Developing Local Specialties

In late August 2023, near the ground base, swarms of little robots were building a new structure.

Various building materials were carried down from above by transport robots. At the same time, another group of robots was digging up soil and mixing it with a binding agent to form a cement-like solid.

Some of the little robots, armed with saws and weapons, began clearing the nearby jungle and grassland.

On September 4, the new structure was completed.

It was a landing pad, slightly smaller than an airport on Earth but still spacious enough. More than twenty square kilometers of ground around the base had been leveled and paved with cement.

Huang Si was still developing a small helicopter, and many technical problems remained unsolved. In the future, he also planned to develop jet aircraft for exploration farther afield.

On November 29, development of the small transport helicopter was complete, and mass production began that same day.

By then, seventy-five years had passed in the Green World.

Huang Si himself had no desire to go to the Green World. What if the difference in time flow made him unable to adapt and he died? He didn't want to take that risk. But bringing back some plants and animals from there seemed feasible.

On November 30, little robots loaded fifty different kinds of fruit and grass separately into the small helicopters.

The helicopters made several round trips. Along the way, one of them broke down in the high-altitude air currents.

At last, all the fruits and grasses had been brought before Huang Si.

Huang Si didn't rush to cook them. Instead, he analyzed them with his consciousness.

His gaze penetrated every cell in the plants, leaving nothing hidden, not even their intricate internal structures. He pulled apart the DNA double helix and examined it carefully.

"They should be pretty similar to Earth species."

Huang Si wasn't well versed in biology. He only knew much about the cells in his own body.

To be safe, Huang Si enveloped all fifty plants in his consciousness, including the bacteria and bugs on them. His Mental Force Field crushed them, killing them all instantly.

After all, he didn't need the plants to be alive in order to cook them.

Prepared to rewind time at any moment, Huang Si picked up a green fruit that looked like an apple. He used his thoughts to remove the dust from its surface, then cut it open. He took a slice and gently bit into it.

The fruit not only looked a lot like an apple, but its chemical composition was also very similar. Huang Si had just confirmed as much by probing it with his consciousness. It contained no viruses or bugs, and he had even killed the fruit itself.

Still, to be safe, Huang Si watched his body from within as he ate, ready to rewind time and reset himself at the first sign of trouble.

The green fruit was soft, not as firm as an apple, but it tasted wonderful. The moment it touched his tongue, a delightful sweet-and-sour flavor filled his mouth.

Huang Si hadn't eaten anything this delicious in more than four years. His judgment wavered, and he wolfed down the slice.

After finishing it, Huang Si repeatedly checked his body. He watched the fruit turn to pulp and juice as he chewed, then flow down his esophagus and into his stomach, where it triggered a bout of churning. After mixing thoroughly with the stomach acid, the pulp was gradually digested, leaving behind only a little fiber.

An hour later, Huang Si confirmed that the fruit was safe, then promptly wolfed down the rest.

After enjoying the fruit, Huang Si examined the other plants.

The robots had brought up nineteen kinds of fruit and thirty-one kinds of grass.

Two kinds of fruit and fourteen kinds of grass were poisonous to humans. Huang Si tossed them aside and logged them in the computer database so the robots wouldn't bring them up again.

Five other kinds of fruit had too little edible flesh, while six kinds of grass were too tough or covered in fuzz. They didn't look appetizing, either, so he discarded them and added them to the database.

After checking the chemical composition of the remaining twelve kinds of fruit and eleven kinds of grass, Huang Si began tasting them one by one.

In the end, Huang Si chose eight kinds of fruit he liked, including the green fruit he'd tried first, along with five kinds of grass.

Since he couldn't be bothered to name them, Huang Si numbered the fruits one through eight and the vegetables one through five.

From then on, Huang Si had fruit and vegetables to eat.

He also made preserves, juice, and all sorts of delicious dishes from them. Life just kept getting better and better.

Ten days later, having confirmed that the plants from the Green World were nutritious and completely harmless, Huang Si began trying the meat.

Once again, swarms of little robots headed into the woods with weapons in hand.

After a day's hunting, helicopters carried more than twenty animal carcasses up into the sky.

Huang Si had specifically told the robots to kill the animals before bringing them back, just in case something went wrong. After all, a gentleman kept his distance from the kitchen; if he didn't have to kill animals himself, then of course he wouldn't.

Huang Si used his Mental Force Field to thoroughly kill every microorganism in and on the animals. With the danger eliminated, he got to work cooking.

He hadn't prepared meat in four years, and he had to cut it straight from the carcasses. It took him two whole days to inspect the meat from seventeen animals.

The meat of two small animals smelled fishy and rank. As for the other fifteen, Huang Si wanted to give them a thumbs-up and say, "Delicious!"

After so many days, Huang Si finally felt that developing this Green World had been worth it. It had completely transformed his life.

