Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
After his excited emotions from finding the sea of gold had calmed, Chen Jin’s mind cleared too. He found himself facing a critical problem. He had found so much gold, but… there did not seem to be much use for it. He could not bring it to Earth and sell all of it straight away. There was no way to explain their specific origins.
He could employ the method of exchanging gold for gold via the channel of Forever Jewels. Every month, he would be exchanging about 100 kilograms of gold. But the amount was too large and it would be easy to attract attention and suspicion.
Hence, in order to avoid danger, he could not bring this 200 tons of gold over to Earth in big batches. Excluding this 200 tons of gold, there was already more than 1,000 tons of gold in the Base of Operations. They were recently found and transported back by the 50,000 robots who had been sent out to scour Moleiduo Republic.
Chen Jin was unable to find uses for this 1,000 tons of gold in the short-term. He did not know how long it would take to sell off all of this gold. With this additional 200 tons, he was overrun. He felt like he might be forced to destroy this batch of gold. With this thought, he felt his interest wane and his heart cooling. Indeed, he had rejoiced too soon.
But, the inherent value of gold still existed. It was just that Chen Jin was prudent and timid, hence it appeared that there were limited options and uses available. “Hey, how about this. I’ll let the robots transport all 200 tons of gold back to the Base of Operations and put them in the capsule factory. Then, I’ll melt those gold bullions and remake them into squares. Finally, I’ll use these gold squares and build a gold castle! The castle will be made entirely of gold. Occasionally, I’ll go and live inside. This should be a pretty nice experience. A 200-ton gold castle. Haha, this should be the most expensive building constructed in the whole world! It can’t be done even by the richest hillbilly, right?”
Chen Jin’s whimsical desire rose in him and he itched to make his idea a reality. He was filled with a great sense of anticipation.
…
Half of the robots and a batch of high-efficiency batteries were left behind to deal with the gold. Flight No. 9 slowly rose into the air to complete the rest of the survey work. The exploration assignments that Chen Jin had planned did not only involve gold. The robots were not sent out to Donuit City purely for gold. Gold was merely Chen Jin’s greatest interest. In terms of practical value, technical information was far more valuable. They were ahead of Earth’s technological knowledge by at least 100 years!
Donuit City would be set as the center of a range with a 300-kilometer radius. He hoped that he could find some high-tech information material in this densely populated and highly developed area, such as finding a few more high performing super calculators, amongst other technological gains. All these were of higher in value than gold and would provide him with greater support.
However, Chen Jin was quickly disappointed. There was no prosperity or bustle in the metropolitan area surrounding the core of Donuit city. Only a wasteland remained. Tens of millions of humans had been vaporized by the nuclear explosions. There was not one single building left on the surface that was more than 10 meters high.
“It’s barren and brown all over, like a mud pond. There’s not even a single hair left, much less materials on technological information.”
Suddenly, just when he was about to totally give up, the smart system of Flight No. 9 reported, “Reporting; a city has been found in the southern periphery in the range around the capital’s core. The buildings in this city are untouched. They have not been damaged by any attacks.” A huge spread of skyscrapers appeared in the images that were relayed back to him. They occupied an area of about 300 square kilometers. It was a large city that once held a dense population in the millions.
Chen Jin was very doubtful. “How is this possible? The surrounding cities have all been destroyed. Why is this the only city that was left untouched?” This perfectly whole and undamaged city lying within a barren wasteland seemed too unexpected and sudden. Very quickly, Flight No. 9 lowered its altitude and entered the airspace above the city. It carried out a series of surveys.
He quickly found the reason why this city had not been totally destroyed! Chen Jin was so shocked that his mouth hung open. In the heart of this city was a plaza, and right in the center of the plaza was a big hole with a diameter of about five meters.
Still in a stupor, Chen Jin asked, “What… what is that?”
Alice explained, “Master, if I am right, that should be an unexploded nuclear warhead. It was a dud due to internal malfunctions.”
“You…you mean that is a nuclear bomb; an unexploded nuclear bomb?” Even Chen Jin thought that he was sounding repetitive. Oh god, aside from images on the internet, he had never seen a nuclear bomb in his life. And a real one at that! What if it suddenly exploded? His mind conjured an image of a mushroom cloud rising in the air.
“It’s ok, Master. The life span of the explosive unit in this bomb has expired. It does not possess any possibility of an eruption.”
He understood. Chen Jin finally understood the situation through Alice’s explanation. This city was named Rockford. It was left all alone because of plain dumb luck. Very fortunately, it was bombed by a dud. If it had met with a working nuclear bomb, it would have been turned into a barren wasteland long ago. However, even if it was an unexploded dud, it was enough to scare the residents of this city into tears. All of them had fled. The dud was still resting in the crater without anyone coming back to deal with it.
Flight No. 9 landed on the plaza in the heart of the city. 10 plus robots alighted and brought with them various tools. They walked to the vicinity of the big hole. Taking more than an hour, they very carefully dug the unexploded dud out of the hole, and checked the nuclear bomb meticulously. On the underside of the bomb, in an area not too apparent to the naked eyes, the robots found an ant-sized engraving in a Sinitic standard script.
There were four characters – Hua State Nuclear Works. The strokes of the characters were stern and solemn and vigorous, with a sense of power. He finally understood the identity of the opponent country that had carried out a full-on nuclear attack on Haierfa’s strongest country of Melica.
“Amazing! Yes, yes, yes! The hegemony cannot act with arrogance forever. It has finally experienced the real meaning of defeat! Although….the final end was mutual destruction. But, Melica, who was similarly domineering on this planet, will never look down on and bully the Hua Xia Peoples again.” Chen Jin shook his head. Right now, he wanted to vent his anger and hatred on something. He felt like making a clean sweep of everything. Although he was a homebody in the past, he did occasionally take note of some national affairs of importance. However, he always saw negative news about how the country’s airspace and waters were infringed upon by the American empire and how they harassed his country.
Through the robots’ discovery of this unexploded nuclear bomb, Chen Jin could feel that the Hua Xia were an upright population that had courage and backbone. They had a fighting spirit and an unyielding and proud character that could not be crushed by any evil power that sought to dominate them! In one sudden moment, Chen Jin became extremely interested in Hua State, located in the other portion of this planet.
He muttered, “After I’ve finished with the exploration here, I have to go and take a look at the eastern country on the other side of the planet. I need to thoroughly explore the other country; a motherland of this dimension is worthy of my respect!” Therefore, the gains from today’s exploration could be summarized with two simple phrases:
He found an undamaged city that had once held a population in the millions. And he found a nuclear bomb!