Secret Base
After sending off Desperate Erlang, who was pale and drenched in sweat, Nie Yun lounged in a beach chair and closed his eyes for a nap. The afternoon sun warmed him all over, making him so comfortable he nearly groaned.
On the table beside him sat the military laptop the mercenaries had contributed. A giant satellite dish stood nearby, invisible radio waves linking the computer to satellites in space.
The base's development was proceeding in good order. With a rare half-day of leisure, Nie Yun decided to take part in a popular activity: surfing the internet.
For him, it was an entirely novel experience.
"Oh, so that's what the internet is. Interesting, interesting. Connecting the world? What a marvelous technology!"
"Physical addresses, IPs—so that's your internet ID. You can get caught if you do something bad? I see, they can pinpoint where a network terminal is. Global positioning! Impressive, impressive!"
"Uh, hacking. I should learn a little, just in case. You shouldn't hurt others, but you should be on your guard against them!"
"Th-this is...! Ah! It's practically burning my eyes! So the human body is actually capable of such exquisite design. The art of human reproduction is truly an advanced field of knowledge! I must study it! I absolutely have to study it in depth!"
Nie Yun rapidly skimmed through all kinds of basic information about the internet, letting out bursts of astonishment and wonder. Naturally, he also stumbled across a few clips unsuitable for minors. Those under eighteen, please do not watch or study them!
Countless streams of data flashed through Nie Yun's eyes as he absorbed online knowledge at a speed that would leave anyone stunned.
As time went on, Nie Yun and the Mechanical Insects worked together with ever-increasing ease. They were almost at the highest state of unity, where each was within the other and man and insect became one.
Ahem. To put it plainly, Nie Yun was gaining greater control over the Mechanical Insects' abilities. They were now entirely at his disposal.
To give an example, the Mechanical Insects had become like external organs for Nie Yun, able to function as both brain and body.
That naturally included their storage and computing abilities. Storing and calculating information had always been what robots did best!
In short, anything recorded by the Mechanical Insects—whether information from hard drives and other storage devices they had consumed, or data downloaded from the internet into their local memory—could be instantly memorized by Nie Yun, then digested and learned through his extraordinary computing power.
Put into a simple formula, his learning speed equaled the internet's download speed!
He couldn't explain where this ability came from, so he could only attribute it to his extraordinary symbiotic bond with the Mechanical Insects.
Even the Iris civilization, the creators of the Mechanical Insects, probably never imagined that a living being could form a spiritual connection with them.
The Iris civilization had designed the Mechanical Insects solely to repair damage to their ships. They could store ship models, transform, disassemble, and reassemble, but they had not been given much intelligence. And to keep them from reproducing without limit and overrunning everything, their generations of reproduction had been specially restricted.
But after being subjected to cosmic radiation, extreme environments, and the passage of eons, the Mechanical Insects themselves began to mutate.
In the end, their fusion with Nie Yun completely broke through those restrictions. Nie Yun and the Mechanical Insects had both evolved into a new form of life, joined in a remarkable symbiotic relationship.
If artificial intelligence was a special form of life in which biological traits emerged from machines, then the symbiosis between Nie Yun and the Mechanical Insects could be defined as a perfect fusion of biology and machinery—a perfect symbiotic organism!
They possessed the machinery's infinite replication and extraordinary computing power, along with the living organism's independent judgment and capacity for continuous evolution. They were more perfect mechanical lifeforms than artificial intelligence could ever be!
Now this monstrous being had begun cautiously probing Earth's internet, like a hungry dragon gently licking its trembling prey. Once it opened its gaping maw, a bloody storm would surely follow!
"Huh, what's this? Damn! The encyclopedia even has information on the design and basic principles of nuclear weapons?!" Nie Yun, who had been browsing the vast ocean of knowledge, abruptly opened his eyes and cried out.
It was no wonder the country bumpkin Nie Yun was so astonished. Just as recipes for things like gunpowder could easily be found online, the structure and principles of nuclear weapons were hardly secret. Even high-school physics textbooks covered the basics.
But knowing the principles was no use. The hard parts were obtaining nuclear material, refining it, and delivering it over long distances—for example, with intercontinental missiles and strategic bombers. Only the five major powers currently had full nuclear capabilities, and those things were strictly classified.
The mining and sale of nuclear fuel were also tightly controlled by governments, making it impossible for private citizens to own any.
So even someone who studied nuclear technology in depth could only end up saying, "Oh, I see!"
But things were different for Nie Yun.
Based on the information he had been "educated" with, there were two ways humans could harness nuclear energy.
One was the fission of heavy elements, such as uranium; the other was the fusion of light elements, such as deuterium and tritium.
Uranium fission technology was already fairly mature, and was widely used in atomic bombs and nuclear power plants.
However, land-based uranium reserves amounted to no more than five million tons, enough to last only a few decades at current rates of consumption.
But the amount of uranium dissolved in seawater reached 4.5 billion tons, thousands of times more than the land-based reserves. The catch was that seawater contained uranium in very low concentrations: a thousand tons of seawater held just three grams.
Extracting uranium from seawater required processing enormous quantities of water and using highly complex methods. Of course, that was only true with current human technology.
Nie Yun's eyes lit up. Element separation was the Mechanical Insects' specialty! His interest was thoroughly piqued!
But as he continued reading publicly available technical papers on nuclear fission, a sheen of sweat began to form on Nie Yun's forehead.
It seemed... more or less... perhaps... maybe... none of this would be difficult for him...
Uranium extraction from seawater? He didn't need any of that. Given some time, the Mechanical Insects could easily separate out uranium.
Enriching uranium to a high concentration? Centrifuge separation? A massive supply of electricity?
He didn't need any of that either! Could anything extracted by the Mechanical Insects be merely 99.8% pure? It would absolutely be 99.9% pure uranium!
Nie Yun sat there dumbfounded for a long moment.
Uh... he'd just gone online to kill some time, and now he'd become a nuclear fisherman?!
Before you continue