Chapter 488: South Pole

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Several hours later, Chen Chen stepped out of the black sphere teleportation room, his body appeared extremely malnourished.

With the completion of the third reactor with a measured power of 10 million kilowatts, the USB drive was generating energy faster. During this time, he had instantiated several additional Gantz black spheres and had hidden one of them near the Earth Federation Headquarters to allow himself to freely navigate to and from there.

Chen Chen’s cheeks were pale and sunken in. There was hardly any strand of hair left on his body. Anybody who saw this haggard display would mistake him for an elderly man approaching his death.

This was after two days of rest. His condition was slightly worse right when his transformation had ended.

With all that said, this was only temporary. Using the Black Knight’s recovery progress as a reference, it should only take no more than a week for Chen Chen to return to his previous form.

Chen Chen, who just emerged from the teleportation room, appeared to be in a joyous mood. He paced around energetically despite his sickly appearance. It seemed like the conference he had just ended turned out very well.

“Sir Godfather, it looks like the meeting went well.”

As soon as Chen Chen returned to the Spire Experimental Base, he heard Little X’s voice beside him.

Chen Chen turned to his side and saw Little X sneaking up on him. She tried to play a prank on Chen Chen by sneaking up and jumping at him like how a little girl would.

“Not bad, it went pretty well.”

Chen Chen mentioned with a nod, “I promised to give them several pieces of technology that can multiply overall society productivity and their military strength.”

Chen Chen’s lips curled into a smirk as he mentioned this, “Additionally, I’ve also promised the four major continents that I’ll provide one ‘Blacklight Fully-automated Medical Platform’ to each one of them. They stared at me wide-eyed when I extended this offer. After all, the technology contained in that device greatly surpasses all contemporary technology. How could they ever refuse this excellent offer?”

“We still need to be cautious and keep our guard up in case they betray us.”

Upon hearing Chen Chen’s remark, Little X raised a point, which she seldom did. “After all, we’re dealing with four governmental bodies. Once they start to gain a better understanding of our organization...”

“Don’t worry, I’m well aware that we have conflicting interests with them.”

Chen Chen smiled faintly before continuing. “Which is why I haven’t provided them any details concerning our memetic research nor did I give them anything such as the G-virus or black goo that is capable of destroying mankind. These are assets that we have to hold on to since they’re the equivalent of nuclear threats. We don’t gain anything by sharing these assets, we only need them to know that we’re capable of unleashing these on them...”

“What’s the purpose of us establishing this multi-party secret agency?”

Little X tilted her head to the side and was slightly confused. “Is it just as the previous owner of the USB drive Zhao Shanhe said, to serve as a countermeasure from whatever galactic crisis that may occur?”

“That’s not the only reason.”

Chen Chen answered almost immediately, “The reason I established the Blacklight Foundation to drag them into this goes beyond serving as a countermeasure to whatever universe crisis that may occur. Another far more vital agenda is to deal with that mysterious person lurking in the darkness.

“That person who is constantly laying traps and plotting my death, I don’t care if this person is Wangxi, Zhao Shanhe or somebody else... If this person wants to wage war against me, then I need to be prepared to retaliate. This institution is essentially my solution to strapping the entire Earth Federation into my battalion...”

Chen Chen suddenly smiled upon noting this. “From today on, this new institution will establish a legally armed faction that’s independent from any governmental bodies in the world and has more authority than any other army in the Earth Federation. We’ll be able to operate in any part of the world without any legal restriction. Meanwhile, I can also temporarily employ hundreds of aerospace experts from them which will serve as additions to our aerospace center and raise our overall production level.

“Why is Musk so obsessed with space travel? Because the mastery of aerospace technology is equivalent to grasping the future of mankind!”

Having said this, Chen Chen suddenly turned to look at the girl who was staring at him blankly at this point. At the same time, a discrete smile that seemed to camouflage his intentions surfaced on his lips.

“Are you ready for the new chapter of Blacklight Biotechnology? From today on, we’ll be ushering the aerospace era...”

...

