Supercomputing Bases alone, just to run the various AIs, had surpassed one hundred thousand.
Back in the migrant fleet, Li Qingsong had built a mere twenty thousand Quantum Supercomputer bases, and that was for performing a nearly endless amount of scientific computations.
And scientific computation was the type of calculation that consumed the most supercomputing power.
And now, with almost no scientific computation to run, Li Qingsong had built a staggering one hundred thousand supercomputing bases!
It was a good thing Li Qingsong's maximum number of consciousness connections had increased to 1.5 billion. Otherwise, even with the greatly improved performance of each AI, it would have been impossible to complete this construction task in such a short amount of time.
Now that the industrial foundation was laid, it was time to proceed to the next phase of the construction plan.
In this next phase of construction, Li Qingsong planned no large-scale scientific facilities.
Although achieving a breakthrough to become a Strong Core Civilization was his most urgent and important goal—one that he himself eagerly anticipated—Li Qingsong forcefully suppressed the impulse to develop technology.
'It isn't time yet. If I start technological research and development now, the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity will arrive before I can make a breakthrough. In the end, I'll be left with nothing.'
At this very moment, there were matters more urgent than developing technology.
In his plan, Li Qingsong divided the construction tasks for this phase into four categories.
One: The production of Mercury-class Spaceships.
He would only produce the smallest type of Manned Warship: the Mercury-class Spaceship. Other than that, not a single Gold Star Level or Earth Level ship would be built!
In any case, against an Intelligent Mechanical Calamity that had already reached the Strong Core Level, there probably wasn't much difference between a Water Star Level ship and an Earth-class Warship.