Chapter 288: Heavy Bomb
Translator: flycrane01 Editor: Millman97
The news of the Mountain Sea Sect and the Moon Splitting Sword Guild's cooperation was like a stone tossed into a quiet pond; it immediately caught much attention of people in the trade.
Many sword-training sects were regretting that they were not the ones to come up with this amazing idea.
If the flying sword shipping network of the Moon Splitting Sword Guild really got on track, the logistics and transport industry of the federation might be entirely reshaped. The business opportunities that it could create were tremendous.
But some sects were not optimistic about the new paradigm. They thought that the cooperation of the Mountain Sea Sect and the Moon Splitting Sword Guild was because neither of them had any other choice. The new magical equipment with the new marketing pattern would be destined to meet brutal failure in the market.
However, the soaring sales of the Demon Beast Detector had slapped the faces of the conservatives hard.
The Grand Desolate Plateau was full of treasures. Although the ordinary people who worked there were at a greater risk than those inland were, they earned much more money than their inland counterparts.
Those who worked at remote mines and fieldwork spots had an even higher purchasing power. They just never had a method to buy anything.
The shipping network that could deliver the goods to their doorstep within one day ignited their passion of shopping immediately.
Li Yao optimized the Demon Beast Detector to better meet the needs of the lower end customers.
Other than reducing the cost by simplifying the structure, he also adjusted the profiles of the demon beasts stored in the memory crystal card.
Ordinary people did not need to know the strong demon beasts above the level of demon soldier. They were more interested in distinguishing common demon beasts such as snake-type, insect-type, and mouse-type ones. They were also in need of telling the venomous snakes or scorpions from the non-venomous ones.
Therefore, the cheap version of the Demon Beast Detector significantly increased the data of these aspects. It listed the dodging strategies and suitable antidotes behind descriptions of the venomous insects and snakes that were commonly seen in the wild and the mother lodes. The users were also allowed to input the contact information of the local hospital, military base, or Cultivation sects in advance, so that the Demon Beast Detector would automatically send out distress calls in case of a demon beast scourge as long as it was connected to the Nexus.
The functions made the Demon Beast Detector more practical. The customers felt that the Young Pioneer Version of the Demon Beast Detector was indeed a piece of magical equipment that was tailor-made for ordinary people.
Three days later, the online sales of the Demon Beast Detector surpassed 10,000.
Five days later, sales surpassed 20,000.
Ten days later, 47,000 Demon Beast Detectors had been ordered.
As a piece of magical equipment whose design purpose was wilderness survival, the sales were already remarkable, and it was only counting personal customers.
With the growing influence of the Demon Beast Detector, many mines, farms, expedition teams, and construction companies had expressed their intent to bulk purchase to the Mountain Sea Sect, hoping to buy the Demon Beast Detector as a labor protection appliance.
Judging from the trend, it was quite possible that the sales of the Demon Beast Detector would exceed 100,000 within the next month.
At this point, the three magical equipment magazines all changed their attitudes.
When the Demon Beast Detector was first released, under the clout of the Zephyr Guild, they had arranged several mediocre critics to post some ambiguous articles on the secondary pages.
But right now, the sales of the Demon Beast Detector were soaring, and the users' feedback was mostly positive, too. If they continued on lying through their teeth, their professionalism would be questioned.
Therefore, two weeks after the press conference was held, the Demon Beast Detector made it to the Heated New Magical Equipment List and the Best-seller List of the three magical equipment magazines, raising another round of passionate discussion.
One's joy might be another's sorrow. In this case, the Zephyr Guild hadn't felt particularly happy about the success of the Demon Beast Detector.
Objectively speaking, as the first commercialized magical equipment of a college student, the Demon Beast Detector had many unsatisfactory points.
The so-called 'Young Pioneer Version of the Demon Beast Detector' was put together by Li Yao only because the Mountain Sea Sect couldn't buy the qualified high-resolution crystal cameras.
If one was to look for drawbacks of the Demon Beast Detector, there would be too many to count.
But the problem was not how bad the Demon Beast Detector was. The problem was that, after comparing the Demon Beast Detector with the traditional probe magical equipment, many people had found that wearing a piece of probe magical equipment on the wrist was stupid and awful.
"The Demon Beast Detector is just a toy refined by some random college student. Of course we won't use that.
"However, the probe magical equipment refined by the Zephyr Guild is all worn the wrist, which is not very convenient to use. Do you think you can present the information directly in front of the eyes, too?"
Many regular clients of the Zephyr Guild had expressed their complaints.
As a result, sales of several kinds of magical equipment that used to be popular in the market had stagnated or even dropped in the past month. The share price of the Zephyr Guild in the stock market was dropping, too, indicating that the market was not as confident in the Zephyr Guild as before.
The Demon Beast Detector alone was far from enough to beat a giant monster such as the Zephyr Guild. But it had stabbed into the critical part of the Zephyr Guild like a sharp sword. From a retrospective point of view, this might be the prelude of the Zephyr Guild's epilogue.
Li Yao personally gained two additional benefits that he did not expect from the business war against the Zephyr Guild.
