Ever since All Beings Base was founded, Lin Qiao hardly took soldiers from Base Number One out of the base to perform tasks. Lin Feng sometimes took them out to collect supplies, but most of the human soldiers were still being trained in the base. The force of Base Number One was small in numbers, so the base didn’t even need to prepare a training ground for them. They found a clearing area right near Base Number One and turned that into their training ground.
The army in Base Number One had merely about three-thousand people, and a small part of them died during the second explosion of the virus. Later on, the number reached about five-thousand after a few rounds of recruitment. Currently, most of them were still new and needed training.
“Lin Feng, you’ll take action with three basic corps. I’ll send a group from Base Number Two to escort you in secret. Huaxia is going to send out a strong force armed with powerful weapons. You guys, be careful!” Lin Qiao looked at Lin Feng, who was sitting on her right side, and gave the order.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lin Feng nodded at her.
Lin Qiao then turned to Qiu Lili and Lin Kui, who were sitting at the left side of the table, saying, “Lili, Lin Kui, you two lead the corp and follow behind them. Don’t make any move unless the situation goes out of their control.”
“I get it,” Qiu Lili responded to her while Lin Kui nodded silently.
“Yun Meng, take all level-six zombies from Base Number Two out to collect as many nuclei as you can. Zombie nuclei, animal nuclei, plant nuclei, anything…” After giving an order to Qiu Lili and Lin Kui, Lin Qiao gave instructions to Yun Meng, who was sitting by the side of Xie Dong.
“Eh? Collect nuclei? Now?” Yun Meng was a little confused.
There would be a war to fight. How come Lin Qiao still wanted her to collect nuclei? If she took away all the level-six zombies, there would be no one left in the base to handle possible emergencies?
Lin Qiao gave her a small smile and said, “Yes, now. You have five days. Send someone to bring back your harvest each day, no matter how many you collected that day. Don’t worry, Si Kongchen won’t make any big moves in five days, and we’ll be able to handle all the small moves that he might take. Also, even if he does plan to take major action within five days, his target will be Sea City Base, not us.”
She decided to seize the time to bring all level-five zombie soldiers to level-six. Every level-six zombie had the power to summon surrounding wild zombies. A good number of level-six zombies would guard the base safely from any possible actions that Huaxia might take.
To achieve high efficiency, Yun Meng needed to collect nuclei as quickly as possible. After hearing what Lin Qiao said, she nodded. “Okay.”
Lin Qiao looked at her and repeated, “You guys have to collect as many nuclei as possible, as quickly as you can.”
“I get it,” Yun Meng understood her meaning.
After giving out the urgent tasks, Lin Qiao started talking about the other thing, “Another thing… According to the materials that Yuan Tianxing read yesterday, it was something that some humans did underground that caused the underground environment to change. Many lower-leveled underground creatures failed to survive, and the higher-leveled ones are smart. They found their way out, and they won’t possibly go back. I’m afraid we won’t be able to make them go back underground. In the coming few years, more and more underground energy will seep out, unless we seal the underground space up. To deal with that energy, we need to grow the catmint, which Lin Wenwen brought back, in large quantities. But before that, we need to purify the soil. I plan to do that after we take out Huaxia Base and Si Kongchen. And about that, we need to run discussions with Sea City Base and the other bases to come up with a plan in detail. Currently, we can try to grow some on our own and see how much we can produce.”
That was a long-term project. To grow purely uninfected catmint, the soil needed to be purified. Currently, only Lin Qiao had the power to do that. She had the lake in her space, which would never dry!
The other way to grow pure catmint was through the soil-less cultivation technique developed by Huaxia Base. However, soil-less cultivation products contained much less energy than the plants which were nourished by the soil.
Mount Wu farm was currently under Liu Jun’s management. After the first pool, a dozen new ponds were dug near the farm. Of course, not all the water in those pools was from Lin Qiao’s space. The water in those pools was from the rivers nearby, mixing together with the water from Lin Qiao’s space. Lin Qiao’s water purified the regular water, so it could be used to water the soil.
It would take a while for the water to remove the virus energy from the soil completely. When the soil was entirely virus-free, it would be ready to grow healthy crops.
Growing catmint in Mount Wu farm was not a difficult thing. After all, the farm was mature now , and the farmers working in it had rich experience. The difficult thing was that the catmint’s effect could only be delivered in huge quantities. It also required two or three years for the plants to grow, so it would take some time for the plants to develop a sufficient amount of energy and spread it in the air. Only when the energy was rich enough could it resist the dark energy from the underground.
“Eh? So we need to grow those plants? But that gas from the underground has been spreading widely. How many years do we need to grow catmint before we can neutralize the underground energy with it? Can’t we just seal up the underground space?” Yun Meng didn’t understand it.
Reasonably speaking, sealing up the underground space was the most efficient way to solve the current problem. The dark energy wouldn’t come out as long as all the paths connecting the underground world and the earth’s surface were cut off.
“That’s one thing we’re going to do,” said Lin Qiao, “But at the same time, we also need to prepare ourselves for the worst-case scenario. We have to deal with the problem from different angles. You see, underground creatures have been showing up not just in our country but also in the rest of the world. That means there are a lot more than ten paths leading from the underground to the earth’s surface. I guess there are hundreds, even thousands of paths like that. We can’t possibly locate them all, not to mention seal them all up. Besides, smart creatures exist in the underground realm, so they’ll find a way to unseal the paths. For the long run, we should start growing catmint now. That’ll do us good anyway.”
The others glanced at each other and fell into silence while Yun Meng started pondering upon Lin Qiao’s words.
“Of course, our first priority now is to deal with Huaxia Base. When Huaxia Base is no longer a problem, we’ll take our time to dig into the underground realm. That’s nothing to be achieved rashly. It’s not just our problem, but also the problem of the whole world. So regarding that, we need to run discussions with the other bases.” After saying that, Lin Qiao added some small details and then ended the meeting.