I can upgrade the shelter

The speed at which Chen Xin and his team returned to the country was not slow. Although the Mobile Base could only travel about thirty kilometers per hour, they could still cover more than seven hundred kilometers in a day if they kept moving without stopping.

Even though the place they departed from was several thousand kilometers away from Flame Country, after traveling for over a week, the two Mobile Bases successfully entered the country through Meng Province and continued southward.

Since they had entered the country, communications were naturally restored, and the authorities promptly contacted Chen Xin and his team.

After a brief exchange, Chen Xin understood the current situation.

The train that previously sent Chen Xin and his team to Siberia took a longer route but was much faster, so it returned to the country well ahead of Chen Xin, and they had already reached their destination.

Besides that, the Boar ship also returned to the country, reported the situation to the authorities, and is currently under quarantine observation.

Another ship, the Dog, remained in the epidemic-stricken Lucia Capital, despite some crew members being infected, to avoid bringing the virus back to the country.

The authorities are currently debating whether to provide aid to Lucia.

As for the earthquake in the Southwest Region, the aftershocks have subsided, and post-disaster reconstruction efforts are underway in an orderly manner.

Although the entire Southwest Region was severely affected, with significant casualties and material losses, thrusting it into a particularly difficult phase, under the authorities’ allocation and full support, the situation has now improved to some extent.

The city where Chen Xin was previously located, the one most severely affected, has ironically been reconstructed the fastest thanks to Titan’s help.

Although other affected cities did not recover as quickly, reconstruction efforts began orderly, and the situation in the disaster areas is gradually improving.

This gave Chen Xin a great deal of relief. However, while setting aside his worries about the disaster areas, he was also concerned about what decision the authorities would ultimately make regarding Lucia.

On this matter, the authorities have not provided a response, merely instructing Chen Xin to return as soon as possible.

Regarding the two Mobile Bases, the authorities also did not offer clear instructions, only asking that they first bring Chen Xin back.

Faced with such instructions from the authorities, the captains of the two Mobile Bases and the leading military officer naturally had no intention of disobeying, driving the two Mobile Bases steadily south without stopping.

However, the authorities realized that the two Mobile Bases were running low on supplies, and specifically dispatched two helicopters to deliver the necessary materials.

"What do you think the authorities mean by this? Are they planning not to aid Lucia?" Standing in the hangar, braving the cold wind from outside and watching two helicopters land on the external helipad, Chen Xin queried the military officer beside him.

Since receiving instructions from the authorities, the officer had not let Chen Xin out of his sight, following him everywhere except when he ate or slept.

Upon hearing Chen Xin’s question, the officer thought for a moment before replying, "Perhaps the authorities have their considerations. To be honest, we don’t have much strength left to aid Lucia. It’s not pre-disaster times anymore; at most, we could send a medical team to study the virus and bring the Dog ship back. That’s about all we can do."

Chen Xin had no other opinions regarding the officer’s answer.

Indeed, as the officer said, the help Flame Country can provide to Lucia is extremely limited under the current circumstances.

The domestic materials and medical resources are tight, not to mention that, although it’s not completely impossible to squeeze anything out, sending a medical team to aid Lucia might be the most the authorities can accomplish.

Regarding the Dog ship, even though losing an ark is heartbreaking, and those compatriots trapped in Lucia infected with the epidemic also deserve rescue, if saving the Dog ship means risking bringing the epidemic into the country, Chen Xin believes the authorities would make the right decision.

It may be cruel and cold, but sometimes individuals indeed seem insignificant when the safety of the entire nation is at stake.

Of course, Chen Xin felt that things had not reached that point yet.

After all, according to the situation reported by the authorities, although there was a widespread epidemic in Lucia, the mortality rate of this epidemic was not considered high.

Even without sufficient medical treatment, the mortality rate among the infected in Lucia remained at a relatively low level, even lower than the flu.

So under relatively safe circumstances, it’s very likely the country will send a medical team to Lucia to both support Lucia and retrieve the Dog ship.

However, although the deadly virus outbreak in Lucia didn’t have a high mortality rate, that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.

Quite the opposite, for viruses, high mortality isn’t as frightening as one might imagine; the truly terrifying virus is one that possesses both high transmissibility and high lethality.

A virus with a high mortality rate can indicate that the human body, as a host, is extremely incompatible with it, leading to rapid death among the infected.

Viruses need self-replication and transmission, but if the infected die quickly, even faster than the transmission, it could result in scenarios where the epidemic hasn’t spread widely, and the infected have all died out.

In such cases, even though the infected would die quickly, causing a high mortality rate, the infection range would be relatively small.

A "perfect" virus ideally has a low mortality rate and an extremely high transmissibility, much like the flu we are familiar with, known for its high transmission rate globally every year but relatively low mortality rate, making it tough for humans to fully eradicate.

Therefore, a virus with high mortality isn’t frightening as it doesn’t have enough time to mutate and easily raises alerts, causing strong damage but limited influence.

But high transmissibility viruses are dangerous; they may spread rapidly in a short period and start mutating due to the ample infected figures.

With enough infected individuals, you can’t even fathom the number of variants a virus can mutate into.

Like during the pre-disaster pandemic, our large southern nation reported discovering 7,684 variants of the same virus in the news.

In such massive mutation scales, only heaven knows how a virus might evolve, and it wouldn’t be surprising if it mutated into a highly pathogenic, deadly, and easily transmissible supervirus, akin to winning the lottery.

For the deadly virus outbreak in Lucia, perhaps Flame Country can ignore its influence due to the great distance and cold weather, but what if a similar situation occurs domestically?

So sending a medical team to Lucia to gather experience in handling ancient virus transmissions is ultimately beneficial.