Breaking Ground

The two voices gradually faded away, but Ma Dongzhen was stunned. He looked around blankly, finding that none of the people coming and going seemed as lost as he was.

Don't they have any loved ones they've lost? Don't they have any lovers they've lost? Don't they have anything they've lost? No, everyone is the same.

They can walk out of the gloom and try to live on. Can't I?

Besides, if what those two said just now is true, and reforms will be carried out in the future, and people of no value will not be tolerated, do I want to become that person of no value?

No, I don't want to.

Ma Dongzhen instantly sobered up. He raised the half-empty bottle of wine in his hand and looked at it, then went to the trash can and held the bottle out, but in the end, he stopped, unscrewed the cap, and poured it down his throat.

"Waste is shameful!"

Ma Dongzhen muttered, threw away the empty bottle, and went in the direction of the two people just now. He was going to apply for a mechanic apprenticeship, to pull himself together, and find his place.

There were many people like Ma Dongzhen, but against this backdrop, they woke up one by one and joined the rolling torrent of collective will.

Time passed slowly, and two months later arrived.

Now, the aftermath of the solar flare had completely passed, and it was time for people to dig back to the surface and embrace a new future.

Heavy industrial equipment, long prepared, rumbled across the floor of Callisto Base, heading towards the rock stratum.

Construction plans and schemes had been evaluated in the past two months, and the support work had been fully set up before excavation.

Now, all that remained was to excavate.

Currently, humanity was located on the third underground level of the original base, about ten meters from the original surface. However, due to the magma, the previous data could no longer be used.

The base, located within the canyon, was likely covered by magma. Engineers estimated, based on previous canyon data, that the current location of humanity was at least seventy meters from the surface.

A mere seventy meters was not enough to stop humanity's progress.

Of course, the actual distance was much longer than seventy meters, because digging a hole could not be done vertically upwards, but rather at a slope.

The engineers had already planned the excavation route.

Of course, the excavation route had to be planned well. It was not to be dug up from the upper layer of the original base, because two months might not be enough to completely cool all the magma in the original rock stratum, and digging up from above was no different from courting death.

The engineers first used fault scanning technology to probe the rock stratum. So-called fault scanning is based on the different values of resistivity, density, sound waves, and other physical properties in different rocks to determine the structure and properties of the rock stratum.

It is divided into two types: seismic exploration and Electrical Exploration.

Due to the conditions, the engineers chose to use Electrical Exploration, that is, using the characteristics of current propagation in the rock stratum to detect the structure and properties of the underground rock stratum.

During the exploration process, the engineers would use physical instruments to send a certain frequency of current from inside the base to the rock stratum. These currents would propagate in the underground rock stratum. Due to the different resistance and propagation speed of different rocks to the current, the engineers determined which direction of the rock stratum could be excavated and which direction of the rock stratum had a risk of collapse by measuring these data.

This was used to determine the excavation plan.

This was a passage related to the fate of humanity, so it had to be done with caution.

The mechanical operators strictly followed the excavation plan, how much slope to dig, where to turn, where to pile soil, the secondary transfer site for the soil, what kind of machinery to use for transfer, how long a distance to dig before stopping and adding support, what materials to use for the support, when to pour the tunnel face, and how to deal with emergencies.

All of these had clear details.

Moreover, before the excavation began, all participating engineering team members underwent repeated training until everyone understood what they should do and what they should not do.

To prevent emergencies, at the beginning of the excavation, at least one engineer from each specialty had to be on site.

Thus, such a scene appeared on the site.

The engineers pointed and gesticulated at the constantly deepening rock stratum, occasionally shouting a few words into the walkie-talkie in their hands, but hardly saw a worker working.

In fact, this scene was not surprising, because the workers were all in the indoor driver's cabs, remotely controlling various mechanical equipment, including but not limited to excavators, loaders, hydraulic breakers, road rollers, tamping mechanical vehicles, concrete mixers, concrete pump trucks, tracked simulation dual-arm mechanical vehicles, wheeled single-arm cranes, and wheeled small simulation dual-arm odd job vehicles.

Of course, there were also engineering equipment with driver's cabs, but because it was an outer space base, this kind of equipment was relatively rare, basically only used inside the base. On Callisto, remote-controlled equipment was more common.

So this phenomenon appeared.

Among the tall engineering equipment, the engineers wearing safety helmets looked very small and weak, but everyone knew that their figures were huge.

From a distance, their figures were almost invisible, only the busy machines and the gradually expanding and deepening large hole.

At this moment, they seemed to reflect the entire human race, those small bodies armed with wisdom.

Day after day, a large round hole with a diameter of nine meters appeared in people's eyes, sloping upwards, curved and measured, leading to the long-lost surface.

"We're here!"

A shout echoed from the top of the tunnel down to the base, announcing to everyone that humanity had returned to the surface, and proclaiming to the vast starry sky that humanity was back.

The tunnel was brightly lit, and engineering vehicles and carriers loaded with various equipment and building materials slowly ascended.

These machines and materials would help the survivors in the base establish their initial foothold on the surface. The ground would be leveled again, power stations would be rebuilt, and everything that had been destroyed on the surface would reappear.

It was as if humanity had returned to the early days of pioneering space bases.

It was foreseeable that the following days would definitely be an era of great construction.

However, the first thing to do upon returning to the surface was not construction, because the first technician to return to the surface discovered that the sky was actually dark.

'Impossible,' Callisto Base always faced Jupiter, so how could the sky be dark? Could it be that after the sun was destroyed, it turned into a white dwarf or a nebula, so that there was not enough strong light for Jupiter to reflect onto Callisto? "That's possible, but it shouldn't be this dark!" the technician thought to himself. Thinking this, he put on his spacesuit, got out of the vehicle, and looked up at the sky.

Huh, where's Jupiter? Where did it go! Could it be so dim that it's invisible to the naked eye? A telescope was brought up, and an astronomy expert who had received the news also arrived on the surface.

Jupiter is very large, especially when viewed from Callisto, so the telescope basically didn't need much adjustment. Just set it up and it would be aimed at Jupiter.

But when the telescope was set up, he discovered that Jupiter was gone!