Nourishment

With the number of clones continuing to grow and the industrial foundation further strengthened, Li Qingsong's steel output had reached roughly 5,000 tons per year through those primitive, small-scale steelmaking facilities.

Over the past two years, Li Qingsong had conserved steel as much as possible, and by now had stockpiled an amount equivalent to a full year of current production.

Now, Li Qingsong spared no expense, taking out every bit of steel he had accumulated with such difficulty.

More than a dozen metalworking machines began operating at full tilt, using various processes to turn the saved steel into Steel Pipe, long steel bars, Connectors, bearings, fastening screws, nuts, and more.

About a kilometer from the Main Base, Li Qingsong had already selected the site for the first large, proper steel factory ever built since he began constructing the base.

The uneven ground there had been completely leveled by Li Qingsong, then reinforced with special cement suited to Luoshen Star's environment.

Though it was called special cement, it was really just crushed steelmaking slag, along with impurities from the Tholin and Oxygen Ore used by the generator units, mixed with a small amount of adhesive with some binding properties.

The stuff had limited strength and load-bearing capacity. If it were used to build houses on Earth, they would probably collapse before reaching three stories. But on Luoshen Star, it was just right for the job. At the very least, it was enough for current needs.

On the leveled ground, all kinds of components were transported in. The clones busily assembled, fastened, and welded them together, and thus the first fully enclosed factory building appeared on Luoshen Star.

It stood ten meters tall and covered roughly 1,000 square meters.

In the future, all work at the steel factory requiring an atmospheric environment would be carried out inside this building.

It was also equipped with machinery such as hoists and electric cranes, making it convenient to store and move raw materials.

Manufacturing hoists, cranes, and similar equipment posed no difficulty for Li Qingsong at this stage. Their core component was nothing more than an electric motor, and since he could build generators, making electric motors was no problem.

The only issue was their poor performance and tendency to break down. But for now, it was enough if they could make do. Li Qingsong did not expect them to be like their Earth counterparts, operating at full load for years in harsh conditions without a single problem.

While the factory building was being erected, the other workshops of the proper steel factory were also being built at the same time.

Of the 1,100 clones, as many as 350 were assigned to the construction of this steel factory.

To make construction easier, Li Qingsong even set up a temporary kitchen directly at the construction site.

Every day, ingredients from the various planting, livestock, and Aquatic Product Bases were hauled there by rumbling tractors and cooked on-site. The clones no longer needed to return to the Main Base to have a filling meal.

A day-and-night shift system was also used. The clones worked in two shifts: one group rested while the other came on duty. Construction never stopped, regardless of the hour.

Whenever shifts changed, more than a hundred clones would arrive together, wearing Spacesuits and jogging over from the Main Base dormitories. After eating, they would begin their pre-work preparations.

Once the handover was complete, the clones who had worked all day would withdraw, eat first, then likewise put on Spacesuits and jog back to the Main Base dormitories. They would hurriedly sleep, then jog back again the next day.

Groups of people began moving back and forth through this valley on Luoshen Star in a regular cycle. Before long, even the hard Water Ice and rocks on the surface showed faint signs of wear.

Under these conditions, seven specialized workshops were completed in succession: an ore-processing workshop, blast furnace workshop, molten iron pretreatment workshop, refining workshop, casting workshop, rolling workshop, and post-processing workshop.

Nothing like this had ever existed in the previous steel factories.

How could the old steel factories have had so many separate processes? Iron ore was delivered, thrown straight into the blast furnace, and the molten iron was then poured directly into molds to take shape. That was it.

This was precisely why the previous blast furnaces had low output, poor efficiency, and crude product quality.

Only with greater refinement and standardized processes could output and efficiency increase, and product quality become stable.

Not only that, Li Qingsong also used automated equipment between the different workshops wherever possible, something unprecedented for him.

Things such as tracks, conveyor belts, and automatic feeding systems—so long as an elementary automated device could be achieved with mechanical structures alone and required no chips, Li Qingsong installed it whenever he could, saving manpower and improving efficiency as much as possible.

Several hundred clones remained busy like this for more than a full year.

In the end, not only were the 5,000 tons of previously stockpiled steel used up, but the roughly 5,000 tons of steel produced over that year were used up as well, leaving nothing behind.

During that year or so, aside from this steel factory, Li Qingsong did not undertake a single other project.

It was not that he did not want to. Even if he had wanted to, there was no steel available.

But every bit of it had been worth it.

Now, this steel factory—with a total area of over 10,000 square meters, processes made as complete as possible, and workflows automated as much as possible—was finally complete.

It was dedicated to producing Low Temperature Steel, the most widely used material on Luoshen Star and the foundation of infrastructure construction.

Looking at the steel factory before him, filled with towering machines connected by all sorts of pipes, conveyor belts, and cables, Li Qingsong's heart was full of satisfaction.

It could produce 270 tons a day—100,000 tons of steel a year.

He could almost see steel flowing endlessly out of the factory, then being cast and processed into components that became nourishment for his entire base, allowing his Luoshen Star Base to grow strong at a rapid pace.

With this steel factory, dedicated Chemical Factories and Planting Bases, metal processing plants and Spacesuit factories, Clothing Factories and clone cultivation centers—all of them could finally be launched...

However, although the steel factory had now been built, it could not yet begin full-power production. For the time being, it could only operate at low capacity and take over the output of those crude old steel factories.

It still needed supporting facilities before it could truly display its power.

Under Li Qingsong's direction, including the more than 400 new clones cultivated over the past year, a total of 800 clones formed a massive team. Driving all kinds of machinery and carrying all kinds of tools, they marched out of the Main Base in high spirits.

Now, Li Qingsong was going to build a railway connecting Iron Mine No. 1 and Steel Factory No. 1!