Wasteland Development Diary.

Chapter 700 The Caveman Returns
One month later.

Jue Mingzi reported the news via a remote extension.

"Chairman, the Legal Front has already built five hydrogen isotope plants with a capacity of 5 tons each and has started producing deuterium, with an estimated annual output of 1000 tons."

"There are two main factors limiting the production capacity of this isotope. One is the high energy consumption; producing one ton of deuterium requires 150 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is no longer a problem."

"Secondly, there is a limitation on the raw material of hydrogen sulfide. However, we have already started the supporting industries for the collection and processing of related raw materials, so there is still room for further growth."

Zhou Yi agreed.

At the current pace, it will only take four years to produce enough deuterium to supply hydrogen flow for direct promotion to photonuclei.

It will become difficult after that.

According to the sowers' method, as hydrogen-based life develops, the amount required for each new isotope will increase. Deuterium is already the easiest and most abundant hydrogen isotope to industrialize on Earth.

Another common type of tritium, even at full capacity, has an annual output of only a few kilograms.

But every little bit faster counts.

Another month has passed.

Five isotope factories were built on the Moon and Mars, specifically for the production of deuterium.

Jue Mingzi said, "According to my and 703's survey, the deuterium abundance in the water ice in the permanently shadowed areas of the moon is 0.03-0.05%, while this figure is 0.015% in Earth's seawater. Due to the long-term bombardment effect of the solar wind, the deuterium/hydrogen ratio is three times that of Earth."

"The abundance of deuterium in the Martian polar ice caps and subsurface is 0.02-0.04%... Both of these planets are more likely to produce hydrogen isotopes than Earth."

"With the current production model, the lunar factory is expected to have an annual output of 2100 tons, and the Mars factory will have a total annual output of 1400 tons."

"If all goes well, we should be able to collect 3700 tons by the end of this year or early next year."

Zhou Yi was overjoyed upon hearing this.

That's the power of building a solid foundation.

It may come in handy at any time in the future.

If he hadn't stepped out of his comfort zone, participated in the Mars base project, and developed the moon, he wouldn't have had this moment of soaring success.

Hydrogen isotopes began to be produced simultaneously and frantically on the three celestial bodies.

One autumn afternoon that year.

The cat god woke Zhou Yi from his afternoon nap.

"Chairman, the cave people have returned. Would you like to go and see them?"

Zhou Yi groggily rolled over: "I'm back, I'm back, let's get back to what we were doing..."

Wait.

He sat bolt upright in bed: "The Cave People have finally made progress on Jupiter?"

"Have!"

Cat God's body crackled with electricity: "Dong Shi is over there docking with them, but the situation seems rather complicated, so he asked me to invite you to the medical department's research building."

Zhou Yi immediately rushed over.

The top floor of the research building belongs to the Cave People. Access to this floor is restricted; the elevators will not stop there, and there is a closed, light-filled wall separating the staircases.

When Zhou Yi arrived, he saw that the Minister of Medicine, Leonardo da Vinci, was also there.

"How's it going?"

Da Vinci said, "Chairman, Maria Hospital conducted a comprehensive physical examination on this group of cave dwellers and found that their physiological functions are much more fragile than those of our cave dwellers. Their ability to resist disturbance is almost lost, and they will physiologically collapse and die if the pH is below 4.5, while the tolerance of the Earth cave dweller population is pH 3-11."

"Faced with antibiotics, their mortality rate is 300% higher than that of the Earth Cave People."

"Because the local microorganisms on Jupiter are so homogeneous, their ecological niche is compressed, causing them to lose their functional redundancy, their metabolism to be hindered, and their system collapse threshold to drop by 90%, making life extremely fragile."

"In other words, this was the natural way of life for the local cave dwellers."

Zhou Yi nodded: "Then after we come back, can we use the diverse microorganisms here to regulate and balance things?"

"It can be remedied appropriately. We are also treating and editing them through methods such as nutritional intervention, adding protective agents, and injecting healthy bacteria."

"But because their physiology is very fragile, these processes need to be handled very carefully."

Leonardo da Vinci further stated: "The environment of Jupiter is like a sterile room for cave dwellers, which will gradually reduce their physiological functions and weaken their resistance."

"Unfortunately, we can't send microorganisms over there. If we send microorganisms through the corridor, they will die immediately upon reaching the other side and cannot be continued."

"Therefore, we can only bring the Jupiter Cave people back periodically, let them rest and recover in this environment for a period of time, and then release them back into the environment to maintain their physiological health."

"However, the group of cave dwellers who returned today have a unique characteristic that they did not have before."