Firstly, his name 'Fiend Star Li Yao' rose to fame in the world of the refiners. Even many ordinary people had heard of him. This was partly because of the sweeping commercials nationwide which told Li Yao's story of survival in the Thunderous Sound Mountain, and partly because he had carved a grimacing little star on every Demon Beast Detector as a signature of the Fiend Star.
Secondly, his collaboration with the Mountain Sea Sect had become even closer. Moreover, he had reached out to the Moon Splitting Sword Guild, with whom he had signed a loose contract promising to sell the magical equipment in the same manner next time he refined something new.
Coincidently, the Moon Splitting Sword Guild, best known for their self-navigating flying swords, boasted proficient capability in refining crystal cameras. "Planetesimal" series and "Alioth" series were two renowned crystal camera models in the trade.
Now that the high-resolution crystal cameras were available, it was possible to march at the higher end of the market now.
Li Yao was ambitious and took the opportunity to make a full upgrade to the Demon Beast Detector for a high-end version. He almost entirely redesigned the product by adding communication function and automatic navigation and direction calibration function.
The latter function was usable even if the Demon Beast Detector was off the Nexus. It was based on the lessons he'd learnt in Thunderous Sound Mountain.
The mechanism behind the function was that the Demon Beast Detector would constantly scan the surroundings and mark them according to their features. Once the Demon Beast Detector lost connection to the Nexus and couldn't find the direction, virtual arrows leading to the start point of the trip would be displayed on the Demon Beast Detector when the user activated the 'Backtrack' function.
This more powerful model of the Demon Beast Detector was named by Li Yao as 'Valiant Warrior Version of the Demon Beast Detector', aiming at the middle-level and low-level Cultivators who needed to train or fight in the wilderness. The 'Backtrack' function was the biggest selling point.
As for the manufacture, marketing, and promotion work, Li Yao entrusted Shang Tianling and the professionals of the Mountain Sea Sect and the Moon Splitting Guild to take care of them.
The issues with the Demon Beast Detector were concluded. Li Yao had no energy and interest to develop the next-generation products for now.
Because he was devoted to Project Mystic Skeleton.
The Refining Department of the Grand Desolate War Institution was indeed a galaxy of talents now.
The few grassroots experts had almost all been gathered here.
The fields that they were good at were different from one another. Some were experts of power rune arrays, and some were adept at refining swords and sabers. There were also firearms experts, crystal processor experts, professional aerodynamicists, and so on.
They were participants of the Project Mystic Skeleton as well as professors of the Refining Department. The medium and advanced courses that they taught had only one student right now, which was, naturally, Li Yao.
Therefore, they decided to do the teaching sessions in the laboratory. Usually the professors would sit down in a circle and pave the crystal suit designs in the middle before they were engaged in violent quarrels regarding a technological issue and a permutation of certain arrays, sometimes forgetting where they were. Li Yao would stand by, take notes, watch and learn as an assistant.
The teaching methodology couldn't be more suitable for Li Yao.
He was like a voracious octopus clinging on his professors absorbing knowledge from them as crazily as he could.
With the collaborative work of everyone, the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit was getting plumper day after day, from which a thin air of bloodthirst could be felt now.
However…
On the second day of the Valiant Warrior Version of the Demon Beast Detector's release, a shocking news hit the Cultivation world like a heavy bomb, blowing everyone who heard of it away.
The MP 1 crystal suit co-developed by Deep Sea University and the Gold Armor Sect had overcome the critical technical problem. The first prototype had been produced!
Inside the Refining Department of the Grand Desolate War Institution, all the members of the Project Mystic Skeleton sat together and watched the giant light beam solemnly, which was playing the press conference of Deep Sea University and the Gold Armor Sect.
The scale of this press conference was tens of times larger than that of the Demon Beast Detector's.
The auditorium was crowded by journalists. Li Yao had a feeling that the entire press industry and all the people who called themselves a journalist had gather here.
Their hungry faces resembled those of dogs who had been starved for three days and saw a bone hanging on the ceiling.
"What a huge difference!"
Li Yao sighed silently.
He had been satisfied at the press conference of last month and pleased by the sales and reviews of the Demon Beast Detector when he 'accidentally' saw them.
However, the press conference today had taught him a lesson on what the overlord of refining looked like and what being known by the entire federation actually was.
Just an announcement. No picture. No specifications. Yet, all the magical equipment BBS and media had gone into a frenzy. Everyone was talking about the new crystal suit crazily.
The terrifying tides easily drowned topics regarding the Demon Beast Detector.
"My magical equipment will be as resounding as this one day!
"However, Deep Sea University is indeed capable. It's only been a few months, and their prototype of MP crystal suit is already out of the furnace, which is even faster than us. It's completely illogical!"
Soon, leaders of the Refining Department of Deep Sea University, including President Chu Xiuhong and Supernova Jiang Sheng, and the managers of the Gold Armor Clan walked onto the platform in joy.
However, the crystal microphone was handed to a young man who apparently hadn't reached his thirties.