211: Chapter 211, Day Six, Eighteen Boxes

The administrative assistant counted the string of zeros in the financial system twice.

This was a Saturday project configuration time specially arranged by the university for the preparation of the center.

Therefore, she had also just obtained the operational query permissions for the new financial project.

[Three-year construction funding control limit: 60,000,000.00 yuan]

[First batch of budget indicators for the preparation period: 5,000,000.00 yuan]

[Subsequent budget indicators: Issued according to annual budget and construction progress]

[Budget execution monitoring: Enabled]

Just then, the printer outside the door emitted a slight operational sound, spitting out an all-English payment approval notice.

The academic secretary walked over, pulled it out, swept her gaze across the page, and then flattened it next to the keyboard.

At the end of that notice, a string of numbers was also clearly printed.

[USD 500.00]

When Jiang Lin pushed the door open and walked in, the two numerical sheets of paper were placed side by side on the large desk, separated by the funding person-in-charge authorization form just delivered by the finance personnel.

"Sixty million yuan is in the system, and five hundred dollars is on paper. However, the only amount that can actually be executed in the system today is five million yuan. When I just logged in earlier, I even thought the university's finance department typed one less zero," said the administrative assistant.

"As long as it's correct." Jiang Lin took off his dark coat and casually draped it over the back of the chair by the door.

The finance staff member in charge of project number configuration walked in holding a stack of folders. Hearing his summary, he smiled and said, "The project number has been established. Today, we will complete the person-in-charge authorization and the first batch of budget indicator configurations, and expenditure applications can be formally submitted. The university will settle uniformly according to budget categories. Whether you can get the remaining money later depends on your construction progress, execution status, and the completion degree of the final performance goals."

Looking at the row of unlit complex process nodes, the administrative assistant said thoughtfully, "So, sixty million yuan is the upper limit the university promised to support us within three years, five million yuan is the maximum scale we can arrange at this stage, and what the system finally pays out after layers of approval is the actual hard cash."

"Right, that's the logic." The finance staff member said, handing the signature pen to Jiang Lin.

Jiang Lin took the pen, signed his name in the funding person-in-charge column, and then picked up the initial budget allocation draft on the table.

The personnel funds for the fifteen full-time positions were steadily ranked at the very front.

The travel expenses for short-term visiting scholars who had already passed academic review, public computing resource leasing, and software support followed closely behind.

However, in the equipment procurement column where money was easiest to spend, only a few general instruments genuinely lacking from the existing platform were temporarily listed. Among as many as seventeen pre-research materials, not a single piece of specific large-scale equipment had reserved funds in advance.

Seeing that the equipment procurement column still only listed a few general instruments, the academic secretary smiled and pulled a thick application from the third cardboard box left yesterday: "Then let's help the warehouse control its resident population first."

This short-term visit application had just completed its preliminary academic review last night.

The applicant was a rigorous scholar who clearly wrote down the problems to be studied, past failure records, required hardware resources, and even the exit conditions three months later.

The other party's demands in the first stage were very restrained, requiring only a quiet workstation, a portion of public computing quotas, and a round-trip travel expense to Beijing.

Jiang Lin carefully checked the person in charge, public academic boundaries, and resource limits. After confirming they were correct, he signed the academic review column.

The administrative assistant immediately entered the materials into the newly activated project number.

The system cursor flickered, first automatically completing the budget verification, and then packaging the travel expense application to send to the next financial review node.

The applications for workstations and computing resources smoothly entered the center's internal configuration queue.

A few seconds later, the bottom of the page automatically generated the research center's first official visiting project number during the preparation period.

[JX-V-0001]

The application that was still pressed on top of the cardboard box yesterday with an unknown whereabouts finally had a clear destination at this moment.

The administrative assistant carefully placed it into a dark blue folder and put it directly into the newly activated official project cabinet.

After dealing with the affairs of the center, Jiang Lin finally picked up the English payment approval notice on the right side of the desk.

The foundation responsible for fulfilling the prize commitment for the Erdős problem across a half-globe time difference sent the payment approval notice in the early morning.

The paper regarding the unit distance problem entered expedited external review on the very day it was submitted on November 6th, three reviewers continuously called upon public verification materials, and the journal released the official electronic version twenty days later.

