The Nuclear Fisherman

Secret Base

After sending away the pale, sweating Desperate Erlang, Nie Yun lay leisurely on a lounge chair on the beach, closing his eyes for a nap. The afternoon sun shone down on him, and the warmth made him want to groan in comfort.

On the table beside him sat the military laptop contributed by the mercenary, with a massive signal-receiving dish standing next to it, invisible radio waves connecting the computer to satellites in space.

The development of the base was proceeding in an orderly fashion, and having stolen a moment of leisure, Nie Yun decided to participate in a popular national pastime—surfing the internet.

For him, this was an experience filled with absolute novelty.

"Oh, so that's what the internet means. Interesting, interesting. Connecting the world? A magnificent technology!"

"Physical address, IP—so this is the ID card for going online? If you do something bad, you might get caught? I see. Locking onto the location of a network terminal? This is global positioning! Amazing, amazing!"

"Uh, hacking techniques—I should learn a little. After all, while one shouldn't have the intent to harm others, one must have the heart to guard against them!"

"This... what is this! Ah! My eyes! So the human body structure can be this exquisite? The technology of human reproduction is truly a profound field of study! Must learn, must learn! I must study this in depth!"

Nie Yun flipped rapidly through the vast amount of basic knowledge about the internet, occasionally letting out exclamations and sighs. Well, of course, there were also some segments unsuitable for children; minors under 18, please do not observe or study these!

Countless streams of data flashed through Nie Yun's eyes as he absorbed knowledge from the network at a staggering speed.

As time passed, the coordination between Nie Yun and the Mechanical Insect became increasingly tacit, reaching the highest realm where one could no longer distinguish between the two—a perfect union of man and insect.

Ahem, to put it in plain terms, Nie Yun's control over the Mechanical Insect's abilities was growing stronger, and the Mechanical Insect was now completely at his disposal.

For instance, the Mechanical Insect was now like an external organ for Nie Yun, capable of acting as both a brain and a body simultaneously.

Naturally, this included their storage and computational capabilities. Storage and calculation were, after all, what robots were best at!

It could be said that as long as it was recorded by the Mechanical Insect—whether it was information from hard drives or other storage devices consumed by the insect, or data downloaded directly from the internet into local memory—it could be instantly memorized by Nie Yun and digested through his super-powered calculation abilities.

To express it with a simple formula: Internet download speed = Nie Yun's learning speed!

He could not explain the source of this ability, only attributing it to the miraculous symbiotic relationship between himself and the Mechanical Insect.

I fear that even the Iris civilization, the creators of the Mechanical Insect, never imagined that a life form could establish a soul-level connection with them.

The original intent of the Iris civilization in designing the Mechanical Insect was merely to give them the ability to repair damaged spaceships. Thus, they only possessed functions for storing ship models, deformation, decomposition, and recasting. They were not endowed with much intelligence, and to prevent the insects from replicating infinitely and running rampant, their reproductive generations were strictly limited.

However, all of this began to mutate under the influence of various cosmic rays, extreme environments, and the passage of long ages.

Ultimately, this was completely shattered following the fusion with Nie Yun. It could be said that after the fusion, both Nie Yun and the Mechanical Insect evolved into a new life form, combining into a miraculous symbiotic relationship.

If artificial intelligence is a special life form where biological attributes are born from machinery, then this symbiosis between Nie Yun and the Mechanical Insect can be defined as a perfect symbiont born from the perfect fusion of biology and machinery!

Possessing both the infinite replication and super-computing power of a mechanical body, as well as the self-judgment and constant evolution of a biological body, they could be called a mechanical organism more perfect than artificial intelligence!

And now, such a monstrous existence began to tentatively touch the Earth's internet, like a hungry dragon gently licking its trembling prey. When it finally opened its bloody maw, it would surely be a scene of carnage!

"Huh, what is this? Damn! The encyclopedia actually has the construction and basic principles of nuclear weapons?!" Browsing through the vast sea of knowledge, Nie Yun suddenly opened his eyes and let out a cry of surprise!

It was no wonder that a bumpkin like Nie Yun was making such a fuss. Just as the formula for something like gunpowder can be found easily online, the construction and principles of nuclear weapons are not exactly classified; high school physics contains basic interpretations of them.

However, knowing them is useless. The difficulty of nuclear weapons lies in the nuclear material, the purification of the raw materials, and the ability to deliver them over long distances, such as intercontinental missiles and strategic bombers. Currently, only five major nations possess full nuclear capabilities, and these things are strictly classified.

At the same time, the mining and trading of nuclear fuel are strictly controlled by the state, and private ownership is absolutely not permitted.

So even if someone studied nuclear technology in depth, the end result would only be a sigh of "Oh, so that's how it is!"

But for Nie Yun, things were different.

According to the information Nie Yun had been "enlightened" with, there are currently two ways for humans to develop nuclear energy.

One is the fission of heavy elements, such as uranium, and the other is the fusion of light elements, such as deuterium and tritium.

Uranium fission technology is relatively mature and has become the technology commonly applied in current atomic bombs and nuclear power plants.

However, the reserves of uranium on land do not exceed 5 million tons, which, at current consumption rates, is only enough to be mined for a few decades.

However, the amount of uranium dissolved in seawater reaches 4.5 billion tons, thousands of times more than the reserves on land. But the concentration of uranium in seawater is very low; 1,000 tons of seawater contains only 3 grams of uranium.

To extract uranium from seawater, one needs to process a massive amount of seawater, and the technical process is extremely complex. Of course, this is by current human standards.

Nie Yun's eyes lit up. Separating elements—this was the Mechanical Insect's specialty! His interest was thoroughly piqued!

As he continued to delve into the publicly available technical literature on nuclear fission reactions, Nie Yun's forehead began to sweat.

It seemed... perhaps... maybe... possibly... these things didn't pose any difficulty for him at all...

Uranium extraction from seawater? That kind of thing was completely unnecessary; given some time, the Mechanical Insect could easily separate uranium elements.

High-concentration uranium purification? Centrifuge separation technology? Need large-scale power supply?

Even less necessary! The elements extracted by the Mechanical Insect—could they be anything less than 99.8%? They would definitely be 999.9% pure uranium!

Nie Yun sat stunned for a long while.

Uh... it seems like I just went online out of boredom, and now I've become a nuclear-armed fisherman?!