"August 5. Today, my Creation Power cap reached 201 points. It's been increasing at a fairly steady rate. Maybe it's because I use up all my Creation Power every day? But my recovery speed still hasn't improved. I used to recover about 4 points per hour; now it's around 4.3, still not even 5. In theory, since my cap has gone from 100 to 201, my recovery rate should have doubled too. So why has it improved so little?"
Huang Si wrote in his diary as he pondered the problem.
With Creation Power recovering so slowly, raising the cap was of little use. At most, he could store a little more power for making extremely complex objects or very large quantities of them.
How could he increase his Creation Power recovery speed?
Huang Si had no clue. He had once again transferred his consciousness into the Creation Book and tried asking it questions, but the book showed no response. It was as if it had fallen completely silent after being opened for the first time.
Unable to figure it out, Huang Si decided to stop worrying about it for now and focus on solving practical problems in his daily life.
The first was the nuisance of carbon dioxide.
Huang Si could create oxygen, but he had no way to get rid of carbon dioxide. And whether he was making pancakes or going about his daily routine, he produced quite a bit of it.
There were no plants in his home, so he couldn't create an effective air-circulation system.
The Dark Space where his house stood was also unusual. Even with the doors and windows open, air wouldn't leak out, no matter whether the pressure inside was high or low.
As for the things in the house, they would only disappear into the darkness if Huang Si deliberately threw them outside.
So, to deal with the growing amount of carbon dioxide, Huang Si had to refer to the brief descriptions on Wikipedia and design and build a blower himself.
He based the blower on a bucket. It had a long plastic cylinder about three buckets in length, with a rod inside connected to a ring. Within the ring were louvers shaped like a camera lens shutter. When he pushed the rod outward, the louvers closed airtight; when he pulled it inward, they opened to let air in.
With this method, Huang Si only needed to vent a small portion of the air in his house every few days, then replace it with oxygen and nitrogen.
As for what happened to the air, garbage, and other things he dumped into the Dark Space outside, Huang Si decided not to think about it.
He would worry about it if the Dark Space ever filled up. For now, he'd just use it as a garbage bin.
"August 8. There's really not much information about solar cells. Anyway, I'll start by making monocrystalline silicon."
Huang Si stood by the window and looked at its glass. The glass's microscopic structure enlarged in his eyes. Before long, he found the silicon atom in a silicon dioxide molecule.
Then he arranged the silicon atoms in an orderly pattern, recorded the structure, and returned to the macroscopic world. That was all it took to create a silicon crystal.
Huang Si held out his right index finger. He gathered a little power around its tip.
A tiny, extremely thin, translucent disc appeared at his fingertip, then quickly expanded. Before long, it had grown into a silicon wafer the size of a CD.
The wafer was made entirely of silicon atoms, arranged in an absolutely regular and tightly packed pattern. Its crystal structure was flawless.
If researchers at the Academy of Sciences knew about it, they'd be green with envy. In the real world, it was impossible to make a silicon wafer that was 100 percent pure and structurally perfect.
In reality, high-purity silicon wafers were generally used to make top-of-the-line electronic components, such as the newest CPUs and graphics cards.
But even the most advanced purification and manufacturing technology left some imperfections. For every new CPU or graphics card, several times as many silicon wafers were often discarded or downgraded to lower-end production lines.
That was one reason the latest electronic products were so expensive.
If people in the IT industry knew that someone here was using flawless, 100-percent-pure silicon wafers to make solar panels, they'd probably cry on the spot.
Solar panels didn't require high-quality silicon wafers at all, and their surfaces even needed to be roughened. Huang Si was practically wasting a priceless resource.
But to Huang Si, it was simply a question of whether he wanted to spend the Creation Power. Making a 100-percent-pure silicon wafer was easier for him than making one that was 99 percent pure.
Huang Si had already recorded the structures of monocrystalline silicon and silicon wafers in the book. However, the silicon wafers used in solar cells needed rough surfaces. Magnified, those surfaces consisted of countless tiny facets that improved light absorption.
"Mm, the number of facets looks good. I should be able to record it." Huang Si examined the wafer's surface through his microscopic vision, nodded, and noted it in the book.
Over the next few days, he tinkered with the other components, including the reflective film, circuitry, and tempered glass.
Modern manufacturing used screen printing to put the circuitry in place. For Huang Si, all he had to do was design the pattern and generate it directly on the surface.
