by <unknown>
"Alright, next up is Miss Allie from Associated Press…"
Chapter 170: Gradually Fermenting |
Apart from the opening speech, Qian Wenhuan had spent the rest of the conference answering questions presented by the audience. With the constant burst of flashing lights to boot, he felt like he was close to being blinded.
After an hour and a half had passed, Qian Wenhuan exchanged glances with the group of people beside him before finally standing up. "Alright, the press conference concludes here. Feel free to explore the Blackwatch from here on."
After Qian Wenhuan had finished, he turned around and left.
The assistant beside him followed up to address the crowd. "Alright now, everyone please leave the venue in order. Everyone can either leave directly or head over to the main deck where we have wine, steak, and a buffet prepared. Please feel free to indulge yourselves.
"Still, I'd like to remind everyone to be mindful. Not only are there soldiers posted by the important hubs on the ship, but there's surveillance everywhere as well. I believe everyone present is of the most cultured members of the Federation and won't be inclined to do anything rash…
"Should it interest you, please stay with us for a few more days here. In seven days, the Blacklight Grand Hotel will be open to all fellow reporters for free. All you need to do is present your press verification at the reception. Everyone can take a tour around the newly opened city. I'm sure you'll not be disappointed…"
With that, the press conference had concluded.
The original motive for hosting the press conference was to proclaim the official establishment of the Eco Science City. The combined influence of these media establishments naturally exceeded any amount of buzz Chen Chen could ever generate on his own.
Moreover, several districts built in Eco Science City had also been assigned to employees. Commercial lots in the city were also starting to be rented out.
Various commercial shops, tobacco and alcohol parlors, daily necessities stores, and other stores were popping up, adding a fresh breath of life to the newly constructed city.
The villa section by the sea was assigned to high-profile people like the professors. As for the Sandwich Bay which was positioned farthest, the hundreds of sanatoriums were stationed by large groups of medical professionals. This spot would soon become the most prosperous section of the Eco Science City.
Following the commencement of the conference and all of the present media outlets had published their respective articles, the topic of Eco Science City began trending and sparked a new wave of public opinion. Countless phrases such as "Age-reversal treatment" and "Blacklight Biotechnology" circulated across the Internet. Countless armchair scientists began sprouting up one after another, discussing the feasibility of the various technologies developed by Blacklight Biotechnology.
As for how these things often went, there was a crowd with opposing views. A bunch of experts and professors began coming out of the woods with claims that acts of prolonging the lifespan such as these were the equivalent of ripping souls out of the hands of the Reaper. This would sooner or later lead to chaos and destruction of mankind!
Furthermore, some believed that the use of cloned embryos to extend human life contradicted basic human ethics. They believed that this practice was utterly unacceptable and should be strictly banned.
As you may expect, these opposing forces did about as good as a cockroach could at stopping a moving vehicle. Facing a historical movement, they barely were able to generate any noise against it. For the most part, most people observed silently at a distance to see if this newly established Eco Science City was all bark and no bite or the real deal.
It was the elderly class of wealthy people who were especially intrigued by this development. In a mere few days, direct flights to Namibia became extremely difficult to attain. To get to Namibia, many people went through the effort of taking a flight to neighboring countries of Namibia and then driving to Namibia.
In just several days, tens of thousands of people had arrived at Eco Science City. Some of them stayed at the international hotels of the Eco Science City while others went straight for the Sandwich Bay area to enquire regarding the technology at the sanatorium.
Several thousands of people moved into the sanatorium over several days and began receiving the age-reversal treatment.
Regardless of the surrounding opinions and the stance taken in favor of or against it, Eco Science City gradually became known to more people. As the word-of-mouth effect continued to ferment, Eco Science City was bound to become more and more prosperous.
This time, nobody would be able to stop it.
…
At present, Cheng Cao drove Chen Chen to an office building nearby the Sun District.
After parking the car, the two of them entered an elevator in the office building. When the elevator door closed, they went down instead of up.
Any other outsiders who witnessed this scene would probably fall into a state of panic. After all, most buildings should only have one to two levels of basements and yet, the elevator had gone down beyond ten levels.
When the elevator door opened again with a "Ding", an underground space of approximately 500 square meters came into the view of the two men.
The underground space was completely vacant save for two tramcars which looked like miniature trains that were positioned by the platform. As Chen Chen and Cheng Cao stepped out of the elevator, the elevator doors shut on their own before returning to the surface.
The platform resembled a metro platform.
Instead of having subway trains, it was just these small tramcars. They were approximately 5 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 2 meters tall. Its body was an all-alloy structure, the front of the car utilized a triangular design with a marked Blacklight company logo at its head.
The track on which the tram traveled was a one-way loop track. Two parallel tracks ran their course down to the end of the platform.
These were the tunnel trams that led to the entrance of the underground laboratory.
