Chapter 360 - 258: A Hot Spring Appeared (Part 3)
The researchers didn’t seek out Lin City staff to arrange accommodations like the civilian officials who came with them but instead stayed directly at Chen Xin’s place.
Fortunately, Chen Xin had prepared plenty of tents, so he just needed to make a few adjustments to free up a tent for the researchers.
However, staying in a tent can’t quite compare to staying in a shelter. After all, it’s not like before the catastrophe; of the five essential human needs—eating, drinking, sleeping, defecating, and urinating—eating, drinking, and sleeping are manageable inside a tent, but personal excretion isn’t something that can be handled inside a tent.
Even if one doesn’t mind the smell, it’s a troublesome matter to deal with.
So usually, everyone has to handle their personal hygiene issues outside the snow caves where the tents are pitched.
In this kind of weather, going out for the bathroom is quite a daunting challenge; squatting for just a bit longer could result in frostbite on one’s behind.
Moreover, considering the smell issues after heating, even though Chen Xin dug another hole near the snow caves to serve as a toilet, it’s still impossible to install a heater to warm one’s behind.
This leads to each bathroom visit being a major challenge.
Besides, bathing is another issue that’s bothering everyone; while the tents aren’t too cold, there’s no place to take a bath. One can only fetch a basin of hot water and wipe down inside the tent.
The movements have to be quick; otherwise, even though there’s no wind inside the tent, after a while, one’s body will become very cold, and catching a cold would be a troublesome matter.
However, if someone really wants to take a bath, neither Chen Xin nor Cao Daren would stop them; instead, they’d give them half a day off to go back to the shelter to bathe.
After all, the shelter is just within Lin City’s urban area, so going back to take a bath doesn’t take much time.
Of course, because the drilling work had only started a few days ago, none of these workers wanted to go back for a bath yet; they could still endure it.
After all, even though there are bathing facilities within the shelter, taking a bath in this current environment is a luxury; usually, the survivors in the shelter could just bathe once a week, and that would already be quite good.
The available water resources are extremely valuable right now. Though the country is still maintaining tap water supply, bathing consumes water not just for the actual bathing but also for washing clothes, which everyone considered when deciding to bathe weekly.
Chen Xin previously didn’t have to think about these issues; all kinds of living conditions in his shelter were very well-equipped, allowing him to bathe daily without issue, and the same for washing clothes.
Apart from worrying about clothes wearing out from frequent washing, Chen Xin didn’t really have much to worry about.
But now, living in tents inside snow caves, many issues Chen Xin wouldn’t care about before emerged one by one, forcing him to allocate some energy to tackle them.
This makes Chen Xin reflect on how well he’d lived before, while also examining his current environment to see if there are areas to improve, for both his and others’ living conditions.
Chen Xin hasn’t forgotten that his system gains survival points extensively through improving his living conditions.
During this period, products generated by the system, like the Isotope Thermoelectric Battery and Exoskeleton Protective Suit, have been distributed nationwide, and Chen Xin already started harvesting survival points on a grand scale.
Although there is an upper limit, one must say, Flame Country is vast, and the survival points brought to Chen Xin by numerous shelters have been remarkably impressive, with his total survival points reaching six figures.
This is a significant amount of survival points, and if Chen Xin wished, he has enough resources to implement many of his ideas.
For instance, Chen Xin always liked large mechas in the past; although building a Gundam is impossible, a Titan is not entirely out of the question, and if Chen Xin genuinely wished, he could construct a Titan from the game "Titanfall."
Thinking about this, Chen Xin couldn’t help but feel a bit excited.
However, he restrained his desire well; the most important task at hand is to build the heat supply core and then erect the Energy Tower.
As for the mechas and Titans, they’re not impossible to manage, but they need to be pushed back slightly.
After all, while others are struggling at the edge of life and death, Chen Xin can’t be indulging himself, building large robots for fun. Can he?
Although such selfish behavior isn’t entirely unacceptable, to Chen Xin, he isn’t very fond of this approach, and the system’s way of acquiring massive survival points also dictates that Chen Xin must help others.
Even though he can convince himself to restrain some impulsive thoughts and can also convince himself that humanoid machinery like Gundam and mechas are pretty useless, with no need to create such high-powered toys...
But thousands of theories and numerous reasons always pale in comparison to a single question: "Isn’t a big robot cool?"
Cool, indeed very cool.
For boys, robots, Transformers, Gundam...such large humanoid iron creations always possess irresistible allure.
Otherwise, why are there always boys crying and fussing for their parents to buy the handsome toys in the store?
Though Chen Xin passed the age where he’d cry and fuss for something he wanted, now that he can build a real one, why should he hold back?
Despite numerous reasons convincing himself otherwise, Chen Xin still wishes to create a robot for fun.
Yet while he considers building a robot, he’s also taking its practicality into account, deciding to first create an engineering mecha.
This kind of thing holds practical value; in this current environment, an engineering mecha can provide significant utility, potentially being more effective than dozens or even hundreds of workers when used well.
Just like the train loading and unloading work in Lin City; with a few engineering mechas, the efficiency could be greatly increased!
Thinking like this, Chen Xin couldn’t hold back his inner impulse and began drafting his engineering mecha design using the microcomputer on the Power Armor and mechanical arms.
But just when he’d finished designing the skeleton of his engineering mecha, Cao Daren suddenly rushed in from outside, found Chen Xin, and excitedly shouted: "We hit it! We hit it! Writer, we struck a hot spring!"
Stunned by Cao Daren’s shout, Chen Xin paused before reacting and hurriedly asked: "A hot spring? Did we really hit a hot spring?"
"We hit it! We hit it! Really hit it!" Cao Daren was extremely excited, pulling Chen Xin and wanting to go outside, yet unable to pull the Power Armor, but that didn’t dampen his excitement: "The drill reached over four hundred meters deep, pierced a rock layer, and encountered a water-bearing layer; now it’s already producing water!"