"...The earliest batch of Duoling people arrived here on a spaceship, bringing with them more advanced technological means than those at the time. In just two hundred years, a vast interstellar empire was born..."

Lu Yuan sat by the window, his gaze sliding line by line over the information appearing on the pale blue screen in front of him.

The blue light forming the screen was projected from a silver-black pendant around his neck.

This was an intelligent optical brain, just currently the most fashionable to be made as earrings and jewelry-like decorations.

"...As of now, the number of life planets within Duoling's starry sky domain has exceeded two hundred thousand..."

Upon reading this sentence, Lu Yuan's heart was fiercely shaken.

Even if not every known life planet has been developed to a certain extent, in fact, many planets remain in a state of neglect.

But the number two hundred thousand is still rather substantial.

Lu Yuan noticed that in the data he found, Duoling officials have already employed an extremely exaggerated counting unit he had never encountered before while counting the empire's official citizens.

And even such a massive interstellar empire is not an absolute hegemon within this part of the starry sky.

From what Lu Yuan could find, at least three other forces possess the strength to vie with Duoling.

Duoling is merely in a middle-lower position among them.

"Sss—"

Lu Yuan took a light breath, his mind slightly shaken.

It must be said, this frog in the well who had just leaped out for the first time received a minor shock from the "starry sky".

After a simple review of the general situation of the starry sky he was in, Lu Yuan withdrew his gaze, focusing on himself and his surroundings.

What he most needed to do now was to perfectly integrate the identity of "Lu Qiyuan", so he could smoothly move to the next step of recovering his strength.

Combining Lu Qiyuan's memories and the data found online, Lu Yuan clarified that the planet he was on was one of the main planets within the "Duoling Great Capital Star Circle".

It could be understood that the place he was living in now belonged to the Empire's "capital".

However, this "capital" was much larger than what is generally understood, so large that it encompassed over a thousand life planets, needing to be named "Star Circle".

Furthermore, the planets located within the main star circle, the closer to Duoling's center, the more prosperous and advanced they were, with living costs and living conditions constantly rising.

Currently, this "2045" Great Capital Star is merely situated at the outermost edge of the main star circle, and calling it outside the "sixth ring" would not be an exaggeration.

But nonetheless, obtaining a permanent residency qualification outside the "sixth ring" in Duoling's Great Capital's main star circle is not an easy task.

The foremost criterion is that the resident must hold noble status in Duoling.

The fundamental reason the Lu Family could reside on 2045 Great Capital Star is that Lu Qiyuan's father, Lu Lingfeng, held a noble title of a third-class Baron in Duoling Empire.

It is said that the Lu Family's ancestors were among the ancient Duoling people who first disembarked from the Origin Ship, once following the first Great Emperor of Duoling to open up territories, with the Baron's identity being passed down through generations.

From the earliest ninth-grade Barons to the current third-class Barons, it was considered that they did not disgrace their forebears.

Although incomparable to those old Duoling people who rapidly ascended with the expansion of Duoling's forces, they were far better than those who lost their noble identity over several generations.

Xu Mingguang, who was coerced and conned by Lu Qiyuan's original self to go to the bottom of the crater to pick up stones, is the best example.

The name "Xu Mingguang" confirms that the Xu family's ancestors should have been pure Duoling people, because only the earliest batch of Duoling people would retain the surname "Xu".

But Xu Mingguang's parents were only general workers at the Energy Mechanic factory now, and Xu Mingguang had to attend remedial classes outside to obtain the Energy Mechanician qualification certificate, illustrating the decline of the family.

During Duoling Empire's continuous expansion, a large number of natives were absorbed to join.

To this day, the numbers in various classes of Duoling Empire are still mainly composed of natives, while old Duoling families like the Lu family and Xu family occupy only a tiny proportion. However, the core of true power was still held by genuinely pure-blooded Duoling people.

"Even among noble circles, there are distinctions between new money and old money; the Lu family is the most typical old noble family..."

Lu Yuan reminisced slightly, in Lu Qiyuan's memory, his father Lu Lingfeng was the quintessential old Duoling noble.

Stern, traditional, inflexible.

No matter what was done, family inheritance was always the primary premise, resulting in stringent demands on Lu Qiyuan in all respects.

The strictness was more an expression of disappointment in his failure to meet expectations.

"Bad father-son relationship is actually good news for me, at least I don't need to pretend too hard..."

Lu Yuan thought to himself, continuing to delve into Lu Qiyuan's memories.

In Lu Qiyuan's brief yet mundane decade-long memories, what intrigued Lu Yuan the most was his understanding of Duoling's power upgrade system.

Yet, memories related to this are scant.

Even as a scion, Lu Qiyuan was presumably among the least promising of them.

Despite being in one of the top noble mechanician academies of the Great Capital, Duoling Shield, each day, instead of earnestly learning the various mechanician skills taught by the school and passed down by family, he focused all his time on chasing girls.

"Venia."

This was the most frequently appearing name in Lu Qiyuan's memory, and also Lu Qiyuan's so-called "dream goddess".

Ever since he first saw this girl named Venia upon entering the academy, Lu Qiyuan launched a nearly frenetic pursuit of her.

The latter was always indifferent to him, yet he was tireless, always doing things that were moving to him but seemed quite foolish to others.

