A suspicion arose in his heart.
Su Wu's reconnaissance actions became distinctly targeted.
He quickly restored the sequence of the disaster.
Just as Su Wu had thought.
A low-temperature cold wave, whose origin was unknown, swept through the northern part of Tumen City.
Its coverage was not extensive, only a few dozen square kilometers.
But its destructive power was astonishing.
The moment it appeared, it caused the environmental temperature within the area to plummet below minus one hundred degrees.
In such extreme cold.
Ordinary vehicle tires and bodies would quickly become hard and brittle.
Then, during the bumps of driving, cracks would gradually form, leading to malfunctions or causing the vehicle to lose control entirely.
At this time.
If the driver reacted quickly enough, they could stop in time.
Otherwise, they would face a life-and-death test, with survival depending entirely on luck.
The vehicles that were relocating within the cold wave.
In the first few minutes after the cold wave appeared, over thirty percent of them were lost for this reason.
At least a thousand people perished as a result.
However, after surviving those initial minutes.
The subsequent situation improved slightly.
The temperature within the cold wave began to rise again.
Over the next half hour, it gradually recovered from below minus one hundred degrees to just over minus forty degrees.
"It should now be the tail end of the low-temperature cold wave."
"We can start attempting large-scale rescue operations."
After reviewing the disaster sequence restored by the artificial intelligence.
Su Wu pondered for a moment.
He then gathered fifty Type One ore transport vehicles, along with several Spider Robots.
Forming a second rescue team, he set off from Jianghe City for the rescue.
Combined, these two rescue teams could transport the affected population and valuable supplies back in one go.
As for the damaged vehicles, they could be slowly towed back later.
There was no need to take risks to recover them in the current uncertain environment.
After handling the rescue matters.
Su Wu's gaze returned to the map of Jianghe City and Tumen City.
At this moment, looking at the route that had just been repaired a few days ago by the merchant convoy, which had already transported over 500,000 people and more than 400,000 tons of various supplies.
It was now left with only a sigh.
This transportation artery, which had just begun to thrive and held Su Wu's considerable hopes.
From now on, it would once again fall silent.
In the future, apart from the specially designed snow transport vehicles, it would be difficult to see any other vehicles.
"In the future, all transfer tasks between Golden Lion Shelter and Jianghe City will be entrusted to those sixteen snow transport vehicles."
"Once new snow transport vehicles are produced later, we will continue to supplement them to twenty."
"With this configuration, each trip can transport a maximum of 1,600 people."
"If all goes well, we can make three to four round trips between the two cities each day."
"Transferring over 5,000 people to Jianghe City."
"That should barely suffice."
Su Wu calculated.
In fact, saying this capacity was sufficient felt somewhat disingenuous.
To rely on it to transfer the remaining two hundred thousand residents of Golden Lion Shelter to Jianghe City would take at least a month or two.
But Su Wu had no ability to provide more.
Given the current resource reserves and income of Jianghe City.
They could produce a maximum of ten snow transport vehicles each day.
And these transport vehicles would also need to be used in more critical areas.
To form more merchant convoys.
After all, compared to those refugees waiting for the merchant convoy to save them, the residents stranded in Golden Lion Shelter could at least ensure their basic personal safety.
"Moreover, the coal reserves in Golden Lion Shelter still exceed one hundred eighty million tons."
"Transporting such a large quantity to Jianghe City would be too troublesome."
"Instead, we could dismantle the professional thermal power generator set that has been idle for a long time in the underground seven levels of the farmhouse courtyard and transport it over."
"Establish a thermal power station on-site."
"The electricity produced."
"Can be used to maintain the operation of the shelter itself, and also to meet the needs of Tumen City's mines and communication signal towers."
"At the same time, with a sufficient power supply."
"Golden Lion Shelter can also transform into a processing plant for raw materials and primary industrial products."
"Reducing some transportation costs."
After the random low-temperature cold wave made low-cost ground transportation impossible.
Golden Lion Shelter, located in Tumen City.
In Su Wu's sphere of influence, it immediately became important.
