At this stage, the total population under Tom’s command had already reached over 1,900 people.
These more than 1,900 people were currently dispersed across the four bases, dozens of factories, and facilities owned by Tom, working tirelessly day and night, vigorously promoting the continuous advancement of Tom’s overall technological level.
But this many people were still too few.
Tom then steeled his heart and directly invested a large amount of resources into this brand new Clone cultivation factory, spending several months to finally complete its construction.
At this moment, the factory, also located in a fully enclosed plant within a canyon, had been completed.
It had a height of five floors; the first floor was for equipment and operations, while the other four floors were all cultivation tank workshops.
Each floor housed 500 cultivation tanks, making a total of 2,000 cultivation tanks across four floors.
At this stage, Tom had fewer than 2,000 people under his command, but now, this Clone factory could cultivate 2,000 Clones every six months, directly doubling the manpower under Tom!
With a heart full of anticipation, a Clone, under Tom’s control, arrived at the cultivation factory.
What greeted his eyes was a hall with an almost pure white, cool tone. Inside the hall, machine after machine and piece of equipment were continuously supplying the necessary electricity and nutrients to the cultivation tanks.
A faint scent of disinfectant permeated the air in the hall; everywhere was spotless and extremely clean.
This Clone brought a small box. When opened, it contained exactly 2,000 small glass tubes.
Each glass tube contained an embryonic cell that had been processed by the highly advanced cell induction and gene editing equipment on the Shenkong (Deep Space) Spaceship.
This was a delicate task. For these 2,000 embryonic cells, Tom had to reassign ten Clones to the Spaceship to prepare the embryonic cells before the Clone factory was completed.
Now, these embryonic cells were placed one by one into the 2,000 cultivation tanks.
Half a year quietly passed. At a certain point, the Clones emptied the nutrient solution from the cultivation tanks and moved the newly born Clones one by one into the resting room.
New nutrient solution was then poured into the cultivation tanks, and embryonic cells were also placed inside, beginning a new round of growth and development.
At this moment, Tom’s attention was not on those cultivation tanks, but mostly projected onto these newly born Clones.
The first Clone opened his eyes. Then the second, the third...
Until all 2,000 Clones in the resting hall had opened their eyes.
Tom’s consciousness instantly extended. The next moment, he suddenly felt his consciousness "expand" greatly again, gaining higher information processing, memory, and learning abilities, as well as other brain-related capabilities.
Furthermore, some problems that had accumulated through the labor of the Clones before, which he hadn’t had time to process or think about, were instantly resolved at this moment with the addition of 2,000 new brains!
For example, the planning blueprints for the heat-resistant steel mill Tom intended to build, the railway line planning schemes for the two newly added bases, the construction plans for new types of cranes, and so on. New ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄhapters are published on novel·fire.net
Of course, the problems that can be solved by adding brains are only about "quantity," not "quality."
Just like the planning blueprints for the steel mill, given enough time, the existing Clones could also produce them. The addition of new brains at this moment only increased speed and shortened time.
Some problems that cannot be solved with the current level of technology cannot be solved even with 2,000 more brains.
But even so, this was satisfactory enough for Tom.
Don’t forget, with 2,000 more brains, his learning and research capabilities also increased by the equivalent of 2,000 brains.
When encountering unmastered technologies and knowledge, he could learn them and research them himself.
With so many brains, what knowledge couldn’t be learned?
But at the same time, these 2,000 newly added brains also gave Tom a feeling he had never experienced before.
It was like an empty vehicle suddenly having a heavy steel plate placed on it, immediately feeling the weight.
And a vehicle’s carrying capacity is limited.
Carefully experiencing this feeling, a realization dawned on Tom.
"Although I don’t know where this ability of mine comes from or what principle it’s based on, for now, it seems that the number of brains my consciousness can connect to simultaneously is limited, unlike what I previously thought, that there was no upper limit.
This can perhaps be considered a limited ’consciousness capacity.’"
He hadn’t felt it before, perhaps because the number of Clones under his command was too small, and the number of connections was too few.
It was like a car only carrying a little cotton, completely feeling no weight.
But at this moment, with 2,000 brains suddenly connected, it was like a steel plate suddenly being placed in the car’s bed, and this upper limit could be felt.
However, at this moment, Tom could only vaguely sense that this upper limit existed, but he couldn’t yet determine what the specific limit was.
It seemed that he was still far from the upper limit at this moment.
"Since that’s the case, I’ll ignore it for now."
Tom made up his mind: "I’ll deal with it when I feel the capacity limit. By then, I might have enough population and technology to find a way to increase the capacity."
Temporarily putting this problem aside, Tom controlled these 2,000 newly added Clones to leave the cultivation center.
Next to it, dormitories prepared for them had already been built in advance. Not only that, but food, water, daily necessities, clothing, spacesuits, etc., had also been prepared in 2,000 sets in advance.
Even 2,000 new job positions were prepared.
After a short day of adaptive training, these 2,000 Clones immediately began working.
Time flew by, and the Loshen Star base developed rapidly.
In just four years, the scale of the Loshen Star base had expanded more than tenfold.
On Loshen Star, the total length of railway lines laid by Tom soared to over 2,000 kilometers, connecting a total of over 200 sub-bases and mining centers.
Every day, hundreds of heavy-duty trains sped across the cold, desolate land of Loshen Star, transporting tens of thousands of tons of various minerals into this canyon.
In the industrial base, Tom built 10 steel mills alone, and the daily steel output surged to over 20,000 tons.
In addition, the numbers of various machinery factories, foundries, chemical plants, agricultural bases, etc., also surged.
The total population under his command also broke the 20,000 mark for the first time, reaching 20,156 Clones!
But at this very moment, Tom finally clearly felt where his consciousness capacity limit was.
He estimated that with at most another thousand brains connected, his consciousness capacity would be full, and he would no longer be able to connect new Clones.