Extend the Stationing Period

Chapter 1.22: Extending the Stationing Period

When the Pandora Era began, life on Earth started to revel, while Human Civilization steadily declined.

Radio communications had stopped working, and traditional cables, telegraphs, and railways were repeatedly damaged. For the first few centuries, cities relied on jeeps to communicate with one another. But cars required a complete industrial system to keep them running.

Once cars could no longer be maintained with industrial products, fifty years later, the cities could only rely on pack animals called "Dragon Horses"—huge beasts with horse and cattle genes—to transport supplies and information.

And because each city was cut off from the others in terms of production and communication, none could sustain an advanced education system.

Over the past century, cities had regressed from nine years of compulsory education to three years of basic literacy education, and finally to just one year. As a result, they had all settled into a technological landscape resembling the Black Iron Steam Age.

In fact, mass education wasn't entirely impossible at this level of productivity. At least before the 1970s and 1980s, universal literacy had been imposed by force, even though much of the rural East Asia Continent still relied on oxen for plowing. But the defeatism brought on by humanity's decline in the Pandora Era had robbed people of the will to advance. And without that will, no one made an effort.

Universal education! It was a policy in which society's upper classes invested in those below them. If social development were driven by self-interest, such a policy could never be sustained.

In a capitalist society, the voices calling for education funding in parliament were clearly at a disadvantage. Wasn't there a huge crowd lobbying for military spending and the economy of the capital markets? Besides, the parliamentary lords hadn't been educated in public schools themselves, and cutting public education funding would only help entrench the class system.

Meanwhile, among the groups currently entitled to compulsory education, young people overestimated their role in society. They would call for environmental protection, social equality, and freedom—but never for more homework.

So how had nine years of compulsory education, at the beginning of the Pandora Era, gradually turned into this?

After every effort to stop the Pandora Field from eroding Human Civilization had failed, the remnants of humanity began to grow accustomed to scraping by. The first generation of scholars focused more on how to keep their own teams going than on listening to people prattle about preserving the flame of civilization and restoring its former glory. As a result, the allocation of social status inadvertently neglected teaching and educating the next generation.

When the first generation of intellectuals passed from the scene, the second generation had no desire to accept assignments that meant "teaching day in and day out for ten years." Faced with a shortage of manpower, the ruling class reduced compulsory education to six years. At that point, some "Clear-sighted ones" began to appear. They believed that the current level of production didn't require so much knowledge; basic literacy was enough. For instance, you didn't need to understand complicated math and science to buy vegetables on the street. What use was all that stuff?

But society loosening its standards in education didn't mean that everyone would loosen theirs and compete fairly. There would never be a shortage of people striving for a higher place in the social hierarchy. After the second generation of intellectuals in the Pandora Era implemented six years of compulsory education, society became stratified in all but name.

Social management required charts and categories, so that statistics could quickly identify where resources were most lacking and direct support there.

In Industrial Technology, maintaining a steam engine and dissecting and connecting biological structures both required an understanding of Solid Geometry. High-tech jobs all required knowledge imparted through systematic education.

When these problems arose, did the Human City-States in each region try to make up for the shortcomings? No. They didn't. The Way of Man was to take from the needy to serve the wealthy, and everything only accelerated the process!

When the educated class overlapped with the upper class, the already aristocratic elite were even less inclined to help with basic education—work that was arduous, brought little fame or fortune, and betrayed their own class.

Thus, eighty years into the Pandora Era, almost every city-state had decisively abandoned the large-scale education system of the old Civilization Era.

That was how civilization worked. Once it abandoned progress, it fell back sharply. And it wasn't just the city-state economies of the Pandora Era. Even on Earth in the 21st Century, the most advanced countries of the time had made the same mistake with education. Once they had set the trend, the rest followed like dominoes.

Even when some politicians in this decline wanted to reverse course, their decisions were bound hand and foot, then plastered over.

Shackle 1: "On the surface: academic freedom in schools. Behind the scenes: the government funds the education sector but doesn't oversee it."

Shackle 2: "Every teacher speaks in the name of political correctness and doesn't interfere with students, while Academic warlords control teachers and make them all sound the same, uniting an entire generation of intellectuals into a single group."

In the end, once education had declined, people reached for an anesthetic to comfort themselves for a while.

That "anesthetic" might sound like this: "Students in our society, with its open education system, are full of self-taught, innovative geniuses. Students elsewhere, under strict examinations, are all bookworms who lack creativity. They're just copying our ideas."