Su Wu planned to turn it into a forward base.
While possessing some basic processing capabilities.
It could also be responsible for all logistical support for Su Wu's activities in Tumen City.
Including receiving merchant convoys returning from afar, temporarily accommodating the population and supplies brought back by the convoys.
And allowing the convoys to resupply on-site, directly starting their next journey.
This way.
Each time, the merchant convoy could save six to seven hours of time.
Effectively improving their efficiency.
"Additionally, since we plan to operate Golden Lion Shelter as a semi-permanent forward base."
"The risks of ground travel have also increased significantly."
"Perhaps we should consider opening two underground tunnels between Jianghe City and Golden Lion Shelter."
Building underground tunnels is not an easy task.
Especially constructing ultra-long tunnels across cities.
Even with Rapid-setting Cement, a construction marvel that can set in minutes.
It would still take at least a few months to complete.
During this time, it must be ensured that there are no significant earthquakes.
Otherwise, the construction period would be greatly extended.
But in any case, this would be a relatively safe transportation route.
After sorting out the planning for Tumen City.
Su Wu shifted his gaze back to Jianghe City.
In the current environment.
The large team recovering construction waste from the city ruins.
Clearly was not suitable to continue.
Ordinary engineering vehicles and various trucks from before the apocalypse could no longer operate on the surface.
Workers in Exoskeleton Armor and Spider Robots.
Seemed to be better off.
But their armor was still made of ordinary metals that were not resistant to extreme cold.
When faced with the low-temperature cold wave, they were equally vulnerable.
The best solution.
Was to withdraw them from the surface and send them to work in the more stable underground environment.
The remaining engineering vehicles.
Also faced issues with extreme cold.
However, considering they were operated by workers from a remote control center, even if damaged, there would be no casualties.
It was not impossible to leave a portion to continue working on the surface.
"Calculating this way."
"We can retain four thousand engineering vehicles to continue the risky work of recovering construction waste in the city ruins."
"The rest will all be redirected to the farmhouse courtyard to expand the shelter."
Su Wu nearly dismissed all the workers working in the city ruins.
Only retaining four thousand fully electric automated engineering vehicles.
The consequence of this decision directly led to the amount of construction waste that could be recovered daily dropping from millions of tons to hundreds of thousands of tons.
However, it also released the largest labor force currently at Su Wu's disposal.
Once they joined the farmhouse courtyard.
The speed of expanding the shelter would surge several times in a very short time.
It was equivalent to shifting Su Wu's overall strategy from focusing on recovering resources from the city ruins to emphasizing the expansion of the underground shelter in the farmhouse courtyard.
It was foreseeable.
In this situation.
The day when the entire population of over ten million in Jianghe City converged on the farmhouse courtyard would be realized much sooner.
In the evening.
Accompanied by Su Wu's large-scale mobilization of the production construction corps.
The surface began to quiet down.
Although there were still four thousand engineering vehicles silently working among the city ruins.
Their numbers, scattered throughout the vast city, were like drops of water merging into the desert.
Making it almost impossible to find traces of them.
In stark contrast to the desolation on the surface.
In the underground of the farmhouse courtyard.
Over twenty thousand engineering vehicles of various models, seventy thousand Spider Robots, and hundreds of thousands of workers in Exoskeleton Armor.
Were gradually moving in in batches.
Turning this place into a vast underground world under constant construction.
Every minute and every second.
Thousands of cubic meters of soil and rubble were being excavated.
Then transported to the surface.
The enormous demand for transporting soil and stone.
Even caused the large lifting platforms responsible for the transfer to show signs of being overwhelmed.
"We need to build a new lifting platform."
"And the platform located on the fifth underground level also needs moderate renovations."
"To separate it from the core area."
"To facilitate the transportation of residents from other auxiliary shelters to areas outside the core."
Currently, four passenger passages and two material transport passages had been built between the farmhouse courtyard and the nearest Qingning Shelter.
Before this.
All six passages were solely used for transporting materials.
Now, as it was no longer safe to operate on the surface.
