On the Tip of This Chapter's Tongue, Goes Great with Rice

On the Tip of This Chapter's Tongue, Goes Great with Rice

After capturing Dubrak, Kunto, and their band of smugglers, everything settled down again over the next week or so, and the colony continued to develop steadily.

The number of mining stations built around the gas giant had increased to four, providing the mothership with large quantities of helium-3 fuel for its fusion reactors. However, the mothership only carried four modular mining stations. Any new ones would have to be built from scratch. Fortunately, the system was not short on metal resources. Several metallic asteroids had already been captured by the mothership for dismantling and refining.

Moreover, of the nine moons orbiting the gas giant, which was also called Endor, three were rich in various metal ores. The Engineering Department was now working overtime to build an interstellar mining site on one of those moons, supplying raw materials for construction in space.

The same was true for the ground colony. The colony on Dawn Star had now completed 1,000 modular two-story residential buildings. Its population had grown to over 1,700, while the entire colony could accommodate 10,000 residents.

Daphne Clement of the Administrative Department kept selecting suitable residents to awaken and send down to Dawn Star to join the construction efforts. Incidentally, Graham was no longer a village chief. Just yesterday, he had been promoted to town mayor.

The biggest problems now were, first, the pressure on jobs caused by rapid population growth, and second, the shortage of transport ships traveling between the mothership and Dawn Star. The mothership had only five small transport ships in total, each able to carry only 100 passengers or 50 tons of cargo at a time, nowhere near enough to meet demand.

Furthermore, these transport ships were around thirty meters long and classified at the level of light frigates, meaning they could not be built on the mothership's internal production lines. To build more transport ships, they had to construct a small Space Shipyard. Construction had already begun, but even with the modular materials carried by the mothership, a structure of this scale would still take another week to complete.

Worse still, one of the transport ships had apparently retained some malfunctions from the mothership's earlier transit. Under such intensive use, it had simply gone on strike...

All of this left Tang Xiao overwhelmed. When the colony had just begun construction, there had not been many problems. But as its scale kept growing, so did the issues. These past few days, he had not had the time to think about anything related to the plot of "Star Wars." He had spent all his time traveling back and forth between Dawn Star and the mothership, making one decision after another.

Still, the benefits of doing so were obvious. His mind had originally been filled with all kinds of knowledge, and after putting it to use during this period, much of it had been unlocked. Many tasks had become second nature to him.

If, a little over a week ago, before his transit, when he had merely been an ordinary college graduate, someone had told him he could manage a growing interstellar colony like this, Tang Xiao would have assumed they were describing the plot of a science fiction novel.

But now that things had developed to this point... Had I transmigrated into a science fiction novel? Tang Xiao looked up at the sky, wondering whether he could see the author's incomparably handsome face.

In any case, under Tang Xiao's leadership, the colony continued developing in an orderly fashion. They formed hunting parties, allowing the Marines to accumulate real combat experience while also supplementing the colony's meat supply...

They searched for mines on Dawn Star, extracting limestone, coal, and metal ores...

They opened up farms and fruit fields to cultivate native plants, while also building enclosed hydroponic farms to grow crops brought from the mothership, such as rice, wheat, and corn.

They built steel mills, cement plants, sewage treatment plants, power stations, and factories for metal refining, component processing, and more.

They also constructed roads and ground spaceports, laid pipelines and fiber-optic cables.

And then there was the most difficult step—waste disposal. On this pristine planet, how to discharge and plan for industrial waste, wastewater, and domestic sewage was an extremely difficult issue.

The biggest problem was that 95% of Dawn Star Planet's surface was land, meaning most of its water was underground. This made sewage disposal exceptionally difficult. The modular wastewater treatment plants carried by the mothership had limited capacity. The problem now was that they needed to build more and larger wastewater treatment plants...

Furthermore, Tang Xiao had begun to feel an inexplicable attachment to this planet. After all, when he awakened the Force, he had been breathing this air and feeling nature itself. He did not want to destroy the beauty here. It had even become a kind of bond.

So, during one inspection of the colony, when he saw residents building sewage pipes, Tang Xiao suddenly had an inspiration. After returning to the mothership, he began earnestly discussing a very serious matter with Daphne Clement: he intended to build a giant Shit Collector on the mountain beside the colony, gather all the sewage and fecal waste in it, then build a dam to generate electricity with the waste.