On the fifth of June in 2024, the four leading continents of the Earth Federation which were the Central, North Sea, Europe, and Northern America made a grand gesture out of nowhere. They unequivocally agreed to an unprecedented preferential policy that would allow Blacklight Biotechnology to establish branch companies in each of these regions.

At the same time, the intense negotiations on Xia Yin’s part that lasted more than five months had finally come to a close.

The news broke out on the Internet and immediately went viral. Countless people were baffled by such exciting revelation and in a near-instant, the stocks of all the major pharmaceutical and electronic companies all over the world drove off a cliff. In a matter of seconds, the world was in an uproar!

A lot of people in the pharmaceutical and electronic sector started “crying wolf” as they contacted their respective governments to look into the details of the recently agreed-upon policy. There was certain merit to the saying that “ignorance is bliss” because the results of their inquiry would give them a greater shock since the document was signed by the highest governmental bodies of the major continents...

That was when everyone realized that nobody in the Earth Federation could ever hope to contain Blackwatch any longer.

This was merely the beginning. Just as Blacklight Biotechnology announced their cooperation with the four major continents, they simultaneously developed a drug that could completely cure Alzheimer’s disease and immediately launched clinical trials in the four continents.

This would be the 139th clinical trial that Blacklight Biotechnology would conduct on an international scale. The previous 138 clinical trials were all related to cancer-targeted drugs.

The same thing was on everybody’s mind: Blacklight Biotechnology was on a killing spree...

This new drug variant was projected to completely cure mild to moderate cases of Alzheimer’s disease. In severe cases of Alzheimer’s disease, the drug could serve as a cure but would not be able to restore the previous intelligence level of the patient.

This limitation was due to the inherent characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease which was a disease that killed large quantities of brain cells. The damage caused by the disease was irreversible, therefore a decrease in intelligence level was a common effect. There was only one solution to remedy its damage – neural stem cell transplantation.

There were several approaches which included ventricular puncture transplantation, lumbar puncture subarachnoid injection transplantation or intravenous injection transplantation. Neural stem cells were transplanted into the brain to replace the necrotic regions and generate new brain cells. This was the only method to regain a portion of lost intelligence.

The human brain was the most mysterious part of the human body. Therefore, it would be more apt to describe this approach as a “modification” as opposed to a “cure” since new brain cells were not the same thing as the original brain cells but completely separate cells instead. This meant that a significant change in memory and personality of the patient was all but inevitable.

Of course, in this situation, Chen Chen could also use the brain repair chip in “Robocop” to alleviate this issue, just like what he did for the Father of DNA. However, this stem of technology would not be widely applicable for at least five more decades, which meant it was not a viable option for ordinary people...

However, this was merely a teaser for the main event. With the momentum still going strong and the topic still trending, the Central Continent along with the other major continents of the Earth Federation announced once again that they would be cooperating with Blacklight Technology to jointly develop a large-scale project akin to “Artificial Sun”, which was what was also known as controlled nuclear fusion.

The project was branded as the “CUERB Project”. The Northern American and European Continent even went out on a limb and publicly declared that within three years of the project announcement, the controlled nuclear fusion research would be completed. After that, mankind shall gain complete mastery over controllable nuclear fusion and put an end to one of the toughest endeavors in the history of mankind!

Unsurprisingly, news of this announcement tossed the entire world into an uproar. Countless countries and their governments started prying for intel like hounds sniffing blood in the air. It came off as a surprise to them to see the four major continents holding a collective stance, which was refusing to yield any information no matter what.

It may appear that just like with nuclear weapons in the past, the four major continents were ready to seize this controlled nuclear fusion technology...

As one would expect, the remaining continents felt bitter about the way things had turned out, but there was nothing they could do about it. Another thing that had them guessing was why would the major continents be directly associated with a private company like Blacklight Biotechnology?

Could it be...

A bone-chilling idea came to these speculators – perhaps certain central technology revolving around controlled fusion technology had something to do with Blacklight Biotechnology.

