Chapter 298: Ribbon-cutting Ceremony, The Result of Ten Days of Hard Work

“Hurry up and get up now, you guys! It’s almost 6 o’clock and you’re all still fast asleep!”

“If one person is late and left behind, everyone will not get to have breakfast!”

Early that morning, Qi Qin was knocking on a big gong that came from nowhere as he yelled loudly.

However, the villagers today surprisingly had no complaints at all.

Everyone got up in excitement despite not wearing anything after they heard the gong.

Yesterday, there was moderate rain in the basin area which brought much-needed relief after the dry spell that had gone on for many days. At the same time, the rain cooled the surrounding air.

When it rained, the construction work on the destroyer proceeded as per normal, given that it was all automated, but the construction work in the village had to be put on hold.

Fortunately, as everyone’s enthusiasm for work was excellent over the past few days, Hope Village’s first construction stage was completed ahead of schedule. After consulting Su Mo, all the villagers were given some time off work.

Their rest lasted for a day.

Should they even be allowed to get a day off in the wasteland?

It sounded a little weird at first, but when Chen Shen gathered everyone together and announced the shocking news, everyone was stunned!

The working hours in Hope Village were set at 12 hours.

They had to wake up at seven in the morning to wash up, and start eating at seven-thirty. The team leaders were responsible for announcing the tasks while everyone was having their meals. At eight o’clock sharp, they would start working.

Six hours later, at two o’clock, it was time for lunch and rest, which lasted for a total of one and a half hours.

They would resume working again at three-thirty until six-thirty. By then, they would have dinner for half an hour. After that, they would continue working up until ten o’clock and call it a day.

There would be three meals a day, and every meal was guaranteed to include vegetables and steamed buns. From time to time, in the afternoon, they would be served noodles.

Everyone was eating consistently. As for the taste of the food, even the old glutton Su Mo savored it every time the cook sent food over, so not much more needed to be said.

In addition to the meals they were given, when the weather in the wasteland was “good”, soup was prepared for relieving heat.

On cooler days, they would pick up the soup themselves, but if the temperature was high, the cook would deliver them once every three hours to ensure that no one would suffer from a heatstroke.

It had only been ten days since they moved to Hope Village, yet compared to their previous malnourished selves, the villagers’ physical fitness had shown a huge improvement that was even visible to the naked eye. They looked nothing like the refugees they were before!

Of course, given that the workers only got to eat and live without wages, if this scenario played out on Earth, it would surely be criticized as a black-hearted capitalist system.

However, in this wasteland, compared to the 14 or 16-hour work system of other shelters that also had to ration their food…

Hope Village was heaven!

It was not the holiday alone that got everyone excited. What was even more exciting was the second news announced by Chen Shen…

The destroyer’s ribbon-cutting ceremony!

The destroyer would officially be completed tomorrow morning and would progress to the testing stage after.

Although the destroyer was still in its prototype stage, and it could only be seen but not used, the villagers were unaware of the specifics.

It was said that a red silk ribbon was to be hung and cut for the ceremony, and they could even personally enter the destroyer and take a look around after that.

At this moment, older folks who were in their fifties, and teenagers who were seventeen or eighteen, all went crazy once the meeting was adjourned!

They had initially arranged for afternoon naps when they heard about the day off, but now everyone shelved those plans upon hearing the news. The moment they returned to their residences, everyone regardless of gender went to one location…

Hope Village’s water distribution point!

Water was a controlled resource. Whether it was water from the melted snow or rainwater, it was a precious resource in the wasteland.

Every villager in Hope Village had a weekly quota.

16L!

This water did not only include the water used for washing, but also included their daily drinking water.

If they used it up before the next distribution, they had no choice but to find someone who would lend it to them, or go thirsty until they could drink their fill of soup when mealtime came.

However, today, without exception, everyone put some drinking water aside and drew out all their remaining water supplies.

They did their laundry!

They took a bath!

The dirt on their bodies had been washed clean!

The villagers’ clothes had never been washed since they came to the wasteland because there was no change of clothes.

Apart from Zhong Qingshu, ordinary villagers, and even the leadership team had strong body odor.

On this day off, although the rain outside just stopped, the sun was not out yet and it was probably impossible for the clothes to dry in time. Despite that, everyone was not discouraged, and they started moving quickly.

As time went by and afternoon came along, the pavilion on the large platform was covered with colorful clothes. It looked unusual at first glance.

It looked like a beautiful painting from a distance.

As for taking baths, things were even simpler.

They would go to the bottom of the mountain, gather some clean snowflakes, add some water that they drew out, and pay a little from their quota to heat the water.

As they sat in the hot water, the smell and dirt from their bodies were washed away in a matter of just ten minutes.

They did not even need to worry about where the remaining water would go after the bath.

When the water cooled down a little, they would put the bucket in their storage spaces and take it to the vegetable field at the foot of the mountain to water them. It was the perfect cycle!

This busyness lasted until the afternoon meal was finished. At around eight o’clock in the evening, everyone returned home and began to prepare for sleep.

Naturally, when they were woken up at six in the morning, they were not grumpy at all.

…

On the other side, in the Underground Shelter, Su Mo got up bright and early as well on this joyous day and started washing up and eating.

