With the return of the Sea Wolf and Nie Yun, the base became busy again.
Taking his plan to trade iron ore for steel with the Chu Group into account, Nie Yun spent half a day increasing his force of Xiaolang Robots made from ordinary materials to thirty thousand, nearly exhausting all the resources the base had collected recently.
Then these Xiaolang Robots began mining iron ore around the clock at the three rich underwater deposits they had surveyed, piling it up on-site to await collection by the ships Nie Yun sent.
All three underwater deposits were open-pit mines that were extremely easy to work. At their current rate, they could extract nearly thirty thousand tons of iron ore a day.
To make supplying power easier, he also laid cables from the base to all three locations, allowing the Xiaolang Robots to recharge on-site.
Viewed from above, the Undersea Mining Zone was now packed with mining robots. The noise of their operations sent nearby schools of fish fleeing in panic.
For the first time, humanity's industrial advance had reached such depths beneath the ocean. Technology deployed on a massive scale began conquering this undersea world that had lain undisturbed for millions of years!
Once mining operations were running smoothly, all the Mechanical Insects resumed devouring the Aquarius at Nie Yun's command.
The Undersea Base.
Only half of the Aquarius's battered hull remained, a truly miserable sight. Beside it, the Panama and two smaller thousand-ton freighters waited to meet the same fate.
Countless Mechanical Insects gnawed relentlessly at the hull and cargo, their numbers growing rapidly with every passing moment.
In little more than a day, the Mechanical Insects had already grown to eight thousand tons, just a step away from the ten-thousand-ton mark. Given how their population increased, the more