Chapter 288: Huaxian Dragon, Growing Outrageously!

Under this dark sky, the interrogation of all the murderers—over a hundred of them—from the Zeus Shelter had all been completed at this point.

It was a little after 8pm and, aside from a few villagers holding torches, who were still collecting and sorting the spoils, everyone else had returned to Iron Rock Mountain to rest.

Having had a busy day, there was no time to continue working on the top of the mountain, so some progress was delayed.

However, having cleared out such a large group of “bandits” and seized an amazing amount of spoils, all of the villagers were extremely excited. Even if they returned to the village to rest, they still hastily joined in on the inventory counting exercise.

When the two militia guards that Chen Shen had gotten to stay behind to guard the shipyard entrance saw Su Mo coming over from a distance, they did not step forward, but quietly left after they gave him a standard salute instead.

Su Mo did not like people standing guard while he was there.

This was common knowledge among the people after being in Hope Village for so many days.

Regarding this strange misunderstanding, Su Mo could not be bothered to explain things either. It just happened to make things leisurely, with nobody around to bother him.

In the wilderness, the truck that had its glass broken by Moore was currently parked next to the shipyard—the villagers had exchanged grain for glass and installed it.

The large No. 2 print looked quite ironic at this time.

Walking up, he looked around the truck and found that its properties were unremarkable. Su Mo nodded, and then walked along the scaffolding back to the main shipyard entrance.

“Huh, Master is back. Moore is earnestly standing guard!”

He had been leaning on the gate until Su Mo walked in to violently smack his shoulder. It was only then that Moore—who was even drooling in his sleep—reacted. He rubbed his head as he called out strangely.

“Woof woo…”

Still, after this little trick, upon hearing Oreo’s disdainful howling behind him, Moore’s face reddened, and he involuntarily hopped two steps to the left.

“It’s fine. Go back and sleep if you’re sleepy. Starting tomorrow, you don’t have to guard here anymore!”

From being woken from slumber to working intensively in the ruins for over ten hours, and then helping the villagers interrogate the prisoners non-stop after that, Moore was not like Su Mo, who could still use the psychic energy water and the Mountain and Sea Painting Scroll card to recover.

If not for the villagers’ loving treatment and good food in the noon and afternoon, he probably would have long slept like a log in the shelter.

“Moore, Moore isn’t tired! Moore wants to wait at the entrance for master!”

It was as if he knew Su Mo was about to start building the ship throughout the night. Moore willingly sat on the ground at the entrance, leaning on the wall and pretending to look forward energetically.

This appearance made Oreo respect him a little more, and her jeering tone stopped.

“That works. Then you sit here. I’ll get Oreo to patrol the perimeter!”

Patting Moore’s head, Su Mo took out the source energy fruits he received earlier after some thought and picked out two of them, passing one each to Moore and Oreo.

Though it was written on the source energy fruit’s properties that it could help wasteland creatures evolve, it was just like a snack to the current Oreo and Moore.

Of course, taste-wise, even the most delicious food could not compare to the thirst they felt for the source energy fruit in their genes.

Upon receiving the fruit, Moore’s eyes lit up instantly in the dark, and he hastily received it from Su Mo, swallowing it in one mouthful.

Oreo beside him received the fruit with her mouth and sat elegantly with her paws crossed, eating it slowly.

“Stand guard. I’ll get to work now!”

After seeing Oreo nod, Su Mo opened the door and walked in like he owned the place, sitting in front of the center console.

In the daytime, this place was covered with solid iron panels and became the temporary meeting room for Hope Village.

However, at night, after Su Mo pressed a button at the back of the console, with a ringing sound, the iron panels started sliding back, driven by the mechanical shaft. The panels revealed a large control panel that looked technologically advanced.

From left to right, there were three different screens that each had a small lever for their corresponding controls.

The first lever was responsible for the auxiliary arm, which was used to help the main arm affix the steel plates.

The second and third levers controlled the two welding arms, which were used to quickly weld the steel plates together.

Pressing the console’s start button, once the self-diagnosis process was completed, the generator placed on the shipyard roof hummed as it started up.