Jiang Lin had long submitted the application materials to the foundation; previously, all that was missing was the official publication proof from the journal.

The heavy public verification materials, detailed construction parameters, and academic citation entry points entered the publishing records together, and the prize file on the foundation's side accordingly changed from [Waiting for Official Publication] to [Payment Approved].

These five hundred dollars belonged to Jiang Lin's personal intellectual return.

However, in accordance with regulations, the foundation required him to submit collection accounts, detailed tax identity declarations, and descriptions of cross-border remittance purposes, with various form attachments totaling as many as seven pages.

The administrative assistant curiously turned those seven pages of forms to the end, then turned back to look at the sixty million yuan project number just configured on the computer, and couldn't help sighing: "The paper filled out for these five hundred dollars is thicker than the approval for that sixty million yuan."

"Sixty million yuan walks the road already paved by the university, supported by a professional system." Jiang Lin dragged and transferred the attachments into his personal email box, "These five hundred dollars have to go through cross-border financial settlement alone without hitchhiking, so the baggage naturally has to be a bit heavier."

"Then does this payment approval notice need to be kept in the center for archiving?"

"No, the public archives only record the time points of the official publication of the paper and the approval of the bonus; the materials of the personal account are kept by myself."

The academic secretary had just finished modifying the center's achievement display page when the second extension phone in the office rang.

The caller was an anxious peer inquiring about the on-site seats for the public report on the morning of the 29th.

In fact, the largest lecture hall in the entire university borrowed yesterday had already been declared full, and the number of online reservations was still rising along a steep curve.

The academic secretary skillfully added the large-character slogan [On-site seats are full, live broadcast entrance is open] to the very top of the report page, and patiently reserved a remote priority question-asking entrance for the other party over the phone.

At this moment, Gu Mingche happened to push the door open carrying a stack of freshly printed formal papers.

Placing the papers in his hand next to the sixty million yuan approval, he lowered his head to look at the completely different thicknesses of the two sheets of paper, with a hint of banter in his tone: "Do you know that the internet is going crazy now, all saying that Tsinghua University directly dumped sixty million yuan on you?"

"What the university gave is the construction control limit for the center in the next three years, and the first batch of indicators is only five million. Moreover, every sum of money here still needs to be reviewed and paid layer by layer by the university's mature financial system; it is not something I alone have the final say on."

Gu Mingche nodded: "So, for the sixty million, you can only look at the digital circulation in the project number, but these five hundred dollars are real hard cash that can enter your bank card."

"Usually, on the side with a smaller amount, personal control is often more sufficient." Jiang Lin opened the paper carrying the scent of ink, lowered his head to check the public material entry links attached to the official version, "You see, mathematics occasionally pays attention to the logic of daily life as well."

At 10:21 AM, the system backend prompted that Project No. JX-V-0001 had successfully completed the internal resource allocation of the center, leaving a complete and clear subsequent audit chain in the financial system for the upcoming round-trip travel expense reimbursements.

Full of drive, the administrative assistant pushed the third heavy cardboard box half a meter toward the wall, making plenty of room for the newly arriving archive cabinet.

Inside the cardboard box, there were still dozens of applications loaded with expectations waiting for Jiang Lin's boundary review.

But starting today, as long as it was an application that passed the review, it could steadily move forward along this newly pioneered official track.

At 3:00 PM, at a small storage park in northern Haidian.

A loaded box truck reversed and parked outside an aged rolling shutter door.

The driver and loaders worked together to move the last six huge corrugated cardboard boxes across the threshold, checking the number of pieces one by one against the barcode on the electronic receipt.

"Six pieces of cargo, the outer packaging is completely intact, and the heaviest machine weighs sixty-eight kilograms." The driver handed over the stylus for receipt and asked warmly, "Do you want me to lend a hand and help you dismantle the wooden pallet?"

"No need, just leave it at the door, I'll handle it myself later."

Jiang Lin finished signing crisply, stood by the door, and watched the truck drive out of the park's public driveway. After confirming that there was no one around, he pressed the remote control to lower the large rolling shutter door all the way down, blocking out all external sights.

This 120-square-meter independent warehouse was a long-term lease contract he signed under his personal name.

The rent, utilities, and all payment for goods bought here were paid cleanly and honestly from his personal bank account.

