The clatter of old fans and the low whir of processors hummed softly through the Forge Lab as Li Wei drew a red circle on the map.
"This area—Xin'an Gorge," he said, tapping the rugged, mountainous region with his knuckle. "Low population, weak municipal oversight, rich in natural resources. Elevation for hydro. Subsurface minerals. And—most importantly—off the grid."
Yanyue leaned over the map. "It's remote. We'll need transport, off-road gear, surveying equipment…"
"And permission," Lan Jie added. "It's still owned by the provincial government."
"We don't ask," Lanyun muttered. "We lease. Temporarily."
Li Wei nodded. "We'll call it a research outpost."
First Resource Trip
Three days later, the four boarded an old delivery van. Inside were crates of modular server parts, lithium battery packs from surplus e-bike factories, makeshift solar panels, and two prototype ForgeKits.
The road toward Xin'an Gorge wound sharply through broken asphalt, slipping into gravel and mud. Beyond the last checkpoint, all signs of city life disappeared.
No signal. No power grid. Just forest, rock, and the occasional shriek of birds.
Perfect.
They parked beside an abandoned shack near a spring-fed stream.
Li Wei stepped out, inhaled the clean air, and looked skyward.
"We start here."
The Outpost
For the next two weeks, they worked nonstop.
Lan Jie constructed a crude water wheel to begin testing micro-hydro power.
Lanyun wired together an autonomous weather station using ForgeOS and salvaged sensors.
Yanyue handled logistics — food, fuel, communication.
Li Wei began assembling a small cluster computer made from discarded mobile processors.
They called it ForgeNode-01.
It wasn't much — just enough to handle basic simulations and field data aggregation — but it marked a turning point.
"We're building infrastructure before the world realizes what's possible," Li Wei said one evening, staring at their patchwork of gear under the moonlight.
"It feels... bigger than us," Yanyue whispered.
"It should."
Data from the Earth
The early days were rough. Li Wei was constantly debugging power fluctuations. Sensors failed under heavy rain. The micro-hydro output was erratic due to rock debris.
But one breakthrough kept morale high.
Lanyun, examining mineral samples with a basic spectrometer, discovered traces of rare earth oxides in the soil — usable in permanent magnets, essential for motor and generator design.
"This isn't just wilderness," she said. "It's a materials bank."
Li Wei's mind immediately shifted to long-term plans:
Localized magnet production
Magnetically suspended turbines
Secure offline storage built into bedrock
They weren't just running a tech lab anymore. They were seeding the bones of a future city.
New Core Project: Project Antlia
Back in the lab, Li Wei began design drafts for Project Antlia — the first truly independent ForgeOS computing system.
Unlike earlier kits, Antlia would:
Run on ultra-low-power ARM cores
Boot from immutable storage (read-only firmware)
Feature modular buses for swapping compute or IO modules
Be fully manufacturable using domestic materials and local tools
The catch? It needed a new file system — lightweight, distributed, fault-tolerant.
"We can't rely on FAT or ext4," Li Wei explained. "Too much overhead, too vulnerable. We need something atomic. Immutable."
He started sketching out AFS — the Antlia File System.
"You're writing a new file system from scratch?" Yanyue asked.
"No," Li Wei replied. "I'm designing the foundation of an independent computational culture."
Underground Ripples
While the team built in silence, the outside world buzzed louder.
ForgeOS v0.7 was forked 218 times across independent boards. Several open-source forums began unofficial translation projects. One startup attempted to repackage ForgeOS into a consumer product — Li Wei issued a takedown notice, politely but firmly.
"We don't sell," he wrote in his public post. "We build. Freely, and for those who will do the same."
This earned him respect in the tech underground. And enemies in the corporate sphere.
One day, a legal-looking letter arrived from Zhenhua Electronics, a regional electronics monopoly.
Lan Jie opened it.
"They want to discuss 'acquisition and integration'," she said. "You know what that means."
Li Wei tossed the envelope into the wastebasket.
"We're not for sale."
From Hackers to Pioneers
Late one night, while the others slept, Li Wei stood alone by the edge of the stream in Xin'an Gorge. The stars reflected faintly off the still water.
In his time, this place had long been strip-mined, paved over, turned into data farms run by AI regimes.
But now, it was his — not in ownership, but in vision.
He could see it: underground fiber loops. Distributed solar fields. Magnetic launch pads. Genetic labs. Housing grown from carbon lattice panels. No kings. No lords. No stockholders.
A city made not from ambition, but from knowledge reclaimed.
He closed his eyes.
"No more waiting."