I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 152 - 150: Observation Room Upgrade

Holding the hammer taken from the workbench, Chen Xin struck the ice accumulation in the shelter repeatedly, unable to avoid feeling exhausted and panting heavily.

Supporting his waist, Chen Xin leaned against the wall inside the shelter and took a deep breath. Although the oxygen content in the shelter was always high due to the oxygen generator and the planting greenhouse, this location was practically considered as external, making him breathless and panting after the ice removal session just now.

Reaching into his pocket for an oxygen bottle, he opened the protective mask on his face, took a few breaths through his mouth and nose, and felt much better before putting the protective mask back on and straightening up.

"Whew, how long will this ice removal take?" Chen Xin couldn’t help but sigh. The ice was so thick that the small hammer in his hand couldn’t effectively break it, only knocking off some ice fragments with great effort.

This inevitably made him feel somewhat frustrated, as ice removal was not an easy task. Unlike shoveling snow with a shovel, it’s hard to clean thoroughly.

But ice, especially frozen hard ice, is very difficult to clear. In many places, if it froze over, it wouldn’t thaw until spring arrived.

However, now Chen Xin couldn’t wait for the temperature to rise and the arrival of a warm spring for the ice to melt on its own; he had to find a way to remove the ice accumulation in front of him, which was at least thirty centimeters thick.

To be honest, he had anticipated ice accumulation and knew that leaving it unattended for a few days would lead to serious issues, but he hadn’t expected it to be frozen a foot thick already.

Such thick ice accumulation would be difficult to clear even with professional ice axes and iron bars, let alone with the small iron hammer in Chen Xin’s hand.

With the hammer, he struck the ice surface a few more times, but the effect was minimal. Apart from chipping some ice fragments, there wasn’t even a crack on the ice surface.

This made Chen Xin feel discouraged, lamenting in his heart, wishing there was a method to solve the ice accumulation issue in one go, and if it could further completely resolve the ventilation issue here, that would be ideal.

But solving the problem was not that easy, Chen Xin smiled bitterly and continued hammering the ice accumulation.

While hammering, Chen Xin was also thinking about how to solve the ice accumulation problem.

The main reason for the ice accumulation was that the air blown out from the shelter’s vent contained water vapor, which quickly condensed upon encountering cold air. Before it could escape, it froze into ice and accumulated here.

This was evident as Chen Xin had been hammering the ice blocks for a while, and there was ice forming on the surface of his Protective Suit.

Brushing off the ice on the surface of his Protective Suit, Chen Xin sighed. While he understood the principle, removing the moisture from the air blown out of the vent wasn’t simply a matter of upgrading the ventilation system.

Chen Xin knew the method to remove moisture from the air, which was through air drying, but this was mainly an industrial production technique. Using it in the ventilation of the shelter was a real waste and consumed a lot of resources.

So, in Chen Xin’s view, it was sufficient if ice didn’t form within the small shelter.

To address this, improving the ventilation form at the vent or adjusting the shelter’s structure to move the vent outside could solve the issue.

However, Chen Xin was somewhat reluctant to move the vent outside because then the air blown out through the vent would be significantly warmer than the ambient temperature. Although it’s not visible to the naked eye, with an infrared telescope, the vent would be as conspicuous as a searchlight in the night.

Moreover, although the vent won’t allow people to crawl in like in Western movies, if discovered, it would still cause many issues.

Putting it inside the small shelter also had a risk of being discovered, but the danger was considerably less.

Therefore, to solve the problem, the best approach was to find a way for water vapor not to freeze into ice inside the small shelter.

Chen Xin racked his brains and suddenly struck down with his hammer, a light bulb moment flashing in his mind.

"I’m just being stupid, why not use the system upgrade to fix this!" Chen Xin slapped his forehead hard, secretly annoyed at how the days spent at Qin Lan’s place had muddled his head, forgetting he could use system upgrades to solve the problem.

Chen Xin called up the system interface, glanced at the already four-digit survival points, and felt assured.

These survival points were prepared for an overall upgrade of the shelter; some points were consumed when building the geothermal heat pump, but during these days away from home, his daily survival points gained hadn’t diminished, with almost 40 points acquired each day, enabling him to easily have the survival points needed for upgrading the small shelter.

"Simple Observation Room"

"Upgrade Option One: Increase observation room area, improve building structure, enhance concealment and breathability, improve shortwave antenna signal reception capability, upgrade requires 700 survival points"

"Upgrade Option Two: Increase observation room defense capabilities, improve building strength, enhance thermal protection performance, protect observation port, upgrade requires 1100 survival points"

Neither upgrade option was inexpensive, each focusing on different aspects. However, due to the lack of building materials and considering the existing materials were prepared for the overall upgrade of the shelter, Chen Xin didn’t adopt a method of upgrading both options.

After comparing the two options, he chose to spend 700 points to upgrade the first option—enhancing the small shelter’s concealment and ventilation properties, while also improving the signal reception ability of the shortwave antenna installed here.

Although Chen Xin also desired the second option, he decided not to overly consume survival points. After hesitating for a moment, he chose to give up the upgrade option that would evolve the small shelter into a bunker.

After the upgrade, the area of the small shelter increased slightly, displaying a circular shape, but it wasn’t expanded too much; the observation port remained unchanged.

However, the original ventilation port in the room had turned into a vent pipe buried within the wall, which would conduct ventilation through the external wall surface of the shelter.

This perfectly solved the issue of ice accumulation at the vent inside the room. Moreover, since the vent pipe ran from the outer wall of the observation room, the air expelled from the vent would reduce temperature in the pipe before being released, making it less conspicuous in infrared visibility.

After completing the upgrade, Chen Xin came out from the shelter’s main door and used the infrared vision function of his tactical goggles to observe the location of the observation room. Indeed, he could barely see the traces of air expelled from the vent.