Chapter 157: The Vanished City
Ion Drilling Laboratory.
In a massive factory building with an area of over 10,000 square meters and a height of a hundred meters, hundreds of experts wearing white coats, masks, and sunglasses looked solemn as they carefully observed the huge facilities in front of them.
It was a cylindrical machine, smooth and pitch-black all over, with a diameter of fully 8 meters and a height of over 70 meters.
It was confined within a huge cylindrical special glass with a diameter of 10 meters. In this way, the distance between every part of this huge equipment and the glass walls was one meter.
Dozens of thick special white ropes hung from its top, keeping its bottom about half a meter from the ground. At the same time, dozens of thick cables connected to it, providing it with energy.
With all preparations complete, Professor Chen Yusheng, the chief consultant of the engineering team, took a light breath and solemnly gave the command: “Ion Drilling Prototype Machine No. 1, 68th long-duration experiment, beginning now!”
“Superconducting equipment normal!”
“Argon gas circulation passage normal!”
“Ionization equipment normal!”
During the equipment’s self-check, the working state of one system after another was confirmed.
“Countdown, 3, 2, 1, 0… Begin!”
At this moment, a dazzling glow like that of a star burst out from the bottom of the drill bit.
Without sunglasses, the experts’ eyes would have been blinded in that instant.
At the same time, in the nearest large city with a population of tens of millions, every household and every place saw every light fixture in their homes flicker dark for a moment.
Many factories had already shut down in advance. The streetlights that normally lit up every night had also been completely turned off ahead of time.
This night, due to the loss of light, the city quietly vanished from the satellite map, as if swallowed by some invisible “electricity black hole.”
Watching the intensely erupting hot plasma, the experts carefully checked data after data, staying in this huge factory building for over 20 hours.
The equipment continuously erupted for over 20 hours as well.
It consumed a full over 15 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Even though electricity prices in the world today are extremely low, at just 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, this was equivalent to over 450,000 in human currency wealth.
After over 20 hours, Chen Yusheng issued the command again.
“Ion Drilling Prototype Machine No. 1, 68th long-duration experiment, now ending!”
Through the tireless struggle of numerous experts day and night, and with the full cooperation of numerous factories and laboratories, this hastily designed and hastily manufactured ion drilling equipment finally had the ability to be formally put into operation.
Chen Yusheng looked toward the relevant personnel from the manufacturing department.
He knew that numerous raw materials and parts had long been piled up in factory after factory.
The production lines had also long been upgraded and adjusted, with all personnel in place.
They were just waiting for the results of this 68th long-duration experiment in this laboratory.
After this, the standard model of ion drilling equipment would be finalized, and production could begin according to the original plan.
“Begin production!”
“Yes!”
With this command, 500 assembly factories scattered globally, along with tens of thousands of upstream parts factories and others, simultaneously began full-load operation.
Endless parts and supplies flowed swiftly like floodwaters along pre-set “channels.”
In just three days, the drill bit sections of these 500 ion drilling equipment units were already produced.
Special large trucks roared into action, once again advancing with unstoppable momentum—killing gods and Buddhas in their path, opening roads through mountains and building bridges over waters—along emergency paved roads toward areas where the crust was thin.
Watching this scene, Chen Yusheng felt slightly dazed, as if it seemed very familiar.
After silently recalling for a moment, he finally realized.
This was very similar to the scene during the first apocalypse when the nation deployed large numbers of special trucks to transport Giant Spirit God II rockets to various space launch bases…
The only difference was that this time the transportation speed was faster and the scale even larger.
Just the drill bit sections of the ion drilling equipment had a diameter of 8 meters and a length of over 70 meters, much larger than a Giant Spirit God II rocket.
And the subsequent “drill pipe” sections were the same size as the drill bits, also 8 meters in diameter. Moreover… the shortest set of equipment had drill pipes totaling 21,000 meters in length.
Because even at the thinnest points of the crust on land, the crust thickness was 21,000 meters.
Such long drill pipes were of course divided into sections, transported separately, and assembled on site. Calculated at 70 meters per drill pipe section, 21,000 meters meant a full 300 sections.
For 500 ion drilling equipment units, that was a total of 150,000 sections.
The scale was directly hundreds of times larger than when transporting Giant Spirit God II rockets back then.
Fortunately, this ion drilling equipment didn’t need to be fully manufactured before operation; it could work while being produced, greatly dispersing the production pressure.
At this moment, Earth’s Crust Base No. 7.
The ground facilities with a total area of one million square meters had already been completed.
Large ground auxiliary equipment had long been installed in those buildings, and now everything was ready except for the final key piece.
The giant truck with over 100 wheels roared into Earth’s Crust Base No. 7. A crowd of staff and large machinery immediately moved forward to begin further operations.
First, reinstalling the previously disassembled internal large equipment.
The drill bit of the ion drilling equipment was the heaviest. Even at just over 70 meters in length, with full internal equipment, its weight reached over 5,000 tons—too much for even the largest trucks to bear.
Thus, its shell and internal equipment could only be transported separately.
But even with just the shell remaining, its mass was over 1,000 tons, heavier than a Giant Spirit God II rocket fully fueled back then.
At this moment, at the core of Earth’s Crust Base No. 7, a funnel-shaped huge cave had been excavated in advance using conventional excavation methods: maximum diameter of over 100 meters, tapering inward to just 10 meters in diameter, and 500 meters deep.
Next to this cave stood four devices like cable-stayed bridges.
The other end of the cables was fixed into the mountain body, supported by towers, with the slanting cables extending toward the cave side.
The giant crane lifted this over-70-meter-long, over-1,000-ton giant device, lowering it vertically into the huge cave.
Afterward, the cables from the four cable-stayed bridges connected to the ultra-strong tensile ropes inside the drill bit equipment for load-bearing.
The over-1,000-ton giant object now steadily hovered in the air above the cave.
Only then did people transport giant equipment pieces one after another, installing them one by one into the drill bit section with the aid of the hoist.
