271: Chapter 271 Global Live Streaming of Brick-Moving: Production Capacity Explodes and Raw Material Shortage Arrives

Lu Chen held a cigarette between his fingers, listening to the Old Chief's heavy breathing over the receiver.

"What are you panicking about? Even if there's an alien fleet hiding on the moon, they'll have to wait two years to come crashing down with those 300,000 nuclear bombs. The Great Wall Dome is prepared specifically for these rats who can't see the light of day. I'm livestreaming over here, hanging up."

Click.

Lu Chen slammed the red receiver back onto the base unit.

The main control room's large screen was divided into countless small squares. At that very second, the world's largest outdoor electronic screens, including those in New York's Times Square, the Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, and the Big Ben Square in London, were all forcibly blacked out.

Immediately after, the images switched simultaneously.

A blinding light burst from the screens, and the air raid sirens of the Jiangcheng No. 1 Radiation Mine echoed through streets all over the world via loudspeakers.

Pedestrians on the streets stopped in their tracks, looking up at the large screens to see what was happening.

The mine was filled with mountains of black-gray slag, and several large excavators roared incessantly in the distance.

Bang.

A dump truck covered in mud and water reversed and stopped at the bottom of the pit, its rear bed tilted high.

A dozen or so scrawny old men in tattered work clothes rolled down the muddy slope.

Smith had the worst fall. His left hand was welded to that thirty-jin iron lump of a nuclear briefcase. Losing his balance upon landing, he fell face-first directly into a pool of radioactive sludge that emitted a pungent odor.

Smith coughed violently, scrambling out of the mud on his hands and knees. His face was covered in black sludge, and he kept spitting out black ash.

A military drone flew right over his head.

Smith lifted his face, which was caked in mud, and let out a heart-wrenching howl at the surveillance camera.

"Lu Chen! You madman! Ugh, I'm going to press the nuclear button! I'm really going to press it! I'm going to drag you all down to hell with me!"

In front of the screens, the generals in the underground command posts of various Western nations were all horrified, cold sweat dripping down their backs.

In the livestream, Da Biao jumped down from the front of the truck wearing a tank top.

He strode up to Smith.

Clang.

He drew his high-frequency oscillating combat knife, the high-pitched buzzing of the blade completely drowning out the sound of the sirens.

Da Biao plunged the knife into the mud between Smith's legs, the blade just a few millimeters away from him.

Smith was so terrified that he collapsed into the mud, his entire lower body shaking uncontrollably.

"What are you yelling for!"

Da Biao looked down at him, pointing at the mountains of slag waste in the distance.

"Your life is tied to those 3,000 nuclear bombs, so I won't kill you today!"

Da Biao held up three thick fingers and waved them in front of Smith's eyes.

"The Boss set the rules: a quota of ten tons of waste per person per day. If you don't finish moving it by dark today, I'll break one of your fingers for every stone missing."

The French Commander nearby begged for mercy in terror.

"Oh no, I'm a Commander! I've never done manual labor before! Ten tons will kill someone!"

Da Biao turned his head, glared at him, and backhanded him with a heavy slap.

Slap.

Two bloodied teeth flew out of the French Commander's mouth again, and he tumbled into the mud, rolling several times.

"If you haven't done it before, start doing it today!"

Da Biao pulled back his hand. His tone was blunt, leaving no room for negotiation.

"This lousy mine doesn't support idlers. One more word of complaint and tomorrow's quota will double. Now all of you, get out there and move bricks!"

The camera zoomed in for a close-up.

Smith held up his welded left hand, staring fixedly at the mountain of slag waste hundreds of meters away. Tears and snot mixed with black mud flowed into his mouth. His face, once that of a high-and-mighty politician, now held only bottomless despair and numbness.

The major global internet platforms fell into a complete silence that lasted for thirty seconds; no one posted a single comment.

Immediately after, comments in various languages began flooding the screens, the dense text covering the entire live feed.

Western netizens broke down and cursed. Keyboard warriors of all kinds collectively lost their voices. The strategic nuclear deterrent cards they were so proud of had turned into useless scrap metal that only hindered the efficiency of brick-moving in the face of Lu Chen's unreasonable and brutal tactics.

The perspective quickly switched to China's twelve major heavy industry bases.

Four million workers were standing next to high-temperature smelting furnaces and heavy machinery, with the giant projection screens above the workshops broadcasting the feed from the No. 1 Mine in real-time.

Old Man Wang, in Workshop No. 3 of the Northwest Seventh Special Steel Plant, had just hammered a two-ton special steel beam into a slot. He looked up at the screen and rubbed his eyes vigorously.

"Oh my!"

The apprentice next to him gaped in shock, forgetting to move the wrench in his hand.

"Master Wang, is that guy rolling in the mud actually Smith, the one who's always bragging on TV?"

Old Man Wang turned his head and spat heavily.

"That's him alright!"

Old Man Wang grinned and laughed, his eyes turning slightly red.

