Vertical Foundry Well Activated!

[Wreckage of pre-war missile cruiser "Orion" suspected of being occupied by illegal armed organization! Currently, Alliance authorities are holding consultations with the Academy, Enterprise, and other factions to explore dealing with the threat of legacy pre-war weapons through closer cooperation. Our reporter urges everyone to remain rational and not listen to rumors! While lead can indeed shield against certain levels of radiation, hanging lead around one's neck or wrapping it around one's waist is utterly pointless and lacks any scientific basis. —Survivor Daily, Avent City Edition] [“Celestials” organization surfaces! Suspected identity: digital ghosts of the Human Alliance era expeditionary force! Experts from the Alliance Academy of Social Sciences published an editorial arguing that the existence of the "Celestials" organization fully demonstrates that uploading consciousness to circuit boards is an act of foolishness akin to "notching the boat to find a sword," as well as an unreliable collective suicide. However, other experts from the Academy of Social Sciences analyze that the extreme ideology of the "Celestials" stems from the overly homogeneous social strata on the Lagrange space station, noting that their predicament is similar to that of the Legion. In any case, the threat from outer space has garnered serious attention from top leadership across all factions. Secretary-General Si Wen of the Representative Council claimed in an interview with reporters that the esteemed President Li Minghui will fight the Celestial forces to the bitter end and will never flee before battle. Li Minghui himself has not yet commented on the Representative Council's statement, merely noting that one hundred thousand neutron torpedoes may pose a severe challenge, and that the South Sea Alliance should develop high-orbit anti-missile systems as soon as possible. —Survivor Daily, Ring Island Edition] [Battle of Yang Province reaches a stalemate! Mammoth State's new leader, Shawa, has governed the military with an iron fist, successfully stabilizing the front line after withstanding the initial offensive. Although the State of Brahma scored an early victory, inadequate logistical supplies and a lack of mountain combat gear have caused massive non-combat attrition across multiple units; the Northern Field Army was virtually wiped out during its latest breakout attempt! The newly appointed Industrial Commissioner strongly condemned former leader Absaik, asserting that the poor governance during his tenure severely crippled the State of Brahma's economy and industrial development, serving as the main reason for the staggering casualties among frontline soldiers. Restoring it to pre-damage levels could take at least twenty years. Despite mounting difficulties and lurking crises, the committee remains confident in weathering the storm. Sava, second-in-command of the Family Association, reiterated at the committee meeting that the pain is merely temporary and renewed his appeal for all classes in Tiandu to unite. Additionally, according to insider sources, Zayed sharply criticized Sava during an internal meeting, calling his crackdown on cockroaches and rats "short-sighted"—a frivolous, flirtatious half-measure lacking vision and thoroughness. To preserve the arable land along the Everflowing River, he stated that more radical measures must be taken: striking directly at the red soil. —Survivor Daily, Port Goldgallon Edition] [The threat of the "Celestials" is looming, but when the sky falls, the tall ones hold it up, don't they? That godforsaken place is far too distant from New West Sail Port. For now, our reporter cannot interview the suffering Celestials and can only hope they endure a little longer. Of note, however, is that His Majesty Salen coughed heavily during this morning's assembly, possibly hinting that the Eastern Empire has major moves in store. We will be releasing a special issue dedicated to deciphering the profound meaning behind this! Furthermore, the war in the Free State is drawing to a close. The police department loyal to City Hall and the Hound Special Forces have seized control of over half the urban area. The corporations are likely finished, though the ultimate victor remains uncertain; after all, Bugra is not merely the Free State of Bugra's citizens, but also the Free State of wastelanders far and wide. Even if local gang members are wiped out, the Flint Group can always recruit fresh henchmen from across the wasteland. The corporations and civilians of the Free State might keep clashing for a while yet, though that sort of gang-warfare skirmishing looks like child's play compared to our neighbors. In Yang Province, both sides have slaughtered each other into rivers of blood, with casualties surpassing the combined total of both factions in the Free State civil war! Proof that not even the end of the world can stop the Brahma people from butchering one another. Beyond war, other calamities are taking turns on the stage. With the State of Brahma throwing itself into heavy industrial development, the industrial facilities of Old West Sail Port have withered almost completely away, prompting business owners to turn into swimming champions one after another. An anonymous official from the tax bureau lamented that life is growing harsher by the day: whereas he used to apply Vaseline lip balm before heading to work, now he can only pop into the kitchen and kiss a slab of lard. Our reporter agrees that this