Yandu, Aerospace Base, Ground Control Center.
"Mr. Gu is returning to Blue Star. Target: Celestial Xia, Yandu, and... huh... the Aerospace Base’s experimental plaza?"
The radar operator on duty cried out in surprise, "He’s heading for us?"
Current high-end satellite positioning and high-definition photography had nearly reached centimeter-level resolution, and the most advanced radar systems were certainly no different. What’s more, Gu Zhao wasn’t even changing his course.
Analyzing Gu Zhao’s landing point was even simpler than tracking a basic ballistic missile, because he wouldn’t even have any terminal-phase deviation.
The base director certainly remembered the message from the Taoist Office. Gu Zhao was going to the Moon to collect Moon Soil and might require his cooperation.
Well, he had indeed cooperated—by instructing the astronauts on the Celestial Palace Space Station to let Gu Zhao in and giving them an improved meal plan.
The director: ╮(╯▽╰)╭
’So, Gu Zhao is planning to deliver the Moon Soil to the aerospace base?’
"Notify the air defense forces! Notify the Celestial Xia Science Academy! Notify base security!" the base director ordered his secretary as he ran for the door. "And inform the Taoist Office, too."
"Yes, sir!" The secretary pulled out his phone and started making calls while running to keep up.
In the base’s monitoring hall, a group of staff members looked at each other, their eyes filled with both anticipation and regret.
"Of all days, why did it have to be my shift today?"
"I want to go out and see, too."
"AHHHH, I’m itching all over with excitement! What do I do?"
"Hey, Little Li, how about you connect the external surveillance feed to the main screen in the hall? We could at least see something that way."
A baby-faced man in glasses lowered his head slightly, and all anyone could see was a brilliant flash of light reflecting off his lenses.
Then, a furious volley of keystrokes echoed from his keyboard, and the main screen in the monitoring hall instantly switched from a series of charts to an outdoor scene.
The scene on the screen was one they all recognized: the aerospace base’s experimental plaza.
They could even see the base director, who had just rushed out of the hall, now appearing at the edge of the plaza.
Just as they saw the director, Gu Zhao saw him too. He’d forgotten the man’s full name but remembered his surname was Li, having seen him on the news or in a video before.
"Hello, Academician Li," Gu Zhao said, hovering in the air above the experimental plaza.
Academician Li looked up at the levitating Gu Zhao, licked his lips, and found he couldn’t suppress his curiosity. "Hello, Mr. Gu. If you don’t mind me asking, how exactly do you manage to fly through the air like that?"
Gu Zhao couldn’t help but smile. "It’s just by absorbing the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi. It’s kind of like how people eat food. When people eat, they get energy. When we absorb Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, we can fly once we reach a certain stage of growth.
"It’s just that most people can’t absorb Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, just like how herbivores don’t eat meat, or how not everyone can learn calculus. You can’t force it."
Academician Li was speechless. "..."
’Damn it,’ he thought. ’You can explain herbivores not eating meat as a difference between species, but I can’t really argue with the part about not everyone being able to learn calculus.’
’Sometimes the gap between two people is greater than the gap between two species.’
"I’ll just put the Moon Soil here, is that alright?" Gu Zhao asked, pointing to the wide-open experimental plaza below.
"Yes, yes, of course!" Academician Li nodded hurriedly. "I’ve already called for people to help move it."
Gu Zhao nodded. "There’s quite a bit of it, so take your time. No rush."
"How much could there be—"
Academician Li had only gotten a few words out before he swallowed the rest of his sentence.
Gu Zhao produced a massive rock, two or three meters wide and tall, and placed it in front of Academician Li.
Academician Li had sharp eyes and spotted a yellow sticky note on the front of the rock. On it was written: [Longitude X°XX′XX″ E, Latitude X°XX′XX″ N, Depth XX meters]
Academician Li: ???
"This is from just one location?" Academician Li stared in a daze at the rock, which was taller than he was. "And what’s with the depth?"
"You provided me with a total of one hundred and thirty-two locations. I started at the surface and extracted one rock every twenty meters, all the way down to a depth of one hundred meters."
Gu Zhao explained to Academician Li, "That’s six rocks per location, for a total of seven hundred and ninety-two pieces of Moon Rock."
Academician Li swallowed hard.
"Besides the Moon Rock, I also brought back a case of Moon Soil from each of the same spots."
Gu Zhao patted his gourd and pulled out a stone case half a man’s height, placing it next to the Moon Rock. "That’s seven hundred and ninety-two cases in total."
Academician Li fell silent.
As a top-tier scientist, Academician Li’s mental arithmetic skills were formidable.
The density of lunar mare basalt is roughly between 3.3 and 3.4 g/cm3. Although the shape of this particular Moon Rock was irregular, it could be approximated as a cube with 2.5-meter sides.
By that calculation, this single piece of Moon Rock weighed nearly 52 tons.
And if there were 792 pieces of Moon Rock...
’Over 40,000 tons?’
’And that’s not even counting the cases of Moon Soil, which must weigh several hundred pounds each.’
Academician Li looked at the waist-high stone case of Moon Soil next to the Moon Rock. It was obviously improvised.
’He probably carved it on the Moon with his Flying Sword.’
’Which meant that when Gu Zhao went to the Moon, he thought to bring snacks for the astronauts on the Celestial Palace Space Station, but didn’t even think to bring containers for the Moon Soil!’
Academician Li felt the urge to facepalm, utterly speechless.
’It was a good thing he at least brought a stack of sticky notes. Otherwise, how would they even tell the Moon Rocks from different locations apart?’
’If this were one of my students, I’d...’
’Then again, if I begged him to take me for a spin around the Moon, I wonder if he’d agree?’
While Academician Li was still lost in thought, he saw Gu Zhao, still floating in mid-air, start pulling out one massive Moon Rock after another with a great CLANG and CLATTER, arranging them on the experimental plaza with a stone case beside each one.
Before long, more than half of the huge experimental plaza was covered.
It wasn’t just Academician Li; the staff who had come with him to help with the transport were also dumbfounded.
Gazing at the Moon Rock that was a good head taller than him, then down at his own gloved hands, one of them mumbled in a daze, "Transport this? Me?"
Back in the monitoring hall, the staff stared at the screen filled with massive rocks of all kinds—some naturally formed, some with sheer-cut faces, others carved into perfect squares—and were collectively speechless.
"How much did that Moon Soil sample our Chang’e rover brought back from the Moon weigh again?"
"1,953 grams."
"Any guesses on how much all this Moon Rock and Moon Soil weighs?"
"I’m not even gonna guess."
"Even if you swapped ’grams’ for ’tons,’ you’d still be way off."
"Those folks who research Moon Rock and Moon Soil have hit the jackpot. 132 locations, 792 pieces of Moon Rock, the same number of Moon Soil samples, tens of thousands of tons... That’s enough material for them to milk for papers for the next ten years."
"Ten years? We couldn’t bring this much back ourselves in ten years."
"Don’t be ridiculous. If we had the capability to bring back tens of thousands of tons of Moon Rock, we would’ve already built a base on the Moon by now."