"They can interfere with some of our medical devices, and even cause a decrease in accuracy or localized errors."

Zhou Yi frowned: "What's the reason?"

"After investigation, we found that the reason is related to these cave dwellers and a part of our current high-precision equipment. They interfere with and react to the silicon crystal gemstones made by the Celestials. These cave dwellers and gemstones have a mutual influence, although it is very small."

Leonardo da Vinci said, "This has never happened before. The Caves are asking about their details."

Reacts with gemstones?
Zhou Yi walked into the laboratory.

The corridor had now transformed into a transparent column, with fine, branching gray veins inside, resembling the veins of some plant or blood vessels that had been drained of blood.

At this moment, the tracks formed by these cave dwelling corpses were emitting a faint glow.

As soon as Zhou Yi appeared, Dong Shi's voice rang in his mind.

"Jay Chou, great news! Great news!"

"The cave people are about to be revived!"

Zhou Yi said, "Tell me slowly, let's start from the beginning."

"Yes."

Dong immediately said, "This matter begins with how you helped some of our kind return to Jupiter."

"At that time, the first batch of Earth cave dwellers returned to the circular flow of Jupiter and lived near the space caves deployed by the company. With the physical enhancements they gained here, as well as the knowledge and experience they accumulated, they quickly established themselves there and had many habitable settlements."

Zhou Yi interrupted, "A settlement? The ancestral land was unearthed at the bottom of the circular flow?"

"It's Blackthorn."

Dong said, "The company mass-produced a large number of young black thorns, with life strength ranging from C to B. Heifu wrapped up these young black thorns and transported some of them over, which became a safe settlement that the Dong people could use."

“There are now hundreds of young black thorns over there, which can support the usurpers who serve as hosts for the cave people.”

"They are the cavemen's mobile continents, and also our Jupiter-like spaceships."

Zhou Yi thought to himself, "So that's how it is."

In Shagang, the Young Blackthorn has gradually become the company's private jet, with each department equipped with one. When employees go on business trips or need to drive to remote areas, they will use the Young Blackthorn. The Blackthorn can traverse almost any terrain, diving into the Dead Sea currents and flying at high altitudes, with a long range.

These giant urchin-like biological vehicles are now painted with the Samurai Crab logo and number representing the company, so they are not afraid of being robbed or causing trouble.

This solved the problem of business travel for employees.

The cave dwellers are also company employees, and exploring and reviving Jupiter is part of their job. They have a dedicated aircraft for their own use, so there's nothing wrong with that.

Zhou Yi pondered for a moment, then said, "Continue."

"Yes. Thanks to the continuous release of young blackthorns, the number of cave people who returned to Jupiter continued to increase. They established a stable rear base next to the space cave and then began to move into the distance."

"The initial 1.5 million cavemen sent to Jupiter have now grown to over 4000 trillion, but because they are so widely dispersed, it is impossible to count them precisely."

“The cave dwellers over there, apart from the group left behind in the rear, were divided into three groups.”

Dong Shi said, "Some of the cave people went into the more distant planar areas; they are the [Horizontal Group]. Another group went deeper into the circular flow; they are the [Vertical Group]. The last group went to find and make contact with the various life forms that survived on Jupiter, including treacherous insects, evil brains, surviving plants, phytomorphs... They are the [Outward Visit Group]."

"Over the course of several years, these three groups have undergone 7 generations of natural evolution there, and their physiology is highly compatible with the local environment of Jupiter."

"They made three main findings, which came from three different groups."

Dong paused for a moment: "First was the [Horizontal Group]. They visited 22 of the rotating machines over there—the Celestial Being components fixed on Jupiter. In one of the rotating machines, they found traces of life."

“By taming the local evil minds, they captured the clear consciousness emanating from there.”

"The life form trapped inside the Celestial being called 'Jade Rabbit 2.' The Evil Brain was created by it using Celestial parts. It is an electromechanical life form, so its consciousness cannot be shattered—because it is inherently in a highly fragmented and discontinuous state..."

Zhou Yi thought to himself, "No wonder."

I found the evil brain strange when it was first discovered.

They were modified and sent to the wasteland Earth, but their goal was to find the old humans... The source was the order given by Yutu-2.

The clues are now clear.

After becoming a light core, Yutu-2 passed through a space hole from the moon and arrived at Jupiter. It was then captured by Jupiter and became part of the Celestial Being's components.

Unable to escape, it modified the usurper, turning this tiny insect into its messenger to reach the old humans and seek their help.

Because it had been living alone on the moon for a long time, isolated from the outside world, Yutu-2 was unaware that the old humans had long since become extinct, and a small number of survivors had been put into biological television sets in the mountain of flesh.