Su Wu planned to open them to residents of the auxiliary shelters.
Allowing others to enter the farmhouse courtyard through the underground tunnels.
He assigned the task of renovating the platform to an engineering team directly controlled by artificial intelligence.
Just as Su Wu was about to continue handling the daily affairs of other shelters.
He suddenly received a combat alert.
The merchant convoy heading to Shanghe City had erupted in conflict with a local force in Shanghe City.
They had already entered the firefight stage.
"The other side is a large civilian shelter."
Su Wu glanced over.
Noticing nothing particularly noteworthy.
He set it aside.
At this point, a large shelter was no longer worth Su Wu's dedicated attention.
The artificial intelligence and the advisory team formed at the remote control center.
Could handle such medium to low-intensity warfare quite well.
Su Wu only needed to wait for the report afterward.
In the outside world.
Not only Tumen City was hit by the low-temperature cold wave.
The entire Eastern Continent, and even the whole world.
Had begun to show signs of low-temperature cold waves.
Originally, with the rain subsiding.
Long-distance trade between cities, which had gradually begun to thrive.
Was abruptly interrupted.
Except for some large cities with strong industrial capabilities that could make targeted modifications to vehicles.
Ordinary forces could no longer venture into it.
On November 19.
The merchant convoy sent to Shanghe City successfully captured a large shelter there.
At the same time, they discovered that the location of the large shelter was itself a large copper mine that had only been partially mined.
With just a little labor input, copper ore could be continuously extracted.
This was both a painful and joyful matter for Su Wu.
The value of copper mines is undoubtedly higher than that of iron ore, potassium ore, and so on.
Especially since Su Wu had a high demand for copper mines due to the production of snow transport vehicles and various high-end electronic devices.
The emergence of this copper mine could be said to come at just the right time.
But the reality that it was four to five hundred kilometers away from Jianghe City made Su Wu feel quite troubled for a moment.
The main task of the merchant convoy had always been to gather refugees.
It was impossible to spare precious transport capacity to cross hundreds of kilometers to transport the mined copper back to Jianghe City.
Ultimately, with no other choice.
Su Wu could only opt for air transport.
The ore extracted from the large copper mine would first be smelted on-site into finished copper ingots.
Then transported via Azure Sky-Class Transport Drones through the air route to the farmhouse courtyard.
To maximize the return of the output from the copper mine.
Su Wu expanded the scale of Azure Sky-Class Transport Drones from the original ten to twenty urgently.
Allowing their batch transport capacity to reach twelve tons.
In this way, in one day.
With the flight speed of Azure Sky-Class Transport Drones.
They could transport back forty to fifty tons of finished copper ingots at most.
The quantity was quite considerable.
However, in reality.
Due to the need to balance external trade.
It was clearly impossible to exhaust all air transport capacity on the copper mine.
Under normal circumstances.
Transporting around twenty tons of copper ingots a day would be considered good.
The remaining transport capacity would have to be allocated to various valuable items obtained through trade.
"When resources increase a bit more in the future."
"I can continue to build another batch of Azure Sky-Class Transport Drones."
"These aerial transport tools, which consume very little energy and have a long range, are indeed very useful."
"But for now, the priority is still to produce snow transport vehicles and Icebound-class Land Battleships."
"Azure Sky-Class Transport Drones can temporarily meet the minimum requirements."
Su Wu felt a bit regretful in his heart.
The resources outside Jianghe City.
For him at the moment, were almost infinite.
But limited by the transportation capacity.
He could only move them back little by little like an ant moving its home.
In the afternoon.
Watching the merchant convoy in Shanghe City set off on the return journey with a full four thousand refugees.
Su Wu received good news from Chen Yue.
Her research had made a breakthrough.
She successfully developed a plant growth agent and high-yield rice seeds.
Among them, the plant growth agent could only be considered a first-generation product.
The cost of formulation was extremely high.
Although it could accelerate the growth rate of all plants by 40% to 50%.
In the end, when calculated.
Regardless of the type of grain crop used, it was difficult to recoup the costs.
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