Chapter 42: Massive Construction
Construction on an unprecedented scale finally began.
Li Qingsong deployed up to fifty thousand Clones for this construction mission. In addition, he was simultaneously undertaking hundreds of other construction projects.
With the explosive growth in population, industrial capacity, and technological R&D, the hundred or so existing mining bases were clearly no longer sufficient.
In the next phase, Li Qingsong would have to extract even more mineral resources.
Thus, from the remaining ten thousand Clones, Li Qingsong dispatched 5,000. They formed a vast construction legion, traveling by train, truck, excavator, bulldozer, and crusher. Their destination was a larger, more distant location that had already been prospected, where they would build new mines.
Of course, they were only to build the mines; there was no need to begin extraction yet, as there wasn’t enough manpower.
But that was fine. Once the Clone-breeding factories were completed, there would soon be an endless supply of new Clones to send out, allowing these idle mines to start operating.
At the same time, construction would also begin on railway lines connecting the various bases. When that time came, even more mineral resources would be transported smoothly back to the main base.
This left only the final 5,000 Clones to maintain the base’s daily operations and produce the materials required for the massive construction projects.
Previously, this would have been nowhere near enough. The agriculture, livestock, and aquaculture bases alone would have been sufficient to keep all 5,000 Clones completely occupied.
But now, with the completion of the information technology overhaul, the deployment of tens of millions of iron-shell chips, and the establishment of a comprehensive communications network connecting every chip, the productivity of a single Clone had increased by leaps and bounds. A mere 5,000 Clones were now sufficient to handle all logistical support and daily maintenance tasks.
And so, the bustling construction, which involved every single Clone, officially commenced.
Every day, enormous trucks with hundred-ton payloads transported building materials—steel plates, glass, screws, rebar, crude cement, and more—from the steel mills and foundries. At the construction site, thousands of heavy machines like excavators, bulldozers, cement mixers, and road rollers worked around the clock.
Vast quantities of methane and oxygen, sourced from methane and Oxygen Ore mines, were first transported to processing plants for purification. They were then funneled into the fuel tanks of the machinery, driving them to unleash immense power.
Metals from various ore deposits were forged in smelters and processing plants into rebar, steel plates, nuts, bolts, and connectors. On the vast, leveled construction site, these components were rapidly assembled. Combined with poured crude cement, factory buildings sprang up like mushrooms after a rain, emerging one after another on the once desolate and silent land according to a pre-drawn plan.
After the main structures were completed, it was time for interior finishing, wiring, and equipment installation.
Inside the enormous soilless cultivation workshops, rows of planting racks spread out like a boundless forest. Massive bundles of electrical wire ran through them, connecting every grow light in a web whose complexity surpassed a spider’s by a factor of ten million.
In the immense livestock farms, countless automatic waterers and feeders, along with numerous heat lamps and lights, were methodically installed in partitioned stalls. The dense network of water pipes, electrical wires, and network cables was an intricate sight.
Inside the massive power plant, the supercritical generator units most recently developed by Li Qingsong were already installed.
The heat generated by the combustion of organic substances like Tolin and methane with oxygen would bring the water in the boilers to a supercritical state under high temperature and pressure.
When driving turbines, water in a supercritical state offers higher efficiency and a more stable operational state, while also being capable of powering larger generator units.
The generators Li Qingsong prepared for the Clone-breeding factory complex each had an installed capacity of 300,000 kilowatts, meaning each could generate 300,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per hour.
And Li Qingsong had installed a total of five such generators.
Li Qingsong had even built a dedicated railway line for this power plant, specifically for transporting the pre-processed Tolin, methane, and oxygen.
Another massive factory was the culture medium blending plant.
With an annual output of one hundred thousand Clones, and each Clone requiring three tons of culture medium, the factory would consume three hundred thousand tons of culture medium per year.
This clearly necessitated a dedicated factory using automated, large-scale production methods. The previous approach, which was akin to manual craftwork, would no longer be feasible.
This would also make it easier for Li Qingsong to control the quality of the culture medium and ensure more stable production.
At this factory, Li Qingsong had built a massive storage tank. At thirty meters high with a sixty-meter diameter, it was a true behemoth.
The culture medium from the blending plant would first be stored here before being piped to the Clone-breeding factory.
Once the breeding cycle began, the used culture medium would be drained from the breeding pods. After the pods were cleaned, the fresh medium would be automatically pumped in to start a new cycle.
At the heart of this cluster of numerous and varied support factories lay the facility Li Qingsong valued most: the Clone-breeding factory.
The main building of the Clone-breeding factory stood one hundred meters tall and was divided into thirty floors. Each floor, spanning 5,000 square meters, was further subdivided into 200 individual breeding rooms.
Each breeding room held ten breeding pods, meaning a single floor could breed 2,000 Clones at a time.
In addition to the twenty-five breeding floors, five other floors were designated for equipment, rest areas, examination chambers, processing rooms, and other functions.
After a Clone completed its development and was finally ’born,’ it would undergo a series of procedures here—physical examinations, intelligence assessments, its first feeding—before being allowed to leave the facility.
Everything was modeled on an assembly line.
Li Qingsong installed a total of 300,000 iron-shell chips in this building, making it the most automated and information-integrated structure in the entire complex.
Even with Li Qingsong’s extraordinary efficiency, the construction of this massive factory complex took a full year to complete.
Production of the Clone culture medium was complete. The collected body fluids from the strange birds had also been filtered, purified, and mixed into this medium, which was then piped into the massive, empty breeding pods.
The first batch of fifty thousand cell samples had been collected. The Clones placed them, one by one, into the breeding pods.
In the power plant, amidst the roar of the giant generators and sustained by an immense supply of electricity, fifty thousand high-quality Clones slowly began to develop.