He had delicious food and drink, all rich in nutrients. He could spend his days munching on dried meat, sipping juice, and watching the surveillance footage for fun. And because the footage was played at 323 times speed, he could watch nearly a year's worth of events in a single day. It never got boring.

Feeling happy and at ease, Huang Si thought his life span might increase considerably. He also felt more motivated to research and learn.

But as the saying went, comfort dulled the will, while hardship kept a person going for a hundred years. Once he'd eaten his fill, Huang Si began thinking less about developing jet aircraft and more about an advanced intelligent assistant.

The reason was simple: he now had not just a room, but an underground base and hundreds of little robots to manage. The number would soon exceed a thousand, and Huang Si had to keep an eye on the surveillance feeds himself at all times. It was becoming a huge nuisance.

What was more, time in the Green World flowed 323 times faster.

Either Huang Si devoted his full attention to managing the little robots over there, or they had to stop and wait for instructions every so often. The hardships involved were beyond the understanding of anyone who hadn't experienced them.

Despite being called robots, they had no intelligence at all. Their ability to adapt and respond was barely better than that of a household vacuum. What Huang Si needed was a true AI assistant capable of planning and making decisions.

He didn't intend to use the twelve AIs immersed in the virtual world on his computer. They were anthropomorphized and unsuitable for the job.

However, Huang Si had previously created a thirteenth AI in the virtual world. It was mainly used to manage and moderate the virtual world itself and had no personality, only decision-making capabilities.

In a sense, this thirteenth AI was the rule manager of the virtual world.

Huang Si casually made a copy of it. Fortunately, it didn't have a personality module or complicated thought processes, so it was relatively quick to copy.

Next, Huang Si used the thirteenth AI as the core of a system to build an intelligent assistant capable of moving freely, connecting to the network automatically, and controlling the army of little robots.

Perhaps his good mood had helped elevate his soul, or perhaps it was because he had spent so long training in the hurricanes of the Dark Space. In May 2024, the Creation Book confirmed that the essence of Huang Si's soul had advanced once again.

His mental presence had now formed an enormous field. Within a radius of eight hundred meters, all things were under the control of his consciousness. He could split his attention and observe everything around him within that radius at once, while even more detailed observation was possible by dividing his attention into more than fifty streams.

The soul essence level Huang Si had registered in the Creation Book had now become "Domain."

Huang Si flipped the Creation Book to the page about levels and found that, sure enough, a new line had appeared:

"Domain: the heart illuminates all things, the domain rules over all."

A new line had also appeared in the fragment distribution records below:

"Record 5: Domain fragment search failed; distribution failed."

Huang Si didn't care at all that there were no more fragments in the book. Improving his soul's strength wasn't important; technological progress was. Only technological progress could improve his situation and help him find his way home.

Look at all the changes so far: good food and drink, and a happy life. All of it was thanks to technology. A stronger soul only made research and production a little more convenient.

Huang Si even felt that after his soul reached the Domain level, his Creation Power cap of 52,900 and recovery rate of 8,130 were far more than he needed.

Still, since he hated to waste anything, Huang Si continued to use up all his Creation Power every day and train his soul in the hurricanes every week.

The hurricanes no longer hurt Huang Si as much. He could last about fifty-five minutes in one, though he still had a way to go before matching its total duration of one hour and forty minutes.

Huang Si thought the two definitions of "Domain" were reminding him to develop his ability to multitask, expand the range of his mental influence as much as possible, and strengthen his Mental Force Field until it became something like a domain.

The phrase "the heart illuminates all things" filled Huang Si with longing. For now, he could only use his thoughts to do fifty different things at once. He could manage more if the tasks were repetitive, but that was still a far cry from illuminating all things with his heart.

In any case, he just had to keep progressing.

Scientific research continued, and it wasn't until July 2024 that the physical form of the AI assistant was finally complete. Huang Si named it Xiao Ke.

Xiao Ke's body was shaped like a flying saucer, with a jumble of ports and cables dangling from underneath. It could move on four legs or fly using jet propulsion.

Inside, it carried a newly developed radioactive isotope battery that could supply power for hundreds of years.

This battery was Huang Si's latest invention. He hadn't developed one earlier because he was worried radioactive materials wouldn't be safe. But ever since discovering the Green World, he had moved some of his more dangerous experiments there, which was how he had managed to create this high-tech device, commonly known as a nuclear battery.

Xiao Ke had an extremely advanced intelligence system. It could connect to networks in several different ways and direct more than ten thousand little robots at once.

As long as Huang Si gave it instructions in advance, it would carry them out faithfully. For example, it could send twenty robots to explore the Dark Space, a hundred to chop down trees, and two hundred to gather resources and hunt.

In the end, Huang Si simply handed over all the work in the Green World to Xiao Ke, putting exploration and resource gathering at the heart of its operations there.