Irrefutable Evidence
The Gu worms were obedient, burrowing into the frozen meat before they began to eat.
The frozen meat had all undergone preliminary processing. Most of the bones had been removed, and it had been cut into chunks weighing around five to ten jin each.
The spiders, centipedes, and scorpions had no trouble eating it, but the toads and snakes had a hard time.
More than twenty Toad Gu stretched out their tongues and licked the meat, but without teeth, they couldn't bite any off. The six Snake Gu had teeth, but they weren't meant for tearing meat apart. The snakes could only swallow their food whole, and they were too small to swallow the chunks.
Fortunately, Jiang Yiming had thought of that and sent Red Tail and Ghost Face to help them.
After Red Tail and Ghost Face evolved to Yellow Rank, their bodies had shrunk, but their fangs and claws had grown sharper. A casual swipe was enough to slice off a strip of meat.
The Toad Gu and Snake Gu all followed on their heels, begging for food.
As they gorged themselves, some of the Gu worms began to evolve. Soon, more and more of them were evolving in turn, with one evolving almost every moment.
Of all the Gu worms, the Snake Gu surprised Jiang Yiming the most.
Those fellows doubled in size with every level they gained.
A Venomous Snake Gu thirty or forty centimeters long reached eighty centimeters at level two, then shot past two meters at level three!
If they kept growing like that, they would burst right through the meat pile!
Jiang Yiming acted decisively, putting all six Snake Gu into the Spatial Gu Rearing Box while they were still only level three.
The Toad Gu were relatively normal. Even after reaching level five, they were only as big as a child's head.
The Scorpion Gu and Spider Gu were about the same size after reaching level five. The Centipede Gu were over fifty centimeters long at level five, but their bodies were slender, so they were about the same size as the others when coiled up.
Two hours later, aside from the six Snake Gu that had been put into the Gu Rearing Box early, all the other Gu worms had reached level five.
The meat on the twelve pallets had been eaten down to a thin layer about five centimeters thick, like a hollow box.
Under Jiang Yiming's direction, the Gu worms propped the leftover bones against the sides, keeping the meat pile from collapsing.
Once they had eaten and drunk their fill, Jiang Yiming put all the Gu worms into the Spatial Gu Rearing Box.
Then he noticed a problem: the Spatial Gu Rearing Box had a capacity of only ten cubic meters, and the more than thirteen hundred level-five Primordial Gu already occupied eighty percent of it.
I wonder if I can make my Gu Rearing Box bigger... he thought.
[The Spatial Gu Rearing Box can only be upgraded with gold.]
The system provided a prompt.
"How much gold does it need?"
[1,000 grams.]
Jiang Yiming hesitated for a moment, but decided to upgrade it.
After deducting 1,000 grams of gold, his balance was down to just 300 grams...
Once the Gu Rearing Box was upgraded, its capacity increased severalfold, expanding directly from 10 cubic meters to 50 cubic meters.
The upgrade was fairly cost-effective.
"It took sixteen or seventeen tons of meat to raise more than thirteen hundred Primordial Gu to level five. Each one needs about thirty jin of meat on average to go from level one to level five."
"If I bought all that meat myself, it would cost at least two hundred thousand!"
"Rearing Gu really burns through money. The few hundred thousand left in my bank account doesn't look like it'll last long either..."
It suddenly struck him that rearing Gu was a road of no return. No matter how much money he had, it always seemed like it wouldn't be enough...
While he was reflecting on this, the food inspection people came again.
Big Beard was leading them again this time.
He was known for being impartial and handling matters by the book, but today he had encountered something strange.
The pork samples taken from the factory for testing had already shown excessive levels of virus in the first test, but just as they were preparing to run a second test to confirm it, the samples had somehow gone missing!
That had forced him to come back and take more samples.
When he arrived at the warehouse, Fatty Hu and Third Uncle came up to greet him together.
"You're here! The tests didn't find anything wrong with our pork, did they?" Third Uncle asked with a smile. He had just received a phone call and was now brimming with confidence.
Big Beard, a middle-aged man, glanced at him. "The tests showed it's very likely meat from pigs that died of disease. I'm here to take another sample back for confirmation."
"Please, go ahead." Third Uncle extended an arm in invitation.
Before taking the sample, Big Beard keenly noticed signs that the pallets had been moved. He turned sharply to the two men who had been standing guard. "Have you been here the whole time?"
"Yes," one of them hurriedly replied.
"Then you should have seen something unusual, right?" Big Beard pressed.
"No!"
At that, Big Beard immediately pulled out his phone, opened the photo gallery, and began making a careful comparison. Within moments, he had spotted more than a dozen discrepancies. There was an eighty percent chance someone had tampered with this batch of meat!
"I'll ask you again. Did either of you leave at any point?!"
"Well... we only went out for lunch at noon. We came right back." The other guard didn't dare lie.
Big Beard knew something was wrong. Instead of rushing to take a sample, he turned to Third Uncle. "Your warehouse should have surveillance cameras, right?"
"It does, but... they broke down a month ago." Third Uncle had long since prepared his answer.
Big Beard fell silent. With the other side refusing to cooperate, there really was nothing he could do with the photos alone. Left with no choice, he could only take a sample from the meat now before him.
After he finished, Third Uncle saw him out with a smile on his face, looking distinctly smug.
Big Beard took a couple of steps, then angrily scolded the two subordinates who had messed things up. "If this happens again, you're not allowed to go off and eat without my orders! Do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir." The two subordinates seemed to have realized something too. They lowered their heads and didn't dare say another word.
"Sigh... there's probably nothing we can do this time." Big Beard was a little disheartened as well, and he left with his men.
As they passed the office building, he suddenly heard music blaring from a subwoofer, as if it were drawing them over!
After a moment's hesitation, Big Beard led his men into the office building.
Following the sound, they soon came to the office right beside the road. Its furnishings were simple: just two desks and a water dispenser.
The sound was coming from the computer on one of the desks.
The computer had its back to the door. Big Beard walked over to take a look, and the dejection gradually disappeared from his face, replaced by excitement!
The others hurried over to look. Although the computer was playing music, the screen wasn't showing music software. It was playing a video!
It was the very video Jiang Yiming had recorded!
He couldn't show himself, so he had taken the opportunity to slip into the office by the road and put the video on the computer, then used the music to attract Big Beard.
When Big Beard saw the video, he immediately had someone make a backup.
They turned off the music and listened to the video's original audio again. Third Uncle's conversation with the driver came through loud and clear!
It was obvious from what they said that Third Uncle had bribed someone in the inspection department.
"Hmph! With this video, I'm not only going to shut down this illegal factory, I'm also going to report to the higher-ups and root out the corrupt elements among us!" Big Beard said firmly.
The two comrades who had been assigned to guard the warehouse were dumbfounded.
One of them desperately explained, "We really didn't know at first. That man Hu invited us out to eat, and it turned out he did it so they could pull this off!"
The other man explained as well, "If we'd known that, we wouldn't have gone to that meal even if you'd beaten us to death!"
Big Beard thought for a moment. "Whether you were tricked or took benefits from them and deliberately cooperated, I'll investigate and get to the bottom of it later. The most important thing now is to get the police to seal off this factory first, then find the scum in the food inspection department!"