So far, two things had been giving Huang Si trouble. First, Wikipedia's descriptions were often too brief. Even after he looked up all the related information, making something as complicated as a solar cell was difficult. He usually had to draw up his own blueprints.
Second, his Creation Power recovered far too slowly.
At 4.4 points per hour, he recovered 105.6 points a day. But that didn't include the cost of air, food and water, daily necessities, electricity, and so on. In the end, Huang Si had only a little over 60 points of Creation Power to spend freely each day.
Whenever he tried developing something new, he used that up in no time.
A lot of the time, Huang Si had to study circuit design while waiting for his power bar to refill.
By August 21, Huang Si had finally made a working solar cell.
He recorded the solar cell's composition in the Creation Book, using up his last few points of power.
"My recovery speed should be 4.6 now, but my Creation Power cap is already 297. I recover less than half my capacity in a day. Waiting is such a pain. Even mobile games don't make you wait this long to refill your energy."
Because his power recovered so slowly, Huang Si had to develop the various components in batches. That was why it had taken him until late August to finish the solar cell.
Solar cells were an important part of Huang Si's power-supply plan. Until now, he had charged his phone and computer with batteries he had to replace by hand. It was bad for the environment, produced piles of dead batteries, and consumed Creation Power.
It was true that everything here was dark and there was no sun, but he had the Creation Book, didn't he?
Huang Si had realized long ago that the Creation Book, this impossible object, was the only truly permanent energy source in the room.
Until he could make a nuclear battery, the only way to get a truly automated power supply was with a solar array that generated electricity from the light of the Creation Book.
On August 22 and 23, Huang Si used the Creation Power he had recovered over those two days to make 32 solar cells and their accompanying components. He connected them with tempered glass and plastic clips to form a solar panel.
Solar cells weren't very efficient at converting light into electricity, so one panel couldn't provide a high enough voltage.
After that, Huang Si spent another seven days making four more solar panels. He wired them in parallel with the original panel, bringing the voltage to 220 volts.
Huang Si connected the wiring to the distribution box beside his front door. With that, the power in his house was fully restored. He no longer needed to use the battery circuit he had invented just to keep the lights on.
Now, Huang Si had placed a cabinet in the living room and set the Creation Book on top of it.
The five solar panels were each a little larger than an A3 sheet of paper. They hung from the ceiling on steel cables, surrounding the Creation Book like petals and making full use of its light.
Of course, Huang Si had turned the Creation Book's brightness all the way up. It generated electricity around the clock.
During this whole process, Huang Si had to keep waiting for his Creation Power to recover. It was so boring that he watched every one of the dozen or so movies on his hard drive and finished a big-budget AAA game. He was now on his second playthrough.
When he got tired of games, he read novels. When he couldn't stand reading novels anymore, he played games.
There was no helping it. In this completely sealed-off space, the only way Huang Si could keep himself from going crazy with boredom was to find things to do that were at least somewhat interesting.
Without those distractions, being shut in a completely dark room for a month or two might really have driven Huang Si mad.
After finishing the solar cells and playing games for a few more days, Huang Si started thinking about building other automated devices.
Maybe an automatic blower? An air conditioner? Ideally, it would absorb carbon dioxide automatically.
Or perhaps he could develop some new food?
Huang Si still hadn't figured out how to make potatoes or ham, and both had spoiled.
He had no choice but to throw them away.
That reminded him that there were germs in the house, which was why the food had gone bad.
It seemed he needed to develop a sterilization device.
"September 3. I've started researching and making an ultraviolet sterilizing lamp. The principle doesn't seem too difficult. I hope I can finish it soon. Today, my cap has reached 325, and my recovery speed is 5.0. This cap doesn't seem to be much use. I wonder when my recovery will get faster."
By September 7, Huang Si had hung ultraviolet disinfection lamps in various places around the room. They used quite a bit of power. If he turned them all on, he couldn't use the other appliances.
On September 12, Huang Si started using an electric blower, solving the problem of the air becoming contaminated with carbon dioxide.
On September 15, Huang Si made a pale-yellow film from plant protein. This was what people outside would call gluten. He then spent a day adjusting its structure and improving its texture before finally recording it.
Gluten thus became the only dish on Huang Si's dining table. He developed several different recipes around it, making his meals a little easier to swallow.
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