"Such a magnificent creation... It's a shame humanity won't be able to build anything like this after the apocalypse..." Li Dong gazed at the towering structure gradually rising from the ground and couldn't help but sigh.
Forget rebuilding—after the Extreme Cold Apocalypse, such ultra-tall structures would become an extreme rarity on the surface of Blue Star.
Most skyscrapers would either be destroyed in earthquakes or obliterated by meteorite fragments.
The reason the Shelter Base was constructing this Watchtower was because it would serve many purposes after the Extreme Cold Apocalypse.
Li Dong's younger brother had once said that after the asteroid struck Blue Star, the planet would enter a decades-long, possibly even centuries-long, period of unending frigid darkness.
During this prolonged icy night, the setting of the Frostpunk era would become reality.
And this tower was being built to guide those returning from outside—just like ships lost at sea rely on lighthouses for direction.
So this Watchtower wasn't just for monitoring forest fires or sightseeing—it would also serve as a navigational beacon and an enemy surveillance post.
Normally, such an excessively tall structure wouldn't be approved for construction. But with the apocalypse looming, who cared about regulations anymore?
The construction site was brightly lit, with countless workers still laboring away. After a brief glance, Li Dong mounted his electric bike and left.
He headed straight for the site's canteen. As soon as he entered, he saw a dense crowd of workers eating, the atmosphere lively.
After all, the workers had been toiling all afternoon—of course they were hungry.
A man is iron, rice is steel—skip a meal, and hunger is all you'll feel.
The canteen was spacious and not particularly crude. From the outside, it resembled a massive factory building, but it had four floors.
Each floor could accommodate ten to twenty thousand people dining simultaneously.
Just the logistics staff running the canteen numbered in the hundreds.
With tens of thousands of workers needing meals at the same time, insufficient manpower would make operations impossible. Even with extensive automation and an intelligent management system, many hands were still required.
The culinary team alone exceeded a hundred people—35 head chefs and 70 assistant cooks.
There were also 120 servers, 50 cleaners, 10 warehouse managers, 10 procurement staff, 6 financial administrators, and 6 administrative personnel.
Add to that the canteen supervisors, food safety officers, sanitation inspectors, and food processing managers...
In total, the staff exceeded three hundred.
Li Dong had never skimped on the canteen's budget. As for whether his subordinates had, he couldn't say.
But they probably hadn't.
After all, the entire base was monitored by the Intelligent System in the Base Main Building—and the one controlling it was his younger brother, Li Tiang.
Every expense, every ounce of food consumed—everything was crystal clear just by logging into the Intelligent System.
Li Dong didn't eat on the first floor. Instead, he went up to the fourth.
Unlike the spartan first, second, and third floors, the fourth floor even had private KTV rooms—primarily reserved for management to dine and entertain.
The soundproofing was excellent; at least Li Dong wasn't disturbed by the noisy commotion from the first, second, or third floors.
After arriving on the fourth floor, Li Dong immediately booked a private dining room and began ordering dishes like a madman.
"Not this one, or this one, or this one either..."
"Bring everything else, thank you!" Li Dong smiled at a waiter as he handed over the menu.
"Very well, sir."
The waiter then took the menu to inform the kitchen staff.
Li Dong's appetite had been growing larger recently, and his physical abilities were still steadily improving. In terms of raw physical strength alone, he was already dozens—nearly a hundred—times stronger than an ordinary person.
Of course, that didn't make him bulletproof or immune to artillery fire.
No matter how much he improved, he was still a carbon-based lifeform—just harder to kill. Even if he possessed supernatural powers like those in novels or movies, that fundamental limitation remained.
Once he had eaten his fill, Li Dong returned to the Base Main Building.
Here, he had his own private gym and bedroom.
There were no standalone villas in the Shelter Base—building them would be a waste of precious land resources and simply not worth it. Every inch of space in the Shelter Base had to be utilized efficiently.
Back in the gym, Li Dong gripped a specially modified barbell weighing a full five tons with one hand.
"Hah—!" With a light exhale, he effortlessly lifted the five-ton barbell with a single arm.
To put that into perspective, five tons was comparable to the weight of a medium-sized transport truck. A typical compact family car weighed between 1.2 and 1.3 tons—meaning Li Dong could lift the equivalent of four ordinary cars with one hand.
That was even more terrifying than the Far Star Union's cinematic super-soldier captain, enhanced by the Super Soldier Serum.
"Seems I haven't hit my limit yet," Li Dong murmured as he gently set the barbell down.
The barbell itself was nearly at its structural limit—it couldn't be modified any further. But Li Dong's strength still had room to grow.
The thickness and diameter of the barbell's bar were almost comparable to some car axles.
From a purely physical standpoint, Li Dong had nothing to fear from Mutated Zombies or Monsters.
But without enough food, even the strongest body would eventually starve to death from lack of energy replenishment.
"Guess I'll keep training. That wisp of flame… it doesn't feel so simple."
Li Dong glanced at the flicker of golden flame that danced for a brief moment at the tip of his index finger.
This was his trump card in the face of the apocalypse—an innate cheat ability he had been born with.
His overwhelming physical prowess had already cowed all the security personnel into submission. Those who hadn't submitted willingly had been beaten into compliance.
Several nights later.
Li Dong gathered all the members of the security team who shared his surname—his clan relatives—for a meeting in a large conference room in the Base Main Building.
"Esteemed relatives, this meeting is of great importance. Before we begin, I ask each of you to sign a confidentiality agreement," Li Dong announced from the podium.
"If anyone is unwilling to sign, you may leave now."
He scanned the room as he spoke.
Some muttered to themselves, others whispered among themselves—but not a single person left. In the end, everyone silently signed their names on the agreement.
"Good, no one has left." Li Dong looked at the clan members who had all stayed and signed their names.
"To make it brief, esteemed clan members, let me ask you this—if one day, a true apocalypse were to arrive, what would you choose?"
The moment Li Dong finished speaking, the large conference room erupted into chaos like a marketplace.
"Apocalypse? Isn't this already the apocalypse?"
"Exactly! Even zombies have appeared in the real world."
"What choice do we have? Isn't it obvious? Life here is so comfortable, I even want to bring my family over."
"Right."
"..."
"Alright, please quiet down. The apocalypse I'm referring to isn't the zombies you're talking about, but a meteorite impact. Everyone, please look at the screen..."
As soon as Li Dong spoke, an enormous screen was projected onto the wall behind him.
The projection displayed several meteorite asteroids heading toward Blue Star, with data labeled for each. The largest one had a diameter of nearly ten kilometers.
The smallest of the remaining asteroids was still four kilometers in diameter.
Next, the screen showed a simulation of the asteroids colliding with Blue Star.
"What you're seeing is real. These meteorite asteroids will impact Blue Star in less than eight months."
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