is truly tragic. Of course, this tax collector's pomade hasn't turned into cooking oil in the poor's pots; after all, red soil requires no elaborate culinary technique, and the region happens to be suffering a famine rivaling the Xilan era. The wise and valiant His Majesty Salen remains utterly baffled. He insists that while he dismantled some heavy factories from West Sail Port, plenty of light factories were left behind—certainly not stripped down to the bare earth as the slanderous Tiandu newspapers claim. In his blueprint, the western coast of Bolo Province could fully serve as the light industrial production base for the Eastern Empire, much like Port Goldgallon and the Baiyue Strait are to the Alliance. We can clearly see that His Majesty Salen is a genuine fanboy of a certain someone, striving diligently to copy his homework. It's just a pity that our neighbors are so hopeless that His Majesty has been forced to subsidize them with a bit of Vaseline oil to help them scrape through the immediate hardship. —Survivor Daily, New West Sail Port Edition] [War never ends. Following the Church of the Torch, the "Celestials" from the Era of Prosperity are once again attempting to point the way forward for the wastelanders on the surface. Evidently, they want us to drop dead. As for the threat from outer space, the Great Rift Valley's reaction has been no reaction at all—it seems one hundred thousand neutron torpedoes probably can't crack their turtle shell. The Ideal City's council convened an emergency meeting; the outcome is expected to be announced after the crisis has passed. As for the Legion... well, the Legion is gone. Thank goodness it's gone. Fortunately, the Academy hasn't stayed behind the curtain this time, finally showing some spine after so long and staking a precious research ship for the sake of all humanity! Of course, that might just be because they caused this mess in the first place. If they hadn't lost that research ship, the space station at the Lagrange point might have found boarding the missile cruiser "Orion" rather difficult. Currently, the Alliance has dispatched the Burning Corps to geosynchronous orbit. Please don't worry, everyone. If you truly can't sleep at night, just think about the Heart of Steel. General MacLaren's assessment was that if he had to face the Burning Corps as adversaries, he would rather turn his gun toward God. Also, friends in New West Sail Port, please don't be so ridiculous: your His Majesty Salen probably just has a cold. —Goblin Observer] …… Regarding the "Celestials" organization and the threat looming thirty-six thousand kilometers away, neither the Academy nor the Alliance deliberately withheld information. For one thing, keeping something this massive entirely under wraps was virtually impossible; for another, transparency prevented unnecessary panic. Being proactive gave them a chance to explain things clearly, whereas hiding the truth would be voluntarily surrendering the battleground of public opinion. By then, whatever outrageous rumors emerged wouldn't be surprising. Precisely for this reason, before rumors could run wild, Chu Guang had Dawn City's Survivor Daily conduct an exclusive interview with the Alliance's Scientific Expedition regarding the incident, openly disclosing to all sectors of society the strategies and preparations the Alliance had undertaken to meet the crisis. The response from Dawn City's residents brought immense relief to Chu Guang. The confusion and unrest lasted merely two days. Before the sun rose on the third day, the uneasy populace had returned to business as usual. Perhaps because they had already lived through one apocalypse, the vast majority of wastelanders reacted to such doomsday scenarios with remarkable composure. Besides, with a disaster of global proportions, panicking was useless anyway. What was more, whenever similar crises had arisen in the past, they had successfully navigated the most perilous moments under the Administrator's guidance. They had every reason to believe this time would be no different. In the omnipotent Administrator, their faith remained absolute and reverent... …… Western district of Xizhou City. Dilapidated buildings sat scattered across the scarred ruins. Scrapped steel debris and wooden planks lay everywhere, while dried water weeds clinging to the bases of walls and window ledges still seemed to exude a damp, murky breath. Ever since the dawn of the Wasteland Era, this district had spent a considerable stretch of time submerged beneath the backflow of lake water. It was only when Alliance soldiers arrived and rechristened the land under the banner of "Dawn" that this waterlogged city finally saw the light of day once more. Even so, though the Alliance had restored order, few people ever visited due to the frequent prowling of split-claw crabs. Not until the crisis of the "Celestials" arose was this neglected corner reclaimed by the Alliance's attention. At this moment, trucks traversed the highway running alongside the ruins in a flurry of activity that rivaled even downtown Dawn City. And right at the center of that dust-swept construction site lay an even more breathtaking marvel— A colossal well rose majestically in the middle of the dense concrete ruins! The massive mouth of the shaft spanned the size of several football fields. Looking down from the sky, it resembled an abyssal maw gazing up at the heavens! Even more awe-inspiring than its surface area and bottomless depth was the internal structure of the