"Expand the existing nuclear power plant by another two times its current size."
"As for the fuel reserves in the subsidiary shelters across various regions, aside from the portion needed to refine the output from nearby mines..."
"The rest should also be transported back whenever possible."
With the spherical lightning control chamber in place, Su Wu's demand for electricity surged dramatically.
However, after careful consideration, he decided not to act too aggressively.
He merely ordered the nuclear power plant to expand by another two times, ensuring that for every day of operation, it could store an additional two days' worth of electricity to maintain the shelter's normal operations.
Expanding the nuclear power plant would come at a significant cost.
Moreover, the ultimate determinant of power generation capacity was the stockpile of nuclear fuel, not the power plant itself.
Simply converting the limited nuclear fuel into electricity at a faster rate by investing a large amount of resources would not be wise.
Especially when considering the risk of the newly expanded facility being destroyed by unforeseen disasters, leading to a total loss.
It simply wasn't a cost-effective move.
As for fuel resources like coal in other regions, Su Wu hadn't been particularly interested in them due to transportation costs.
He had somewhat passively used them for local power generation, planning to slowly deplete their reserves by refining nearby ores.
But now, with the spherical lightning control chamber capable of storing an infinite amount of electricity, these resources were no longer just bulky, space-consuming, low-value items.
They had become like checks that could be cashed and used at any time, making them worth the effort to transport back to Jianghe City.
However, even with their newfound value, they still ranked low on Su Wu's transportation priority list.
Unless there were no people or other materials to transport, these ordinary coal fuels wouldn't make the cut.
After spending some time familiarizing himself with the functions of the spherical lightning control chamber, Su Wu glanced again at the system panel.
Upon completing the previous main quest, new content had been refreshed.
[Next stage of the main quest unlocked.]
[Quest objective: Build a super shelter capable of housing 1 billion people.]
"1 billion people," Su Wu murmured to himself.
He wasn't sure how to evaluate this quest objective. The leap was akin to transitioning from elementary school exams to the college entrance exam in an instant.
Moreover, in the post-apocalyptic world, disasters were endless.
For instance, the Eden satellite had detected a cyclonic formation over 2,000 kilometers in diameter in the depths of the ocean, along with corresponding undersea geological activities.
If such phenomena were to occur on land, they could wipe out a significant portion of a continent's human population in a short time.
Under those circumstances, gathering 1 billion people would likely take several decades and the implementation of mandatory birth policies to even have a slight chance of success.
"Humans are just too fragile in this post-apocalyptic world."
"To complete this quest, we'll need to accelerate population transfer starting now."
Su Wu couldn't help but feel a bit relieved that he had chosen the path of population expansion from the beginning.
Otherwise, if the shelter had remained with just a handful of people, the difficulty of achieving this main quest would have been at least ten times greater.
And with the threat from an unknown intelligent species looming closer, ready to erupt at any moment, time was of the essence.
January 23rd.
At a small shelter on the outskirts of Jianghe City.
After breakfast, Wang Hao put on his patrol uniform—a set of warm, form-fitting regular clothes, a police baton, a flashlight, radiation and virus detectors, an electronic thermometer, a networked camera-equipped hat, Bluetooth earpieces, and a phone.
He began his routine inspection of the shelter's various corners.
As it was still early, the employees responsible for maintaining the plantation hadn't arrived yet, leaving the shelter eerily quiet.
Walking alone down the corridor with its slight echo, Wang Hao felt as if he had stepped onto the set of a horror movie.
Turning a corner, a dimly lit passage came into view.
Wang Hao stomped his foot forcefully, but the motion-activated lights in the corridor didn't turn on as expected.
"Broken again," he muttered.
"After I get back, I'll need to grab a bulb from the storage room to replace it."
As a remote small shelter primarily responsible for providing animal feed, many of the less critical facilities used civilian products left over from before the apocalypse to cut costs, considering the possibility of abandonment at any time.
These outdated devices relied entirely on manual operation and maintenance, forcing the shelter's workers to wear multiple hats and handle any issues that arose themselves.
Even patrols were conducted manually, as despite Jianghe City being managed by artificial intelligence, there were still many blind spots in this shelter's surveillance that required Wang Hao to periodically patrol, manually capturing and transmitting the situation in those areas.
"Just hang in there a bit longer," Wang Hao thought.
"I'll apply to be transferred back to the main shelter soon."
Turning on his flashlight, Wang Hao entered the dark corridor, guided by the not-too-bright light.
A few minutes later, as Wang Hao reached the corridor near the exterior wall on the shelter's third underground level, the ground suddenly shook.
He instinctively stopped and crouched against the wall, having grown accustomed to frequent earthquakes.
But soon, he sensed something was amiss.
This tremor felt unusually strong.
Just as he realized this, a cracking sound echoed ahead.
On the side of the shelter's exterior wall, spiderweb-like cracks began to spread.
Under immense external pressure, the wall shattered, allowing a massive influx of soil to pour in.
Seeing this, Wang Hao dared not stay put.
He scrambled to his feet, staggering backward several steps.
Fortunately, the shaking subsided, preventing the situation from worsening.
Taking a deep breath, Wang Hao adjusted his flashlight to illuminate the damaged area.
In just those few seconds, the soil that had surged in had formed a small hill, completely blocking the passage ahead.
"How long is this going to take to clear?" Wang Hao couldn't help but feel a headache coming on.
As the shelter's only security guard, the task of clearing the debris would undoubtedly fall on him.
Grimacing, Wang Hao was about to calculate his workload for the next few days when his Bluetooth earpiece emitted an urgent warning.
