Outside the ecological base on the thirtieth underground level of the Group 2 Research Institute, Little Peach Mountain, Dune Plane.
Locke and Mason Witch walked through the area with the others. He frowned slightly. He had only been gone for three months, yet the ecological base of Group 2 had already changed drastically.
Outside Group 2's oasis base, there were rings of natural-gas wells scattered throughout the desert, along with a large number of cold factory buildings.
The factories stood packed tightly together. Countless concrete smokestacks rose across the Dune Plane, spewing huge amounts of exhaust into the sky that had been scorched through by the sun.
Many golems and First-Class Wizard Apprentices hurried around the enormous smokestacks.
The four of them walked beside a magic-alloy smokestack five hundred meters in diameter and a kilometer tall, as if a gigantic pipe had been driven into the body of the Dune Plane.
This smokestack was spewing out an enormous mass of black gas, more terrifying than a volcanic eruption.
Locke looked at the terrifying black fog. "Severe Huan Element pollution? And Plutonium Element... Radon Element..."
"These are all heavily polluting substances..."
Freya Witch said, "Yes, but separating matter and restoring the Composite Element Particles that make up the substances will inevitably cause a large number of entropy-increasing reactions in the process, producing a whole mass of elemental substances that ordinarily wouldn't be exposed on the surface in nature. And there are so many of them."
"However, Lord Zalan Bailey, our newly promoted Second-Ring Wizard, believes that environmental pollution is simply a necessary evil."
"As long as we rapidly restore the number of plants on a plane, we can change the environment through large plant communities and then save the plane. What an ambitious plan."
Locke did not offer an immediate assessment.