This was the first time Hawke had ever made a hydrogen bomb, and the first time he had ever seen one explode. Although Hawke had been prepared for it, he was still dumbfounded by the scene that turned the world upside down.
At the moment of the explosion, a thousand kilometres away from the main base, Hawke observed a seismic wave equivalent to a magnitude four earthquake. At base three, he observed a tremor equivalent to a magnitude seven earthquake.
Fortunately, Hawke's plants and buildings were made of pure steel, so a magnitude seven earthquake would not have affected them too much. At best, some of the machinery was not secured properly and was damaged a little, which could be repaired and still be used.
The explosion created a huge storm that swept across the distance of dozens of kilometres to base three. Fortunately, Hawke had been prepared and had moved all the movable machinery to the fixed plant, so the storm did not have any effect on Hawke. At most, it blew a layer of sand and soil off the ground, making rare earth mining easier.
As the storms passed, Hawke saw before him, wind-blown and littered, the corpses of worms, and immediately, light began to emerge from Hawke's eyes.
"These, these are gifts from the heavens." If Hawke still had his hands, Hawke's hands would have been trembling.
Just before the hydrogen bomb exploded, Hawke was still angry, angry at how there were so many of these bugs that could not be killed, but now, he wished there were more of them, the more the better.
These days, Hawke had completely analysed the various physical properties of the bug corpses. They were found to be surprisingly resistant to radiation and heat!
The average thickness of these insect bodies was only 0.1 millimetre, but even with this thickness, their radiation protection was equivalent to the entire radiation protection layer on top of Hawke's old ship. Moreover, even the thousands of degrees of heat from the flamethrower could not burn their bodies.
"As long as they are collected ... as long as they are collected and made into a radiation barrier and heat shield, by then, I'm afraid that even the radiation intensity and heat of a million kilometres of the sun won't be able to help me." Hawke harrumphed and laughed long.
"En, immediately reinforce the third base, this time, we have to develop some robots that specialize in collecting bug corpses out." Hawke immediately made up his mind.
"By the way, I wonder if the rest of the lakes have such black bugs?" Just then, a thought popped up from Hawke's mind.
It was on Titan anyway, and Hawke wasn't the least bit worried about destroying the ecology or anything like that. Jokes aside, was there an ecosystem on Titan? Even if there was, it belonged to the bugs, not to Hawke. Killing them did not give Hawke a psychological burden in the slightest.
It began to rain in the sky. With a little projection, Hawke immediately understood. This was the reason why the whole of Lake No. 2 had been evaporated, creating a large number of rain clouds over this place.
The rain poured down so heavily that Hawke was in a mess and hurriedly commanded all the robots to retreat into the factory to take shelter from the rain. But the next moment, a problem caught Hawke's attention.
Before the third base, a large number of insect corpses had been washed away by the flood caused by the rain. Because the terrain was lower there at Lake Two, the liquid, surprisingly, flowed in the direction of Lake Two. It looked like it had a tendency to continue to fill up the second lake.
Huo Ke suddenly cursed: "I have worked so hard to empty lake number two, and have not gone to collect the fruits of my labour, and in the end it will be an empty one? No, something has to be done."
If Lake Two was back with liquid methane, then Hawke's job of collecting the bug carcasses would be raised considerably. And even if one thought with one's butt, one could figure out that the blasted empty Lake Two must have a huge amount of bug corpses waiting for Hawke. These were extremely valuable resources, and Hawke would never want to waste them.
"Damn it, you wait for me." Hawke muttered as the powerful photonic computer ran the calculations for only three seconds before a plan popped up and, in only two seconds, passed the three thousand seven hundred feasibility tests. Hawke decided, immediately, to adopt this plan.
Stop the rain from falling near Base Three! Stop Lake Two from re-storing water.
At the main base, countless robots were busy. The water from the Weiran Lake was collected in large quantities and, together with liquid oxygen, was made into high-pressure incendiary bombs. The Wind God One helicopter quickly took off, carrying these incendiary bombs and flew fifty kilometres behind Lake Two.
Here was a desolate wilderness, no veins, no mountains, no lake. It was here that Hawke dropped one incendiary bomb after another.
