The warm sun of the winter morning could not raise the temperature to the warmth of summer.

Despite the weather in the basin finally turning clear today, the temperature remained at around -6 degrees between six and seven o’clock in the morning, and the apparent temperature was around zero degrees.

Seeing that most of the villagers who came to greet him began to sneeze due to the cold, Su Mo quickly ended his sentimentalism and returned to the shelter.

He pushed open the familiar door and breathed in the familiar scent of the shelter.

The Earth Tiger, King Kong, and the two rotary tillers parked in the garage had vanished.

The workshop was replaced with a heavy machinery workspace.

The partition they had built from the blueprint and the wall used for keeping tools had been demolished, and the room had been evenly divided from the middle.

There were seven or eight giant nails on the left side of the wall and several large handmade pieces of equipment hung from the nails.

On the surface of the appliance, you could clearly see the protective paint that had not completely dried out, reflecting the light from outside.

Meanwhile, the right side had become a hanging tool storage wall. There were four columns from top to bottom, and there were hundreds of tools. It was a paradise for an engineering expert!

Su Mo stepped into the shelter.

The surface of the previous stone floor had been evenly covered with a layer of dense wooden planks.

Although these wood planks had only undergone simple treatment and were not the most comfortable to step on, they prevented moisture from being trapped inside the stone floors and effectively prolonged the life of the precision instruments.

“What do you think? Isn’t it much warmer than before?”

Su Chan jumped off Su Mo’s back as soon as they stepped inside the shelter.

She familiarly approached the corner of the room and turned on the first floor’s lights.

In an instant, three jack-o-lanterns that hung from the ceiling began to flash a warm yellow light, and the small wall lamps around the walls also lit up in similar colors, completely illuminating every corner of the room.

The weather outside remained chilly, but as the light lit up the room, it made one’s heart feel comfortably warm!

“Tsk! You guys did much better than my design!

“What’s with the decorations? Haha! It makes me feel as if I entered someone else’s house!”

Feeling like he had returned to a civilized era, Su Mo glanced around the shelter, and his curiosity was beyond words.

Near the stone gate on the second floor, they maintained Su Mo’s rough design style and did not make many changes to prevent affecting the rigidity of the overall structure.

The opposite side was turned into an open laboratory with various instruments of different sizes neatly arranged throughout the place.

Su Mo felt an out-of-this-world experience after seeing the big screen that was lit on three sides of the laboratory.

“Everyone has been working enthusiastically recently since the things in the lucky bags are getting better.

“This lamp, screen, computer, and several other items were drawn from the lucky bags!”

Su Chan explained as she pointed to the things on the ground.

“They bartered these?”

“Of course! Didn’t we implement personal assets? We had to barter for these things!”

The resources for the shelter and for the village had also been completely separated.

Su Chan went to the second floor to put on her shoes and brought a small notebook that recorded the recent “prices of goods” and the shelter’s expenses.

“Did you record all these?

“Not bad! Let me take a good look at the basin’s market conditions!”

Su Mo was excited since he had seen the complicated cargo ledgers in Freedom City, and he was curious about the barter system that had been developed as part of the basin’s economy.

He sat on a chair in the open area and opened the first page, reading the contents very seriously.

The first thing recorded was the trade market.

Much like how animals would store food as they waited for hibernation during the winter, for the villagers who were still living in the collective accommodation the most popular thing was still the food resources.

Everything from ordinary unprocessed food, such as flour, rice, whole grains, and even to the more luxurious foods such as biscuits, canned food, bread, and instant noodles.

Anything edible had no risk of being untradeable in the basin. It was very easy to exchange food for what you needed.

The second most popular item after the food was daily necessities.

Small things such as toothbrushes, soap, towels, washbasins, razors, warm clothes, warm beddings, and prey fur.

It was completely different from the refugees in Freedom City, who did not care about their living environment or quality of life.

There was no imminent pressure to survive, and they had expectations for a better future.

Humans who lived on Earth for decades in modern civilization would not be satisfied with a low quality of life.

They wanted to have comfortable towels, sturdy washbasins, and suitable bath products when washing up.

They missed having a comfortable mattress, warm quilts, and dry sheets when going to bed at night.

They also longed for their soft toilet paper when using toilets made out of clods.

Su Mo was able to understand the people’s feelings in the basin according to the transaction records that showed various transactions of daily necessities.

These results were precisely what Su Mo wanted to see after implementing the policy!

“Very good! As long as our internal supply and demand relationship continues to maintain this trend, we won’t have to worry about revitalizing the economy!”

The lucky bag had supplied and satisfied the lack of external economic transactions within the basin.

After the lucky bag event was over, they would be able to get through the long winter and welcome spring!