Unlike the generator inside the Underground Shelter, because the shipyard’s arms ran on fuel, aside from the console, it was only a few headlights that consumed electricity.

Thus, seeing that the shipyard’s power consumption was not high, he chose to add a small-scale generator on the roof, where the noise would be tolerable.

Sitting in the pitch-black shipyard control room, Su Mo was not in a hurry either as he waited patiently.

After a few minutes, the generator gradually became stable and, as power was delivered, the headlights on the shipyard ceiling started lighting up slowly, emitting light.

The eight large spotlights on the scaffolding also started turning on simultaneously, shining onto the shipyard. Behind the blast-resistant glass, the shipyard was suddenly lit up.

Once the lights came on and the three-screen dashboard completed the self-diagnosis process, he entered the creation function panel.

Having controlled it several times before, Su Mo had naturally become familiar with the shipyard creation function. However, his current goal was not here.

Flipping his wrist and waving his hand, four bionic mechanics dropped onto the floor, making dinging sounds.

Turning on all the bionic mechanics, he picked up three of them and placed them in front of and behind the three dashboards’ levers.

There were three difficulties he had to overcome if he wanted the bionic mechanics to learn to build a ship.

Firstly, the robots would need to coordinate between the shipyard’s three-screen dashboard and use the levers in tandem. The three lever positions had to match. Given the size of these miniature robots, a single one would definitely be unable to handle all three controls, so three of them had to work together and cooperate.

Secondly, the main lever operated the arm that picked up the materials, and had to be used in tandem with the auxiliary arm to fix the steel plate into position, before he could have his hands free to continue picking up more materials. This would require no small amount of focus.

Thirdly, the robots would have to develop a response plan when errors were encountered. As the master, when Su Mo was around, he could stop the operations immediately once an error was detected and work to fix it before continuing. However, this was not written into the robot’s programming, so continuous A.I. learning was required for them to learn it.

As long as the robot workers learned how to deal with the three things mentioned above, then he would be able to completely delegate control of the shipyard’s arms to these robots and save time and effort, even if they were slightly less efficient than if he did it himself.

“These three robot workers had nineteen algorithms inputted and would only require simple A.I. learning to control the shipyard arm’s operations.”

“As for the robot that I’ve upgraded twice, with its advanced logic chip, it’ll be responsible for controlling this main lever as well as overall coordination between the team of robots here!”

After setting the four robots’ responsibilities and writing numbers on them with a pen, he clicked the learning function button one by one to officially start the machine learning process.

If he dragged things out for a day, that would be a day wasted.

After the system wrote all-new algorithms for the bionic mechanics, in terms of operations, they were almost indistinguishable from humans.

Based on his usual efficiency, he moved his hands constantly as he placed a steel plate down, and then slowly adjusted the steel plate into position.

The auxiliary arm fixed it, then the two welding arms began work. After the welding was complete, and he confirmed that the leftmost screen had detected no issues, he controlled the main lever to return to the pile of materials again to pick up another steel plate.

This process was then considered successful.

Of course, without the shipyard’s assistance, it would take at least 8-15 minutes to finish fixing one steel plate by hand.

He demonstrated each step of the process through his actions.

As the robot workers needed to use their own logic to deduce what to do in each step, by the time the first steel plate had been welded into place, an hour had passed without him realizing it.

Adjusting his stiff shoulders, he stared at the robot workers’ eyes that were still flashing with a curious light. Su Mo’s expression was bitter as he began the second round of demonstration.

This round fared much better. Among the four robot workers, the middle one who had been upgraded twice learned the quickest. In just 40 minutes, the second plate had been successfully welded “on board”.

The third round… 38 minutes.

In the fourth round… The first error was encountered. After demonstrating the response plan for dealing with errors, this round was completed in 56 minutes.

The fifth round… 30 minutes.

In the sixth round… The second error happened, but it was handled in just 7 minutes. A total of 38 minutes were used.

Seventh round… 18 minutes!

