Homo Sapiens

Lanbi Island.

It was an island full of tropical charm, located at approximately 11 degrees north latitude and 98 degrees east longitude.

The island stretched from northwest to southeast, measuring 31.8 kilometers from north to south and varying from 4 to 24 kilometers from east to west. Its shape resembled a small hoe.

It was chosen for two reasons. First, the island was large enough, at 188 square kilometers, and also sufficiently remote.

Second, the island’s topography formed a semi-enclosed bay with an area of nearly two hundred square kilometers.

This terrain made it convenient for the Qingye Group to establish certain secret industries within the bay.

The public-facing name for the project on Lanbi Island was the Lanbi Island Seaweed Cultivation Base. This wasn’t a case of bait-and-switch; it was a genuine seaweed farm.

It was just that the variety of seaweed cultivated here was rather special.

Upon arriving, Kevin, along with members of the Blood Blade Special Team and regular Soldiers, immediately put on specialized biological protective suits.

The factory buildings, cultivation ponds, and seawalls had already been constructed. Some secret facilities were also built into the mountainside and underground.

As Kevin passed the ponds, he looked at the rows of seaweed soaking in the seawater and quickly instructed the Soldier in charge, ”Change the access route. Don’t have it pass directly by the seaweed ponds.”

”Yes, sir.”

He then went deep into the factory. After being ground up by a conveyor belt system, the granulated seaweed was sent into methane fermentation tanks to produce methane gas.

This methane gas was stored in tanks made of Crystal Sponge and used to power the island’s generators and equipment.

But the residue left over after fermentation was Kevin’s true purpose for this visit.

Inside the mountain were thick layers of protective concrete and lead shielding.

The seaweed residue, after fermentation and high-temperature drying, was stored in lead canisters inside the mountain.

”What’s the current output?”

The Soldier manager replied coolly, ”We can produce 300 tons of dry material per month. If we expand the cultivation area, we can increase output further.”

Kevin rubbed his chin. ”Three hundred tons of dry material? What’s the average enrichment?”

”The average enrichment is between 0.73% and 0.88%,” the Soldier manager answered.

”In other words, 300 tons of dry material can yield 2.1 to 2.4 tons of uranium oxide?” Kevin made a rough calculation.

”Correct. However, within that uranium oxide, the proportion of uranium-235 is only about 0.7%.”

Kevin wasn’t disappointed. After all, this was only the beginning.

He had been dispatched to Tuwah Port with a core mission: to secretly build a uranium extraction base here.

And the Lanbi Island base was established for this very purpose.

In fact, the uranium enrichment of the fermented seaweed residue was already very high—at least an order of magnitude higher than that of typical uranium ore, which generally has an enrichment level between 0.05% and 0.2%.

As for uranium mines, all the major world powers knew the locations of terrestrial deposits and even kept them under strict, constant surveillance.

Small purchases could be justified as being for laboratory research, but large-scale procurement was simply impossible.

Previously, while developing his seaweed technology, Li Qingye had created many byproducts, such as a potassium-rich seaweed for extracting potassium salt.

Building on the fact that scientists internationally were already researching the use of seaweed to extract uranium, Li Qingye leveraged his advantages in biotechnology to genetically engineer a uranium-enriching seaweed specifically designed to absorb uranium.

The total amount of uranium in the oceans is over 2,000 times that of all currently discovered terrestrial uranium deposits, with total reserves as high as 4.5 billion tons.

Rather than searching for mines on land, it was better to just extract it directly from the sea.

The advantages of this approach were, first, its low cost, and second, its high degree of stealth.

Of course, the crude ore extracted from the seaweed could only be stored in the underground warehouse on Lanbi Island for now; there was no way to refine it further.

This was mainly because uranium enrichment requires large-scale centrifuges and massive amounts of electricity, and large centrifuges are pieces of equipment that the world powers guard with extreme vigilance.

Li Qingye didn’t want to attract the focused attention of the world powers right now, so he naturally wouldn’t make any moves to purchase or develop centrifuges.

However, not having centrifuges didn’t mean uranium enrichment was impossible.

In reality, biological enrichment was another method that could be used to refine uranium and separate out uranium-235.

Li Qingye called this technique ”reverse biological purification.” It involved cultivating bacteria that only absorbed uranium-238, taking advantage of the weight differences between uranium-238, uranium-235, and uranium-234.

As long as the uranium-238 was separated out, what remained would be uranium-235 and a very small amount of uranium-234.

At that point, the purity of uranium-235 in the remaining uranium compound would reach over 99.9%—directly weapons-grade.

Moreover, this technology’s energy consumption was extremely low and its stealth potential was excellent. It required neither a series of large centrifuges nor a power station; even a small workshop could handle the purification process.

But for now, this technology was just a concept. Li Qingye had only managed to cultivate a few semi-finished strains of the bacteria that specifically absorbed uranium-238, and their ability to differentiate between the three uranium isotopes was still quite low.

Furthermore, uranium’s inherent radioactivity caused significant interference with the bacteria.

But Li Qingye wasn’t in a hurry. Once this technology was perfected, he could use the large stockpile of man-made uranium ore to quickly obtain a massive quantity of high-purity uranium-235.

Therefore, the Lanbi Island base’s current mission was to continuously produce uranium-enriching seaweed and stockpile the uranium-containing residue.

However, the Lanbi Island base was not the only uranium production site. There was also a hidden island in the Luzon Islands carrying out the same work.

Biological enrichment was definitely a frontier technology with great potential.

And the ocean was an even greater treasure trove of resources.

With the world’s terrestrial resources already carved up, the Homo Sapiens Company could only turn to the ocean for resources to complete its initial, low-profile development.

After inspecting the Lanbi Island base, Kevin planned to further expand the infrastructure there, aiming to increase the monthly output of dry seaweed residue to about 1,000 tons.

When it came to nuclear weapons, Kevin and the other Spider Web Managers actually placed more importance on them than Li Qingye did.

After all, they were now deeply tied to the Homo Sapiens Company. If they wanted to avoid being controlled and destroyed by the world powers in the future, they needed not only sufficient strength in conventional weaponry but also the ability to counter their enemies with unconventional weapons.

As the preeminent unconventional weapon, nuclear weapons were perfectly suited for strategic deterrence and were not as terrifying as biological weapons.

After all, you could let others know you possessed nuclear weapons through test detonations, but there was no way to openly test biological weapons.

Kevin wished the Homo Sapiens Company could develop nuclear weapons immediately, so they would no longer have to hide in the shadows.

After secretly returning to Tuwah Port, he quickly used the internal fiber-optic network to report the situation at the Lanbi Island base to the Hongsawaddy Branch, including the funds and resources needed for the upcoming expansion.

Ma Chi approved the expansion plan without hesitation.

Meanwhile, with the arrival of the Qingye Group, Dongzhi was beginning to transform from a backward agricultural city into an industrial one.

In fact, the entire Shan Plateau was changing, including the perpetually chaotic Golden Triangle, which was now exhibiting an eerie calm.

However, the outside world knew little of this calm.

This was partly because Hongsawaddy’s channels to the outside world were very limited.

And partly because the gangs in the Golden Triangle had all been ”cleaned up” by Yang Mengjiao and Domino—either absorbed or turned into rainforest fertilizer.

Under these circumstances, it was natural that very little news made its way out.