Although the entrance to the underground laboratory was located right under an underground parking lot in a certain district, it had long been sealed up with concrete. Alternatively, several underground tunnel trams similar to this one were placed in the area surrounding the Sun District.
When Chen Chen and Cheng Cao boarded the basic tunnel tram, it activated on its own and began accelerating toward the other end of the tunnel.
The tunnel trams were extremely fast. They arrived at their destination within several minutes.
When Chen Chen got out, what appeared before him was a checkpoint station that was nearly identical to the previous platform.
Only then did Chen Chen technically arrive at the underground section of the Sun District.
This was where the entrance to the underground laboratory elevator was located. In the future, Chen Chen would begin posting cloned security guards in this section to tighten the security measures.
The tramcar automatically screeched to a stop upon approaching the end of the line. After the two of them hopped out of the tramcar, it circled and stopped itself on the opposite track. Any personnel exiting the underground laboratory could take this tramcar to return to the previous platform.
Upon the commencement of the underground laboratory construction, the previous lift platform was replaced with a properly enclosed elevator. There were two of them installed as well. It was done this way so that there was no time wasted entering and exiting the underground laboratory.
Upon entering the elevator, Chen Chen immediately noticed that the elevator was far more pleasing to the eye than the state it was in during construction. The interior was a full metallic gray. In addition, to help alleviate boredom, there was music constantly being played in the elevator with the option to choose the music to boot.
Chen Chen simply browsed the music library and discovered that the catalog pretty much consisted of all the artists in Earth Federation.
Even songs from bottom tier artists could be found. It could be noted that the person who designed this feature was extremely attentive.
After five minutes, when the elevator was drowned in silence again, the doors suddenly opened.
What was behind the door was no longer the exposed underground space as seen before. It was a gleaming glass corridor more than three meters wide.
Chapter 171: Reverse Engineering |
Upon witnessing the scenery before him, Cheng Cao, who was just about to step into the corridor, did a double-take and slowly pulled back his foot that was close to stepping out.
The corridor was around twenty meters long. Whether it was the walls on both sides, the ceiling or the flooring, they were all made of glass.
Just the glass itself was not a big deal on its own. What stood out was that right behind the glass was a bunch of squares. These squares were composed of light blue strips of light.
Countless strips of lights had illuminated the corridor brightly.
At the end of the corridor was a metal gate shut tightly.
When Cheng Cao took in the scenery before him, he felt very exposed…
"Don't worry."
Upon noticing Cheng Cao's hesitation, Chen Chen stepped a foot inside and began explaining, "There's an AI recognition system installed. While we were taking the elevator entering the underground section, the AI has already identified us."
"Can these strips of lights also emit lasers like in the movie?"
Cheng Cao could not resist the urge to ask as he walked in and measured his surroundings.
"It's called an AR ion laser generator. It can emit tens of thousands of degrees of plasma."
Chen Chen ran his finger across the glass wall as he continued explaining, "The surrounding walls are made of a tempered glass known as 'fluorescent organic polymer-capped gold'. Apart from having tougher than steel qualities, it also has beam expanding functionalities. It can emit combined lasers in any shape or form, effectively getting rid of any unauthorized presence entering the corridor without leaving an inch of a blind spot."
"Welcome, Commander Sigma05. Sir Commander, you're now located in the underground 'Spire' laboratory base code A0001."
An icy, mechanical voice of a girl suddenly echoed across the corridor. Unlike Little X's voice which contained hints of emotion, its voice was closer to that of a soulless robot.
Chen Chen pointed at the roof and informed Cheng Cao, "This is 'X-111', the artificial intelligence of the 'Spire', it manages this section."
This was X-111, a copy of Little X.
Due to issues pertaining to permissions, Little X could not expose itself in lower-tier permission dimensions. Similar to the God chip, Little X had created a slightly inferior artificial intelligence copy of itself to maintain the operations of the underground laboratory.
As the two of them approached the end of the corridor, the steel gate parted on both sides with a deafening sound, revealing another gate that was rising behind the steel gate.
When the second gate opened, another spiral-shaped gate appeared. It was only after all three gates had opened successfully when the two men saw an ascending escalator behind the gates.
As a security measure, the elevator entrance to the Spire laboratory extended 50 meters downward. The Spire was surrounded by tens of meters thick reinforced concrete on all sides.
This meant that even if an invader managed to destroy the laser corridor they had just passed through, they would still have to break through a fifty-meter thick layer of reinforced concrete to break into the Spire laboratory.
After climbing to the top of the escalator and passing through so many safety installments, Chen Chen and Cheng Cao had finally arrived at the underground base.
This was the Spire laboratory sector.
A structure resembling the Mayan Pyramid stood tall in the distance. No matter how you look at it, it was a breathtaking marvel. It was surrounded by many other buildings such as dormitories, training centers, warehouses, canteens, and similar facilities.
