Chapter 162: You’re Rich!
Northern Clearspring City.
Near the elevated fifth-ring, a six-person team marched slowly along the cold and dead street against the howling wind.
There were originally only five people in the plan.
Back when he was leaving, Chu Guang brought four players in full armor and was about to set off from the central square of the outpost. However, before leaving the south gate, Luo Hua chased after him and said he wanted to tag along.
He had a very simple reason to do so…
"There may be many kinds of products created from the Carbon Dioxide traps, so the captain asked me to go with you. Although the probability of large-scale storage of dangerous goods in the urban area is very small, he is still worried about your safety. It can be quite dangerous if you don’t handle them properly.”
Since someone offered to help out of good intentions, Chu Guang certainly wouldn’t refuse.
Although some of his players understood chemical engineering, they did not recognize the words of this world. He was literate, but he still couldn’t understand professional symbols.
Random boxes of chemicals shouldn’t be opened recklessly, so it was better to have a knowledgeable person with them.
As such, the six of them set out together.No one expected that on this sunny day, a blizzard would suddenly start when they were just halfway through their journey.
There had been more and more days like that recently.
Chu Guang anticipated that in November, the weather in this wasteland would be even more exaggerated, and the days would become more and more difficult.
The progress on the Greenhouse Ruins needed to be sped up a little.
Walking in front of the team, Old White raised his head to look at the sudden rush of snow and couldn’t help squinting.
"The last time I saw such heavy snow was in Harbin."
"I saw it on the television." Holding Daybreak in his hand, Ample Time’s eyes wandered on both sides of the street. "But I’m more worried about something suddenly popping out of the street than the snow."
Old White sighed softly, "To be honest , I kind of miss Night Ten a little bit. Without his perception attribute, I always feel that something is missing."
"Me too, our team is missing an eye." Gale held the short spear in his right hand, scanning the streets on both sides. His nervous look was even more exaggerated than Ample Time.
That couldn’t be helped. They had to be careful.
The two of them were now equipped with expensive equipment. If they accidentally died, they would lose all their treasures.
The steel right hand was so awesome that Gale couldn’t bear to wash them any longer..
Listening to these guys talking all the way, Sideline Slacking shouted discontentedly, "Hey! Am I not good enough? I’m also a perception type, and I’m almost LV7, okay!"
Gale couldn’t help but sneer, "Almost there means that you haven’t reached the level, which also means that you are still LV6."
Ample Time mumbled, "Indeed, I’m LV8, Gale is approaching LV8, and Old White is going to be LV9 soon. Dude, you have to work hard."
"@#%!"
Next to Chu Guang, Luo Hua, who couldn’t understand what the shelter residents were talking about, couldn’t help but sigh softly. "I always thought that only natives can speak languages that we don’t understand..."
Halfway through, he suddenly realized that what he said seemed to be very rude, so he quickly added an explanation. "Uh, I don’t mean to offend you, I just find it strange. Because generally, shelter residents speak the standard language of the Federation of People, and even rarely have an accent."
Chu Guang smiled lightly and didn’t care. "It’s alright, I also feel as strange as you do."
For questions that he didn’t know how to explain, he would simply throw them back at the person. He had tried the trick many times before.
Instead of making up an excuse full of loopholes to make others feel that he was not sincere and had concealed something, it was better to express the same confusion as the other party. In this way, the other party may even stand in his position to think of the reasons on his behalf.
Why is the sky blue?
Yes, why? This editor is also very curious. What do you guys think?
Luo Hua did not ask any further questions. After all, he had seen too many strange things along the way. Such trivial matters were not surprising at all.
The group soon reached their destination.
It was an abandoned office building. But it was difficult to tell what it was used for in the pre-war era just from the outside.
Perhaps it was because of its unremarkable appearance that it had been ignored by scavengers for two centuries.
In accordance with the map given by Captain Lu, the group moved along the edge of the hall, entered the safe passage, followed the stairs all the way up, and quickly reached the target floor.
The corridor was covered with dark green Slime Mold, the necrotic part of which had turned dark brown, and the corpses of dozens of mutants were lying on the ground.
The mutants here had been cleared, and there were no new mutants wandering around for the time being.
"What the fuck is this?!" Crouching next to a three-meter-tall humanoid mutant, Sideline Slacking poked it with the bayonet of his rifle.
Its dark skin was ridiculously hard. When the bayonet stabbed it, it was like stabbing a tire on a heavy truck; the bayonet pierce it in the slightest.
Is this thing really a carbon-based creature?