According to the cave dwellers' description.

In the eyes of Yutu-2, the old humans still retain an omnipotent attitude, so it believes that creating its own old humans can save it.

Dong Shi continued, "Yutu 2 asked Dong Ren for help in releasing it from the Celestial's body. Unfortunately, this is impossible with current technology. However, they spent a lot of time confirming that it is possible to communicate smoothly with it using the Evil Brain. The source of the Evil Brain technology is Yutu 2."

"It also shared with us the method of using worms, which is actually a combination of sound waves and light waves. By using specific frequencies and bands, we can guide, drive, and tame the worms."

"The horizontal group is mainly this... and then there's the vertical group."

Dong Shi added, "Their goal is to excavate the records of the ancient Dong people's civilization deep in the Huanliu River, and to shorten our revival speed by restarting this part of the civilization's heritage."

"This part of the progress is the slowest. As it descends vertically, the load on the blackthorn, the worm, and the evil brain increases. The closer Jupiter is to the mantle and core, the greater the energy density and pressure, so the whole process takes a lot of time."

"Over there, they cultivated many specialized evil brains using Yutu-2, with strength approaching that of light core bodies. They repeatedly descended, using Yutu-2 to stir up the circular flow region, making repeated attempts. They did find some fragments, but the information on them was incomplete and could not be directly applied..."

"Just recently, a crucial and complete heritage site was finally found."

"That is a [working layer], which can be seen as the caveman's workbench and core machine tool. It can manufacture and polish all kinds of caveman tools. The records are also made through the working layer."

Dong's voice became cheerful: "Through the [Working Layer], they successfully replicated the [Enclave] according to the records in the manual on it."

"This is a well-structured floating city that can accommodate 1000 trillion cave dwellers. It can drift safely in the circular current, and during the drift, it will absorb other surrounding substances, allowing the entire enclave to continuously expand."

“In the past, the cave people expanded and created enclaves, thus spreading throughout the entire Huanliu region and traveling and moving around the whole world.”

Zhou Yi listened with a sense of emotion.

The fact that they can create a self-growing city shows that Dongren Technology has a truly unconventional approach.

"It was because of this initial success that they returned for the first time to report the good news to the company."

According to Dong Shi.

"Hmm. So, what about the other group?" Zhou Yi asked.

"The situation for the foreign delegation is a little different."

Dong hesitated for a moment: "They have sampled and come into contact with many Jupiter creatures, among which the highest matching degree is still the piranhas. They have accumulated a lot of experience here at the company and can easily tame those wild piranhas."

"The delegation made some very unexpected discoveries."

“String lights are still appearing on Jupiter, and these flashes are happening more frequently than Nig described, with a purple sun appearing almost every three days.”

“Under the light of the string, the cave dwellers would also become very strange.”

"Based on our investigation and the judgment of Yutu-2, the string civilization is directing a large amount of string light toward Jupiter in an attempt to activate the planet. This process is clearly ongoing, and the outlook is not optimistic."

Zhou Yi's heart sank upon hearing this.

Although the Celestials created a wall around the sun to seal off the string civilization inside the sun, the string light could never be completely blocked, and there would always be some escape, radiating outwards.

Once Jupiter is remotely activated and controlled by it, it will have to clean house and deal with the celestial beings, and Earth will inevitably be affected once again...

Just like the circular impact that destroyed the old humanity back then, everyone did nothing wrong, but they were still affected.

We must never let the same thing happen again!
Zhou Yi said in a deep voice, "Continue the investigation and follow up, and report the situation of the String Light daily. This is crucial to the transformation of the Celestial-Human strategy."

"Yes! But Mr. Jay, they've already taken care of it."

"nailed it?"

Zhou Yi asked, "What do you mean?"

"The visiting team felt that the string light had too much influence, which would cause riots and madness among Jupiter's creatures, making it an unstable factor and affecting the company's development of Jupiter, so they simply shut it down."

"..."

Zhou Yi looked puzzled: "It's off?"

"Yes."

Dong explained, "Because the string light itself is transmitted here through one-dimensional space as a medium, and then it circulates around the entire planet's gas layer, after we confirmed this, we cut off and sealed the one-dimensional space hole through which it was transmitted."

"The palace has experience in this area. They had Yutu-2 locate the source, and then the cave people arrived there and filled in the gap with the enclave."

"As long as there are more than 10 billion cave dwellers there, they can use their bodies to completely refract and seal the string light, preventing it from leaking out."

Zhou Yi was greatly shocked.

The physical body blocking the light?
Do cave dwellers possess such a talent?

(End of this chapter)