Inside Lu Zhou’s private resting lounge.
Lu Zhou hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the lounge door. After locking the door, he walked to the bed and lay down on it. He closed his eyes and summoned the system.
Soon, a familiar feeling surrounded him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in a pure white space.
How long has it been since I last came here?
A month?
Two months?
Or maybe half a year.
Lu Zhou didn’t remember when was the last time he came here.
Ever since the long-term scientific research mission chain began, he rarely returned to the system space.
He walked in front of the holographic panel, a line of blue text appeared in front of him.
[Congratulations, user, for completing the first phase of “Control of Earth and Moon”: landing on the Moon.
[Requirements: User has to lead a project in sending at least one astronaut to the Moon and successfully bring him back to Earth safely.
[Rewards: 100,000 engineering experience points, 50,000 materials science experience points, 50,000 energy science points. 500 general points. One lucky draw ticket.
[Secondary goals:
A barrel of gold: Collect and bring back 1kg of lunar soil. Reward: 50,000 experience points. (completed)
Overlooking Earth: At an altitude of 100-2000 kilometers, manually operate a camera and capture a photo of planet Earth. Reward: 50,000 experience points, one lucky draw ticket. (completed)
Life Of Farming: Deploy a 10-square-meter unmanned planting module on the Moon’s surface. Observe and record the growth of crops under conditions of low gravity and the absence of a magnetic field. Reward: 50,000 experience points. One lucky draw ticket. (completed)
Crazy Jerry: Plant ten rats on the surface of the Moon. Observe and record the activities of the specimen under the conditions of low gravity and the absence of a magnetic field. Reward: 100,000 experience points. One lucky draw ticket. (completed)
]
This mission’s experience point rewards were plentiful. In addition to the main mission experience points, the 250,000 branch mission experience points were assignable to any subjects. He also received four of the precious lucky draw tickets.
Lu Zhou was as excited as the astronauts who had just stepped out of the aerospaceplane.
Of course, it was too soon to celebrate.
Whether or not this was worth celebrating still depended on the lucky draw.
“System, open my characteristic panel!”
A blue light swept across the screen, and his characteristic panel soon appeared in front of him.
He didn’t have to worry about mathematics and physics right now; one was level 8, the other was level 7. Their level up requirements were all in the millions of experience points range, so the 250,000 wouldn’t do anything.
Engineering and biochemistry, which were both on level 5, seemed to be a pretty good investment. However, the level 3 energy science and level 2 information science were also cost-effective choices. If the helium-3 mining or lunar communication bandwidth problem were solved, information science and energy science might be useful.
Lu Zhou stood in front of the characteristic panel and contemplated it for a while. He suddenly felt like 250,000 experience points wasn’t enough.
“I guess I didn’t complete enough branch missions? I guess I have to pay more attention to the second mission stage…”
Lu Zhou took a deep breath and pondered for a second. He quickly made a decision. He spent 200,000 of the experience points on biochemistry, then allocated the remaining 50,000 experience points to information science.
Soon, his characteristic panel was updated.
[
A. Mathematics: Level 8 (774,000/3 million)
B. Physics: Level 7 (13,215/1.2 million)
C. Biochemistry: Level 6 (10,000/600,000)
D. Engineering: Level 5 (10/300,000)
E. Materials science: Level 6 (63,000/600,000)
F. Energy science: Level 3 (50,000/100,000)
G. Information science: Level 3 (3,000/100,000)
General points: 4,835 (four lucky draw tickets)
]
Biochemistry was upgraded from level 5 to level 6, while information science was upgraded from level 2 to level 3. He was getting closer to mastering biochemistry and was no longer a novice in information science.
The reason he chose to allocate the experience points this way was mainly that biochemistry was closely related to materials science. Because his biochemistry level was lower than his materials science level, the benefits of leveling up his biochemistry level were quite large.
As for why he chose information science and not energy science, it was mainly because second-generation controllable fusion technology was still nowhere to be seen, and helium-3 mining wasn’t an urgent project.
Of course, there was another thing he could have done, which was to level up his engineering to level 6.
However, so far, Lu Zhou felt like he didn’t require a high-level understanding of engineering. After all, there were many excellent engineers at the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study who could make up for his shortcomings in the engineering field.
All of the experience points had been allocated; next up was the exciting lucky draw.
Lu Zhou stared at the information screen and took a deep breath. He silently prayed for a bit before focusing his attention on the roulette wheel.
He pressed the button, and at the same time, he spoke.
“… Let’s go!”
The wheel began to spin.
Without hesitating, Lu Zhou spun the wheel three times in a row, giving him three prizes.
After he saw the prizes, he was appalled.
Three lucky draws; two pieces of garbage and one sample. One was a Future brand liquid meal replacement, the other was the long-lost Future branded coke. There was also a Future brand… pajama?
Even though the label said it was a sweater, it was clearly a gray pajama.
What surprised Lu Zhou the most was that this “pajama” was a sample…
Lu Zhou thought this item was no different from a piece of garbage.
Lu Zhou took a deep breath and looked at the lucky draw button.
He only had one shot left.
Lu Zhou clenched his teeth and pressed the button.
The wheel spun quickly. He pressed the button again, and the wheel slowly came to a stop.
[Congratulations, user, sample is given!
[Received: “Crawler”, an all-terrain remote-controlled exploration vehicle!]
Lu Zhou: “?!”
Lu Zhou’s eyes immediately focused on this weirdly-shaped exploration vehicle.
Even though there weren’t any instructions, his intuition told him that he just struck gold!
He felt a little better.
Lu Zhou looked at the holographic panel.
After all of his lucky draws were finished, he could finally see what the next stage of the mission was.
“Time to move on to the next stage.”
Lu Zhou took a deep breath and opened the mission panel.
The blue light swept across the screen, and the mission “Target 2″ was presented in front of his eyes.
[Target 2: Permanent Station on the Moon
[Requirements: Build a semi-permanent scientific research station on the surface of the Moon. This station is for astronomical observation, observation of geohydrological and climate activities, as well as high-energy physics experiments. The basic requirement is to place more than 100 tons of man-made objects on the surface of the Moon.
[Secondary goals:
Crowded Planet: 24-hour active population on the Moon has to exceed 100.
2: Spark of the Future: Large Hadron Collider on the Moon.
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Three Feet Deep: Collect 50 tons of rare lunar soil.
Alchemist: Produce 100 tons of titanium alloy.
5 Look Back on the Earth: Establish a semi-permanent Earth meteorological observation station in the Moon’s orbit.
6: Look Far Away: Establish a large space telescope for detailed observations of planets in the solar system, as well as extraterrestrial stars.
…
]
Lu Zhou: “…”
The manned moon landing was still realistic, but these missions were on a completely different level.
Even if Skyglow picked up trash from the low-Earth orbit and threw them on the Moon, it would take several trips to place 100 tons of man-made objects on the Moon. If he really did that, he could forget about receiving any mission rewards. Not to mention how scary the next mission stage would be.
Lu Zhou had a headache.
Why do I feel like this damn system…
Is becoming more and more difficult to deal with.