"Tyrant..." Chu Guang glanced at the mutant on the ground, frowning slightly. "The fifth-ring actually has such a monster."
"Dear administrator, is this Tyrant difficult to deal with?" Ample Time looked at him and asked.
"It’s not easy to deal with," Chu Guang said after thinking for a while. "If you meet it in this kind of terrain, it can easily wipe out two teams like yours."
Actually, he had never seen it before. Exaggerating it would never go wrong regardless.
While Ample Time swallowed and Gale shrank back, Old White and Sideline Slacking didn’t feel anything. After all, their equipment was not that precious.
Even if they dropped, they would not feel distressed.
Bypassing the Tyrant’s corpse, Chu Guang took the group of people through the alloy door with the words indicating that only stagg could enter and arrived inside of the Carbon Dioxide trap.
The space it contained was very large, occupying almost half of the entire floor. The ceiling of the current floor was also removed, allowing it to use space on the upper levels.
Carbon Dioxide produced throughout the building would be sent here through a central ventilation system, where it would be broken down into graphite and oxygen, then hydrogenated, or the oxygen would be replaced with hydrogen as needed.
For the people of that era, atoms were like toys in their hands. With almost endless energy they could splurge on, they transformed nature’s creations into what they needed.
And those products that were produced were packed in boxes with special materials and stacked next to the dedicated freight elevator, waiting for the staff who would never come to transport them away.
Looking at the hundreds of cubes piled up in the room, Chu Guang roughly estimated that there were about three or four hundred cubes.
He couldn’t help asking, "Your captain never wondered what’s inside those boxes?"
"We are not interested in those things. As long as there is enough energy, we can produce resources related to carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. At most, it is a matter of cost... For example, this row of black boxes looks like graphite. It seems that you are quite unlucky."
Luo Hua chuckled and walked to another row of boxes.
Pointing his flashlight at it, he read the text on it and continued to comment with interest. "This is okay. It’s a pile of high-polymer fibers... See the X-4 label."
"X-4?"
"A kind of code. After all, their spatial structure is complicated and bizarre, we can’t always use chemical formulas to represent them." After a pause, Luo Hua continued, "By the way, although its main purpose is to make clothes, it can also be used to replace wood fibers in smokeless powder, and increase the explosion speed and power by at least 20%... That’s how we use it."
It’s much easier to understand this way.
In game terms, it would be something like
[Rifle ammunition power +20%, explosion probability +?]
Chu Guang silently memorized its purpose, and glanced at the number of similar boxes. There were about forty or fifty of them lying about.
It was estimated that there were at least twenty or thirty tons of stuff they had to bring back.
Seems to be enough for a long time.
At this moment, Luo Hua, who was walking in front, suddenly yelped in fright, "Holy shit?!"
Chu Guang, whose thoughts were interrupted, raised his head and immediately walked to his side. The four players who thought that the plot had been triggered also surrounded him and peeked curiously.
"What happened?" Chu Guang asked in their stead.
"Dillat Rubber!" Looking at the unremarkable dusty box in front of him, Luo Hua took a deep breath, looked in disbelief, and said with envy in his eyes, "How can this thing appear here?! This is too much!"
Chu Guang: "Is there a problem?"
"Of course there is! The products of Carbon Dioxide collectors are mainly determined by the industrial needs of the region. Starch, graphite, and polymer fibers are more common. Olefins, alkanes, even benzaldehyde, and ketones may appear near industrial areas. But Dillat Rubber... I have only seen it near the Aerospace Industrial Park, is there an aerospace industry in Clearspring City?"
Taking a deep breath, Luo Hua concluded, "In other words, you guys have hit a jackpot!"
Dillat Rubber, a composite nanomaterial formed by chemical bonding of organic and inorganic components at the molecular level.
Yes, it was not a pure organic component. It cannot be synthesized by simply relying on Carbon Dioxide and water. Other substances must be added into the reaction system. Even in Ideal City, it was also very expensive.
That was why Luo Hua was so surprised.
In an oxygen-free environment, its molecular structure was folded and arranged, and it existed in the form of a colloidal liquid at a macroscopic level. Once it encountered oxygen and was at room temperature, it would transform into a solid state in a relatively short time, and the molecular structure would also change at the same time, becoming a crystal lattice.
It was like cement that had undergone a hydration reaction.
The process was usually irreversible due to changes in molecular composition.
The material had excellent wear resistance, acid and alkali resistance, and had almost metal-like resistance to high temperature, and was not as easy to age as traditional rubber, which was extremely rare in traditional polymers. It was for this reason that it was usually used as an aerospace material.
