Brand New Base One

With the original twelve clones continuing their existing work, the five newly added clones also became busy.

Following their previous experience, Li Qingsong once again directed two clones to use the available components to begin building the Second Steam Turbine.

The other three clones repeated the construction process of Base One, first using Electric Heating Equipment to clear the frozen gases from the parts of the cave outside Base One.

The cave had a total area of around six hundred square meters, yet only two hundred square meters had been used so far. Now that he had enough manpower, Li Qingsong planned to make use of the remaining space as well.

The Electric Heating Equipment required a great deal of power, but the power supply was limited at the moment. In order not to affect the Sunlight Lamps or hinder crop growth, the frozen gas removal could only be carried out at low efficiency, taking nearly ten days to complete.

Afterward, several clones got busy knocking off all the sharper protrusions from the cave walls and polishing them smooth to prevent them from puncturing the film.

After that, Li Qingsong brought over eighty percent of the special film stored aboard the Deep Space and laid it throughout the cave along the rock walls.

The original No. 1 Planting Base was directly incorporated into the new planting base.

Once all this work was done—the film joined, laid, and secured; the seal checked; and temporary Lighting Lamps installed—Li Qingsong looked over the vast empty hall and imagined the future. Then he got busy again, transporting down all the remaining Planting Shelves, usable pipes, and other supplies from the Deep Space.

By the time the Planting Shelves had been assembled, the pipes laid, and the Sunlight Lamps installed, the Second Steam Turbine had also been completed. A new generator had been removed from the Deep Space and connected to the turbine.

The new steam turbine had an installed capacity of thirty kilowatt-hours. It could not meet the power demands of the entire planting base on its own, but together with the first one, it was more than enough.

"Start it!"

At Li Qingsong's command, the clone serving as a stoker immediately threw the prepared frozen Tholin Mine ore and Oxygen Ore into the Thawing Room.

Heat from the first generator extended here and slowly thawed them. Once mixed with oxygen, they immediately began to burn fiercely.

The Water Ice melted into liquid, then turned into steam. The heavy rotor began to spin, making the ground seem to tremble faintly.

A steady stream of electricity flowed out and into the Sunlight Lamps, which instantly released brilliant light.

At the same time, the steam, still extremely hot after doing its work, flowed through the pipes into the underground portion of the base. After cooling, it flowed back into the steam turbine.

The temperature inside No. 1 Planting Base immediately began to rise.

Once the temperature had risen sufficiently and the atmospheric pressure had equalized, several clones stepped forward and directly removed the film from the original Base One.

The two bases, one large and one small, truly merged into one at that moment.

The prepared fixtures, nutrient solution, Sweet Potato Vines, and other materials were planted in the new Planting Shelves in an orderly fashion.

From then on, they would grow alongside the original sweet potatoes.

The new planting base now covered a total area of six hundred square meters and stood 2.3 meters tall. Of that, four hundred square meters were still used for growing sweet potatoes, while the remaining two hundred had other purposes.

The newly added Planting Shelves for sweet potatoes still had four tiers. Thus, the original four hundred square meters used for sweet potatoes had been multiplied fourfold, reaching sixteen hundred square meters.

That sixteen hundred square meters of planting area was expected to yield around ten thousand kilograms of sweet potatoes each quarter.

At a consumption rate of three kilograms per clone per day, or two hundred seventy kilograms per quarter, sweet potatoes alone could now support around thirty-seven clones at Base One!

Aside from the area used to grow sweet potatoes, eighty of the remaining two hundred square meters were used for the Nutrient Solution Preparation Room, temporary storage, a Rest Area, a kitchen, and the like.

Another eighty square meters, with the added area provided by two, three, or four tiers, gave a total planting area of around two hundred square meters. Li Qingsong planted crops such as wheat, soybeans, peanuts, rapeseed, oilseed lettuce, and spinach there.

He did not plant much of each, and their yields would not amount to much either. They were mainly kept as seed reserves and for the occasional change in diet.

The final forty square meters were taken up by internal passageways and similar facilities.

Li Qingsong packed the six-hundred-square-meter Base One to the brim, pushing space utilization almost to its limit.

With the expanded planting area came greater power demands and a greater need for manpower.

The five newly added clones were almost exactly enough to keep the entire base operating, leaving Li Qingsong with virtually no spare hands for anything else.

The two steam turbines roared all day long like two insatiable monsters. No matter how much Tholin Mine ore and Oxygen Ore the clones brought over, it would all be consumed in short order.

This forced Li Qingsong to add another clone to the Mining Team, bringing its total to five.

The stoker team also grew from two people to three. They worked in shifts, each working more than twelve hours a day, barely enough to keep up with the Steam Engines' consumption.

The two bodies stationed aboard the Deep Space could not be moved lightly. Besides the crucial need to avoid total annihilation, they also had to study and cultivate new clones.

The remaining seven clones were all assigned to the planting base, spending their days repairing faulty circuits, mixing nutrient solution, tending crops, and so on.

A total of seventeen clones remained busy all day without rest.

Time slipped quietly by under these circumstances, and another three months passed in the blink of an eye.

This time, the clones gathered in Base One once again and worked together to harvest every mature crop.

A day later, Li Qingsong smiled as he looked at the temporary warehouse piled high with more than ten thousand kilograms of sweet potatoes, along with a wide variety of wheat, grains, beans, peanuts, vegetables, and more.

"The survival crisis has finally been temporarily resolved. With this many sweet potatoes, I finally don't have to worry about starving to death.

But..."

Feeling the pressure of their current workload, Li Qingsong's expression gradually turned grave.

"My agricultural foundation is still far too fragile. If anything goes wrong and the film suffers major damage, all the air will leak out in an instant, and every crop will die immediately.

I have no Industrial System at all.

Fortunately, we finally have some food reserves now, and there are temporarily enough hands for agricultural production. Once we add more clones, we can finally break away from agricultural work and do other things."