Homo Sapiens

Hongsawaddy.

The western Qin State.

Due to the restrictive mountainous terrain, its development had historically been very poor.

It wasn’t until after the "Hongsawaddy Transformation" that Homo Sapiens Company’s other shell corporation—the Hongsawaddy Development Group—began investing a portion of its funds and efforts here.

However, their development strategy here differed from other regions. In terrain surrounded by mountains like this, Homo Sapiens Company had never been one for brute force. Instead, they opted to forcibly relocate the local mountain dwellers from the deep forests to the plains.

Unless there was a strategically vital resource, they had no plans to build cities in such mountainous areas.

Most of the terrain in Qin State is a mountainous plateau, dominated by Longlang Mountain. The presence of this mountain range separates Qin State and Rakhine State from Hongsawaddy’s core region.

To solve this problem, Homo Sapiens Company planned a railway and a highway cutting through the center of Longlang Mountain. Currently, the railway was mostly complete.

But this kind of mountainous terrain wasn’t without its advantages.

Many of the Hongsawaddy Branch’s secret bases were built in these very mountains.

For instance, on a small mountain plateau south of the Longlang Mountain railway, about 7.2 kilometers from the tracks, lay a small mining town called "Longlang Gold Mining Town."

There was indeed a small gold mine here with reserves of about 21 tons, but the reserve figure disclosed to the public by the Development Group was 288 tons.

This was clearly a deliberate smokescreen, creating a pretext for the increase in Hongsawaddy’s gold reserves to conceal their biological mining technology.

The majority of the Gold Mining Town’s over 2,500 employees and their relatives were "new humans." Coupled with the strict management of the mine and the difficulty of outside access, it was only natural that no one knew the true size of the gold reserves.

However, this small town had another purpose.

It was the construction site for a spaceport. The launch facility was being built on a plateau to the east of town—a plateau at an elevation of about 820 meters, with an area of 4.7 square kilometers.

By now, a large portion of the trees on the plateau had been covered by the Green Umbrella system.

The town’s residential area was about 3.5 kilometers from the launch site, connected by a repaired mountain road accessible to large trucks.

But the ordinary residents were unaware of the situation over there. They all assumed it was a large gold mine, and with the presence of buffer zones and patrols, the families had no inclination to investigate.

The chief engineer, Wang Dayou, who had come here under the guise of a "miner," was one of the few new immigrants to be granted "new human" status. He didn’t come from Huaguo, but was a Chinese man from Kangaroo Country.

Immigrating to Hongsawaddy from Kangaroo Country was extremely rare.

In truth, he had been forced into it. Wang Dayou was a second-generation immigrant in Kangaroo Country, having moved there with his parents in his teens. Afterward, his life was relatively smooth sailing.

After his father died in a car accident, he had just graduated from university and successfully found a job as an engineer at a construction company. His income was barely enough to fill the void left by his father’s passing.

Five or six years passed like this. He got married and had a child.

Then one day, an act of heroism plunged him into deep trouble. Not only did he receive no praise, but he also lost his job and was thrown in jail.

During his three-year prison sentence, his elderly mother and his wife filed endless appeals, exhausting nearly all their family’s savings, but they couldn’t get him released.

After his release, he saw his wife, who had been forced to take on odd jobs to support the family, and his mother, her hair now completely white. At that moment, he wept.

Any fantasies he once held were utterly shattered in that instant.

Putting down his cigarette, he looked at the mountains before him. "Creating a new world with my own hands... isn’t that a romantic notion in its own right?"

As for the rich kid from Kangaroo Country who had cost him everything and framed him.

Wang Dayou had long since forgotten him.

After all, he had personally bound the man in chains and weights, then kicked him into the sea as he watched with a terrified, pleading gaze.

"Mr. Wang, this afternoon we’re heading to Zone 7," said Base Commander Wu Gang, placing his tray and glass bottle into the recycling bin. "It’s the fuel storage area. We need you to oversee the construction requirements."

"Zone 7? All right."

The layout of the spaceport was arranged in a ring around the central plateau.

The layout resembled a large spider: the plateau was the launch site, while the access tunnels and other sections were like six legs.

Zone 7 was located in one of these valleys, the farthest from the launch site at 4.1 kilometers. This was mainly for safety, as rocket fuel is highly flammable and explosive.

「2:30 PM.」

Wu Gang drove an SUV, carrying Wang Dayou and several other engineers to the construction site in Zone 7.

The road was built halfway up the mountainside and covered by the Green Umbrella system, so they had to keep their headlights on even on a sunny afternoon.

For this type of road construction, Homo Sapiens Company now used bio-erosion strata technology and strata-fluid boiling technology to artificially create landslides, directly leveling the mountainside.

For areas at risk of landslides or mudflows, they took a preemptive approach, destroying the hazardous zones in advance.

Although this destroyed the local ecosystem, such a once-and-for-all transformation did indeed reduce subsequent maintenance costs.

Driving on this mountain road, the car didn’t experience the winding curves and frequent inclines of a traditional mountain highway.

With a distance of 4.1 kilometers and good road conditions, the group quickly arrived at their destination.

It was another small valley.

Dozens of employees were already conducting preliminary surveys and setting up the Green Umbrella system.

Wang Dayou held a topographical map, studying the area.

The site was wedged between three large mountains, with a 0.3-square-kilometer lowland in the center. In a mountainous region with a tropical rainforest climate, such lowlands had no development value, mainly because they were prone to flooding.

Therefore, when planning construction areas, they usually chose relatively gentle slopes halfway up a mountain.

Wang Dayou pointed to the mountain on his left and said, "Thorn Tree Mountain over here is better. With some modifications, we can create a flat area of about 0.6 square kilometers."

"Huh? Mr. Wang, the magnetic field here is a little off!" another engineer said, holding a compass.

The others also noticed that the compass was indeed behaving abnormally.

Wu Gang called over the technician in charge of the survey work.

"Did you find any metallic minerals in the core samples from the drilling?"

The technician shook his head. "No. Our standard boreholes for foundation supports go 200 meters deep. The magnetic anomaly is probably just due to high iron content in the surrounding rock!"

Unsatisfied with the technician’s explanation, Wu Gang reprimanded him directly. "Be more careful next time. If you discover a problem with the magnetic field, you report it immediately."

"Sorry! I’ll be sure to pay attention next time." The technician jumped, startled.

Wu Gang ordered, "Reorganize the survey. Drill 500-meter boreholes, and add several more drilling sites in the surrounding area."

Faced with this situation, Wang Dayou and the others just looked at each other. Such zones of magnetic anomaly were often characteristic of a metallic ore vein, but they didn’t know what kind of metal it might be.

If it was a precious metal, a rare metal, or a rich ore deposit, the construction plans for Zone 7 would definitely be affected.

As a result, their inspection for the day had to end abruptly.

The survey team, meanwhile, increased their drilling depth to conduct a more thorough survey of the surrounding mountains and geological strata.

Hongsawaddy’s previous surveys of these mountainous, non-centrally-controlled areas had not been comprehensive; some areas were complete blanks on the map.

Therefore, Homo Sapiens Company took a two-pronged approach to surveying here.

On one hand, they formed official survey teams. On the other, they used their various engineering projects in the mountains to conduct rough surveys of the surrounding areas at the same time.

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