Chapter 265: 【underground Laboratory】
Under the senior student’s lead, Yuan Zhu and Nie Yin followed along, soon leaving the Frog Factory construction area and heading toward another, more distant construction site.
Eyeing the distance, it was about 200 meters. Yuan Zhu couldn’t help but ask in confusion: “Is that the laboratory’s location? Why isn’t it built together with the Frog Factory and greenhouse?”
The senior student said without turning her head: “The frog farming area, as well as the greenhouse for planting dangerous plants, are ordinary buildings. They need to be large in scale, but as long as the strength meets the standard, it’s fine. The advanced laboratory is different, however. It has extremely high requirements for building materials, protection levels, pollution shielding… It needs to be built independently.”
“Besides that, I have more privacy designs and special needs for our laboratory… Look!”
At this moment, the senior student brought Yuan Zhu to the side of a huge deep pit, pointing at a ‘giant drilling machine’ below the pit that she didn’t know how to describe, reminding him in a slightly boastful tone.
Candle looked down and was shocked by the scene in the deep pit: “This is…”
At this moment, ‘one’ or rather a machine that was old-fashioned in appearance, rough, covered in soil and rust, yet still full of mechanical beauty—a metal behemoth—was coiled like a steel giant dragon in the center of the pit, twisting its body wildly and crazily drilling into the hard rock beneath the soil layer.
The mechanical behemoth was like a cylindrical ‘mechanical worm/earthworm’ with a diameter of 6 meters. The exposed length of its body was at least 20 meters, and it could twist flexibly like a worm or earthworm.
Its head was a sharp suction-cup-shaped rotating mouthpart resembling a ‘mechanical lamprey’, with a huge mechanical drill bit installed inside the cavity, just like Earth’s shield machine, but more flexible.
It clearly looked like a classical steam punk device assembled from ‘pure mechanical structures’, but the shock and ‘retro tech feel’ it gave was even higher than Earth technology, even more astonishing.
Inside this large drilling machine, there were strong alchemy element fluctuations. Clearly, it wasn’t purely ‘physical machinery’ either; it was blessed with supernatural pollution. This made the giant machine look more like a living ‘creature’.
Accompanied by a series of sharp friction sounds that could scratch the eardrums, this mechanical behemoth plunged headfirst into the pit bottom again, opening its mechanical giant mouth to gnaw at the rock layer, using the drill bit to destroy the rock structure, crushing the stone, splattering sparks, and swallowing the ground stone chips into its belly, then spraying them out from the ‘tail’ protruding from the ground not far away.
Soon, construction teams drove up in large trucks and bucket loaders to collect these crushed ‘stone particles (mechanical behemoth poop)’, using them as materials to construct the Frog Factory and greenhouse, transporting them to Construction Area 1.
It was also making use of local materials, turning the original soup into original poop.
Yuan Zhu looked at the giant pit before him. Though it couldn’t be called bottomless, its depth of over ten meters was still quite shocking: “What is this thing? Why dig such a big ‘pit’? Didn’t you say we were building a laboratory?”
At this moment, Candle was completely bewildered.
The senior student curled up the corners of her mouth and said excitedly to him: “Of course it’s to build an underground laboratory! It’s both safe and hidden. Look at this thick rock layer—pouring an indestructible laboratory underground, easy to defend and hard to attack, enough to suppress any ‘dangerous experimental subjects’ and prevent escapes!”
“???”
The laboratory in Yuan Zhu’s mind: An explosion-proof concrete building, not high requirements, two or three stories is fine.
The laboratory under the senior student’s supervision: A mechanical alchemy behemoth crazily gnawing at the rock layer, digging out a pit over ten meters deep, then pouring and filling it? Is this building a core nuclear facility?
Hearing the senior student’s description, and realizing that this ‘underground laboratory’ also had a share for him, he was naturally inexplicably excited and thrilled. But soon, it was replaced by heartache: “This… how much money does this cost?”
Too extravagant, too wasteful! His requirements for the Frog Factory were still at the level of the frog sheds in CCTV agriculture channel’s rural “Road to Riches”. And here you are pulling a Biohazard Raccoon City underground hive on me?
Isn’t this a bit excessive!
The senior student waved her hand: “Relax, it’s not expensive. This is a professional drilling team arranged by my uncle at my request. He promised to build me a -6-story underground laboratory. There are also 3 stories above ground to cover eyes. In addition, they will use this ground-drilling worm to build multiple unconnected passages on each floor of the underground building, leading to different exits, convenient for secretly transporting goods and safe evacuation.”