Chu Guang asked casually, “Can you produce this?"
The expression on Luo Hua’s face was slightly embarrassed. After all, he had just bragged about their ability, but now he was slapped in the face in less than two minutes.
With a slight cough, he tried to explain. "... We can’t regard this as a hydrocarbon in the strict sense. It also contains a lot of inorganic components, which is equivalent to an organic and inorganic hybrid polymer."
Chu Guang nodded thoughtfully and tried to translate the sentence he couldn’t understand to something he could...
They cannot produce it.
"There are at least about fifty tons here..." Luo Hua looked at the situation in the warehouse with envy, and said with emotion, "Don’t let our division chief know."
"Why?"
"I’m worried that he will not be able to sleep."
"..."
Is it that exaggerated?
Chu Guang felt that if Li De wanted it, he wouldn’t be so stingy that he wouldn’t give any to the other party.
It was just that the distance from here to the operation camp was so far, and the goods had to be moved downstairs...
It wouldn’t be too much to charge a shipping fee, right?
In short, according to Luo Hua’s introduction, Dillat Rubber was very versatile and valuable. After processing the information for a while, Chu Guang felt that its status in the rubber industry was probably similar to perfluoroether rubber in the early 21st century.
And there was no difficulty in processing while trying to use them.
Before encountering oxygen, it could be kneaded like glue, and there was no other rubber material like it that was easier to handle.
In addition, due to its good sealing performance, it was widely used in aerospace, nanodevices, bionic engineering, mechanical sealing, and other industries.
For example, the exoframe produced before the war used this material!
Of course, its use was not limited to that. Many industrial production equipment used rubber. If it could be replaced with Dillat rubber, the maintenance cost would be greatly reduced, and the production efficiency would also be greatly improved.
With these goodies, the industrial area of the outpost would not have to worry about rubber for a while.
Of course, with so many boxes, it was impossible for six people to move them back.
As a result, Chu Guang immediately updated an express delivery mission on the VM.
[Mission: Transport the goods from the specified location to the outpost (Strength Type Recommended)]
[Reward: 10 silver coins and 10 contribution points]
There was less and less work in the operation camp now, so Chu Guang always had to find something to do for those energetic players...
...
After returning to the outpost, Luo Hua went back to his office to pack up his stuff with his partner, Ace.
The Pioneer would leave the day after tomorrow, so their work here was over, and there would be a car to pick them up before evening.
Chu Guang couldn’t help feeling a little sad when he thought that the drinking buddy he had just become acquainted with was leaving soon, so he returned to the shelter, chose a bottle of red wine plated with gold paint from the old leech’s collection, and took it to the temporary office.
"Thank you for your help in the past few weeks, I don’t have anything good for you here." Putting the red wine into Luo Hua’s hands, Chu Guang looked at him sincerely and said, "This bottle of wine is my goodbye gift to you. Remember not to drink it at work."
"Thank you, your friendship is the most precious gift to me!" Taking the red wine from Chu Guang with a moved face, Luo Hua rummaged in his pockets for a while, looking embarrassed. "... Damn it, I’m not prepared at all."
His pocket was cleaner than his face.
There were still a few banknotes before...
"It’s okay, your friendship is equally precious to me," Chu Guang said with a smile. "When your Journey to the West is finished, just send me a copy."
"I will definitely send you one! But this is different, I have to give you something..." Luo Hua thought hard for a while, and then suddenly his eyes lit up. "Yes! Let me write a letter for you."
Chu Guang gave him a confused look. "A letter?"
Luo Hua nodded immediately and said excitedly, "Yes, I have a drinking buddy on the East Coast. Although his alcohol tolerance is not as good as mine, he is not that bad! Of course, not only drinking, he is also an engineer... Although I forgot about what the thing he studied was called, I always heard him complain that life in Ideal City was too boring, and he envied those of us who are lucky enough to set foot on the journey for the future of human civilization.
"When I get back on the Pioneer, I will write a letter to him, and recommend him to come to you!"
Chu Guang always felt that the guy was a little naive.
How was the other party complaining? Obviously, the person was trying to show off.
But out of politeness, he still smiled and nodded. "Then I’m looking forward to your good news."
Luo Hua grinned, patted his chest, and guaranteed, "Don’t worry! I’m very reliable!"
Ace, who had already packed her luggage, glanced at him. If Chu Guang was not mistaken, she just rolled her eyes…