For now, we would leave the speculations conjured by the various parties all over the world regarding the CUERB Project aside. Several days later, a small tunnel boring machine with a measured diameter of about five meters was assembled in the Spire Experimental Base and drilled into the layer of rock formations based on the pre-designated plans and blueprints.

With that, a brand new secret project was conducted in the Spire Experimental Base.

Chen Chen planned to construct a ring of particle accelerators at a depth of more than seven hundred meters around the Spire laboratory.

This particle accelerator ring did not need to be obscenely large. Its circumference would only total to approximately three kilometers, which was one-tenth the size of the largest particle accelerator in the world. Once completed, it would surround the entire Spire Experimental Base and put the Spire at its very center.

Some of the core devices for this implementation were already acquired by Chen Chen in Europe and Northern America.

This project was originally assigned to Xia Yin, but things had taken an unexpected turn with the leak of memetic technology. Chen Chen was forced to expose his cards to the Earth Federation earlier than he planned to, which led to the situation developing to what it was now.

This particle accelerator did not need to be constructed any larger because even at this size, it was already far more powerful than the world’s largest particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland. The superconductor temperature regulatory technology alone reduced its size to at least two-thirds of the one in Geneva.

In addition, Blacklight Biotechnology obtained its technology from Elysium. Compared with the actual particle accelerators built in Europe, it was undoubtedly much more advanced and its power nearly hundreds of times higher. It was unnecessary to make it any larger than what was needed.

In addition to studying high-energy physics with this particle accelerator, what Chen Chen strived for was to research the so-called “high deflection armor”. Once they could replicate what was known as the “hardest matter in the solar system”, Chen Chen would have the leverage to further strengthen his arsenal and further pull apart the gap between himself and the Earth Federation!

The Blacklight Biotechnology particle accelerator project had officially commenced. The crew of scientists in the Spire Experimental Base was excited about its development...

This was merely one of Blacklight Biotechnology’s many projects. While this was happening, on the other end of the world at the South Pole, the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station that was once here had been completely disbanded. The only evidence of their past stay here was the empty barracks and the airport with a 4270 meters runway.

At this moment, several military transport planes of different models and different stamped logos were parked at the airport. The curious sight was that there was a mix of different models from different countries. There was the C-17 transport aircraft with the Northern American flag painted on top, there was also the An-70 transport aircraft of the North Sea Continent, not to forget Europe’s A400M and the Yun-20 of the Central Continent...

The military transport aircraft of all four major continents were scattered all across the abandoned airport...

Somewhere nearby the barracks were several large transport helicopters parked atop the ice shelves. On the southern end of the South Pole, a huge drill with a diameter of more than three meters was slowly being erected into the air with iron scaffolding...

In accordance with the “Antarctic Treaty” signed by the continents of the Earth Federation, the use of Antarctica was strictly restricted to peaceful purposes and all military, nuclear or radioactive waste disposal activities were prohibited. However, the four continents were now blatantly violating the agreement and moving their military forces into Antarctica.

Their goal here was none other than to construct the first main base of the Blacklight Foundation underneath the ice sheet at the South Pole.

Based on Chen Chen’s plans, the base was to be built two kilometers below the Antarctic ice sheet. Upon completion, it should be a safe space from any calamities that should occur in the world above it.

Unless the earth was to detonate or stray off track of its orbit and swerve into the edges of the galaxy, the base should remain standing regardless of whatever happened.

As a gratuitous display for the commencement of the first four-continental joint military project in human history, Chen Chen had invested 10 billion U.S. dollars on his own accord for the construction of this base. The other four continents also invested tens of billions of U.S. dollars of their own while dispatching military forces to oversee the project.

This grand project was completely secluded from the outside world. Its nature was even more secretive than the Quantum Deity Laboratory. All satellites passing over Antarctica were ordered to be temporarily deactivated to prevent the secret from being exposed. Any other continents that attempt to pry into what was happening would receive stern warnings from the four major continents to not step over the red line or else they would receive joint sanctions.

Such a grand display was undoubtedly bewildering to anyone who had the chance to witness it. Nobody would ever foresee such a day where the four strongest continents in the Earth Federation united their efforts together...