The accounts here had no intersection whatsoever with Tsinghua University, the Mathematical Sciences Center, or even the Low Entropy Workshop, forming an isolated Physics node.

The park's cameras only covered the public roads outside the warehouse, while the area inside the rolling shutter door was managed by the tenant themselves.

From the very first day he rented this warehouse, Jiang Lin had deliberately refrained from installing any internal video surveillance equipment.

At the end of October, after concluding the thrilling thirteenth Wasteland expedition, he spent three entire nights alone sorting out the engineering requirements for the next step on the blueprints.

Afterward, he broke the whole down into parts, placing orders in batches and across provinces through ordinary e-commerce platforms, professional instrument platforms, and industrial product bulk-procurement websites.

The shop selling water quality sensors only knew that a customer had bought twelve sets of probes.

The warehouse dispatcher selling special optical fibers had only seen the logistics order for four rolls of wear-resistant cables.

As for those chemicals, cold-resistant seeds, aviation seals, and high-capacity storage media, they came from a dozen other independent orders with completely opposite shipping locations.

The courier deliverymen were only responsible for delivering the original packaging intact across this rolling shutter door.

The subsequent unpacking, recalibration, assembly and combination, labeling and numbering, and even the setting of the unsealing sequence were all completed by Jiang Lin alone within this enclosed space.

Right in the center of the warehouse stood a width-limit frame he had personally built using aluminum profiles, with a clear width precise to five hundred and twenty millimeters.

All transport units about to be brought by him into the underground facilities of that Wasteland World would pass through this aluminum frame.

Box corners, handles, bottom load-bearing wheel assemblies, or even external power plugs—any spot that so much as brushed against the edges of the profile meant it could jam in the narrow underground ruins passages, requiring it to be dismantled and its layout readjusted.

Jiang Lin picked up a utility knife and cut open the sealing glue of the six outer boxes that had just arrived.

He successively took out two sets of precision water body analysis probes, backup modules for radiation measurement, and several pieces of offline storage media.

The heavy foam and cardboard used for factory shockproofing were quickly dismantled by him and piled into recyclable waste.

After undergoing power-on verification and data calibration on the workbench, the precision devices were cautiously packed into the narrow-body engineering hard cases on the other side of the warehouse.

Inside the cases, the original packaging was not used; instead, it was replaced with tailor-made partitioned hard supports and high-density buffer foam blocks, ensuring stability even under violent vibrations.

When the sixteenth hard case was pushed through that width-limit frame, the gaps on both sides each happened to have sixteen millimeters remaining.

He grabbed a marker, affixed a waterproof serial number to the upper right corner of the case lid, and pushed it into the qualified area ahead.

[ T14-16 ／ Environmental Sampling ／ Data Backup ／ Second Sequence ]

Inside the qualified area, fifteen completed cases were already neatly lined up.

Lined up at the very front were the 3D scanner, structural echo detector, composite gas detector, and high-precision clock synchronization equipment unsealed in the first sequence.

The middle cases contained sub-packed offline storage arrays, special optical fibers, and relay communication nodes.

In the case numbered T14-15, lightweight coring tools and underground-dedicated anchors were properly placed.

As for those heavy demolition assemblies and high-capacity mobile drainage pump groups, they remained quietly in the candidate column of the shopping list within Jiang Lin's mind, and the payment button had never truly been pressed.

The collapse volume, water accumulation depth source, pumping head, and load-bearing data of the remaining support structures of that underground passage in the Wasteland World were currently all unknowns, awaiting actual measurement.

If large equipment specifications were selected in advance under conditions lacking data, it would only restrict the next round of dangerous engineering deadlocks to a set of unmeasured, erroneous parameters.

The core tasks of this upcoming expedition were to map out the route clearly, ascertain risks, and estimate the engineering workload.

As long as the basic data was clear, the existing processing system in the Wasteland was fully capable of manufacturing corresponding heavy equipment on-site.

Jiang Lin steadily secured the last set of water body probes into the slot and pressed the latch of the sixteenth case.

The seventeenth case was somewhat special; inside were various antibiotic drugs, water purification filter elements, pressure-resistant seals, and a batch of core sensing elements that the Wasteland's existing industrial level struggled to stably manufacture.

As for the eighteenth case, he reserved it for supplies with more of a breath of life.

Dehydrated food, screened cold-resistant seeds, and daily consumables.

