Chapter 149 The Moon-Earth Rift Begins_1

Over the past decade, Moon Base has selected countless excellent talents from Earth. The Moon, with its safer environment and brighter development prospects compared to Earth, has naturally drawn the attention of innumerable people.

Now, the Moon's population has exceeded forty million, and it has become a superpower.

The talent assessment at Moon Base is quite strict; it is relatively difficult for ordinary people without a particular skill to enter the Moon. Although there is an opportunity, their path is undoubtedly more tortuous.

The Underground Cities naturally restrict their top talents from going to the Moon, but they don't limit mid-to-high level talents too much. With a wealth of talent resources, Moon Base has entered the fast lane of rapid development.

The Moon has completely surpassed Earth in many technological fields and has made significant breakthroughs at the forefront of space exploration.

The latest space battleship on the Moon is the Second-and-Half Generation Battleship, which was overseen by Feng Zi during construction. It left many module interfaces in various aspects, and nobody knew their use.

In terms of weaponry, in line with Lin Sen's wishes, the main guns of the second generation "Divine Bow" class were replaced with kinetic weapons and renamed the "Authority" class. The battleship's maximum speed was set to one thousandth of the speed of light.

Since the battleship's combat concept was close-range combat, there were significant changes in the internal structure and appearance of the ship, which became noticeably longer, and the "disc" was greatly reduced in size.

This class of battleship no longer fully considered stealth attributes; close-range combat only required relative concealment. The battleship's sides were also fitted with backpack-style "big pots" and "big planks," the internal industrial compartments were completely removed, and the resource reserves and ecosystem were drastically streamlined.

The battleship's keel and hull were also significantly reinforced, taking into account watertight compartment design. This not only provided a safer combat environment for the crew but also ensured the battleship's survival capabilities in close-range combat.

The achievements of humanity now basically approach the level of around 100 years into the Crisis Era as described in the original work. In the original work, at Crisis 80 years, humanity emerged from its great depression; at Crisis 130 years, the Three Great Space Fleets began to gradually evolve into independent nations.

It's been about 25 years since humans achieved success with third-generation controlled nuclear fusion, and 15 years since the first experimental Particle Accelerator Spaceship headed towards the Kuiper Belt. Technological development on the Moon has not been interrupted.

Human science and technology have continued to develop rapidly over the past two decades, mainly thanks to the push from quantum computers.

Quantum computers are technology gifted by the Trisolarans. The biggest limitation in modern technological development is computing power—complex chemical reactions, material structure analysis, artificial intelligence… they all require powerful computational capabilities.

Most crucially, there's been a shift in mindset; no longer do people see Trisolarans as invincible adversaries, as evidenced by the average speed of Trisolaran battleships being only 1% of the speed of light.

Moon Base's "Authority" class battleships now possess real space combat capabilities and are being constructed in batches. The flagship "Authority," two years ago, was delivered to the Moon's Space Force, with the battleship placing great emphasis on artificial intelligence automated control.

Other ships of the same class, "Imperial Power," "Maritime Power," and "Domestic Power," will soon also be delivered to the Moon's Space Force. This year, the construction of "Defend Power," "Guard Power," "Imperial Power," and "Boundary Power" is anticipated to begin.

"Command and control over the vast lands, Defend, Guard, Rule, and Expand."

The future will continue with constructions like "Stabilize All Directions, Eternally Govern with Lasting Peace…".

The names of the battleships are all in Chinese, as the majority on the Moon now are from Country C and the third world, with Country C's cultural influence being significant. Many places directly use Chinese. The third world can also translate the names into their own languages, but they usually directly use transliteration of the Chinese characters.

The rapid construction of battleships is also thanks to some Underground Cities on Earth recovering their industrial capabilities, providing the Moon with a large number of building materials and components.

Moon Base has started to place wide-ranging orders with Underground Cities that have restored industrial capabilities, on the one hand to repay past debts for food, and on the other hand because the Underground Cities need to exchange for the Moon's helium-3 resources.

However, the exorbitant exchange rates are daunting, and the allocated quotas are pitifully small. PDC's repeated negotiations with Moon Base's leader Feng Zi have failed to break through.

Feng Zi has steadfastly followed the instructions given by Lin Sen before he entered hibernation, and has not given an inch. This has allowed Feng Zi to fully master every aspect of Moon Base over nearly a decade.

With the current helium-3 allocation from the Moon, even if all is used for food production, it would only be marginally better than during the period of natural disasters.

