In the local chat channel of Jianghe City, the hottest topic was still the road-clearing activities on the ground.
After a brief hesitation, Su Wu decided to continue.
They were almost at their destination. They couldn't just give up because of a minor abnormality.
On the riverbank, the leading micro excavator, unaffected by Su Wu's anxiety, maintained a speed of two meters per second, slowly moving along the embankment, searching for a way down.
Gusts of wind blowing along the river stirred up strands of fine sand and gravel, which struck the excavator's metal shell with a crackling sound.
It carried greetings from the wilderness to this lonely sand-digging team.
Finally, after moving forward for a few hundred meters, they came across a slope with a gentler incline.
The artificial intelligence immediately took control of the micro excavator, rotating its radar to scan the terrain and map the route as it carefully descended the slope.
As the convoy entered the riverbed, the soft sand and gravel gradually replaced the relatively hard earth and stone ground.
Su Wu didn't let them go too deep. He simply found a spot on the outskirts and began digging. This kind of excavation, without proper screening, obviously wouldn't produce high-quality fine sand. But that didn't matter. Once transported back to the shelter, there would be plenty of time and labor for further processing.
In a post-apocalyptic environment, compared to the risk of prolonged exposure to the outside world and the constant threat of disasters, labor and time costs were negligible.
In the riverbed, due to the micro-transport vehicle's limited capacity, the entire excavation process didn't last long. After just five or six minutes, its bucket was already filled with sand and gravel.
Following the principle of maximum efficiency, the artificial intelligence immediately sent the micro-transport vehicle back along the original route. The micro excavator remained in place, waiting for the transport vehicle to return before continuing its work.
This operation made Su Wu slightly uneasy, but after hesitating for a moment, he chose not to interfere.
As long as there were no obvious climate hazards or other dangers, there was no reason to halt this highly efficient plan.
On the return trip, the mini transport truck moved much faster since the route had already been mapped out. It maintained an almost full-speed pace the entire way.
Soon, the mini transport truck appeared on the surveillance camera Su Wu had installed on the shelter's ground level.
A full load of sand and gravel was successfully delivered to the warehouse.
"There shouldn't be any problems."
Watching the mini transport truck unload its cargo before disappearing into the night again, Su Wu felt a slight sense of relief.
With the first trip successfully completed and given the precision of the artificial intelligence, he didn't need to worry as long as the weather remained stable.
Shifting his focus back to the shelter, Su Wu assigned two construction robots from the engineering team on the fourth underground floor to bring tools to the surface and process the freshly delivered sand and gravel. The usable portion of this batch would be brought into the shelter to serve as raw material for expanding the fourth underground floor.
As the construction robots arrived on the surface and began their work, Su Wu surveyed the entire construction site through a camera placed at the highest point.
This land had once been a farmyard.
There were no signs of an impending storm. The flat terrain was dotted with supply piles tied together with metal bars, a single-story bunker waiting to be reinforced, and a shelter exit bunker with only a drainage ditch dug and no foundation laid.
Though the structures were far from aesthetically pleasing, their very existence signified that the chaos on the shelter's surface—caused by the storm—was gradually returning to order.
Everything was beginning to take shape.
"Just a little more time."
"As long as the bunkers and shelters are completed..."
"We won't have to fear another hurricane."
After handling matters at the shelter, Su Wu shifted most of his focus to the cleanup team working at the city's edge.
After nearly ten hours of continuous clearing, the special transport vehicles and large trucks had advanced to the vicinity of Tekla Mall.
With the mall as a dividing line, progressing any deeper into the city became several times more difficult.
Many streets were completely blocked by collapsed buildings. Rather than exerting great effort to carve out a passage, it was more efficient to find alternative routes.
In such cases, the primary artificial intelligence alone couldn't make the best judgments. Su Wu needed to step in occasionally to make real-time adjustments.
Despite the increased difficulty, they were now within the city limits, where multiple other shelters had also dispatched teams to participate in the cleanup.
Overall, the pace of advancement remained relatively steady.
"These collapsed buildings are a great source of materials."
"Once the cleanup is done and we've retrieved the last batch of resources from the official shelter..."
"Maybe we should consider bringing back a few more truckloads of construction waste."
The cleanup process was long and monotonous. Occasionally, Su Wu corrected the special transport vehicle's working area, but for the most part, he idly observed the surrounding environment.
The city's thousands of collapsed buildings and the massive piles of rubble made Su Wu envious.
To him, these ruins were nothing less than an endless supply of building materials.
Even though they were some distance from the shelter, their sheer abundance and the ease of loading them onto trucks more than compensated for the inconvenience.
He turned the special transport vehicle's camera toward the distance.
Beyond the ruins, hidden in the darkness, faint lights flickered between the buildings.
They belonged to construction workers from other shelters, operating heavy machinery.
At temperatures exceeding seventy degrees Celsius, ordinary humans could barely function outdoors. But specially modified construction vehicles were built to withstand the heat.
According to official forum information Su Wu had gathered, those modifications prioritized preventing machinery from overheating. The workers inside the cabs, however, received far less consideration.
Although the temperature inside the cabs wasn't as extreme as the outside world, it wasn't much better.
Every worker confined within them was enduring pure torment.
After observing for a while, Su Wu developed a rough understanding of their efficiency.
Although the excavators, bulldozers, and other equipment they operated were larger than his special transport vehicles, their inconsistent operation led to frequent repetitive and ineffective movements.
Often, the combined efforts of seven or eight excavators and bulldozers barely matched the efficiency of a single special transport vehicle.