Homo Sapiens

With help from his bio-phone’s system assistant and the neighborhood administrator, Gan Lin and his family were finally starting to adapt to life in White Stone Base.

He had found a temporary job as a construction worker.

Today was his first day, and Gan Lin arrived at the company’s local station to report for duty.

The training team leader in charge of new recruits was an extremely muscular man who looked rather intimidating.

The muscular man was blunt with the new recruits:

"Work hard. It’ll definitely be a little hard to adapt at first, but don’t get discouraged. If you don’t understand something, ask. If you don’t know how, learn. If you’re thinking of slacking off, don’t blame me later for not warning you. If your performance isn’t up to par, you’ll be assigned to the worst posts."

That got everyone to take things a bit more seriously.

After changing into full industrial exoskeletons in the company’s locker room,

the muscular man led the group of new recruits onto an electric train heading for Construction Site 506.

On the train, all they could see were the dark tunnel walls on either side. Gan Lin and the others quickly grew tired of the view. Fortunately, there was a large-screen bio-computer in the car that could play news, TV dramas, and variety shows.

Unfortunately, Gan Lin could barely read, and since the content was all in Chinese, English, Burmese, and Thai, he couldn’t understand what the TV programs were saying at all.

Seeing this, the muscular team leader reminded them, "You can use your phone’s earpieces."

After speaking, the muscular man took out two dark green patches, each about the size of a pinky fingernail, from the back of his phone and stuck them on near his ears.

Gan Lin and the others followed his example, clumsily taking out their own bio bone conduction patches. These patches had built-in electromagnetic signal receivers and could draw power by absorbing energy from the user’s bloodstream, so they didn’t need to be charged.

Of course, this method of drawing power from the blood was harmless to the human body. It could even help treat conditions like high blood sugar and high cholesterol.

When he applied the patch, Gan Lin felt a slight sting, but the pain quickly vanished.

In a short while, with the help of their phones’ system assistants, they learned the basics of using the simultaneous translation function.

Using the simultaneous translation, they could finally understand what the TV show was saying.

The program currently playing was a domestic and international news brief from the Hongsawaddy Development Television news channel.

On the screen, a news anchor said with a grave expression:

"To cope with the potential refugee crisis in the Assam Region, the Qingye Group, Development Group, and United Group have each been contracted to construct sections of the border barrier wall..."

"Hongsawaddy will maintain a neutral stance, closing all roads and ports of entry with the Assam Region effective immediately, and will strengthen its western border defenses..."

Hearing this news, Gan Lin and the others exchanged bewildered glances.

Although they were largely illiterate, they still knew some basic common knowledge. As locals, they were certainly familiar with place names like Assam, Manipur, and Siliguri.

"Is a war about to start?"

"Maybe!"

"Who knows what will happen now."

The muscular man clapped his hands. "Instead of worrying about that, you should be thinking about the work ahead. The people from Tianzhu won’t be able to get in."

Huh? ’People from Tianzhu?’ Although Gan Lin didn’t consider himself a person from Tianzhu, the fact that the muscular man said it so brazenly made it clear that the people here didn’t have a good relationship with Tianzhu.

Just as they were all whispering among themselves, the train finally arrived at Construction Site 506.

This was a construction zone located 173 meters below the surface. The rock layer above was primarily igneous rock, and there was an underground river nearby.

When the muscular man led them to the site, workers were in the process of laying the roof slabs for the top level.

"Our team’s job is sediment transport. Come on..." As he spoke, the muscular man led them into the equipment room.

Inside were various pieces of equipment, such as slurry pumps, pipes, slurry separators, and transport vehicles.

The muscular man was very responsible, giving them hands-on instruction on how to operate the equipment and explaining all the safety precautions.

By noon, the new recruits were still confused.

The muscular man wasn’t angry about this. After all, they were all illiterate rookies. The first month would be dedicated to preliminary standardized training, followed by a two-month internship, before they could possibly become qualified junior employees.

In the construction site’s cafeteria.

Gan Lin finally got to eat rice and chicken. After several days of eating mush, he couldn’t stand it anymore and was desperately missing real rice.

While the new recruits ate, the muscular man gathered with a few of his "New Human" colleagues in a small room to eat and chat casually about the project’s progress.

"Engineer Cheng, when will the roof slab work be finished?" the muscular man asked, holding a chicken leg.

"Team Leader Tie is worried about this too?" Engineer Cheng took a sip of green tea, then picked up a slice of pre-cut, artificially grown wagyu beef and put it in his mouth.

The muscular man, Iron Science, shook his head. "It’s mainly because we have more and more employees, and our base’s energy supply is getting tight. Rationing electricity and gas long-term isn’t a solution. This project of ours is extremely important."

Engineer Cheng, of course, knew the importance of the project. "The roof slab will take about another thirteen days. We have to install the anti-nuclear materials, after all."

Although the underground base was located within a mountain or deep underground, often with hundreds of meters of rock and soil above it, that didn’t mean it was completely foolproof.

For example, bunker busters, nuclear bombs, and neutron bombs could all strike targets deep underground.

Against bunker busters, the base’s primary defense was a brute-force approach, relying on a special non-Newtonian fluid layer combined with a protective layer constructed from genetically modified coral polyps.

The top two or three levels of the underground structure were not typically used as residential areas or for frequent personnel activity.

Within the base’s various zones, the residential areas were located at a relatively greater depth, usually below 240 meters, and their structural defenses were typically the strongest.

As for nuclear and neutron bombs.

Neutron bombs were actually less of a concern. With the bio-nanocarbon-lead-aluminum alloy plates produced through biosynthetic technology, combined with such thick geological strata, it was very difficult for a neutron bomb to kill personnel inside the underground base.

The real fatal threats to the underground base were actually hydrogen and atomic bombs.

A direct hit, even two or three hundred meters underground, would still be difficult to defend against completely.

This was especially true for hydrogen bombs with yields exceeding one megaton. The massive crater from the explosion, combined with the seismic waves, rock compression, thermal radiation, and neutron jets, meant there was basically no chance of survival from a direct hit.

Fortunately, however, when the Assam Branch was constructing its underground production and living bases, site selection prioritized mountainous and plateau regions, as well as metamorphic rock strata like granite, which greatly increased the upper limit of resistance against hydrogen bombs.

As long as it wasn’t a direct hit, even if ground zero was within two or three kilometers, the base’s defenses could still withstand a significant portion of the attack.

Since Tianzhu’s hydrogen bomb technology was not well-developed, they currently did not possess mature H-bomb warheads, only atomic ones.

And due to the nature of their reaction mechanism, the maximum yield for an atomic bomb is about 300 kilotons.

Of course, if Tianzhu were to continuously bombard the same location with several atomic bombs, they could indeed destroy the base below.

However, for Tianzhu to do so, they would need the capability, and the other great powers are no pushovers. They would most likely join forces to prevent Tianzhu from using nuclear weapons.

Therefore, the defensive capabilities of the various underground bases currently being built by the Assam Branch were more than sufficient. This was also to plan for the future, to avoid the need for a second round of upgrades later on.

The underground facilities being built by the Hongsawaddy Branch, Luzon Branch, and Siam Branch in their respective regions all had similar levels of defense.

These were necessary preparations for potential future crises.