“It’s a pity I don’t have money, otherwise I could even connect the ‘secret passages’ to the complex underground cave network in the Misty Mountains; or all the way to Running City’s underground transportation network. But the price is too high, can’t afford it. Our ‘underground secret passages’ can’t exceed 1 kilometer in length, with exits built in a few nearby hidden spots, convenient for us to do some unseemly things.”
Yuan Zhu now somewhat understood why this mechanical alchemy device called the ground-drilling worm appeared at their own Frog Factory. Digging the pit was secondary; its more important job was to drill multiple independent ‘escape + goods transport’ safety passages for the underground laboratory?
What exactly does this senior student want to do?!
Yuan Zhu now seriously suspected that the other party was using him as cover. Seemingly supporting his ‘frog farming undertaking’, but actually secretly doing other unspeakable ‘illegal research’, even digging underground smuggling passages.
Once it blows up, obviously he’d be the one taking the fall. So scary!
Yuan Zhu, with complex emotions, held back a lot of words for a while not knowing how to ask, hemmed and hawed for half a day, then asked: “What does your uncle do? Such a big project!”
The senior student responded flatly: “He’s not some big shot, just a small boss in the gem mining business. Running used to be a famous ‘old industrial heavy town’ on the West Coast. Beneath the nearby mountains, there are rich metal ore deposits, gem ore deposits… The underground space has numerous karst caves and fissures.”
“Therefore, Running’s mining, drilling, and excavation projects are extremely developed. The strongest subjects at Rain Courtyard are geology and large mechanical engineering. This old and outdated ground-drilling worm is an underground drilling alchemy device designed by Rain Courtyard a hundred years ago.”
“Nowadays, Running’s industry is backward and production capacity has declined. The original ‘metal mines’ have been exhausted. Taixi discovered new mining areas in other regions. Only the gem processing industry still maintains competitiveness. My uncle has business in a mining area near Running, is familiar with the drilling team, so he borrowed this ground-drilling worm to dig holes for us.”
In the senior student’s introduction, Running City is surrounded by mountains on all sides, with limited surface area. But thanks to super strong industrial capabilities and drilling excavation technology.
Running started building complex underground transportation systems as early as a hundred years ago, with subway systems long ago. Further down is the complex and luxurious drainage system. Going even deeper, there are numerous naturally formed underground fissures.
Abandoned old subway passages, collapsed underground tunnels, privately excavated underground spaces, ultimately weaving into a filthy ‘underground city’.
Therefore, goblins in Running are particularly rampant. The warm and humid underground network becomes a breeding ground for goblins. The city hall needs a large number of cleaning companies to hunt and clear goblin hazards, often pouring poisonous gas into unknown underground spaces, then igniting with open flames for efficient kills.
And drilling, excavating secret passages, building underground secret rooms… have long evolved into unique local culture. As a transmigrator, Yuan Zhu couldn’t quite understand the senior student’s excitement.
Building one’s own ‘secret underground laboratory’, plus multiple ‘secret passages’, is the dream of every Running child from childhood to adulthood!
Snake Snake translated it in a way Yuan Zhu could understand: “Batman’s Batcave + Raccoon City hive + Third New Tokyo City’s EVA launch tunnel…”
Yuan Zhu: “So cool!”
At this time, the Alchemy. Ground-drilling worm was still in the stage of excavating the foundation, and the construction team had not yet entered to pour the laboratory’s lowest level.
So the group didn’t stay long, but was pulled by the senior student to a nearby temporary base, where she pulled out stacks of design drawings and introduced them to Candle like showing off.
–
The 6-story underground laboratory, except for the top two floors being experimental areas. -3 floor is the ‘isolation observation area’, and the bottom three floors are more like different levels of dungeons, secret rooms, prisons, used to store, detain, imprison, seal dangerous ‘experimental works’.
During the construction of each floor, she would hire professional teams to set up multiple ‘magic arrays, alchemy arrays’.
In short, Yuan Zhu listened half-understanding, but understood that the safety level must be very high. Three levels of prisons, with increasing confinement strength downward. Even if it goes wrong, with this absolutely up-to-standard underground structure, it won’t spiral out of control.
…
According to the senior student, when Rain Courtyard handles some high-risk experimental waste or out-of-control experimental subjects, they often go deep into the Misty Mountains, find an abandoned mine, and use professional geological teams to drill a secret passage of unknown depth leading to the underground.
Then pour a sufficiently safe enclosed space with structure powder, throw the ‘sealed item’ in, continue filling and pouring… and then it’s all good.
Even the Security Bureau, when handling tricky ‘pollutants’, likes this self-deceiving trick. Taixi even transports large amounts of ‘forbidden pollution’ to Running, then buries them deep underground, just like Earth hometown handling nuclear waste.
