Chapter 154: One River, One Sea
“Fellow villager! How do I get to that hilltop?”
He Liang, wearing durable hiking clothes, got out of the vehicle and called out to an old man riding an electric tricycle that was passing by.
The old man was about seventy years old, but he looked spirited, with hair that was only somewhat gray and not completely white, and faint traces of muscles still visible on his body, clearly in good health.
“That’s quite far. Are you going fishing? Listen to this old man, there aren’t many fish there, the road is tough, better pick another spot.”
He Liang glanced at the line of more than a dozen off-road vehicles and pickup trucks behind him, and laughed: “Old man, didn’t you see we have so many vehicles? Fishing doesn’t need this kind of display. We’re here to build a power transmission tower.”
“Power transmission tower? Oh, oh, that’s serious business. You go this way first, there’s a small path over there…”
The old man gave detailed directions, then added: “Vehicles can’t get through, shall I find you some donkeys?”
The word “donkey” made He Liang pause for a moment.
Not to mention seeing one, he hadn’t even heard the word in a long time.
“No need, thank you old man, you go ahead with your business.”
Led by He Liang, the convoy continued forward and finally stopped at the end of the highway. Then a group of dozens of people got out, carrying their personal tools, and began hiking onward.
In the weather of late October, it was already a bit cool in the mountains. But the group still hiked until they were drenched in sweat, finally arriving around noon.
Sitting on a stone and panting heavily, He Liang surveyed the area in front of him.
It was full of scattered rocks and overgrown with weeds. Trees of various sizes grew wildly here.
This was the location where they would work and live for at least the next half month.
The roar of a helicopter came from the sky. An all-terrain excavator slowly descended under steel cable suspension.
“Here, buddies? First clear out the campsite.”
The excavator roared to life and began working, clearing stones, weeds, and trees. During the process, they even used explosives a few times, directly leveling some small hillocks.
Before nightfall, the campsite was cleared. Dozens of tents were set up, and people finally had a place to rest.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much food, so they could only gnaw on bread and eat instant noodles.
Swallowing a few bites of bread, He Liang stepped out of his tent, blowing in the slightly cool mountain wind, gazing into the distance over the dim land.
Ahead was another hilltop, where some lights flickered faintly, like stars. Looking back, he saw some lights there too.
He knew those were the other power transmission tower teams, stationed there just like his own.
Looking down at the foot of the mountain, he saw more than a hundred light spots roughly aligned in a straight line, scattered across the vast and winding mountains, extending to the unseen distance.
He knew those were the road-building construction teams.
To quickly build the road connecting the external main road to the “Crust Seven” base, the world government mobilized more than a hundred construction teams, starting work simultaneously at over a hundred sites.
This way, what would have taken at least two years could now be compressed to just about half a month.
Unfortunately, his own electricity supply team had an even tighter schedule and couldn’t wait even for the half month of road construction, so they had to use a combination of personnel hiking and helicopter equipment transport to complete the power transmission tower construction as early as possible.
Shifting his gaze from the scattered lights of the road-building teams, he looked in another direction.
If the more than a hundred road-building teams’ lights formed a river, then the lights now formed a sea.
In the mountain valley, the construction site spanning at least a million square meters was brightly lit. Though he couldn’t see the details, he knew that at least ten thousand construction workers were busy and over a thousand large machines were roaring.
The helicopter transport teams, like a river in the sky, forcibly connected this desolate, previously untouched area to the outside civilized world before the roads were built.
Countless building materials, personnel, and machinery were converging here.
“Apocalypse…”
He sighed and turned back to his tent.
As the sky was just barely lightening, He Liang got up.
“Time to work, time to work!”
All dozens of people in his team crawled out of their tents. They boiled water for instant noodles, ate haphazardly, and soon helicopters roared in again.
Work began accordingly.
People first leveled another piece of land, drove in the pile foundations, then some operated intelligent welding robots to start welding the power transmission tower framework, while others began installing and debugging the superconducting-related equipment.
The group worked energetically.
In just one day, the planned 60-meter power transmission tower grew from zero to ten meters.
“Old He, want some canned food? Military issue, plenty and filling.”
A companion walked over holding an iron can.
Seeing the canned food, He Liang instinctively swallowed sour saliva and subconsciously shook his head: “I’ll stick to instant noodles.”
Frowning like he was taking medicine, he barely choked down that bucket of instant noodles, then He Liang sighed deeply.
“Damn it, is it so hard to have a hot meal…”
On the second day, work continued. This day, not just He Liang, but everyone else in the team also started looking troubled at the instant noodles and canned food.
In these barren mountains, solving meals was really tricky.
Before, they could ask the helicopter transport team for hot meals. But now transport capacity was tight, no time for that.
No choice, with the apocalypse at hand, just endure it.
As noon approached, hunger struck again. Glancing at the mountain of instant noodle boxes, He Liang forcibly suppressed his hunger.
Just then, a bell sound came from the rugged mountain path nearby. He Liang looked over in surprise and saw a giant beast completely covered in black fur, with a long face and long ears, a bell around its neck.
This is… oh, this is a donkey.
That donkey was loaded with cargo, seemingly several hundred pounds. And behind it were seven or eight more like it.
Six or seven villagers herded the donkeys to a stop, and the old man he’d met before walked over with a smile: “Kids, haven’t eaten yet, have you?”
He Liang hurried over: “Old man, this is…”
“Cough cough, heard the aliens are coming, government’s building some base here to fight them, figured the road’s bad and meals would be inconvenient.
We’re just a bunch of farmers, no special skills, but we can’t let you go to the battlefield hungry, so we discussed with the folks in the village—Aunt Wang, Aunt Li, Old Man Zhao and them—all households contributed what they had, and we have donkeys at home, so we brought stuff over.”
The old man turned to the villagers: “Old buddies, the kids haven’t eaten yet, let’s get to work!”