His idea was not entirely without basis, because he had done exactly that in a game before. He figured that since even spaceships from games could be brought into reality, a Shit Collector that worked in a game ought to be possible too.

However, Clement was immediately terrified. She desperately suppressed the urge to drag Tang Xiao off for a brain examination and seriously informed her administrator that this was impossible in reality. The energy spent pumping fecal waste up a mountain would already far exceed the electricity it generated. Besides, the pressure of the waste would not be enough to drive the dam's turbines, and its excessive impurities would easily clog everything.

After all, who knew whether someone might be constipated, right?

They also had to consider the seasons. What if the fecal waste in the Shit Collector froze in winter? Then they would need a heating system too, wouldn't they? All of that cost money!

To make her argument more persuasive, Clement even dragged over Guan Yan, an energy specialist who had been in the middle of eating. Guan Yan was innocent. Although she immediately vomited up the lunch she had just eaten upon hearing the topic, she still did her best to help Clement persuade Tang Xiao.

Seeing that this route would not work, Tang Xiao, who had already entered a rather deranged state, asked them how many water purification plants would be needed to repeatedly purify fecal waste into drinking water.

Clement and the others were stunned by Tang Xiao's wild imagination. They brought in Qu Xuewen and Feng Yongwang as well, and several experts jointly spent a long time earnestly persuading him. Only then did Tang Xiao abandon the idea of generating electricity from fecal waste and recycling it, finally avoiding going further and further down the road to getting himself shot.

This stinky topic still needed a conclusion, so they continued discussing it for half the day. In the end, they concluded that a giant Shit Collector really could be built. It was essentially a massive sewage treatment center. Though it would cost a bit more, it really did seem capable of solving the waste disposal problem on a planet where most water was underground.

Of course, the Shit Collector could not be built on a mountain. Otherwise, if the dam burst, that would be quite something—an entire city flooded with fecal waste.

Tang Xiao immediately made the decision. From now on, every city would have to build a Central Excrement Collector! Once treated, all that collected fecal waste could be used for fertilization, and when necessary, it could even help maintain public order, couldn't it?

In the end, they decided to establish the Public Health Department to handle this matter. When he made that decision, Tang Xiao had no idea that he had personally created the most terrifying department in the history of the Milky Way Galaxy.

However, Tang Xiao soon moved on from that stinky topic. At the moment, he was contentedly stirring a bowl of mushy chocolate with a spoon, occasionally taking a bite, while discussing a very important matter with a newly awakened Elite Class sociologist.

There were not really any snacks on the mothership, so Tang Xiao could only satisfy his cravings with this kind of semi-finished food.

"Administrator, what we must consider now is the cohesion of the colony. At present, our scale is still small, and everyone revolves around you. That is very good. But if we continue developing, that will be far from enough. Please take a look at this proposal of mine..." The sociologist named Norris Barry spoke earnestly to Tang Xiao.

At that moment, Guan Yan passed by carrying a boxed meal. Seeing Tang Xiao, she casually said, "Oh, you're here, Administrator. By the way, the analysis of the infrared laser weapon has gone very smoothly. It should be completed ahead of schedule. We'll conduct the first weapons test this afternoon. Are you going?"

"Ah, no problem. I'll go this afternoon." Tang Xiao replied. The initial analysis of the infrared laser weapon had been completed in just over a week, and he felt he should praise her a little. But he suddenly got stuck, not knowing what to say, so he picked up the mushy chocolate in his hand and asked Guan Yan, "Want some?"

Seeing the bowl of sticky brown substance that Tang Xiao had stirred into a spiral, Guan Yan's face darkened as she hurriedly refused. "Uh, no. I don't really have much of an appetite..."

"Ah, what a pity. It's pretty good." Tang Xiao shook his head regretfully, stirred the bowl again, then scooped out a huge sticky spoonful and smacked his lips as he ate it.

Guan Yan's face went from dark to green. She abandoned the boxed meal in her hand, covered her mouth, and turned to run away.

Bonus chapter images 1 and 2: various Shit Collectors.

A video by Bilibili creator Yuanmeng Qingyan. Everyone can go check it out...