Not expecting too much, as long as they could build a business transportation road to Freedom City, the Demon clan would be able to bring the products in the basin to other territories in the New World. What waited ahead for the basin was unstoppable economic progress!

Su Mo was excited at the thought and began to look at the data recorded in the next pages.

As expected, the temporary peace in the basin had not caused the villagers to lose their vigilance in the apocalypse.

The third major category that had high transactions happened to be weapons, armor, and some survival items.

These items were mainly collected by the main body of the village.

Under the current circumstances, where the military equipment was not completely unified, many villagers who had weapons did not secretly keep them to themselves.

They generously traded their equipment with the military forces in the village for low prices so that they could be used to protect the village.

“Are these the only three categories? What about the others?”

“What others? The rest are worthless junk!”

Su Chan smirked and signaled Su Mo to turn the page to where the payments were recorded in the next few pages.

“Let’s see…”

Su Mo frowned once he heard that the imported products that were sold for tens of thousands of contribution points were worthless in the basin.

He flipped the pages all the way to the back and began to mutter to himself.

“The morning exchange fair on Month 4 Day 9…

“The first round of purchases, two ceiling-mounted jack-o-lanterns and four wall-mounted warm lamps traded for three pieces of soap, and one tube of toothpaste?

“The second round of purchases, two LCD screens, one small cutting and grinding machine (paid by Lu Kuan) traded for five towels and three toothbrushes?

“The third round of purchases, a computer central processing unit and a microcentrifuge (paid by Ou Yangguo) traded for two razors, a new bedsheet, three pairs of thermal socks, and five towels!

“…”

For each record, the items that were received could be sold for at least 18,000 points in Freedom City, while the items that were traded out were only some ordinary daily necessities.

The abnormal trading patterns made Su Mo shake his head in disbelief, despite already being prepared for it.

“We don’t even have the electricity supply for these lamps. Besides, even if we did have electricity, we would need our own house to use it. What are supposed to do with it now?

“This screen and central processing unit are useless right now. Its value is no different from an iron block.

“As for the instruments, the villagers planned to give them to us for research purposes. I insisted on trading the stuff with them, and they had no choice but to accept!

“We still have a lot more stock!”

Su Chan was full of pride as she placed her hands on her waist, looking like a housekeeper.

It was as she said. Su Mo was able to exchange for many items above good-quality with seeds in the market.

This was because only the item qualities were considered and were not categorized, which was why most of the items he got were daily necessities.

At that time, Su Mo was helpless about these things and thought they could never finish this stuff.

Who would have thought that these things that would have lasted decades were the best sellers after the establishment of an economic system!

They could be used to exchange so many high-quality technological supplies!

“So all these things in our laboratory were acquired through bartering?”

Su Mo put down the book and stood up to examine the things around him with an expression of disbelief.

Compared to the humble experimental laboratory they had previously, the lack of technological instruments was still significant. Still, there was no doubt that with the help of modern computers and Lu Kuan’s skills, it was possible to fully utilize these items to upgrade the basin’s technological development!

“Ah! Where’s Lu Kuan and the others? Why aren’t they around?”

Su Mo walked to the desk where he used to work and picked up a notebook.

The robot that the researcher’s consciousness used to live in before had not lost its liveliness after Lu Kuan and Ai Jianfeng were “resurrected”.

It was early in the morning, but the robot was still sitting in the corner, and judging by the dust on it, it was apparent that no one had been using it for at least a day or two.

Lu Kuan and Ai Jianfeng’s brains were no longer inside the slime of the brain box.

“Uncle Lu and Uncle Ai? They both set off to the heatstone mine. Oh, right, we haven’t told you that we already established a mining base there.

“They should’ve already received the news and be on the way back if there aren’t any hiccups.”

Su Mo’s eyes squinted, and he glanced over to the back wall of the laboratory that Su Chan pointed to while speaking.

Lu Kuan had quickly concluded and predicted that the heatstone mine was not as simple as it seemed when they discovered it in the heating pipes the last time.

He had plans to discuss the matter in detail but was unsuccessful because of Su Mo’s tight schedule to travel to Freedom City with Hao Qiang that night.

The trip was merely four days, but everyone had already decided to construct a mining base in the heatstone mine.

That meant that these stones were valuable!

Su Mo approached the wall and easily found the information he wanted among the dozens of papers pinned on it.

There were a total of three sheets of paper that recorded information about the heatstone mine on the wall.

The first one was filled with various shapes, and upon closer inspection, Su Mo realized that the sketches were of the heatstones.

When the ore was not absorbing heat, it was a pale black or purple colour, which was similar to an ordinary black pebble.

Once heat absorption occurs, the ore would undergo qualitative changes.

The black and purple color surface of the ore would begin to shrink inward and accumulate inside the ore when it absorbed 10% of heat.