After all of this was done, it was already eight o’clock in the morning. The daily system announcement came on time.

“Hey, there’s a good gain of survival points today, about 1500 points…”

“…my current balance of survival points now…”

“…28,000 points…”

As he sat on the sofa, after seeing his survival points balance that was close to 30,000 points, Su Mo, who was known for being as cool as a cucumber, still inevitably showed that he felt moved.

Throughout these ten days, Su Mo was seen as the one rushing to work all day and managing the construction work of the destroyer around the clock with no time to rest.

However, everyone, including Chen Shen, did not know that it was not Su Mo who sat in the shipyard’s control room every day, but that it was the…robot workers!

An intelligent robot was a trump card, but at the same time a constraint.

It was best to keep it hidden.

To the villagers, the terrifying efficiency and productivity of the robot workers would not inspire them, but rather make them feel as if they were going to be replaced.

Su Mo could have dealt with those fears, but with so many things on hand, it was more convenient to keep it hidden.

Apart from these, the other things remained similar to the people’s guesses. With the help of the robot workers, although Su Mo was not busy in the shipyard, he was not idle in the shelter either.

The trade with Tundra Shelter was completed on the third day.

Five machine guns, ten rifles, and twenty handguns.

30,000 rounds of machine-gun bullets, 10,000 rounds of rifle bullets, 5,000 rounds of pistol bullets, and ten packs of powerful explosives.

Considering that this was such a terrifyingly large expense, were it not for Su Mo’s superb “acting skills” that endlessly emphasized the importance and urgency of acquiring a radar system within ten days…

The people in Tundra Shelter would have never believed that they managed to obtain this much super equipment just by paying the price for a fire-control radar blueprint and an ordinary collision avoidance navigator radar blueprint.

With these ammunition and weapons, let alone the odd few foreign race attacks, even if there was an entire group of thousands of them, when these machine guns were strategically placed and utilized on a battlefront, it would be game over for the attackers.

With the two blueprints on hand, the radar manufacturing process was no longer a problem.

After Su Mo’s numerous reminders, the version for the two blueprints that he obtained was not the latest one, but rather the old-fashioned radar systems that were active on ships in the 1980s instead.

This kind of radar had lost most of its functionality in newer and more modern ships, but on this wasteland, it had an irreplaceable advantage:

The structure was simple, the materials were abundant, and it was easy to maintain!

Besides, after knowing that Su Mo was merely a layman, the personnel who drew the blueprints was extremely considerate.

It was more of a manual than it was a blueprint!

As long as he assembled them according to the specifications, accurate to the millimeter, in the manual and replicated them, the two radars could be put into use in no time!

With that, on the seventh day, by relying on LCD TV’s error correction function, he managed to handcraft most of the larger components, using the system to supplement the creation of the more technical components, in addition to acquiring some smaller components from the trading market. In the end, he managed to create…

The two radars!

Over the next three days, after completing the radar manufacturing, Su Mo hurriedly proceeded to the program configuration process.

Starting the destroyer was not as simple as turning on the engine, transferring the power, holding the steering wheel, and stepping on the accelerator.

An 80-meter-long ship like this required complex controls for multiple systems. If one segment was left out, the ship would not move.

Without a proper operating system, the ship would be rendered helpless. Even if Su Mo gathered up the hundreds of untrained villagers to help, it would be of no use.

Therefore, over the remaining three days, his survival points balance began to fall like flowing water.

After becoming the god of cookery, the system would likely reward him with 20,000 points, which would allow his survival points balance to exceed 40,000 points.

In addition to the thousands of points he received over these ten days, he should have over 50,000 points.

However, Su Mo was not willing to spend such a huge amount of survival points.

It was not expensive to directly create a finished product without its technological components. The time fuze that detonated the explosives was one example. It only required two points per minute of the timer.

But if it involved technical expertise, like creating a destroyer with its corresponding operating system, it required a whopping 100,000 points.

Even if Su Mo tried outsourcing the functions of the destroyer’s operating system to the villagers, gathering people and making teams of them responsible for a single module, and then finally using the system to change all the backdoors and connecting them into a system that worked for the destroyer, it would still cost a whole 40,000 points!

In desperation and seeing a large number of points required, Su Mo had to draw on inspiration and personally undergo programming training in the system’s training ground to replace the system’s transformation process and save costs, and later maintenance expenses.

It would cost 20,000 points.

However, after undergoing a serious amount of training, Su Mo’s programming level reached an all-time high.

As he started to modify and improve these systems on the destroyer, he was in his element.

Within only three days, the operating system responsible for the fire-control radar and the collision avoidance navigator radar were modified.

The most important part of the ship’s automatic navigation progress reached 90%. All that was left was to finish the ribbon-cutting ceremony, work overtime at night, and the ship would be ready the next day.

“Seven days left. We need to get moving…”

“…tomorrow at the latest, I have to set up all the underlying circuitry, install the engine and all the systems, as well as commence the first round of testing.”

The daily system announcement was closed, and the storage space was opened.

When he saw that the faintly blue Divulgence of Heaven’s Secret talisman was fully-charged, Su Mo’s gaze turned serious, and he quickly had an idea in mind!