After irresponsibly leaving everything to others, Nie Yun arrived at the Undersea Base, closed his eyes, and projected his consciousness into the Lunar Base out in space.
After a preliminary geological survey, Nie Yun ultimately chose an enormous lunar mare on the far side of the moon as the site for his growing base!
A lunar mare was a relatively low-lying plain on the moon's surface, appearing as a vast dark region.
Though called a "sea," a lunar mare naturally had no water. Its surface was covered in rock resembling Earth's basalt, known as lunar mare basalt. Compared with terrestrial basalt, lunar mare basalt was rich in iron and titanium, making it one of the Lunar Base's main future sources of iron and steel!
Meanwhile, the titanium and other by-products could be used to manufacture Xiaolang Robots from ordinary materials.
Since this raw ore had not been refined, the Mechanical Insects devoured it extremely inefficiently. Thus, rather than having them consume lunar mare basalt directly at the outset, Nie Yun used local materials to churn out Xiaolang Robots made from ordinary materials.
After two days of development, the Mechanical Insects had already established a Small Nuclear Fusion Energy Center and a Computer Control Center in the middle of this lunar mare! The Lunar Base was beginning to take shape!
Within a small area surrounding the base, over a thousand ordinary Xiaolang Robots bustled about on their short little legs, operating various mining tools to excavate ore.
As iron ore mining on Earth expanded, vast amounts of data helped optimize the Xiaolang Robots' mining behavior, making them increasingly intelligent! Their mining efficiency was steadily improving as well!
Still, the lunar environment differed from Earth's. Besides having no atmosphere, the moon's surface gravity was only one-sixth of Earth's.
As a result, Xiaolang