By the time it reached 30% absorption, the surface would gradually shrink into a circular shape within the ore.

When the heat absorption progress reached 60%, the black and purple surface would have completely peeled off and condensed into a ball within the ore!

The black and purple accumulation could still be seen from the outside because the condensed ball was not wrapped by the external colloid.

When it reached 100% heat absorption, the colloid outside the black sphere gradually underwent a change and completely wrapped the black sphere inside.

The previously black and purple surface would appear as a milky white color.

Whenever it sensed an imbalance of heat in the atmosphere, the colloid would stimulate the black ball inside to rotate and release energy outward.

‘So that’s how it absorbs and releases heat!’

A simple illustration clearly explained the whole process and changes of the heatstone.

Judging by these its physical reaction, the possibility that it was a radiative material that would undergo a chemical reaction could be ruled out.

Su Mo curiously glanced at the paper underneath that recorded a few keywords.

‘Heatstone ore, heat energy exchange, induced signal release, natural battery source, energy-charged weapons, bomb, construction materials, pesticides…’

There were familiar words that represented Lu Kuan and the others’ thoughts for the uses of the heatstone.

However, not all keywords were about the role of the heatstones.

There were about a hundred words on the paper from the beginning of the list to the end, but most of them had been crossed out.

Su Mo glanced at the rest and focused his attention on the third piece of paper, which had the title written in red.

“Energy connection?”

“Exactly!”

Su Mo read out the words on the paper doubtfully, and before he could finish speaking, Lu Kuan’s jubilant and rich voice came from behind him.

He turned to the sound, and after seeing two figures appear through the door, Su Mo was stunned but burst into laughter moments later.

“What were you two doing, not being in bed at night? Having snowball fights?”

In four days, Lu Kuan and Ai Jianfeng had become used to controlling their physical bodies, compared to the first day.

It was impossible to see any awkwardness in them anymore.

However, unlike Chen and the others who had not tidied their clothes, the two who had entered through the door were covered in snow, and even their eyebrows were white, looking extremely hilarious.

“Su Mo! I’m telling you, these heatstones are really sneaky! They only absorb heat during the day and release heat at night. We could only go at night to collect experimental data.

“Last night, Lao Ai and I worked the whole night and were only able to get a glimpse of how it works!”

Lu Kuan patted his clothes and shook off the snow all over his body, and although he complained, the joy on his face could not be concealed.

“Look at this! The experimental data we collected, this time we’re gonna make a fortune!”

Lu Kuan took off his coat and pulled out a slightly crumpled document that had complicated formulas written all over it.

“The heatstone is indeed similar to a normal superconductor that we mentioned, but it’s not the theory behind it that is similar. It’s the usages for it.

“After our research results, we found that during the process of absorbing and releasing heat, the heat loss ratio was below 0.001%, and the most valuable thing about it was that there was no limit to how much it absorbs. Do you know what this means?”

Lu Kuan’s hands trembled as he handed over the paper.

He originally wanted to explain to Su Mo but realized that the latter had really high intelligence, so he turned his head toward Su Chan, who wore a curious expression, and started explaining to her.

However, the jargon and professional terms that were mentioned were too much for Su Chan, who only had a high school education.

Seeing that Su Mo’s eyes widened and the joy on his face, as if he was listening to an interesting story, Ai Jianfeng stepped forward and interrupted Lu Kuan’s ramble.

“Su Chan, what Lu Kuan said is complicated, but it’s actually very simple.

“You can understand it like this. The reason why it was difficult for us to make breakthroughs in the energy field in the past was that we couldn’t make any breakthroughs in preserving energy and transmission methods.

“It’s like a battery. The energy is not stored inside the battery itself but it generates electrical energy through chemical energy. It’s similar to hydroelectrical energy storage, flywheel energy storage, superconducting magnetic energy storage, hydrogen energy storage, etcetera, which can only use electrical energy to do work and convert it into potential energy, which is not directly storing the energy.

“However, the heatstones are different.

“We’re able to store energy inside it directly and only need to create a corresponding device to extract the energy, so we can use them repeatedly.”

Ai Jiangfeng could not contain his excitement, and after explaining, he took out a heatstone and kissed it reverently.

“This is a revolutionary breakthrough. It’s an existence that can push civilization forward!”

“Power can be completely restored in our territory if we can mine at least ten tons, and everyone can enjoy free electricity converted from the sunlight!

“As long as we can mine a hundred tons, we could push other technological advancements. God…

“Armor, electrical towers, anti-gravity vehicles, high-tech weapons, real-time monitoring satellites, long-distance missiles… There’s so much we could achieve! So much!

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that we’re going through a mechanical revolution from this moment onward!”