To make this self-delusion more convincing, they cited examples such as Edison teaching himself and Gates voluntarily dropping out of college halfway through.

When a social group lacked education, ignorance, arrogance, and smugness would all evolve within its culture!

Jian City was no different. When the soot-covered explorers returned and reported to the upper echelon about this "mysterious," "new," and "strange" community of human genes,

Jian City's decision-makers rushed to make a decision without further investigation!

Zeng Longmu's seven or eight advisers vied to show off.

When they submitted their plans, perhaps they were thinking: Investigating? Spending several days gathering piles of data and drawing conclusions—that's just mediocre hindsight. Only by judging—or guessing correctly—from the little information we have can we show that our strategic insight surpasses that of ordinary people!

In fact, they couldn't investigate, even if they wanted to! An investigation required a lot of manpower, observations from as many perspectives as possible, and every person modestly and tacitly treating their own views as just one part of the whole.

When it came time to reach a shared conclusion, no one could think in terms of their own "personal ability." No one could insist that their own investigation take precedence and everyone else's opinions come second.

All in all, the advisers in Jian City, which had no public education system, performed at the same level as the think tank of some country in the 2020s.

Their assessments and conclusions about Wei Keng's appearance were as follows.

Assessment 1: This is a community that originated primarily from human genes. It may have arisen by chance under the influence of human radiation from several cities, including Jian City. Another possibility is that a branch of the Fused Human community from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in the north migrated south.

Assessment 2: This community is currently very weak. No large beast capable of challenging Beast Tamers has been observed, and most individuals carry only firearms and similar equipment.

Assessment 3: This community is currently in a state of confusion, which is why it requested that it not be contacted by our side for six months. It may be in the process of scattering further.

Conclusion: Jian City must dispatch forces as soon as possible to control, or even destroy and replace, its core before it can grow stronger.

And so on and so forth. After all that, the little experts in this county town had nothing more of substance to say.

It all amounted to, "Our city-state has plenty of Beast Tamers, and our newly calibrated Mechanical War Beasts are powerful. This is a chance to test them in a small-scale operation and demonstrate our strength at home and abroad."

In an office in Jian City, Zeng Longmu listened to the report, then turned to two young people. The man was still reading through the documents. Beside him, the woman tugged at a kumquat on a potted plant and asked Zeng Longmu, "Uncle, when will your little kumquat ripen?"

Zeng Longmu said, "You know, it'll ripen sooner if you stop messing with it." Then he turned to the man beside her.

Zeng Longmu said, "Fang Hong, I'd like you to carry out this mission."

Fang Hong nodded.

Zeng Longmu looked at them both and said, "When you get back, I'll send you this pot of kumquats."

A month later—on the seventy-eighth day since Wei Keng had arrived in this plane—someone, or rather, more than a thousand someones, were counting the days on their fingers, thinking they had just over twenty days left before they could return.

The great iron gates of Jian City creaked open to the sound of the steam engine starting up on the tower.

A convoy of twenty horse-drawn carriages filed out through the gate. On their carriage bodies, indented metal symbols resembling traditional Chinese characters spelled out "Jian City."

The draft animals were massive draft horses weighing two tons—or rather, Dragon Horses, a mix of assorted genes. Steam poured from their nostrils as they pulled vehicles with Fine Steel chassis, metal suspension, and rubber tires slowly across the stone arch bridge over the moat in front of the city gate.

Thanks to the resilience of living things under Life Radiation, it was still possible to obtain rubber, a liquid resin from trees.

The carriages were surrounded by Steel Shells. Of course, they couldn't provide all-around protection from machine guns like a tank could, but the Steel Shells were thicker around the windows. People could shelter behind Steel Shields at the windows and fire Heavy Machine Guns at anything nearby.

Behind the convoy came three war beasts clad in Metal Armor. These hybrids of living creatures and machines rested their forelegs on flatbed carts, leaning against the wheeled vehicles as they moved forward. They were the Beast Tamers' Mechanical War Beasts.

Each of these Mechanical War Beasts weighed more than five tons and contained Power Generation Cells like those of an eel, which powered the machines in their chests and forelegs during combat. But they couldn't sustain that power for long; they could only fight at full intensity for twenty minutes.

