129: Spark Special Zone

In the northern hemisphere of Kali Star, there lies a vast wasteland known to the locals as "Visala." In the human Chinese language, this name translates to "Oblivion."

This is a barren land scorched year-round by the red rays of the star kari. The surface is covered with hard black basalt and purple moss, and fierce winds howl through the craggy canyons, making sounds like whimpering.

To the Kari Civilization, most of this area is worthless wasteland, with few signs of life except for the occasional traveler passing through.

According to the "Subordination and Peace Agreement" signed between the Human Federation and the kari United Government, this land, covering an area of approximately 100,000 square kilometers, along with its orbital space, was permanently designated as a "Special Administrative Zone" of the Human Federation.

On the afternoon after the agreement was signed, that steel behemoth hovering above the capital "Dawn"—the Human Federation's flagship, the pacific—slowly ascended amidst a low roar. The glow of its anti-gravity engines pierced through the clouds once again, carrying Commander-in-Chief Li Zhenhua and a group of high-ranking human officials back to orbit.

They left behind an eviction order with a one-month deadline.

The kari government's execution was quite decent. Although the Oblivion region itself was sparsely populated, there were still some scattered villages and mining towns nearby. Over the next thirty days, whether they were willing or not, all Kari People were forcibly relocated to other regions.

A month later, as the back of the last kari civilian disappeared at the edge of the wasteland, this ancient land fell into complete silence.

But this silence did not last long.

At noon on June 28, 2102, Earth Calendar, the sky suddenly darkened.

It was not because of dark clouds, but because of a massive ship large enough to block out the sun.

It was the heavy industrial transport ship Himalaya, which had arrived with the First Interstellar Fleet on its expedition. Although its volume was not as slender and imposing as the pacific, its width and thickness exceeded that of a typical warship, resembling a mobile city floating in the sky. Its massive cargo hold contained the industrial foundation sufficient to rebuild a civilization.

Accompanied by the characteristic tremors of its anti-gravity engines, the Himalaya descended slowly, its massive landing gear planting heavily onto the hard basalt ground of the Oblivion wasteland.

Boom—the earth trembled, and the stirred-up dust spread outward like a sandstorm, but it was quickly suppressed by the electrostatic dust-removal force field surrounding the ship.

The hatch opened.

But there were no shouts from human soldiers, nor the sound of military boots stomping on the ground.

Amidst the sounds of mechanical operation, an army made of steel surged out in silence.

Thousands of engineering robots, the pinnacle of Paradox Technology's industrial aesthetics, whose technology had long been mastered by several major industrial powers.

Some were dozens of meters tall, possessing multiple strong hydraulic robotic arms; others were only half a person's height, moving by hovering on anti-gravity chassis, equipped with precision laser welders and scanners; there were also mining robots resembling giant spiders and transport robots with wide tracks.

The first step of construction is always energy.

To the east of the flagship's landing site, a bedrock area with the most stable geological structure was selected as the energy center.

Dozens of heavy mining robots began working simultaneously, their high-frequency vibrating buckets cutting through the hard basalt as if it were tofu. Just two days later, a massive foundation pit, a hundred meters deep and hundreds of meters in diameter, had taken shape.

Immediately afterward, a massive sphere wrapped in thick lead layers and magnetic field generators was hoisted down from the belly of the Himalaya. It was a large-scale modular nuclear fusion generator unit.

It was not a traditional nuclear power plant like those on Earth that required years to pour concrete and lay pipes; this was a "plug-and-play" energy core specifically developed by Paradox Technology for interstellar colonization.

The massive sphere was precisely placed into the foundation pit. Engineering robots immediately swarmed up, anchoring the pre-fabricated high-strength alloy foundation plates to the generator unit. Countless thick superconducting cables extended from the sphere like blood vessels, connecting to the newly erected substation towers nearby.

"Cooling system connected."

"Magnetic confinement field self-check initiated."

"Deuterium-tritium fuel injection."

Under the control of personnel on the ship, the robots completed one procedure after another according to the pre-set programs.

With the final command from the core control program, the sleeping "artificial sun" awakened.

Although there was no violent explosion, the temperature of the surrounding air rose by several degrees instantly. The huge cooling towers began to spew white steam, and the low, powerful humming sound became the new heartbeat of this wasteland.

A nuclear fusion power plant capable of supplying the energy consumption of half of Kali Star rose from the ground in less than a month and was integrated into the power grid.

The blinding beams of searchlights instantly tore through the dim twilight of Kali Star, illuminating the wasteland for dozens of kilometers around as if it were daylight.

Perhaps in the eyes of the Kari People, that was the radiance of a higher civilization.

With energy, there is the power to change the form of matter.

Eight months later.

A massive automated mineral refining station was being built on the north side of the base at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Meanwhile, in the asteroid belt of the Kari Star System, the human engineering fleet had already begun its frenzied plunder.

Dozens of specially designed mining ships did not engage in precise mining; they simply and crudely used laser cutters and robotic arms equipped with large saws to cut asteroids rich in precious metals into countless fragments weighing over a dozen tons, then dragged them into their cargo holds using tractor nets.

When the fully loaded mining ships arrived above the Oblivion base, they did not land but instead opened their bottom cargo holds directly.

