After seeing Director Li off, Lu Zhou took the elevator straight down to the second basement level of the Institute for Advanced Study's main building. He passed through the access-controlled door hidden inside the sample room and entered the unknown third basement level—
That was, the underground laboratory.
Most of the wreckage the system had rewarded him with was stored here, under Xiao Ai's supervision.
The moment he stepped into the laboratory, a quadcopter drone with a display screen dangling beneath it wobbled over and circled him twice.
Looking at Xiao Ai sticking to him, Lu Zhou got straight to the point.
"How is the Crawler doing?"
The so-called "Crawler" naturally referred to the Crawler all-terrain remote exploration vehicle, one of the samples the system had rewarded him with upon completing the previous stage mission.
Unlike the clothes woven from carbon nanofiber material, this thing was clearly far more technologically advanced.
According to the manual, its communication range theoretically reached as far as three astronomical units. Even if Mars and Earth were at their most distant relative positions, the terminal on his end could still receive signals from the Crawler all-terrain remote exploration vehicle. The signal would merely be weaker, and the delay higher, making real-time control impossible.
Extremely interested in its communication device, Lu Zhou had once tried to dismantle it. Unfortunately, he never found a nonviolent way to take it apart, and the manual explicitly stated that it contained a self-destruct program and that dismantling it could lead to unpredictable consequences.
Clearly, this thing was probably in the same category as the Nitrogen Shield.
Either he hit it with the all-powerful Scanner Gun, or he could only use it until it broke down.
Fortunately, unlike the single-use, non-rechargeable Nitrogen Shield, the manual stated that this thing could be