Ten days later.

In the huge canyon created by the earthquake, dozens of people wearing chemical protective suits are operating machines to carefully excavate and clear the rubble.

The spore cloud emitted by the giant mother has basically dissipated, and it is difficult to detect the presence of spores even in the Grand Canyon, so it can be said that it is almost "clean".

In fact, the spores were no longer detectable on the ground from the next day, and the spore smoke column formed by the female worm when it exploded was more than 3,000 meters high, and the concentration of those spores dropped very quickly in the troposphere, where the air flowed rapidly.

However, it was winter after all, and the air in the canyon was still relatively slow, so it was not until more than ten days later that the agents returned here.

In these ten days, the entire camp was mobilized: to build construction machinery, to build new Skynet drones, and finally to find a small iron mine with low reserves more than 20 kilometers from the town.

With the solution of the steel problem, the construction speed of the entire camp increased several times at once, and all kinds of construction machinery were manufactured, and with the help of some construction machinery, the excavation of the shelter was completed in just 8 days.

The interior of the shelter began to be renovated, and at this time, the idle construction machinery was pulled down here.

Chen Zheng had already gone to the bottom of the valley once before, and searched the entire canyon with two star thieves wearing power armor, and found no danger, but he also didn't find any more zero crystals.

In the entire canyon, only the place where the mother worm once entrenched, occasionally found a few round spherical zero crystals, which surprised Chen Zheng.

According to the zero crystal content in the body of the worm, there should be at least dozens of tons of reserves in the huge body of the female worm! However, Chen Zheng only found less than 200 kilograms scattered - this is only one or two times more than the zero crystals in the worm's body!

Could it be that there really is such a little bit of zero crystals in the huge body of the mother worm?

After Chen Zheng searched the entire canyon but found nothing, he waited until the spores were gone, and pulled the agents and machinery down to start the cleanup.

On the one hand, I want to see if there are any other missing Zero Crystals, and on the other hand, I also want to dig up the heritage of the long-handed and long-legged people.

If nothing else, as long as you dig up the kind of machine that can identify whether the target is infected or not, it will be worth the price, not to mention its future application prospects, and now that the unknown spores are spreading, no one is sure that Shen Shen will be infected like a black skin.

In the sky, 37 Skynet drones are circling, alerting them to possible dangers around them.

Chen Zheng is not on this hot construction site, he is accompanying the glasses man in the base to do experiments.

“…… High...... Higher...... Lows...... Stop! ”

Under the command of the man in glasses, a spor bound by pale blue energy was accurately sent to the lens of the microscope.

"Your Excellency, now you can begin." The man in glasses looked intently at the nucleus of the spore under the microscope.

"Hmm." Chen Zheng's left hand glowed with a pale blue light, firmly restraining the little thing that seemed to be conscious, while his right hand condensed an ultra-thin Zero Sword...... Uh, zero needle, exactly pierced into the nucleus of the spores.

"Poof......

With an extremely faint sound, the zero pressure covering the spores was shattered, and the diffuse ultra-small impact burst the microscope's lens into a crack.

"How?" Chen Zheng saw the man with glasses raise his head, so he asked out loud.

"That's right, the nucleus does contain an ultra-small zero-crystalline particle that is too small to be observed with a microscope. The explosion was caused by your lightsaber detonating the particle. ”

“…… Alas. Chen Zheng shook his head and smiled bitterly.

It turned out that the information given by the man with glasses was not wrong.

Zero does have a habit of storing zero crystals - it now seems that the mother worm's huge belly should be full of zero crystals.

However, when the mother explodes, it disperses all the zero crystals and injects them into each tiny spor. As these spores spread in the natural environment...... God knows what kind of big moves they're going to make.

"Looks like we're going to have to do a lot of useless work." The man with glasses sighed and pointed to the busy "construction site" on the monitor next to him.

"No, the equipment, weapons, and even the information they left behind are worth studying, after all, they have more experience in fighting these bugs and know more about bugs."

Although Chen Zheng was very disappointed in his heart, he didn't show it in front of the man with glasses.

When Chen Zheng came to Lao Xia's room, he pretended to have a cold expression and relaxed.

“…… What's wrong? Looking listless? Lao Xia raised his head from the wooden table, glanced at Chen Zheng and lowered his head again.

“…… How many zeros do we need? Chen Zheng vaguely felt in his heart that a few hundred kilograms might not be enough.

"What zero?" Lao Xia was stunned.

"I mean...... Magnum crystals, how much do we need to build a tide gate? Chen Zheng asked with some concern.

"It depends on time and investment, the shorter the time required, the more it will be needed, but some parts we can't make ourselves, but if we make them ourselves, it will take too long......"

"Minimum, how much is needed?"

"Wait a minute, I'll do the math." Regarding Chen Zheng's question, Lao Xia frowned. He had never calculated this question carefully, but he also knew that Chen Zheng must have encountered some difficulties, so he didn't talk much nonsense and compared them on his personal terminal.

A few minutes later, Lao Xia projected a 3D model of the blueprint.

"All the places marked in red are completely incomprehensible rare materials, and must be transformed with universal crystals - some places in them simply use universal crystals, and this part will definitely not be left."

"The orange mark needs to have ultra-high processing accuracy, the yellow mark is too complex and we can't do it for the time being, the blue mark is the ordinary elements that we don't have now, and the green mark is what can be created under existing conditions."

As Lao Xia split the whole model and split it again, soon an ordinary 3D model became colorful, and if people who don't know it look at it, they may think that this model is very good-looking......

…… However, after clearly knowing the meaning of all the colors, Chen Zhengke really couldn't laugh.

"This is almost 300 kilograms, right?" Chen Zheng frowned...... The number of zero crystals is insufficient, and 300 kilograms is barely reachable.

“300？ At least 500. Lao Xia pointed to the orange part and said, "For example, here, you tell me how to process it?" And here, here...... We simply don't have a way to do it! ”

"......" Chen Zheng was silent for a while, and finally sighed: "I can barely cut it out with a zero sword......"

"Really!?" Lao Xia's eyes lit up.

“…… It looks like it's been a long, long time......" Chen Zheng couldn't help but look bitter as he looked at those extremely complex workpieces.