After preliminary ablation treatment, those massive ores were fitted with disposable deceleration parachutes and dropped precisely toward the refining station's receiving field like countless meteorites.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The "meteorites" landed, causing massive tremors, but the crushing robots that had been waiting there immediately pounced on them.

The massive jaw crushers let out a thunderous roar, instantly pulverizing rocks weighing dozens of tons into powder, and then sent this powder into a high-temperature plasma furnace.

Here, there was no scene of slag piling up like a mountain; the molecular sieve separation technology newly developed by Human Federation scientists could extract every single element from the ore.

Iron, titanium, aluminum, copper... Molten metal flowed through heat-resistant pipes like rivers of fire.

And at the end of the production line, after cooling and solidifying, these liquids were forged into standard industrial alloy ingots, rolls of high-strength carbon nanotube cables, and sheets of reinforced glass as transparent as crystal...

These industrial raw materials did not pause for a moment; they were sent directly via conveyor belts to the adjacent automated construction materials factory. There, these materials, along with a large amount of basic construction materials, would be integrated into modular building components. No matter the type of building, it could be built quickly just by arranging and assembling these components.

On the south side of the base, there was no sound of clashing steel or the roar of furnaces; instead, there were transparent domes rising rapidly one after another.

This was the food production factory designated by Commander Li Zhenhua, or more accurately, a fully enclosed ecological agricultural center.

Although Kali Star possessed an atmosphere and native vegetation, to ensure the absolute safety of human immigrants and prevent Earth species from causing irreversible pollution to the local ecology, humans chose the most conservative yet safest method—complete isolation.

The massive transparent domes were made of synthetic plexiglass harder than steel, capable of filtering out the wavelengths in the red dwarf's light that were unfavorable for the growth of Earth plants, and supplementing the spectrum using artificial light sources.

The air inside was filtered through layers, and its composition was precisely adjusted to Earth's standard atmosphere.

The soil was specially formulated, mixed with bacterial strains brought from Earth and processed local minerals.

Rows of vertical cultivation racks were erected, reaching heights of dozens of meters.

Here, genetically modified wheat, rice, corn, and various vegetables would grow crazily at ten times the speed on Earth, nourished by nutrient solutions and all-weather lighting.

At the other end of the factory was the even more sci-fi synthetic food workshop. Inside massive bioreactors, muscle stem cells extracted from cows, chickens, and pigs were cultured. Immersed in nutrient solution, these cells continuously divided and proliferated, eventually growing into blocks of pure meat with clear textures, devoid of bones and internal organs.

This was the standard ration for future interstellar colonization mandated by the Human Federation Food Safety Committee.

When the first batch of synthetic meat came off the assembly line, it meant that this forward base had completely shed its reliance on food supplies brought from the fleet.

As long as there is energy and matter, humans can multiply and live here forever.

...

Another three months passed.

The area located to the west of the fusion power plant was the largest and most technologically advanced zone; this was the recently completed space launch and docking center.

Unlike the Kennedy or Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centers on Earth in the past, it did not have towering launch towers. Today, with the proliferation of anti-gravity technology, vertical takeoff and landing had become the norm, and those cumbersome rockets designed to fight gravity had long since become the dust of history.

What appeared before the eyes was a huge and flat plaza, with the ground paved with a special alloy capable of withstanding tens of thousands of tons of pressure.

The plaza was divided into hundreds of berths of various sizes, each equipped with automated fuel loading arms and material conveyor belts.

At the edge of the plaza, massive hangars were closing; these were places for parking and maintaining intra-planetary shuttles and atmospheric fighter jets.

At the core of this area, a massive building filled with complex robotic arms and precision instruments was undergoing final adjustments.

That was the small spacecraft manufacturing plant. Although the Human Federation's main warships still needed to be built in zero-gravity shipyards in space, for medium and small spacecraft under one hundred meters in length, such as shuttles, armed gunships, mining barges, and individual fighter jets, this ground factory was fully capable of full-process production, provided there were sufficient materials.

All of this had taken only about a year.

A year ago, when this place was still a wasteland with nothing but the sound of wind and gravel, could any Kari People have imagined that a steel fortress filled with sci-fi elements, fully functional, and capable of accommodating 100,000 people to live and work would rise from the ground in just one year?

This base was brightly lit under the dark purple night sky of Kali Star, the massive fusion reactor like a sun on the ground, casting its light in all directions.

Anti-gravity transport ships shuttled busily above the base, and a large number of railways were laid around the base. These railways were used to transport the large amount of industrial finished products produced in the base to the kari society, in exchange for industrial raw materials such as minerals provided by the Kari People.

In the distance, a few Kari People who had sneaked back to the vicinity to spy on the situation were completely stunned by the scene before them.

They hid in the rock walls, looking up at the miraculous base in bewilderment, their eyes filled with incomprehensible awe.

In their cognition, building such a base comparable to a small city would require the entire nation's effort over several decades.

Yet these visitors from beyond the sky took only one year.

Is this the power of a higher civilization?

"Spark Special Zone."

"A single spark can start a prairie fire."

After hearing the report on the construction progress of the surface base from his subordinates, Commander Li Zhenhua on the pacific said with a touch of emotion.

"This will be the starting point where we ignite the fire of civilization in this star system, and it will also be the eternal lighthouse of our Human Civilization in this universe."

In June 2103, Human Civilization officially hammered in the first nail on an alien land 5.4 light-years away from Earth.