It was then that the Underground Cities and PDC on Earth realized that humanity's neck was being squeezed by Moon Base; helium-3 is the core industrial resource for the Underground Cities.

Although the situation of resource scarcity for humanity has slightly improved, the status quo has not changed, and the anticipated society without hunger is still far from realization.

People once again endured the cruelty of being given hope only to have it extinguished. Those at the bottom of the well climbed to the edge again, took a glimpse, and once again fell back down.

The rift between the Moon and Earth had begun…

PDC and the Underground Cities negotiated to exert pressure on the Moon, but they frustratingly discovered that they could hardly impose effective sanctions on Moon Base.

In the economic sphere, the current currency system has completely changed. The entire world primarily settles international trades in Moon currency now, and Moon currency is essentially a food-based currency.

At first, no one paid attention to this currency. Everyone believed that once the Underground City industry recovered, this food-based currency would phase out of history.

However, it's the Moon Base that has restricted the supply of helium-3, resulting in the food currency remaining robust.

Only the Moon Base can sanction the Underground Cities, while the Underground Cities have no effective economic countermeasures against the Moon Base.

In military aspects, it's not that Earth lacks arms or that its armies aren't strong enough. During the Crisis Era, military talent was cultivated with no effort spared, and one could say the current army is the strongest in history.

But the construction of Space Navy Harbors had stagnated a decade ago, and the design and construction of Space Battleships had almost come to a halt.

By contrast, the Moon Base has been mass-producing space battleships with actual combat capabilities in the Space Navy Harbors on the far side of the Moon. Even though the Moon Base is trying hard to conceal this news, PDC's intelligence capability still managed to capture this development.

The construction of Space Battleships is an incredibly huge project, involving directly tens of thousands of personnel and even more throughout the entire industry chain, amounting to millions.

With such a large scale, it becomes extremely difficult to keep the operations a secret, but crucial data like battle performance and weapons specifications must remain strictly confidential.

Currently, Earth possesses no capability for space warfare; militarily, the Moon Base holds an overwhelming advantage. Although Earth has powerful forces, they cannot be projected into the space battlefield.

The Moon's Space Battleships have now become a deterrent for the Moon against Earth. The Moon Base and Earth continue to maintain peace.

Each Underground City has survived numerous hardships and after 10 years of development, they have become virtually isolated from each other.

The Underground Cities have essentially become isolated informational islands, unable to unite, and even their social structures differ.

This is why, despite knowing that the Moon is exploiting them, they still need to maintain peace with the Moon.

Space Battleships cannot be built by a few Underground Cities combining their efforts. But with the current societal development, such a union is pure wishful thinking.

At this point, the Moon Base acted again, mandating all Underground Cities to produce various products according to the Moon Base's requirements. This has become a new economic cooperation model.

In this model, Underground Cities act as producers, while the Moon Base serves as the allocator of resources and technology.

To obtain more helium-3 resources, the Underground Cities need to continuously research and innovate in their respective fields of expertise.

Once an Underground City makes a significant breakthrough in a certain product, this technology is shared with the Moon Base, which then allocates more helium-3 resources to that Underground City.

This redistribution of resources is not only a reward for technological innovation but also an incentive for other Underground Cities.

As resources dwindle, other Underground Cities must work even harder to research and produce in order to maintain their economies. Consequently, technological exchanges between Underground Cities decrease, and others become threats.

Overall, this production model and technology-sharing mechanism oriented towards the Moon's needs has allowed the Moon to develop more rapidly and has also intensified the competition among Underground Cities.

Helium-3 is indeed crucial for the future development of Underground Cities and does hold immense advantages. However, it is not irreplaceable; it's just incredibly difficult.

A few tens of liters of helium-3 can supply an Underground City with energy for one year.

But using fossil fuels, to begin with, is extremely bulky; transportation alone is tremendously difficult unless an Underground City is located near such resource mines.

Regardless, everyone understands that once the Moon and Earth break out in open hostility, and Earth regains its strength, that will be Earth's time to demand justice.

The idea that the Moon Base could permanently blockade Earth in terms of resources and technology is impossible—there are innumerable ways for humankind to break through.

Without helium-3 as a controlled fusion fuel, we could still utilize first or second-generation controlled nuclear fusion. Even without fusion fuel, Earth has an abundance of fission materials and fossil fuels.

In short, there are more solutions than problems. Breaking out of established thought patterns to find new and more effective pathways is the consensus of all Underground Cities.