Resurrection Empire-Chapter 945 - 365: Building Strength for the Huaihai Battle

The enormous black shadow quietly glided over the earth.

The dense mechanical army surged across plains, hills, and mountains like a mudslide.

Thick smoke billowed upwards as the mechanical army formed a long dragon-like formation.

This smoke contained the unique emissions of internal combustion engines, as well as the dust and dirt churned up by the massive rubber wheels.

Through Huo Donghua's connections and Ying Hao's endorsement, Ren's Group has now established direct cooperation with the Locke Group's First Continent Branch.

Locke Group sent over a large number of energy modules and purchased a significant amount of electromagnetic Ruins Beast Crystals and materials.

If Ren's Group were a typical business, the supply from Locke Group would suffice.

But Ren's Group is a rapidly expanding war machine, with every component running at full capacity, making Locke Group's energy modules somewhat insufficient.

Others have suggested that Ren Zhong find a way to obtain excess energy quotas, but after careful consideration, Ren Zhong decided to take an unconventional approach.

As luck would have it, no one expected a large subterranean oil field with astonishing reserves to exist under an abandoned mine.

Source Star's exploitation of oil resources has a significant history. Bas Group almost monopolizes most of Source Star's oil resources, mainly for refining chemical products.

The refining process also produces by-products like gasoline, kerosene, and diesel.

According to Earth's technological trajectory, these things become energy sources, but Source Star's situation is unique, primarily relying on electricity, so Bas Group often further processes these for synthesis into other products, rarely burning them for energy.

Ren Zhong issued orders to first procure obsolete production lines from Bas Group.

These production lines can both extract oil and complete refinement and separation of semi-finished products.

Subsequently, Ren's Group expanded its business and became a supplier for Bas Group, providing intermediate products and retaining gasoline, kerosene, and diesel energy products for its own use.

Before this, Ren Zhong presented the internal combustion engine theory based on his memories, then factory employees elaborated its design, utilizing existing ultra-precision machining and strong material technology to rapidly manufacture semi-finished products for testing and continual refinement.

In just a few days, the first mass-produced internal combustion engine with a thermal efficiency over 48% was completed, reaching the technological level of Earth's 2040.

Around this internal combustion engine, generator sets and vehicles with internal combustion structures quickly emerged.

After a series of modifications, Ren's Group completed a preliminary transformation of the energy system within just a month.

Oil energy now covers about 30% of the low-end energy supply internally, just enough to meet the demand.

Moreover, as extraction and refinement speed climb continuously and further improvement of internal combustion engine technology progresses, along with ongoing efforts towards enlarging power generation equipment, the proportion of oil energy supply will continue to increase until it surpasses 50%.

Currently, 80% of the ground forces in the Starfire Army's mechanized troops have achieved internal combustion engine conversion.

Heavy equipment is equipped with giant diesel engines, most medium equipment uses kerosene engines, and light equipment primarily employs gasoline engines.

Under this arrangement, infantry has disappeared from the Starfire Army, with the lowest combat unit being wheeled motorcycle troops.

Mechanical units of this caliber appear grand and imposing during advancements, leaving an impressive sight.

Even from several kilometers away, one can see the clouds of dust stirred up.

Of course, the greatest oppressive feeling is not brought by the ground troops but by the four medium-sized near-ground warships in the sky.

With their main activity area within the atmosphere, the near-ground warships have a sleek design, and during flight, their frontal sections deploy active airflow shields to deflect airflow to the sides, further reducing wind resistance and noise.

The warships resemble whales, with no armament visible on their surface.

But once they activate their war mode, they instantly transform into formidable killing machines.

Throughout the army's advance, the four warships' scanning devices operate at full capacity, scanning the path ahead and searching for high-rank Ruins Beasts.

Every so often, the missile launch rack on a tanker on the ground would rise during the march and fire a missile.

The missile arcs through the air, hitting a Ruins Beast located tens of kilometers ahead of the army's advance route with pinpoint accuracy, and lurking Demolition Master from the nearby recon sequence immediately swarms in.