At the very top of these supplies was pressed a forty-one-year calendar compiled and printed by himself.

Next to this calendar were neatly placed two stacks of bright red paper, a few goat-hair writing brushes, a box of ink sticks exuding a pine-soot fragrance, and a roll of coarse cotton twine specifically used for wrapping zongzi.

These inconspicuous little items were all carefully selected and bought one by one alongside those industrial daily-use orders.

The red paper was naturally for writing Spring Festival couplets.

The cotton twine was stored away in a box, waiting to come in handy for the Dragon Boat Festival.

...

Days spanning over forty years could neither be said to be long nor short.

But the years, months, and solar terms within time still needed a spiritual foothold in that desolate world to remind oneself that one was still human.

By the evening of the second day, the eighteen transport units had respectively completed their corresponding packaging verifications, and instruments requiring power supply had additionally passed vibration, moisture simulation, and power-off protection tests.

Jiang Lin packed the original engineering records brought back from the thirteenth expedition into two separate encrypted terminals.

In the task package prepared to be taken to the site, only measurement data that would directly affect route selection, equipment operating status, and uncertain sections marked as hazardous were retained.

As for the full engineering archives, they continued to be stored in the heavy offline storage cabinet outside the yellow boundary line.

Although the low-dependency civilization core inside the OUTER CACHE-07 facility had completed recovery and verification, on the Wasteland side, there was still only one fully verified physical copy at the current stage.

Any accident could lead to an irretrievable interruption of civilization.

He listed the establishment of second and third physically isolated copies as the absolute priority work to be completed first in this round of expedition.

Before the redundant verification was thoroughly completed, Fleet 5 was strictly prohibited from entering the nine highly dangerous failure zones marked on the topology map.

Routing information leading to the higher-level observation archives scattered like pieces of shredded paper behind the breakpoints of the old network topology.

Six of them now only had an illusory path marker left, while for the other three, even whether the physical channels carrying communication entities could continue to pass required Fleet 5's on-site surveying and mapping for confirmation.

Based on these considerations, the unsealing sequence of the eighteen cases was strictly divided into three tiers.

Structural surveying and mapping equipment and communication relay nodes ranked on the front line, environmental sampling instruments and lightweight drilling tools stood by in the middle, and construction-type auxiliary components were not allowed to be opened until the overall engineering workload was settled and safety was confirmed.

Jiang Lin took out a marker and firmly secured a waterproof task card to the inside of the first case lid.

[ 1. Establish a fixed receiving field. ]

[ 2. Complete the engineering surveying and mapping of the underground trunk line. ]

[ 3. Verify the entity routing of the higher-level observation archives. ]

[ 4. Formulate the construction engineering workload list for the next round. ]

Behind these four core tasks, clear termination conditions were listed respectively.

Once the on-site structure changed, pollution showed a trend of spreading, the residual power supply network became abnormal, or any unknown execution request was received, as long as any of these thresholds was reached, Fleet 5 must immediately seal the site and unconditionally withdraw to the existing isolated safety zone.

When the three-way backup live broadcast completed its final stress test, it was already the eve of transmission.

November 29th, 5:56 AM.

The rolling shutter door of the independent warehouse had been locked from the inside.

Under the lights, eighteen heavy engineering transport units, strictly following the preset unsealing sequence, were compactly enclosed within that eye-catching yellow boundary line on the ground.

Between the cases, passages were precisely left solely for Fleet 5's robotic arms to enter and conduct dragging operations.

Jiang Lin stood before the operating console, disconnected his phone from the network, and locked the folder needed for the 9:00 report that day, his Tsinghua University campus card, and the casual clothes on his body belonging to the Real World all into a metal locker outside the yellow boundary line.

On the workbench on the other side, the warm breakfast he bought on the way here was still placed.

Two rice balls wrapped with pickled mustard tubers, and a cup of soy milk with the straw not yet inserted.

This was a breakfast he had specially prepared for himself who would reappear after 6:01.

The red electronic clock on the wall ticked from 05:59:59 to 06:00:00.

The next instant, within that yellow boundary line, eighteen huge cases along with a figure wearing work clothes disappeared into thin air.

Inside the huge warehouse, only a flat expanse of cement ground remained, along with that cup of soy milk still emitting heat on the workbench.