For example... running into the wilderness to pick up meteorites in the middle of the night.

"Master Simp."

Lu Yuan made a precise judgment about the original Lu Qiyuan.

From his point of view, this Venia was far from being the pure and beautiful girl that Lu Qiyuan thought she was; instead, she was quite calculating.

Evidently having no feelings for Lu Qiyuan, yet she neither rejected nor accepted him, intentionally stringing him along, clearly merely valuing his noble Baron's son's status, carrying the mindset of "riding a donkey while finding a horse" in associating with him.

Venia's background wasn't considered outstanding, she was merely the daughter of a newly made eighth-grade baron, and not even the sole daughter.

Her certain amount of fame in the academy was entirely supported by her natural beauty.

"Boring."

After skimming through this part of the memory, Lu Yuan shook his head and moved on.

From Lu Qiyuan's scarce memory regarding the power upgrade system, Lu Yuan learned.

Within the range of Duoling, the mainstream power still remained with the mechanicians.

Mecha were the foundation of all small, medium, and large-scale battles.

The terms related to the starry sky martial path, like "Star Cave" and "Life Star Chart," could also be found in Lu Qiyuan's memory.

But it's different from what he knew in his original place.

Here, it seemed people truly initiated into the starry sky martial path when they were about to advance to the Star Lord Level.

Before that, honing spiritual power and learning to expertly control a mecha were universally regarded as the most important.

Lu Yuan was no longer a novice who knew nothing; he had long realized that within the starry sky martial path system, mecha, or mechanical soldiers, were an indivisible, extremely important component.

Whether starting with the Life Star Chart or first practicing mechanical soldier control,

in essence, there was not much difference because once advancing to the Star Lord Level, the two must be combined to exert the most complete, powerful combat force.

Duoling brought forward the practice of mechanical soldier control, only focusing on spiritual power, only learning mechanical soldier control.

The main reason should be that Duoling was built on martial strength and was always in the stage of opening new frontiers and expanding territories.

How to quickly expand military power, forming a combat-capable army efficiently in a short time, was what they most needed.

And mecha were undoubtedly the fastest way.

Lu Yuan looked at it and noted that the current standards for evaluating the strength of Duoling mecha masters only had two factors.

One was the strength of spiritual power, also known as consciousness.

The second was the mecha control skills combined with spiritual power.

Both these points far exceeded his previous understanding of the field of mecha control.

"On the mother star, whether in Sum Country, the Distant Star Federation, or Havel, those mechanicians cultivated by the government appeared far behind compared to Duoling mechanicians in terms of armed and mecha control capabilities...."

Lu Yuan encountered many mechanicians, from lower ranks to higher ones.

His impression of these mecha was that they relied almost entirely on the mecha's own capabilities for attack or defense.

Although there were certain requirements for the mechanician, the mechanician's role was merely to issue commands like "what kind of instruction to give at what timing."

There might be some elite operations that only a few individuals could perform, but essentially it was still a human operating a machine.

But Duoling's requirements and description for a qualified mechanician gave Lu Yuan the feeling of "human-machine integration."

"Spiritual power also completely serves the mecha.

Different forms of spiritual power correspond to different styles of mecha, and the capabilities demonstrated in battle differ greatly.

Many different mechanician factions have derived from this, much like the different factions of pure martial fighters..."

Lu Yuan swiftly browsed through various resources online, feeling an entirely new world slowly unfolding before him.

"The Lu Family possesses a complete lineage of mechanician factions.

For Duoling, the most important metric in evaluating noble status is the mastery of one's familial mechanician faction....

No wonder Lu Lingfeng was so strict with Lu Qiyuan.

As the only male heir of the Lu Family, Lu Qiyuan would inevitably inherit the third-class baron title of the Lu Family in the future.

If the familial faction is not well mastered and the evaluation is failed, the title could be downgraded.

Failing multiple evaluations consecutively can even lead to severe consequences such as being completely stripped of noble status...

Conversely, if one excels in abilities, this can also pave a broad path for noble advancement."

Lu Yuan quickly extracted the portions related to the Lu Family's lineage in Lu Qiyuan's memory.

The name of the Lu Family's mechanician control faction was quite elegant—Wind Spirit Sword Shadow.

"Mecha control requires almost no Star Martial Talent from the mechanician.

This is good news for me..."

Lu Yuan had poor Star Martial Talent, so poor that even Yu Wentong had once said he had almost no cultivation prospects.

So he had always pinned hopes of advancement on the Martial Arts Grandmaster and the Evil God System.

Now that the Martial Arts Grandmaster panel had disappeared, and besides the Devouring Spirit Clan panel, the other major professions in the Evil God system could not yet be activated.

During this gap in strength, being a mechanician was a great way to fill in.

"At least before advancing to Star Lord Level, talent will not become any obstacle on my path as a mechanician.

By the time I'm approaching the Star Lord advancement hurdle, my strength should have almost recovered, and it will be entirely possible to consider transitioning back then..."

Lu Yuan's eyes shone with a flicker, and a bubbling, restless emotion surged in his heart.

He felt that at this moment, he suddenly found a short-term direction for advancement and effort.

"At worst, unlocking a new profession is still good; right now, what I lack the most are Skill Points and attribute points..."

Lu Yuan thought to himself.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by lotustale.com