…

One round after another was completed as Su Mo sat in the shipyard. From having to exert concentration at the beginning, he now could even occasionally sit back and leisurely watch the robots work independently for ten or so minutes.

From an hour in the beginning to a few short minutes later on, after learning the basic logic sequence, the robot workers’ speed increased more and more, and the precision of their work was rising higher and higher as well.

Moreover, unlike Su Mo’s unrefined work, with the robot workers’ logic chips, they could even automatically improve the process by comparing it with the blueprint. As they strived to make it more perfect, they also became more precise when they worked on the materials.

After watching them for a while and realizing that he did not need to interfere too much, when the robot workers’ could also keep the process under 15 minutes, Su Mo leaned on the wall and shut his eyes groggily.

He had worked the entire day the day before and had only slept four or five hours before entering the ruins, where he had ended up working without rest for 16 hours. When he came out, he mentally exhausted himself working through the night as well.

Even supplemented by the magical abilities of the psychic energy water, leaning on the wall, after a few minutes passed, Su Mo’s breathing became deeper as he gradually fell into deep sleep.

In the shipyard control room, Su Mo slept very peacefully.

Even the beeping sounds made by the four robots upon finishing one round did not rouse him.

Outside the shipyard, Moore laid on the floor at the entrance and was also sleeping very comfortably. The heavy dew of the night did not make him stir at all either.

Oreo, lay furthest away on the ground as well. While it looked as if she was asleep as well, from her occasionally twitching ears, one could tell she was not deeply asleep.

The headlights were shining, and the shipyard was still at work.

One after another steel plate was carried over into position by the main arm and then welded together by the welding arms.

From the one hour a plate at 8pm to three minutes a plate at 4am, the four arms worked in tandem as if they were being controlled by intelligent beings. They worked at a shockingly fast rate. Just as each steel plate was put into position, before the main arm could bring over the next plate, the previous one had already been welded.

Fast asleep, Su Mo could not see this scene.

However…

The Zeus Shelter captives tied up at the edges of Iron Rock Mountain could see it very clearly.

They had placed their attention on it from the moment the shipyard lights lit up.

However, during the first hour, when Su Mo only completed fixing one steel plate, the few leaders of Zeus Shelter showed some ridicule.

Just this?

With this speed, he still dared to make such a large ship?

As their circle of tacit ridicule ended, the night was slowly encroaching. Having been interrogated for a day, they were so tired that they sat on the ground and napped.

However, the good times did not last long and, as the faint noises started sounding out in the night, more and more prisoners awakened!

Following the direction of most people’s gazes, when Big Beard opened his eyes as well and looked at the shipyard below…

He was dumbstruck!

Compared to the slow speed earlier, which was as if an old person had been operating it, now, deep into the night, the shipyard lights were still bright, but the speed of the main arm had changed drastically!

Watching the proceedings for a few minutes more, they realized that not only had the main arm’s speed changed, but the speed of the remaining auxiliary arm and welding arms had changed as well!

Transfer, extend, pick up steel plate, transfer, release, fix and weld.

For these seven steps, even though their view was blurry, since it was two kilometers away, all the captives were shocked as they noticed…

Within this set of actions, there was no trace of redundancy!

Each step reached the limit of absolute precision. The entire process seemed like a work of art!

As for the two welding arms, as they rotated and intertwined in the air, they created afterimages.

The screeching electrical sparks never stopped from beginning to end, like fireworks were being set off, shocking the group of captives!

“This is fully-intelligent creation?”

Nobody answered Big Beard’s question because, in their eyes, when they had initially witnessed the manufacturing speed of an hour per steel plate in the beginning, nobody would have believed this was operated by A.I.

There seemed to be only one answer left!

Sitting on Iron Rock Mountain, all the captives were awakened.

It was not the meaning of being awakened from slumber, but rather that they were “awakened” to their own situation upon seeing the power Su Mo displayed.

Nobody spoke and nobody yelled. They only watched in dumbfounded silence.

Observing the shipyard’s work below, observing the structure of this Huaxian “steel dragon”, at a speed visible to the naked eye…

Grow outrageously!