Unfortunately, at the start of their entrepreneurship, they didn’t have strong funds. Otherwise, digging the underground secret passages all the way into the complex underground mine caves of the Misty Mountains would allow casually discarding garbage. And unable to be tracked or held accountable.
Thinking of the future underground laboratory + hidden safe goods transport passages, Yuan Zhu thought of the two siblings he had high hopes for.
Yuan Tang and Yuan Tiao should adapt well to this environment, right? The two just crawled out of the caves in Eclosion World, and now they’re drilling into Running’s underground. What fate!
After appreciating the underground laboratory blueprints designed by the senior student herself, and learning that she relied on family connections (uncle) to build the underground structure at no great cost.
Candle gave it ‘full marks’, praising that the senior student was indeed worthy of being the senior student! If he handed the Frog Factory work to Nie Yin, with his own finances, he could at most build a ‘”Road to Riches” level’ rural frog farming shed.
Then rely on his Holy Light attainment (Holy Ash) to subsidize the Frog Factory, earn hard money from frog farming. Accumulate over time, slowly perfect the factory. In Running, lacking connections, building a laboratory like the senior student’s, who knows how many years of hard struggle it would take?
Here, he couldn’t help but sigh: Truly the evil rich second generation!
Leaving the temporary residence, the group walked back toward the Frog Factory and greenhouse construction sites. Seeing the bustling staff on the site, he couldn’t help asking: “With so many people involved in the construction, aren’t you afraid of too many eyes and someone leaking intel on the ‘underground experimental facility’?”
According to the senior student’s plan, whether the underground laboratory or the several independent safety passages, they were all top secret. Outsiders coming to the Frog Factory for goods could only see the two surface-level ‘experimental small building’, used to cope with external safety inspections.
But now with such a big giant pit, such a long ground-drilling worm, there’s no secret at all. Zone B construction site is less than 200 meters from Zone A, and constantly transporting ‘crushed stone’ here—what can’t be hidden.
The senior student patted his shoulder and calmly reassured: “Relax, every one on site has signed a Law. Confidentiality Agreement. After the job is done, the Law Agreement will automatically trigger, destroying and clearing their related memories. They’re professional engineering teams, process is complete—everything you can think of is in the contract.”
Yuan Zhu thought again of Running’s unique ‘underground culture’. This kind of ‘private forbidden bunker’ is something every wealthy family does. Such professional construction teams obviously have rich ‘confidential construction experience’.
Having the Pale Great Law directly clear memories is more reliable than any oath or guarantee.
Yuan Zhu praised: “Laws are really convenient.”
The senior student: “Of course. The construction team didn’t cost much, relying on favors and connections. Instead, the Anti-Law. Confidentiality Agreement was borne by me at my own expense, cost a lot of money to get.”
Yuan Zhu flattered: “Senior student, your family is really rich! Yet back then when you recommended ‘supernatural reinforcement’ to me, you still charged me a consultation fee.”
The senior student humbly said: “My family really has no money, just an ordinary family, the kind of fringe poor relatives of a big clan. My uncle’s line inherited the family’s ‘gem mines’, but compared to Running’s big gem merchants, it’s just small business. The jewelry industry hasn’t been doing well these years. The family sent me to Rain Courtyard to study to get to know some geniuses, expand connections, find new business. Our cooperation is a small attempt. I think highly of you, personal investment in you, the family provides some help.”
Yuan Zhu asked back: “The family behind you also wants to enter the ‘pharmaceutical industry’?”
His original intention in opening the Frog Factory was to secretly learn the power path’s pollution reinforcement, study local ‘magic potions’; and by the way, borrow Rain Courtyard’s blueprints to build a ‘laboratory’ to replicate Earth’s veterinary medicine.
Let the above-board identity earn some hard money, launder ashore, live a luxurious hedonistic life. With his Yuan Zhu Holy Light perfected, using it to raise frogs, make money to buy cars and houses, live in a big house, eat big fish and meat every meal, enjoy a bit—isn’t that fine? This is all exchanged with my life! (Ignite life, release Holy Light.)
Hearing Yuan Zhu’s question, the senior student nodded: “There are indeed such ideas.”
“I study the School of Dangerous Botany. Besides following the mentor to research cracking the mysteries of rogue immortals; it also involves a lot of ancient prescriptions from the old continent (Geng Continent) Xi Chao. If through researching extraordinary medicinal herbs, we can explore and restore improved versions of several pill prescriptions or medicine prescriptions, or cultivate ‘extraordinary medicinal herbs’ that can stably breed, that would also count as opening a new business line for the family.”
