Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse

Chapter 1126 - 606: Asteroid Impact on Earth

The entire prison was completely empty.

”Let’s go down and take a look.”

Xu Xin immediately followed the spiral staircase he’d taken last time and headed downward.

Both Xu Ying and Li Wenxi were here for the first time, unsure of what to do, and could only follow behind Xu Xin, continuing downward.

”Brother, in this underground prison, aside from us... there’s no other sign of life,” Xu Ying remarked, observing the cells on either side of the staircase.

”Let’s go down and check it out.”

The three quickly reached the lower level of the prison.

Along the way, all the cells were empty.

”My god... they’re even using gold-level meteoric iron here...” Xu Ying marveled as she walked, ”This entire underground prison is way too extravagant...”

”Meteoric iron, is it a very rare thing?” Li Wenxi reached out and grabbed one of the prison bars, feeling the texture of this special metal.

”Extremely rare!” Xu Ying nodded vigorously, ”Particularly rare, how should I put it... The status of meteoric iron in extraterrestrial technology is like that of titanium alloys and beryllium alloys in Earth technology.”

”...Space technology?” Xu Xin turned back to look at Xu Ying.

”Yes. At least 60% of the total weight of the alien invaders’ spacecraft comes from meteoric iron. Gold-level meteoric iron.”

Xu Ying nodded, and patted the metal walls of the underground prison: ”This gold-level meteoric iron is the highest quality meteoric iron. It’s a special metal resource, not an alloy, but directly mined and smelted, with high difficulty in both mining and smelting. I really didn’t expect there to be an underground prison here entirely constructed out of meteoric iron.”

”Is it hard to smelt? My furnace can do it,” Li Wenxi gripped a metal bar of one cell and looked inside. Finding nothing, she turned back unenthusiastically: ”Before coming with you, I’ve already smelted several pieces of meteoric iron, though currently I can only smelt purple-level.”

”Indeed it’s very difficult, at least for us humans, only your technology can smelt meteoric iron,” Xu Ying feigned innocence, ”And you spent nearly three hundred years before finally figuring out how to smelt meteoric iron in the last few years before that world collapsed. Ah, I’m talking about my sister-in-law.”

”That sister-in-law...” Li Wenxi pursed her lips, ”Sounds strange. It definitely was hard. So... after finally figuring out how to smelt meteoric iron, didn’t you produce more?”

”Of course we did. Most of the special weapons I plan to hand over to you in the future are made of meteoric iron, but the amount... is limited, unable to equip many people.”

Sighing, Xu Ying continued: ”That’s exactly why we didn’t abandon mass-producible Earth weapons, and built an arms factory in the underground world, but unfortunately, something happened down there...”

Xu Xin glanced at her.

Previously, Xu Ying mentioned to him that the underground world might have been surreptitiously infiltrated by alien invaders.

After they came up, they hadn’t asked what happened afterward.

Forget it, let’s figure out the situation here first, ask later.

But now, they’ve reached the bottom of the prison, and as Xu Ying said, it was completely empty, nothing at all.

Not even a trace, spotlessly clean, making Xu Xin question if the folks who left here did a thorough cleanup, taking even the trash with them.

This is too clean.

Such civility?

”Why not mass-produce meteoric iron weapons?” Li Wenxi asked, puzzled, ”From the rate I smelt meteoric iron, although slow, it should be possible to produce in large quantities if scaled up, right?”

She meant that though one furnace smelts slowly, having hundreds or thousands working together could greatly increase the overall smelting speed.

”It’s not that easy,” Xu Ying said, troublingly rubbing her hair, ”Our circumstances at the time, building a large-scale factory wasn’t easy, and most importantly... meteoric iron ore is too scarce. This metal doesn’t exist on Earth, only brought in by the alien invaders.”

”After they settled on Earth, the metal was in short supply. To solve it once and for all, they somehow directed small asteroids rich in meteoric iron to impact Earth multiple times. Only then did we learn about this metal, naming it ’meteoric iron’.

The name meteoric iron, that’s how it came about.

But...

Guiding asteroids to impact Earth?!

Xu Xin and Li Wenxi stared at Xu Ying, shocked.

Seeing their expressions, Xu Ying paused, then realized their thoughts and burst out laughing: ”Hey hey, did you hear asteroid impact and think it must be very powerful?”

”Uh, isn’t it?” Li Wenxi blinked, ”Asteroid impact on Earth!”

”Uh...” Xu Xin thought similarly.

Studies show Earth’s mass extinctions often resulted from asteroid impacts.

The dominant large dinosaurs on Earth for millions of years also went extinct due to this.

So hearing the term and that alien invaders can control asteroid impacts on Earth, it would’ve been strange if he wasn’t shocked.