shaft. Rebar frameworks stretched from the mouth down to the very base like the spine of a titanic behemoth, and beneath that steel ribbing, the shaft walls were cast entirely of metal, radiating a somber, imposing majesty into the dark. This was Vault 100. To put the "Foundry Well" at the heart of the vault into service, the Alliance construction crew had dismantled the dome above the shelter! Now that the dome's removal was complete, the recommissioned "Foundry Well No. 100" would officially serve as the primary engine for the Alliance's aerospace industry. At this moment, an engineer from the Academy stood atop the Foundry Well, his eyes wide with sheer shock as he peered down. Though he often scoffed at the Alliance's "crude and brute-force" industrial methods, he could not muster a single flippant word right now. To call this a wonder was an understatement. It was nothing short of a work of art. "Truly unbelievable..." After a long pause, Zhong Jingchu let out a heartfelt sigh of admiration. Turning to the veteran engineer beside him, he said, "I never imagined you could forge such an astonishing... miracle out of ruins. I truly underestimated you." There was not a shred of flattery in his tone. The older engineer beside him chuckled heartily and replied with modest grace. "Hardly. We could never have pulled off such an enormous monstrosity on our own... Strictly speaking, this is a legacy of the Era of Prosperity; we merely recycled it." His name was Qi Xiangsong, a professor from Camp 101 and the chief engineer of the Alliance Aerospace Industry Group. Hearing Chief Qi's explanation made it slightly easier for Zhong Jingchu to swallow. Just then, he noticed faint blue pinpricks of light flickering deep inside the shaft. Curious, he turned to the side and asked, "What are those flickering blue lights?" As if anticipating the question, Qi Xiangsong gave a cryptic smile without explaining right away, merely handing him a pair of binoculars. "See for yourself." With a mix of curiosity and skepticism, Zhong Jingchu took the binoculars from the veteran engineer and looked down into the shaft. That single glance stopped him cold. When he saw clearly what those faint blue light sources were, his eyes went wide in disbelief. The blue glow itself was nothing mysterious—merely the spattering sparks of electric arc welding on alloy. What was truly astonishing was the source of those electric sparks! It was the light from "Cross Spider" engineering robots! Like spiders spinning a web, they shuttled back and forth along the vertical steel framework, following preprogrammed routines to haul materials delivered by overhead cranes to designated positions, completing welding and assembly tasks with seamless coordination. Under the relentless labor of tens of thousands of mechanical spiders, a steel structure weighing tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of tons was visibly "growing" upward before his very eyes! Though Zhong Jingchu was no specialist in aerospace, he possessed a solid understanding of the industry. Because of that, he understood all too well how utterly incredible this spectacle was! No wonder the Alliance Administrator was confident he could build another gravity well in the Southern Sea. If the full potential of this Foundry Well were unleashed, forget a mere gravity well—the Alliance might truly be able to flood low Earth orbit with spacecraft like dumplings dropping into boiling water! "These mechanical spiders..." "They're technological achievements from the survivors of Vault 100," Qi Xiangsong said, gazing into the profound depth of the shaft. "Once they learned of our mission, they decided to join us." Zhong Jingchu's Adam's apple bobbed. He shifted his gaze back to the vertical foundry well beneath his feet, remaining silent for a long while before speaking slowly. "I recall that in the earliest days, the Human Alliance went through a period of assembling spacecraft on the surface... Back then, they manufactured parts on the ground, then launched them into low Earth orbit via chemically propelled rockets for orbital assembly. It wasn't until space mining and alloy smelting matured, along with the completion of space elevators, that the aerospace industry gradually shifted from the surface to geosynchronous orbit, and eventually to the Lagrange equilibrium points." Qi Xiangsong smiled. "I've heard that history. So, assembling a ship directly on the ground is a first? Only we've done it?" "You could say that." Zhong Jingchu nodded, his expression carrying a hint of poignant awe. "Back then, our science could only decipher the dimension we inhabited; we hadn't yet penetrated other dimensions, let alone mastered gravitons and manipulated gravitational fields. We could only rely on the clumsiest methods to arm-wrestle the 'drag' resisting our outward migration. "But now it's different. Not only can we break free of gravity's shackles, we can turn gravity into the monsoon winds propelling us forward..." At this point, his admiration was palpable as he praised from the bottom of his heart, "In a sense, you truly have made history." In the past, he had never understood why most of the defecting researchers ultimately chose the Alliance. Now, he finally grasped their thinking. In the Alliance, they saw a hope they had never witnessed before. It was not a miracle forged by one solitary man. It was forged collectively by an entire community. Had he not carried a mission of his own, he too might have found himself tempted to stay...