Chapter 768: Undersea Tunnel
Translator: _Min_ Editor: Caron_
However, after some contemplation, Jiang Chen also didn’t understand what this “just in case” actually referred to.
Was it meant to leave a seed for the Third Reich or for something else?
And this fortress was just a blueprint. Did the Fuhrer really send people to Antarctica and constructed the doomsday fortress following the instructions from the Remnants of the Void? And as far as the location on this map was concerned, the fortress seemed to be buried in the permafrost. It remained an unsolved mystery whether it was possible to survive in such a place.
[Should I go to Antarctica?]
This idea suddenly appeared in Jiang Chen’s mind and exploded uncontrollably.
Fallout shelters couldn’t determine the outcome of the war, and at most, they provided the losers with a dying grave. No matter how he thought about it, it was meaningless to do so. However, the Remnants of the Void wouldn’t insert a piece of useless information in the characters for no reason. They did and they certainly must had their reasons…
What could the reasons be?
…
The next morning, Jiang Chen returned to Coro Island with Ayesha and Xia Shiyu after spending a wonderful time in Penglai.
For work reasons, Natasha boarded a plane the day before the charity ball and returned to Moscow. It was only the three of them on the return flight.
Back on the island, Xia Shiyu’s first task was to go home and drop off her luggage, and the second task was to go to Future Building. A week without stepping into the office – the accumulated workload must be as high as a mountain. Although her assistant could help her take care of some documents, many of them concerned the direction of the group’s business and must be handled by her.
Jiang Chen returned to the mansion with Ayesha. After a short break, he also started to busy himself.
On the one hand, he was preparing for his Antarctica trip. On the other hand, he recently planned to build a undersea tunnel to connect the nine Pannu islands together. As a result, people wouldn’t need to travel by ship, and they could drive directly to any corner of Xin in just a vehicle.
If a country wished to be prosper, they must first build roads. It was the unchanging principle throughout history. If there was an undersea tunnel that could unite the nine islands of the Pannu archipelago, it would provide a huge boost to the economy of the entire country.
Apart from that, once this tunnel was completed, the demand for cars in Xin would surely explode.
However, despite this, building a tunnel wasn’t an easy task.
There were many ways to build an undersea tunnel. There were four representative types such as the drilling and blasting method used in tunnels in Xiamen and Qingdao, the immersed pipe method used in Xiangjiang, the drilling machine method used in the English Channel, and the shield method used in Japan.
However, these four methods all shared one characteristic in common.
Expensive! Very expensive!
Take Hua as an example – 123 kilometers of the Dalian-Yantai High-Speed Rail Undersea Tunnel under construction had a bill as high as 260 billion RMB, and the average cost per kilometer exceeded two billion! Even if the 129 million cost of the high-speed rail per kilometer was taken out, just the cost of building a pipeline was an astronomical figure!
And this budget was only a conservative estimate!
If all nine Pannu islands were connected, it wouldn’t be as short as 123 kilometers. The distance directly between the southernmost island Ange and Coro Island exceeded 150 kilometers, which was equivalent to the distance from Wanghai to Hangzhou.
A conservative estimate was that the undersea section of the tunnel must be at least 300 kilometers long to connect all Pannu nine islands. If the project was contracted to a builder in Hua, the entire project would cost at least 60 billion US Dollar.
Sixty billion US Dollar, good lord, this money would be enough to build two more Penglai Cities! Even if Future Group was rich, it obviously wasn’t possible to spend in this manner.
Fortunately, Future Heavy Industries made breakthroughs in graphene technology in semiconductor-type graphene and high-strength nanomaterials. It could be said that no scientific research institution in the entire world was a worthy opponent of Future Group’s Material Science Laboratory.
Among them, the use of graphene plates on Future Building was a breakthrough in driving down the cost of construction of undersea tunnels. If a tougher material than steel could be used as the outer wall of the tunnel, the progress of the entire project would undoubtedly be much easier.
At the beginning of April, Future Heavy Industries selected a partner from hundreds of construction companies worldwide through public bidding – the Victoria Construction Company registered in Xiangjiang. The construction company once designed and constructed two undersea tunnels and had a deep knowledge of the immersed pipe method.
Considering that the immersed pipe method was more suitable for the performance of graphene materials, Jiang Chen ultimately decided on this company as the final candidate.
After the successful bid, Victoria Construction immediately dispatched Wu Weiyu, an engineer who specialized in undersea tunnels, to Xin to discuss the application of graphene materials in the construction of the undersea tunnel.
Just as Wu Weiyu landed, Jiang Chen immediately invited him to the High-Tech Park on Ange Island.
In the center of the spacious factory building was a semi-cylindrical archway about twelve meters wide and about five meters high. The four walls of the archway were transparent, but the sheen of the glass wasn’t visible on the surface.
Taking Wu Weilu to the side of this transparent archway, Jiang Chen took a hammer from the staff and smashed the archway.
Dong!
There was a muffled sound and the sound echoed in the closed archway. Wu Weiyu looked at the spot where Jiang Chen smashed the hammer, and his eyes widened in shock.
“This is our prototype.” Jiang Chen smiled. He returned the hammer to the staff and patted Wu Weiyu on the shoulder. “The outer wall of the tunnel is to be made of graphene material, ten times the strength of molybdenum-nickel steel. Its longitudinal extension is stronger than all metal materials except there’s an issue with high-temperature resistance… Of course, chances of catching fire in the sea are pretty small.”
“There may be traffic accidents in the tunnel which may cause a fire, even in the ocean.” While stroking the outer wall of the graphene archway, Wu Weiyu mumbled to himself, “But we can paint on inner wall flame retardants, this should be an easy fix…”
After a short pause, Wu Weiyu looked back at Jiang Chen and asked him seriously, “What’s the cost of this graphene material?”
“For this archway, about one meter is about seven hundred dollars.”
One meter, seven hundred dollars. One kilometer was seventy thousand dollars – this cost was much cheaper than steel! If a large sum of money could be saved on the materials, the construction cost of the entire project would undoubtedly be cut several times!
With this thought in mind, Wu Weiyu’s eyes on Jiang Chen suddenly turned brighter.
Victoria Construction Company must find a way to obtain the graphene tunnel! If this high-strength, low-cost building material could be obtained, Victoria would undoubtedly gain strong market competitiveness in the global tunnel construction market.
Not to mention the quality of the project – just one deal would be enough to murder countless competitors.
Victoria Construction Company must establish a long-term strategic partnership with Future Heavy Industrial!
Wu Weiyu already made up his mind secretly. After the end of today’s trip, he would make a phone call to his boss and be sure to clearly explain the pros and cons. If they could obtain this deal, it would be a huge achievement and promotion would no longer be a dream.
That passioante gaze made Jiang Chen shudder as he subconsciously distanced himself.
[What the… Could this guy be…]