"These bastards finally got what was coming to them! Always sailing aircraft carriers on the sea to block our merchant ships—this time, they can honestly go move waste bricks!"

The entire workshop erupted in a massive roar of cheers.

Thousands of workers shouted at the top of their lungs to vent. Some pounded hard on the surface of nearby steel plates, the frustration that had been suppressed in the workers' hearts for decades being released in this single instant.

A feeling of fanaticism and excitement instantly swept through all the production workshops.

Inside the Jiangcheng underground control room, Lu Chen leaned back quietly in his leather chair. The system notification sounds in his mind rang incessantly.

[Ding, detected four million employees in a state of extreme excitement.]

[Ding, employee loyalty forcibly locked at 100% maximum.]

[Ding, tech points production has entered the trillion-level critical hit mode, beginning financial settlement.]

Lu Chen glanced at the virtual panel popping up in the top right corner of his retina. The balance number kept rolling and jumping upward: one billion, 1.5 billion.

[Ding, current tech points balance has surpassed the two billion mark.]

Two billion.

This massive amount of points was enough to directly exchange for defensive firepower facilities in the system store that could crush the entire solar system. Lu Chen didn't even lift an eyelid.

He stubbed out his finished cigarette in the ashtray, rested his hands casually on the surface of the wooden desk, and cast his gaze upon the holographic engineering sand table in front of him.

The holographic sand table displayed the distribution structure of the entire map of China, with twelve giant red energy nodes lighting up densely. These were the actual coordinates of the twelve ground bases for the Great Wall Dome.

Wu Dong sat in front of the main console, typing rapidly on the keyboard. He reported the monitoring situation without turning his head.

"Boss, the popularity of the livestream room for Smith and his group has already surpassed three billion people. The foreigners' network firewalls have been completely paralyzed by our attacks. What should we do next?"

Lu Chen tapped his fingers lightly on the sand table.

"Let them keep moving."

Lu Chen's voice was calm, with no ripples of emotion.

"Tie the surveillance cameras to the excavators and film them twenty-four hours a day. Don't let these old geezers slack off."

Lu Chen left his seat and walked to the automatic coffee machine in the corner. He picked up a paper cup and filled it with half a cup of ice water. After taking a sip of the ice water, Lu Chen turned to look at the production capacity progress bar on the large screen.

The data progress was soaring without stopping. The production efficiency of the twelve major bases had been pushed to the physical limit under the dual stimulation of genetic agents and emotional critical hits.

"Where did Old Zhou disappear to?"

Lu Chen asked casually, holding the paper cup.

"The logistics supply data hasn't been reported yet today."

The words had barely left his mouth when the heavy metal explosion-proof door of the main control room was violently slammed open from the outside.

Old Zhou rushed into the room, tumbling and scrambling.

He had been running so fast that he stumbled and fell directly onto the thick carpet. Old Zhou was completely soaked in cold sweat. He gasped for air, clutching a tactical tablet tightly, his face as pale as paper.

Wu Dong was startled by the sudden turn of events and quickly stood up from his chair.

"Old Zhou, have you seen a ghost?"

Wu Dong shouted at the top of his lungs, demanding an answer.

Old Zhou had no time to pay attention to Wu Dong. He scrambled up from the floor on his hands and knees and rushed a few steps to the front of Lu Chen's solid wood desk.

"Boss, oh no, there's a huge problem!"

Old Zhou's voice was dry and cracked. His fingers trembled violently as he swiped rapidly across the tactical tablet screen.

Lu Chen set down the paper cup he was holding.

"Speak."

Old Zhou swallowed a large mouthful of saliva with difficulty. He pointed to the frantically flashing bright red high-risk alarm icon on the tablet screen.

"That… the production efficiency of the twelve major bases is advancing too fast. After drinking the agents, the workers don't know what fatigue is, and those machine facilities are all running at full, overloaded capacity around the clock!"

Old Zhou gasped for breath repeatedly.

"Just a moment ago, the heavy-duty smelting furnaces in the core bases in East and Southwest China sent an emergency dispatch simultaneously. Their reserves of special metal raw materials have completely bottomed out!"

Lu Chen raised an eyebrow slightly upon hearing this.

Old Zhou stood there, slapping his thighs in anxiety.

"Boss, the amount of special ore and high-strength steel we've consumed in this one day of madness is equivalent to the total material consumption of all of China for nearly two years in the past. The meager stock in the country has long been completely emptied by us in these past few days!"

Old Zhou raised his head, staring at Lu Chen with bloodshot eyes.

"Now, the ore transfer stations at customs and along railway lines everywhere have been completely emptied. You can't even find a single piece of rusted scrap iron!"

"Oh, if no raw materials are replenished within three hours, those thousands of heavy-duty smelting furnaces in the twelve major bases, which are kept at a high temperature of two thousand degrees, will immediately burn dry and explode. By then, our entire foundation project for the Great Wall Dome will be completely ruined!"