There were plenty of decorative plantations that did not require sunlight around the surrounding empty spaces. Chen Chen specifically built a large underground garden to prevent the research staff in the Spire from developing mental illness.
The addition of light everywhere also emulated a sensation of being on the surface.
In the section of the underground base that bordered around the ocean, a hole with a diameter of around 50 meters was dug to serve as an artificial dock.
In the future, this dock would be opened like a tunnel, connecting it with the ocean. With that done, it should be able to house submarines and serve as the secondary entrance to the Spire.
There was hardly a need for concern of seawater intrusion as the tunnels connected to the ocean took on an L-shape. The idea behind it was similar to how when putting a cup upside down into a body of water, the middle space of the cup would not be filled with water due to the atmospheric pressure present.
When the water pressure of the seawater was equal to the atmospheric pressure in the air, it was impossible for the seawater to flow into the underground laboratory.
As for the original long narrow passage leading into the underground laboratory which they initially discovered, Chen Chen was going to have it sealed away for good with concrete.
At the present moment, Chen Chen could see fifty clones implanted with God chips on the training ground of the underground laboratory, drowned in sweat as they conducted their rehabilitation training.
With the God chip governing over them, their physical capacity was utilized to its maximum limit without overexerting them the slightest bit nor sparing any additional preserve. They would continue to grow stronger by the day until they reached the limits of the human body.
The only thing these fighters were missing was the fitting equipment and weapons.
Of course, the weapons referred were no ordinary weapons.
Although Chen Chen had at one point smuggled several batches of arms from Russian arms dealers, how did these weapons compare with the troops of the Earth Federation?
In the future when these black knights embark on their mission and face encounters with various other continents, the excellence of the cloned fighters would not make up for the gap in weaponry. After all, the age where war relied on manpower was long past.
Therefore, Chen Chen had required a great deal of non-standard weapons such as the GS combat suit, PK Armor, and various equipment transcending modern technology. This was the only way to properly arm a world-leading combat force.
However, Chen Chen did not have this much energy in the USB drive.
That was why the next phase of Chen Chen's plans was to reverse-engineer the items instantiated from the movie.
The GS combat suit was composed of nano-scale carbon fiber and polyethylene fiber. Producing the nano-scale filament alone posed a great challenge, not to mention the far more difficult task of manufacturing liquid armor and electronic spine.
When Chen Chen considered this, his mind wandered back to the material laboratory back then that performed the material analysis for the GS combat suit as well as the three scientists working there.
It would appear that now was the time to recruit a group of scientists specializing in material science. Before that, he needed to have the world's most advanced material research facility.
While Chen Chen had this in mind, the two of them had arrived at the entrance of the Spire laboratory. He turned to Cheng Cao. "Cao, why don't you take a break in the breakroom. I'll call you when I'm leaving."
Cheng Cao nodded and promptly took his leave.
Once again, Chen Chen entered the laboratory and went to the earliest constructed radiation protection laboratory on the first floor.
Chen Chen took a seat in front of the experiment table and removed the USB drive attached to the wristband.
Previously, he took four months to charge the USB drive with an enormous amount of electricity
using the Symphony of the Seas. If this electricity were to be converted to energy, it would be equivalent to a nuclear bomb of 21.5 million tons.
Chen Chen did not use all of this energy to instantiate the crystalline, he only instantiated 33 of them in total. He used two of them to conduct experiments on the mice and absorbed the remaining 31 crystallines.
Calculating by the weight of 4.5 kilogram per piece, Chen Chen would have instantiated a total of 148 kilograms of items. At this time, the USB flash drive could still instantiate 52 kilograms of material.
So, what should he instantiate next?
Chen Chen thought about it for a moment before plugging the USB drive into the computer. He selected the USB drive and turned his attention to a movie in it.
Terminator: Dark Fate.
Chapter 172: T-800 |
After some consideration, Chen Chen did not open Terminator: Dark Fate right away. Instead, he turned on the browser and downloaded the second movie of the Terminator series online.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
When the download was completed, Chen Chen moved the movie into the USB drive right away.
The two terminator movies merged into one movie in the USB drive immediately.
Chen Chen attempted to view the movie. The opening of the movie was a war montage of the battle between mankind and Skynet. The soaring robots up above and the machineries on land unleashed strange plasma beams, completely crushing the human rebel armies in the frontlines.
In this cruel and vicious paddle, mankind was hanging on by the edge the entire time.
As the frame switched abruptly, a T-800 that had lost one of its arms and legs as well as combat prowess could be seen laying among the rubbles, still squirming around.
As destiny would have it, this T-800 would be taken out by a resistance soldier the very next second. However, Chen Chen clicked the pause button before the soldier could make his appearance.
