The Matthew Effect

Inside the Yellowstone Volcano exclusion zone.

In the peripheral areas of the exclusion zone, in regions once covered by tides of magma, quite a few robots were at work.

Although the Yellowstone Volcano exclusion zone still maintained a radius of 500 kilometers, the actual eruption zone had been suppressed to within a radius of 100 kilometers.

The remaining areas, such as the Rocky Mountains where the terrain stood higher than Yellowstone Volcano, were generally unaffected by the magma tides.

About 480 kilometers southwest of Yellowstone Volcano lay a city that had been more than half swallowed by magma.

Of course, it was an abandoned city.

Once the capital of Idaho—Boise—it had been part of the Snake River Valley plain, with the Yellowstone Volcano core zone upstream. Naturally, it had been unable to escape disaster.

A great deal of volcanic ash still remained on the surface of the abandoned city, and the air carried the smell of sulfur.

From the tallest building in the city, one could see the southern river-valley plain carpeted in endless black. It was a plain of igneous rock formed after the magma had cooled and solidified.

Unfortunately, Boise's airport had also been submerged beneath magma. A new temporary airport could now only be built in the mountains northwest of the city.

The reason people had come here was not to restore the ecosystem or anything of the sort, but to mine these igneous rocks.

Although Yellowstone Volcano's eruption had caused an enormous ecological disaster, this immense crisis also contained tremendous opportunity.

Boise's abandoned urban district had been transformed into a massive mineral refining center.

All kinds of mining trucks and transport vehicles excavated huge quantities of igneous rock, which were then roughly crushed, initially sorted, and sent to specialized refining plants.

The igneous rock here consisted