As soon as they touched the ground, they burst into flames, fuelled by liquid oxygen, and large flames rose up, covering almost a few kilometres of ground. An infinite amount of air was heated and then rose. The massive amount of hot air almost made the Wind God One helicopter unstable. Hawk hurriedly manoeuvred the Wind God One helicopter and dropped the rest of the incendiary bombs, and hurriedly escaped.
It was common sense that when air is heated it becomes lighter and rises. Hawke intended to use this common sense to block the rainfall at Base Three and Lake Two from destroying the fruits of his labour.
Under the laws of physics, the fire here immediately caused a chain reaction. A large amount of hot air was heated up and the air pressure in this area immediately became negative. Cold air was then immediately poured in from all around, filling the empty area. But the cold air was immediately heated up again and continued to rise, so the cold air from all around continued to pour over to replenish ...
This sea of fire that Hawke had created triggered a violent flow of air. And once the air is moving it creates wind, and the wind, in turn, blows the clouds over.
Without the clouds, where's the rain?
That was Hawke's whole plan.
Monitoring the flow of air, Hawke was greatly encouraged.
"But it's not burning far enough here, and the fire will last another twenty minutes before it goes out." Hawke thought, manoeuvring Wind God One back to base, loaded up with another huge amount of incendiary bombs and returned to the area.
The wind was already blowing, but the Wind God One was so superior to Earth's helicopters that it wasn't afraid of it.
Dropping the incendiary bombs in the same way, Hawke continued his return and kept coming back ... for five hours.
At base three, the wind detector reported good news.
Here, the wind had begun to blow, and the wind was increasing. And, not surprisingly for Hawke, the wind was, indeed, blowing towards the burning area.
"Very good, very good." Hawke's heart was filled with pride as he looked at the rainfall that was gradually decreasing until it stopped completely.
"Some liquid methane has probably accumulated in Lake Two, but it shouldn't be much. It's not a problem, let's keep them, it's good to use them as a fuel source for base three."
Hawke made up his mind.
The robot production line was already in full production. This time, what was being produced were hoover type robots. These tiny bug corpses were not really easy to get rid of if you relied on traditional collection methods. It was just right to use hoover robots to deal with them.
Three days later, the first batch of fifty vacuum cleaner robots arrived at their destination.
Hawke directed the robots to go out immediately to collect the bug corpses. Each robot was followed by a large machine, which was responsible for loading the vacuum cleaner robots with the insect carcasses they collected, and for fuelling the hoover robots. In this way, the vacuum cleaner robots can continue to operate for long periods of time without having to return to base every once in a while, greatly increasing their efficiency.
These robots carry a giant package on their backs and their arms are two large vacuum cleaners. With a single sweep of the ground, the corpses of bugs that fall to the ground interspersed with dust are sucked in and stored in the parcel. When the parcels are full, they transfer the contents of the parcels into the large loading machines.
At the same time as the insect corpse collection programme was underway, the construction of Base Three resumed. With the constant replenishment of supplies from the main base, the construction of Base Three was in full swing, and even finished rare earth products had already started to be produced.
Hawke estimated that in just three days' time, rare earth production would be on track. At that time, a major bottleneck in Hawke's development would disappear.
Under the control of Hawke's huge computing power, everything was in order. With the end of Base 3 in sight, Hawke began to plan for the construction of Bases 4 and 5.
Each of these bases will have a different role to play. Some will produce silicon, some aluminium, some gold, and so on. The raw materials they produce will be gathered together at the main base, and after various smelting, processing and casting processes, they will eventually be turned into components.
These components will be turned into a starship that will take Hawke on a great interstellar voyage.
At the same time, the massive search for bugs was also in full swing. After this period of construction, Hawke gradually felt that only one helicopter, Wind God One, was not enough, so Hawke did not hesitate to start the construction of Wind God Two and Wind God Three.
The Wind God One helicopter surveyed all the methane lakes on Titan that were over one hectare in size and installed heat sources next to each one so that whenever there were black bugs in the lakes, they would be attracted to the heat sources and then Hawke would find them. Then, depending on their value, Hawke would decide whether to launch a hydrogen bomb strike.
The ecology on Titan would be destroyed, as there is no intelligent life on Titan anyway, and a massive hydrogen bomb blast would not affect Hawke himself.
The large-scale construction of Titan was in full swing. At the same time, good news came from the Second Research Institute, the Controlled Fusion Laboratory.
A huge technological breakthrough had been made in controlled fusion research.