Chapter 1367: The Essence to Upgrade
The meeting on the 'Project Nüwa' lasted for a few days and the professionalism displayed by the participants left Roland gasping in amazement. What made him even more surprised was their abundance of energy.
The entire meeting consisted of disputes and debates that went on in unbroken succession from nine in the morning till seven at night. When they encountered issues that were difficult to come to a decision, it was not rare for the debates to last till midnight. Although the participants were dressed to the nines, none of these professionals relented when it came to a technicalities. The intensity of the arguments were in no way less than outright war. They were not limited to only the middle-aged backbones of their respective industries, but even the white-haired seniors acted in the same manner.
An average person that hit such an age would usually be inarticulate and have slower train of thoughts, but aside from their looks, none of these common factors were present in them. Their voices were loud and clear, their eyes bright and full of expression. They were still capable of suppressing their successors in debates. This scene convinced Roland that the brain was truly an organ that developed the more one used it.
In the Dream World, he was able to rely on the Awakened ability to maintain his heightened concentration, but after waking up in reality, he would feel the exhaustion clearly. To accommodate the content of the meeting, he had no choice but to increase the hours of sleep and use the time in reality to replenish his energy.
Of course, the atmosphere within the projects department did not kick start from the get go. In the beginning, no one showed much interest, and the majority of disagreements were concentrated on Roland's 'plans.'
For example, the idea that after the destruction of the world, the humans killed by the Fallen Evils would turn into another 'competitor', as well as the mutation of the pure Force of Nature and Blackfire that went against science... Although no one publicly called into question Roland's words seeing that the Martialist Association and the government were in spearheading the entire project, signs of disagreements and conflict appeared, either through their silence or on the pretense that it was 'for the job'. Roland knew that their mentality and the process of repeated questions and beating about the bush led to nowhere.
If not for Roland's signals towards Ling, the Taquila Witches might had taken action.
Only until they reached the conclusion at the end of the first night did the conflicting views of both parties reach its peak.
A chief master in mechanics stood up and spoke bluntly that regardless of how much they discussed, it was useless if no one remembered the content. Just a single day worth of decisions required the Martial Artists a few weeks to digest; thus, they decided to end the meeting earlier. Roland clearly remembered that Scroll, having maintained her silence for the entire day, had suddenly slammed the table with her hand.
The meeting room immediately became her stage.
Scroll not only listed the content discussed in the meet, but even the questions and doubts raised by every single individual, and all the valuable contributions made on each topic from the beginning to end—everything were listed out to the smallest detail. Her fascinating memory shocked everyone present, leaving even the chief master that challenged Roland speechless. At that moment, it was as though all the professionals had turned into students, and Scroll was the only teacher.
It was most probably her verification regarding the unlimited possibilities existed within the Force of Nature—that not only could limbs be strengthened, or have the intellect of engineering elites heightened—along with her outstanding temperament and features which resulted in the reversal of the subsequent situation.
In the following days, despite arguments still happening, the focus shifted from the setup to 'Project Nüwa'.
Not only that, under the situation where money and manpower were no longer an issue, any 'contentions' were immediately conveyed to the research and development team, where experiments were immediately carried out to test on their feasibility.
To Roland, it was no doubt the best days in which he reaped the most in the Dream World.
Under the suggestion of President Wu, their focus on improvements moved onto instruments.
In his words: "We clearly have cutting-edge technology and high quality materials, but our usage of such simple and crude machines and instruments is truly a waste. Even if we lack electric control technology, we can use machines to automate and regulate precise control. If you had raised it up earlier, we would have stopped accepting such defective products."
Roland did not know whether to laugh or cry to this. The 'defective products' mentioned by the President were the best designs he had spent his lifetime working on. But Roland completely agreed with the President's assessment.
Before the proliferation of electronic technology, pure machinery and equipment had once developed to what could be deemed 'a work of art.' Examples included the mechanical calculator, as well as its subsequent development which eventually ended as the theoretical difference engine. Anyone who laid their eyes on the overlapping gears and interconnected screws would feel a sense of pure beauty. However, the advancements of electronic technology in history was simply a powerful current that instantly swept all of these large and complicated machines into the gutters of history. Even if he flipped through textbooks, it was impossible for him to find any design information on the corresponding equipment.
With a specialized team to improve the tools he had and reproduce all the technological materials that had long disappeared, he naturally couldn't wish for more.
The improvement of the tools brought about an increase in production efficiency and decrease in manpower demands, signifying that Neverwinter would be able to use the same number of people to accomplish even more work. This was extremely significant for his Kingdom that had limited manpower.
Aside from producing machines, the new Design Bureau supplied many things that included simpler calculators, typewriters, automatic printing press, etc... All these did not require electronic components and only required a few units to greatly enhance the rate of administrative work.
These details constituted the foundations of 'Project Nüwa.'
Building on top of this establishment, the content expanded tremendously.
The majority of the professionals acknowledged that strengthening themselves to protect the human race from extinction was the main priority. They required the ability to resist the Fallen Evil's power of degeneration before having the capacity to develop the next step, which was mainly focused on weapons.
After considering the conditions laid out by Roland, none of the participants produced any proposals that had an answer to everything. Instead, they divided the proposal into three steps—quarterly plans, yearly plans, and five-year plans.
The past wars in the Dream World provided optimal answers for certain problems, but the targeted approach in terms of the number of 'survivors' made it difficult to establish a concrete industry system. With historical numbers no longer practical, the specialists leaned towards focusing on fighting the enemies and developed further into the specific projects targeting this goal. This was also their original intention—to be able to bring about a metamorphic change in humanity's ability to battle within three to twelve months.
The very first thing mentioned, something which was also the easiest at enhancing, involved the various high-energy explosives and propellants.
This was coincidentally Neverwinter's largest shortcoming.
Reproducing nitro-explosives could be learned from chemistry books, but simple explosives such as TNT and RDX had very few references, much less to say the composition of modern gunpowder. But with the government spearheading the project, this gap had finally been filled.