The basement stretched fifty meters down and rose nine meters high.

A. In a space that cavernous, he knew he’d have to put up some partitions if he wanted to use it efficiently.

B. “I wonder if the reinforcement function can actually create sensible walls,” Chen Yun muttered.

He placed his palm on the floor once more and summoned the system’s holographic panel.

In his mind: “Targeted reinforcement—layout reconstruction.”

He mentally tapped Reinforce.

The system displayed:

Would you like to perform a targeted reinforcement on the current shelter?

Reinforcement direction: layout reconstruction.

Points required: 300.

Materials required: design blueprint.

“It can actually rebuild the layout, but this time the reinforcement is different,” Chen whispered to himself. “The cost isn’t just points—it actually needs a blueprint, apparently a mandatory one.”

He straightened up, scanned the empty cavern again, and concluded, “Looks like I’ll have to draw a plan myself.”

After committing every detail of the empty basement to memory, Chen walked back up the stairs to the house.

Sitting on the sofa, he fell into thought.

“The whole shelter’s framework is set, except for the underground layout.

The points, 300, are well within what I can afford.

All that’s missing is a design drawing.

The problem is… I have no idea how to draw one.”

He pressed his forehead, feeling a headache creep in. “I’m just a lousy programmer—drawing blueprints is way out of my wheelhouse.”

He stayed that way for a while, then rose and headed to the desk in the corner. He grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil, then summoned his old laptop from the “space.” The battered notebook had been his companion since college, now over seven years old.

“Fine, I’ll learn as I go,” he sighed, opening the machine.

He began sketching on the paper, dividing the basement into two levels.

Upper level (the first underground floor): four zones—living, medical, storage, and work.

Lower level (the second underground floor): three zones—energy, water, and farm.

He decided to make the underground portion the core of his base. It offered far more space than the house above, and, aside from earthquakes and floods, an underground shelter is far safer against most disasters. With a looming frost apocalypse, staying below ground made perfect sense.

He then turned his attention to the house above. While preserving basic living functions, he planned to turn the old home into a fortified, siege‑proof bunker—capable of both defending and attacking if needed.

With a rough layout penciled on the page, Chen launched the drawing software on his laptop. He painstakingly traced the floor plans of both the underground chambers and the house above, line by line. Time slipped by as the sun sank toward the horizon.

After a long stretch, he hit Ctrl + S, stood up, and stretched lazily.

“Finally done!” he exclaimed.

He pulled an equally ancient printer from the “space,” printed the plans onto several sheets of A4, and stared at the crooked, ragged drawings in his hands.

“Ugh, they look terrible,” he muttered.

“Let’s see if the system will accept the blueprint,” he said, summoning the panel and attempting another Reinforce.

The system’s cold, mechanical voice replied:

Do you want to reinforce the target item—this worthless blueprint?

Points to consume: 40.

Chen felt a sting to his pride. “…Yes,” he answered.

Confirm reinforcement. Consuming survival points: 40.

The progress bar filled almost instantly. The pile of scribbled A4 sheets vanished, replaced by two massive A0 sheets.

One displayed a bird’s‑eye view of the entire yard, house, and basement. The other was a dense, detailed map of every room. The sheer amount of line work made his eyes water, but after a careful look he grasped the overall layout.

Armed with the new blueprint, Chen returned to the bottom of the basement, summoned the system, and started the reinforcement.

Confirm reinforcement. Consuming points: 300.

Consuming design blueprint × 1.

The floor trembled faintly. Within seconds, the familiar blur returned, and the vast, empty cavern dissolved.

Walls sprang up, slicing the space into compartments. The ceiling, once over nine meters high, now hovered at about five meters. Chen found himself standing on the second underground level.

He switched on his flashlight and began exploring the reconfigured base.

He was now in a main corridor nearly three meters wide. Tall, deep‑gray walls flanked either side, partitioning the lower level into several huge chambers.

Left side: three adjacent rooms of roughly equal size—according to‑scale, they were the energy zone, the water zone, and a waste zone.

Right side: a single, massive chamber—the farm zone.

At the far end of the corridor lay a dark‑gray stairwell leading upward.

Chen climbed the stairs to the first underground floor.

The upper level’s ceiling was lower, about three meters high, and similarly divided by deep‑gray walls into orderly sections.

Near the stairs was a relatively spacious area, surrounded by a collection of rooms of varying sizes:

Left side: a large storage area.

Right side: a sizable work area.

Directly opposite were three rooms—the biggest a medical bay, the two smaller ones bedrooms. All the rooms were empty, waiting to be filled.

The layout was clean and purposeful, each function clearly delineated.

Suppressing the awe that still lingered, Chen descended the stairwell back to the house above.

The old house’s overall structure hadn’t changed much, though its footprint seemed slightly larger now that the underground levels were accounted for.

Having surveyed both the subterranean and surface sections, he slumped onto the sofa.

“The framework of the whole base is finally set,” he thought. “Next up: install the power systems, water‑the‑point‑of‑use equipment, and start building the hydroponic greenhouse.”

“The hydroponic greenhouse tech is beyond me—I’ll have to research or talk to a specialist,” he muttered, already planning his next steps.

Ding— a synthetic chime rang.

Daily points settlement initiated.

Calculating…

Base points earned today: 24.

Survival assessment: Base construction – 420 points.

Settlement complete. Current survival‑point balance: 962.

“Four hundred‑twenty points—that’s a decent payout,” the cold mechanical voice faded. Chen frowned, still puzzled by the scoring system.

“If the points are tied to construction progress, they should keep climbing day by day. But if they’re based on daily output, I spent 640 points today and only got 420 back. That’s not sustainable.”

He sighed, glanced at the apocalypse countdown on the system’s display, and thought, “The end is coming faster. Time won’t wait—gotta move faster.”

Standing up, he took a deep breath, surveyed the solid gray walls surrounding him, and smiled faintly.

The prototype of his base was complete. Tonight, he would work through the night to flesh out this skeleton.