Chapter 541: Chapter 366: Tearing Open Basalt Barehanded, Ten Thousand Meters Underground (Part 2)

According to Wang Ye’s understanding, the system’s daily automatic evolution usually occurs around five o’clock,

so he needs to drill into the mantle around five o’clock to synthesize carbon acetylene within his body, triggering the system’s automatic gene editing, thus completing the process of turning his bones into carbon acetylene.

At this thought,

Wang Ye’s mind suddenly cleared up,

he immediately walked out of the warehouse and found an open area nearby.

He then began to excavate the ground.

His way of digging was to directly develop his fingernails into shovel shapes and use his hands to break open the soil. However, this method of hand digging was undoubtedly quite inefficient.

Despite his great strength, it was indeed his first time digging soil.

He wasn’t very familiar with the land’s traits and the techniques of excavation.

After digging for about half an hour, he had only managed to excavate a vertical pit approximately five meters deep.

Wang Ye threw the last handful of dirt onto the ground and took a shallow breath.

His body and face were already covered in mud and dust, making him look rather disheveled,

and due to the physical exertion, his body temperature had once again risen to over 100 degrees Celsius, enveloping him in a dense fog of steam.

Wang Ye couldn’t help but sigh, "At this rate, who knows how long it will take to dig into the upper mantle, and the rocks underground will only get harder. Even the top layer of soil is so challenging to dig through, let alone the hard basalt and other rock minerals deeper underground."

In fact, he wasn’t the first person to do such a thing,

during the U.S. and Soviet Union arms race in the last century, the Soviet Union undertook a very crazy excavation project, digging over 10,000 meters into the earth, which later became known as the Kola Superdeep Borehole,

the main purpose of this Soviet project was for scientific research, to prove its technological superiority over the United States.

To achieve their scientific goals, the Soviet Union allocated a significant budget to the Kola Superdeep Borehole, so much so that engineers and scientists involved in the project earned a month’s salary equivalent to a year’s salary of other Soviet university professors.

However, they did not dig directly with their hands or excavators like Wang Ye, but used metal drill bits. After reaching over 10,000 meters underground, the temperature rose to over 300 degrees Celsius, and this temperature, combined with the high-intensity mechanical operations, made it easy for the strength of the drill bit metals to weaken or even melt, while the hardness of the deeper underground rocks also increased, making it harder to drill through.

Thus, the Kola Superdeep Borehole drilling stopped at 12,262 meters. Of course, the Soviet Union’s economic recession and eventual collapse also meant they couldn’t continue supporting this project.

As for the Kola Superdeep Borehole, there has always been an urban legend circulating online that after digging over 10,000 meters, the workers heard strange noises, as if millions were wailing, very similar to descriptions of hell in various religious texts. That’s why the Soviet Union stopped the project at the time.

Wang Ye wasn’t too concerned with this legend; whether or not there is a hell or underground people, it mattered little to him. His goal is simply to leverage the underground pressure to promote his own evolution,

and if he wants to utilize the pressure of the upper mantle, he must improve his excavation ability as much as possible and quickly dig to 600 kilometers underground—he doesn’t want to waste too much time at this stage.

Wang Ye thought carefully for a moment, considering that it’s unrealistic to request drill bits from the military to refer to the Kola Superdeep Borehole. Not only due to the high cost, but the metal strength of the drill bits would not be sufficient to continue deep drilling after reaching a certain depth, and the pressure at 10,000 meters is only 0.36GPa, far less than a tenth of the pressure requirement for synthesizing diamonds, let alone carbon acetylene.

So, he had to rely on himself; the best way was to directly use the system to improve his excavation ability.

"I wonder if the system can detect the Excavation Skill; if it could enhance the skill through the system, that would be great..." Wang Ye muttered softly. With his current insight and the system’s skill level boost, it was very easy to raise a non-extraordinary skill to lv5. According to his testing, it only required a day of intense training to raise to lv5. A human-limit level of excavation skill combined with his strength, and certain hardness of shovel-shaped fingernails, digging down to 10,000 meters like the Soviet Union in the last century should be no problem.

So now, the question is how to get the Excavation Skill to appear on the system panel.

Based on Wang Ye’s understanding of the system, he needed to thoroughly and proficiently master the basic actions of a skill and perform them to be detected by the system.

Wang Ye remembered that in nature, there is a creature called a mole that is very good at digging,

Although it is very small in size, it has an astonishing digging speed. Statistics show that a mole’s digging speed is about 0.55 to 0.83 meters per second, and a European mole can dig a 20-meter-long tunnel in a day. Excluding rest and feeding time, this means it digs about 6 meters of a tunnel per hour, or about 1 meter per minute, which translates to about 0.55 to 0.83 meters per second.

In emergencies, the digging speed is even faster,

which is obviously much faster compared to Wang Ye’s speed of only five meters in half an hour of full effort,

so Wang Ye plans to learn the mole’s digging techniques to see if he can input it into the system panel.

Wang Ye found some videos of moles and carefully observed their movements,

their movement in the soil was somewhat like the breaststroke,

with the front feet clawing outwards and the hind feet pushing back.

It must be said that from a god’s perspective, it did look somewhat awkward,

but Wang Ye didn’t mind,

because he knew that after improving his skill level, his movements would automatically improve according to actual conditions, just like Running. He initially used the crouch start like an ordinary athlete, but as his level improved, his starting posture became a unique self-created start. The Excavation Skill would be the same; once his level was high enough, he wouldn’t be constrained by form and could freely change movements.

Wang Ye watched while learning the motion, constantly trying to move in the pit he had dug, and after about another half an hour passed.

A new skill finally appeared on the system panel.

[Excavation lv1 (0.12%)]

"It’s done!" Wang Ye’s face beamed with joy.

For the next half day, Wang Ye kept digging and leveling up in the pit.

Until nightfall,

a soldier on patrol came across the pit.

Curiously, he shone a flashlight into it, only to discover that the pit was terrifyingly deep,

even his high-lumen flashlight couldn’t reach the bottom, and strange hissing sounds kept coming from within the pit as if something was moving inside. This reminded him of the legendary sandworms.

But as he turned to report this to his superiors, he was suddenly pulled back by someone.

He turned around to find a mud-covered person standing behind him, his face obscured by dirt, making it impossible to identify him.

The soldier was startled, but the person spoke up suddenly, "Don’t worry, I’m Wang Ye."

He wiped his face, clearing the mud, and the soldier then recognized his identity.

"Commander Wang, what are you doing?" the soldier asked cautiously.

"Digging a pit, conducting an experiment. No need to patrol this area in the future; you can notify others for me," Wang Ye said calmly.

He was addressed as ’Commander’ by the soldier because Old Yi was preparing to form a Titan Company for him, simultaneously promoting his military rank to General, which is the highest rank. This meant he was nearly the highest-ranking officer in this army unit.

However, since the Titan Company had not been formed yet, he was more of a figurehead without actual authority.

"Conducting... an experiment? Digging a pit for an experiment?" The soldier was momentarily puzzled. But he quickly realized he shouldn’t ask too many questions, so he nodded immediately, saying, "Yes, I’ll notify the others right away!"