Chapter 348: Severed Land Routes (Patreon)

Chapter 348: Severed Land Routes

Fuhai Province.

Shuitian City.

Chai Zeyang had unusually set aside official duties. Accompanied by his personal guards, he arrived at a surface-level watchtower.

From here, one could gaze upon a desolate and vast gray plain stretching to the horizon.

It was volcanic ash from the distant north, blanketing the icy plains.

Though located in the southernmost part of the Eastern Continent,

the super earthquakes ravaging the continent's interior had not yet directly affected Shuitian City.

Yet, the surface environment here had still been profoundly altered,

becoming utterly different from before.

Standing before the watchtower's observation window,

Chai Zeyang stared outside for a long time before sighing wistfully.

"Everyone has left."

With the sinking of Yu'an City,

the once-vast Southeast Alliance now had only two members left—himself and Su Wu—

effectively disbanded.

And now, time was running out for him.

"We must accelerate construction."

"Even if it costs everything—"

June 23.

Terra.

Underground Level 1, Control Center.

"Report No. 10,927: During this cycle, the external wall stress intensity reached 8.7 magnitude."

"Expected to cause minor tremors in 19% of the Shelter's interior."

"Under the emergency protocol authorized on June 12,"

"to counteract these minor tremors, the Shelter's ultra-large Anti-gravity Array will automatically increase power output by 1.2%."

On the control console screen,

countless data points condensed into a few concise lines of text, updating the system logs.

Behind these words,

it meant another astronomical amount of energy had been poured into the Anti-gravity Array.

Minor tremors had little impact on the daily lives of ordinary people or even routine production work.

But for something as massive as Terra,

even the slightest disturbance would be amplified hundreds of millions of times,

resulting in significant cumulative losses.

Thus, to ensure Terra's absolute environmental stability,

even an extra tens of thousands of kilowatt-hours consumed per second was a worthwhile trade-off.

Meanwhile, in stark contrast to Terra Shelter's undisturbed interior under the Anti-gravity Array's influence,

on Terra's surface,

the land—once hardened to near-steel consistency by extreme cold and blizzards—

had turned into liquid waves,

crashing against Terra's towering walls in relentless surges.

Every moment brought impacts equivalent to hundreds of thousands of tons of force.

In such terrifying conditions,

if not for Terra, any ordinary shelter would have been torn apart within ten minutes.

"The earthquakes in Jianghe City are growing stronger."

Seated at the control console, Su Wu reviewed the surface monitoring data,

feeling a headache coming on.

Though earthquakes of this magnitude (8-9) couldn't directly harm Terra,

their near-constant occurrence was another matter.

In the ten or so days since the earthquakes began,

all land transport routes around Terra

and thousands of mining stations of varying sizes in the quake zone

had essentially ground to a halt.

The only remaining way to obtain resources was through air transport using Morning Light-Class Transport Ships and sixth or seventh-generation fighter jets.

This effectively slashed Su Wu's resource income by more than half.

Additionally,

with land routes also severed,

the precious internal space of Terra Shelter could no longer accommodate the increasing number of newly produced Ice Lake-class Transport Ships.

In the workshops located on the first three above-ground levels,

related production tasks were forced to halt.

This directly derailed Su Wu's original plan of rapidly devouring the entire Eastern Continent's resources by endlessly expanding land transport capacity.

"Moreover, Terra's population growth has been too rapid lately."

"It must slow down to allow for proper absorption."

This was another issue that couldn’t be ignored.

Recently,

in an effort to rescue as many survivors who had lost their shelters as possible,

Su Wu had deliberately lifted restrictions and dispatched five first-generation Morning Light-Class Transport Ships solely for population relocation.

As a result, Terra's total population surged from nearly 1.1 billion to over 1.5 billion.

This massive influx—comparable to the population of a former superpower—

meant that even the most basic survival needs alone nearly overwhelmed Terra's entire supply system.

If not for the Artificial Intelligence coordinating everything,

maximizing the use of limited resources and minimizing human-induced waste in distribution,

a large-scale riot would likely have erupted by now.

After a moment of deep thought,

Su Wu pulled up Terra's structural diagram, his gaze settling on the upper levels of the colossal shelter.

The newly added hundreds of millions of people

were currently housed between the 18th and 23rd above-ground floors.

Apart from the 21st floor, which was originally designated as the shelter's third dedicated leisure zone,

the remaining five floors were entirely standard dormitory levels, each capable of housing 80 million people.

Most of these individuals currently received only the bare minimum rations to sustain life.

They lacked even basic necessities like spare clothing or simple tools such as scissors and hammers.

However, with the Super Factory as a backbone,

while the situation seemed dire, it wasn’t unsolvable.

All it required were some basic resources and a modest amount of time.

"Resources… time."

Su Wu murmured to himself.

He then switched the console to the transport management interface.

Instantly, a complex aerial transport network map unfolded before him,

with hundreds of small and large light dots flickering and moving along the routes.

These represented all of Su Wu's remaining airborne transport units.

Among these hundreds of dots,

the true backbone consisted of eight first-generation Morning Light-Class Transport Ships with 30,000-ton capacity and four second-generation Morning Light-Class Transport Ships with 100,000-ton capacity.

Thanks to their round-the-clock operations,

20 to 30 million tons of supplies were still being transported to Terra every day.

According to the Artificial Intelligence's calculations,

while these resources might seem insignificant compared to the Eastern Continent's total reserves,

when combined with Terra's latest resource recycling and recovery technologies,

just one or two weeks of accumulation would be enough to meet all the needs of the hundreds of millions of new residents.

And just then—

A soft beep sounded.

On the transport network displayed on the screen, a blinking light overlapped with Terra's position.

It transformed into a steady green marker.

This indicated that it had arrived at one of Terra's orbital ports and had begun docking and unloading procedures.

Su Wu clicked to check.

Immediately, he saw a colossal metal vessel, stretching 470 meters in leng

th, hovering within the highest orbital port on Terra's 31st layer.

Slowly tilting its massive hull, it poured tens of thousands of tons of liquid freshwater into specially designated channels.

The water surged violently through the channels, rushing toward the enormous reservoir built inside the 31st layer.