dmims Chapter 61 Oh my god, Iridium!
Chapter 61 Oh my god, Iridium!
Chapter 61 Oh my god, Iridium!
Pei Qi sighed, unscrewed the cap of the [Night Vision Potion] bottle in his hand, tilted his head back, and gulped it down.
The spicy liquid flowed down his throat, and his vision instantly became as clear as daytime, revealing even the dust particles in the cracks of the rocks.
He was unaware that he had made an empirical error that only "veteran MC miners" would make.
When setting off, in order to avoid an underground river that could submerge the drilling vehicle, he slightly deflected the digging direction downwards by about 15 degrees, based on the prompts on the minimap.
In the game, it's simply a matter of digging a few more blocks and building a few more ladders.
However, on the Earth, a giant sphere with a diameter of 12,000 kilometers, in the dark environment deep underground where there are no reference points, a deviation of 15 degrees, combined with the navigation system malfunction caused by geomagnetic anomalies, is enough to make him deviate from his target by a great distance.
"Perhaps it's just that this tectonic plate has a thicker crust?"
Pei Qi looked at the depth data displayed on the instrument panel: [Error], and could only console himself with this thought.
"After all, on such a grand scale as a planet, it's reasonable for the Earth's crust to have an error of tens of thousands of meters in thickness, right? Just like how the thickness of some people's skin varies from person to person."
He manipulated the drill and blasted open the rock wall in front of him once again.
"Never mind, keep digging! As long as my pickaxe is hard enough, there's no wall I can't break through! Even if I have to dig through the earth's core, I'll get that bucket of lava!"
Time passed amidst darkness and roaring sounds.
Pei Qi had lost track of how long he had been digging. If it weren't for the fact that the built-in physiological circulatory system of the nanosuit was still functioning normally, he probably would have fainted from dehydration long ago.
"when--!"
A sharp, metallic clang abruptly interrupted Pei Qi's mechanical operation.
The drilling vehicle shook violently, and the reinforced drill bit in front, which could even shatter obsidian, was actually bounced away!
"What's going on? Did they hit bedrock?"
Pei Qi's spirits lifted, and he quickly turned off the drill, carefully observing the rock wall in front of him through the zoom function of the nano-mask.
It was a strange layer of rock.
It has a grayish-white color, an extremely dense texture, and a surface covered with fine cracks like those found in glass.
What surprised him even more was that, under the influence of the night vision potion, this layer of rock faintly emitted a kind of—
A silvery-white metallic luster?
Pei Qi's heart skipped a beat.
As a seasoned player who knows the crafting recipes for Industrial Age 2 by heart, he is all too familiar with this luster.
That is the ultimate dream of every industrial player, and the only way to reach the "Quantum Set" and "God Mode".
"This color—this texture—could it be—?"
With trembling hands, Pei Qi pulled a handheld mineral scanner from his personal storage space.
"Beep—High abundance of rare metal element detected."
Main component: Impact quartz.
Associated mineral: Iridium. Abundance: Extremely high.
Holy crap!
Pei Qi couldn't help but swear, but his voice was filled with ecstatic joy.
"Iridium ore! It really is iridium ore! And it's a rich deposit!"
He felt like he was about to have a stroke.
In IC2, iridium ore is a god-tier material that can only be generated through UU materials or found with a very low probability in dungeons!
It is the core ingredient for making quantum armor, quantum generators, and even that antimatter bomb that can destroy the world!
"We've struck gold! We've really struck gold this time! It turns out these things really do exist underground in the real world!"
Pei Qi was so excited that he wanted to dance a dance from the Pure Land of Bliss in the cockpit.
With all that iridium, why would he need to do magma power generation? He could just skip ahead in technology, build some advanced solar arrays, or directly develop a quantum computing system.
Even if a Space Marine from Warhammer came, he'd dare to arm wrestle with him!
"Calm down, Pei Qi, calm down."
He forced himself to suppress his excitement and gripped the joystick tightly again.
"But how come there's something like this underground in Tokyo? Did the Americans drop a nuclear bomb on Tokyo during World War II? Or did I dig up Godzilla's lair?"
"Never mind! In short, the mission has changed! Lava can wait, focus all your energy on mining iridium!"
However, in his elation, Pei Qi failed to realize a serious geological problem.
On Earth, high concentrations of iridium are typically found in only one place—the K-Pg boundary (the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary).
That is the "death dust" layer left behind when that 10-kilometer-diameter asteroid struck Earth 65 million years ago.
There is only one place in the world where impact quartz can have this thickness and hardness.
That was the core of the impact.
This is not Tokyo.
This is deep underground in the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Behind the thick layer of iridium-rich rock in front of Pei Qi, there was not the more ore he had imagined, but a huge cavity.
There, a red, double-helix-shaped creation, not belonging to Earth's civilization, is sleeping.
It has been waiting here for 65 million years.
"Sizzle sizzle"
The drill bit started spinning again, and this time, Pei Qi directly activated the overclocking mode.
The enormous torque made the entire drilling vehicle tremble, and sparks from the friction of metal exploded like fireworks in the darkness.
"This stone is so hard—is this the legendary 'blast-resistant stone'?"
Pei Qi gritted his teeth and stared at the progress bar as it slowly advanced.
At the same time, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that the electromagnetic interference readings on the HUD interface were starting to look a bit strange.
What was originally just random static noise now seemed to have acquired a certain rhythm?
It was like a heartbeat, or some kind of incomprehensible whisper.
"Zzz————————"
The sound came through the headphones in a broken, intermittent manner.
"What the heck? Did they switch channels?"
Pei Qi patted his helmet. "Is Arima trying to call me through an encrypted channel? The signal is so bad?"
He didn't take it seriously at all.
For an industrial user who works in various high-radiation and high-interference environments for a long time, a little static in headphones is commonplace.
As long as it doesn't interfere with his mining, even if Sadako crawls inside his earpiece, he'll just stuff her into the molecular recombination device and break her down into organic matter.
"Five meters left!"
Looking at the thickness displayed on the scanner, Pei Qi's eyes burned with fervor.
"Once we get past this hardest layer of impact quartz, there's bound to be a huge iridium vein! I have a feeling my bad luck is about to completely turn around today!"
Rumble—
With a dull thud, a crack finally appeared in the seemingly indestructible rock wall.
"It's connected!"
Pei Qi was overjoyed.
But what he didn't know was...
The red divine seal seemed to sense something.
The originally dim runes on its surface began to light up gradually, emitting an eerie, maddening red glow.
A Minecraft player, wielding a pickaxe and obsessed with mining and generating electricity, unknowingly stumbled upon the gates of hell.
"Let me see where the precious iridium ore is—"
Pei Qi maneuvered the drilling vehicle, blasting away the last rock obscuring their view, the headlights instantly piercing the darkness ahead.
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