"Warning: Dangerous creature detected."
"Evacuate immediately."
Wang Hao was momentarily stunned.
Without fully understanding what the dangerous creature referred to, he instinctively turned and ran towards the shelter's safe room.
He didn't know much, but the keywords "dangerous" and "evacuate immediately" were clear enough.
When it came to life and death, it was always better to leave immediately, regardless of the circumstances.
As he ran, Wang Hao seemed to hear faint whooshing sounds behind him, different from the usual noise of his footsteps.
But the difference was so slight that he didn't pay it much attention.
After navigating several turns and climbing the stairs to the second level, Wang Hao finally entered the safe room, locking the door behind him.
Only then did he have the chance to connect his phone to the camera on his hat and review the footage he had captured earlier.
The video showed nothing out of the ordinary, except for a fist-sized purple crystal mixed within the soil and rubble blocking the passage.
"Was the warning a mistake?" Wang Hao wondered.
He exited the video playback and opened the task log on his phone, only to find that his current assignment had changed from patrolling the shelter to staying in the safe room and awaiting rescue.
This indicated that the previous warning was not a mistake; there really was a dangerous creature he hadn't noticed.
At that moment, his gaze sharpened.
Meanwhile, at the control center in the underground level of the farmhouse, red warnings began to flash incessantly on the screens.
Several spider robots and machine dogs closest to Wang Hao's small shelter rushed towards it at full speed.
Behind them, more mechanical forces, including twin-engine drones, began to gather, ready to provide support.
"Cut off all underground material transport channels for small shelter C013."
"Prepare the Pioneer-class land destroyer to dock with the crystal detector."
"Head to the surface near small shelter C013."
Su Wu's expression was unprecedentedly grave as he personally intervened in the AI's response, raising Jianghe City's alert level to just below a state of imminent combat.
A palm-sized, inverted crystal pyramid was placed into a safe box, then escorted by several spider robots from the control center to the Pioneer-class land destroyer's cockpit.
This was a detector for purple crystals that Su Wu had once upgraded using survival points.
With a scanning radius of only 5 kilometers, it needed to be sent to the front lines to confirm the actual situation there.
"No purple crystals have appeared around the farmhouse."
"And no second purple crystal has been found in other subsidiary shelters."
"Let's hope the situation isn't too dire."
At this point, Su Wu no longer hoped it was a false alarm; he only wished that reality wasn't a purple crystal army having already surrounded all of Jianghe City.
On the surface, the Pioneer-class land destroyer, having received the crystal detector, immediately activated its engines and headed towards Jianghe City's urban area.
With the detector's effective range limited to a 5-kilometer radius, the destroyer would first circle the entire city along the highway before reaching small shelter C013, scanning every corner to assess the safety level.
Twenty minutes later, the Pioneer-class land destroyer, now close to the city's edge, began continuously transmitting the latest detection data.
The results weren't the worst-case scenario, but they weren't too optimistic either.
In the direction closer to the farmhouse, there were almost no purple crystals.
But on the side near the Qinling Mountains, there were sporadic appearances of roughly a few thousand purple crystals in random locations between the surface and one to two hundred meters underground.
Some were even directly attached to the exterior walls of some shelters.
However, only the one in small shelter C013 had actually entered a shelter's interior.
"There's still time to prepare," Su Wu thought, his tension easing slightly.
He considered the situation and issued an emergency evacuation order to all subsidiary shelters in the urban area.
The total number of personnel still stationed in these shelters was approximately 700,000.
Previously, to save costs and serve as guides for the incoming large population transfer from other regions, Su Wu hadn't relocated them to the farmhouse.
But now, keeping them there was undoubtedly a high-risk and unnecessary move.
"Currently, the farmhouse has 2,400 heavy main battle spider robots and 70,000 ordinary spider robots."
"Leave 400 heavy main battle spider robots to guard the farmhouse."
"The rest can be deployed to the surface to secure the evacuation routes."
These combat robots were mostly products that Su Wu had the super factory produce around the clock in recent days.
Fortunately, that was the case.
Otherwise, with the main forces dispatched to the Kuangjiang River Basin and the surrounding areas of Yu'an City to escort the transfer convoys, encountering today's sudden incident could have led to significant losses.
Leaning back in the soft chair of the control center's command seat, Su Wu watched as Jianghe City's operations became increasingly hectic under his orders.
He let out a silent sigh.
"Prepare to begin the battle."
At the same time, at the official Shelter No. 1 in Jianghe City's urban area, a group of young people was active on a lush green lawn.
"It's been so long since I've seen such a vibrant place."
"Truly nostalgic."
One young man took a deep breath, savoring the scent of plants that was almost impossible to find within the shelter on regular days.
"It's all thanks to Brother Liu and Miss Qianqian."
"On our own, we wouldn't have the privilege to enjoy this place."
Another handsome young man named Fu Yang, sitting beside Liu Mingshu on the grass, gazed at Liu Qianqian, who was surrounded by a group of girls like the moon among stars, his eyes revealing a mix of admiration and loss.
These people were new friends Liu Mingshu had made since arriving in Jianghe City.
Taking advantage of Liu Qianqian's one-day holiday granted by Su Wu and her unrestricted access to Jianghe City, they had collectively come to the park a
t the official Shelter No. 1 for a picnic.
"Looks can be deceiving."
"Now that Qianqian has moved to the core
area alone, even on holidays, she has to report back every night."
"Even I, her brother, can't spend much extra time with her."
Pretending not to notice the young man's forlorn expression, Liu Mingshu began to vent his grievances.
(End of chapter)