Sunny King, having come to his senses, became even more curious about Dong Tianyu. "Brother, can you tell me how your Companion Spiritual Treasure upgraded into a submarine?" he asked.

Sunny King did not hide his curiosity and asked what was on his mind straightforwardly.

In response to Sunny King’s queries, Dong Tianyu had no intention of hiding anything. After all, as long as one possessed enough Black Devil Cores, everyone had the right to choose to upgrade their Companion Spiritual Treasures into submarines.

Therefore, Dong Tianyu straightforwardly shared with Sunny King the options he had encountered during his upgrade. Seeing Dong Tianyu being so forthright, Sunny King’s favorable impression of him increased significantly.

Although Sunny King understood that this matter would eventually become common knowledge, what Dong Tianyu did not know was that even if Companion Spiritual Treasures swallowed Mysterious Cores for upgrades in the early stages, except for becoming a bit larger, there were no other changes.

As a result, most people started using Mysterious Cores as credit currency, rarely choosing to feed them to their Companion Spiritual Treasures.

When one thinks about it, if one merely feeds Black Devil Cores to a Companion Spiritual Treasure, even if it evolves, in the early stages, only the shape of the vessel changes.

After evolution, neither the sailing speed, the material of the hull, nor anything else besides the size changes.

It was widely known that Companion Spiritual Treasures could evolve by swallowing Mysterious Cores, and everyone had confirmed this. However, the evolution in real life wasn’t like that in online games where each swallowed core shows progress.

As the nature of Companion Spiritual Treasures changed continuously, the number of Mysterious Cores required for each evolution also increased, and people were initially very excited about upgrades.

However, as time passed, many people fed so many Mysterious Cores but could not see any progress in the upgrades and did not know how many more cores were needed for the next level.

Most crucially, due to the manner of acquiring Mysterious Cores and their ability to be swallowed by Companion Spiritual Treasures, many people began treating Mysterious Cores as a regular currency for transactions.

If paper money is considered credit currency, then originally, metals like gold, silver, and copper were currencies with intrinsic value.

Simply put, copper can be used to make various utensils and even weapons, and gold and silver, like silk, have specific uses.

Thus, because Mysterious Cores have specific practical uses, many people, upon obtaining them, no longer fed them to their Companion Spiritual Treasures but used them for trading instead.

In this way, once most people had elevated their Companion Spiritual Treasures to the size capable of accommodating four or five people, they stopped feeding them Mysterious Cores unless some major powers, for researching evolutionary patterns, fed some to a few experimental personnel. However, given the bottomless nature of Companion Spiritual Treasures, it was difficult for forces other than major powers to sustain them.

At present, the most powerful force in China was undoubtedly the Imperial Court, which had the capability and resources to nurture it.

But due to the current floods, the water bases under the command of the Imperial Court found it challenging to pool resources together.

If all the bases started using Mysterious Cores for research independently, it would lead to significant wastage. Although the value of Mysterious Cores was decreasing, whenever it dropped to a certain level,

because of the ability of Mysterious Cores to be swallowed by Companion Spiritual Treasures, the merchants holding a large number of cores did not panic at all. They could simply feed all their cores to their Companion Spiritual Treasures without worrying about any losses.

Thus, the value of Mysterious Cores remained stable within a peculiar range. Whenever their value fell below this range, the cores would be rapidly bought up from the market, and whenever their price rose above this range, many Martial Artists would turn into hunters, venturing outside to fiercely tackle the Mysterious Realm.

This is why, although the Imperial Court needed to research the evolutionary patterns of Companion Spiritual Treasures, their investment was a steady trickle. After all, although it had been confirmed that Companion Spiritual Treasures could evolve, the necessary quantity of Mysterious Cores for the next evolution was unknown.

Even if a large number of Mysterious Cores were used to aid the evolution, if the evolution did not benefit the Imperial Court, it would be a waste, since Mysterious Cores were effectively as valuable as money at that time.

At such a time, investing a large amount of money all at once into researching an unknown area could be justifiable if the research was successful, but if not, let alone a lack of success,

even if the research succeeded but the results did not help their current situation, it would be harmful because the investment could potentially break the entire base’s financial chain.

Thus, although the Imperial Court did research this area, given that there were other projects needing research in the base, they only invested a set amount of Mysterious Cores daily for research records.

The reason Dong Tianyu did not want to join any forces lay precisely here. Although joining a force would provide many benefits, to enjoy these perks, Dong Tianyu would also need to compromise on many issues.

If Dong Tianyu joined a force, even if the resources he contributed belonged entirely to him, once others knew he had exchanged so many resources for Mysterious Cores at once,

unless he shared the obtained Mysterious Cores with others in the force, if he continued to hoard them as he did now, he would definitely face criticism.