Inside one of the carriages, a Cultivation Tank sat in a metal box. Microorganism Replication within it gave off Life Radiation, and the Mechanical War Beasts controlled the organisms' activity, drawing energy from them like a kind of Wireless Charging.

The convoy headed west, making the distinctive metallic sounds of its kind. Just as it set out, a Reconnaissance Team sent out by Wei Keng spotted it.

The fact that Jian City had made its move in the final ten or so days before Wei Keng's crossing ended reminded him of a Timed Game Mission. Something always happened right at the end.

Wei Keng asked the system about the details of returning.

When the return process began, every Self Individual would gather again at the point where they had first arrived, and the whole process would last half a day. That meant they couldn't withdraw from here, move elsewhere, and then retreat again. They had to stop these unwelcome visitors.

There were two ways to stop them: a Verbal Blockade or an Armed Blockade.

A Verbal Blockade meant negotiating and arguing their case; an Armed Blockade meant using force to hold the enemy back. Wei Keng had considered a Verbal Blockade, but trying to negotiate while the other side was carrying military weapons would be as naive as "asking the League of Nations to mediate during the September 18 Incident."

An Armed Blockade, however, posed a problem. Wei Keng had clearly seen Heavy Machine Guns among the approaching troops. There was no way he could deal with those.

A Submachine Gun and a Heavy Machine Gun weren't the same thing. The former had an effective range of only 150 meters, so it couldn't serve as a Squad Tactical Core. The latter could suppress any infantry movement within a range of 500 to 1,000 meters. In short, the Heavy Machine Gun was the Core of Firepower.

As for Crossbow Bolts, they had been useful for bullying monsters in a semi-Jungle Environment. But on a proper battlefield, the requirement to stand upright while shooting alone would be deadly.

Could they rely on organization and willpower to defeat the enemy? Wei Keng was only of average ability; his willpower couldn't be trusted.

Besides, the other side was on home turf. To use the terrain perfectly and wipe them all out, they'd have to be stupid to a certain degree. If a war plan started out assuming everything would go perfectly, history had already shown what could happen!

The navy's "gallant fools" during the Pacific War had always pursued perfect battle plans. They assumed the American devils would absolutely fall for their strategic deception, take the bait, and end in a great victory for the Imperial Army.

War was a serious matter. After undergoing a baptism of fire, the Wei Keng Collective would never pin its hopes for war on one or two possible advantages.

No matter how he looked at it, Wei Keng didn't think the current conditions gave him a chance. He had to ask the system for help.

When Wei Keng initiated this conversation, Bai Linglu responded very smoothly. She first expressed concern about his current crisis, then said she believed he could solve the problem and was willing to help as much as possible. After that, she analyzed the threat: it was only short-term, and if he could get through it, he would achieve a different outcome.

Finally, she explained one of the terms of the system's assistance: "I can provide the relevant weapons and equipment immediately. However, receiving Material Support will require delaying the arrival of your Shuttle Return Channel."

In short: if you took the assistance, you'd have to stay in this area longer—not just be stationed there longer, but remain there for a while.

At that answer, Wei Keng ground his back teeth and asked, "How long will it be delayed?"

Bai Linglu: The weight of the transported supplies is measured in Unit Scalars equal to one-third of your total weight. There are currently 1,523 of you, so your Unit Scalar is 45.3344 tons. Transporting one Unit Scalar will delay the Channel Arrival Time by one hundred days. You must exchange for at least one Unit Scalar and no more than three.

After a fairly intense discussion among the Wei Kengs—well, if Wei Keng had been one person, that discussion would have amounted to an individual agonizing over a decision—

The key question they debated was whether to be frugal and exchange for one Unit Scalar, or leave themselves some leeway and exchange for three.

If Wei Keng hadn't split into multiple bodies, faced with such indecision, he might have flipped a coin or slapped himself a few times to see which slap hurt.

But now they compared their views to see which opinion was more common within their collective.

Five minutes later.

Wei Keng's Communications Group gave Bai Linglu a unanimous answer: "We'll exchange for three Unit Scalars." That was the maximum they could exchange for.

Bai Linglu was a little surprised by Wei Keng's sudden generosity.

But the logic behind the Wei Keng Collective's generous choice was this: they were about to go to war, so they had to burn their boats. Their military supplies needed to be as secure as possible. They absolutely weren't going to imitate Great Qing and pinch pennies over purchasing warships before the First Sino-Japanese War.

Once they had settled on the total quantity of supplies, the next step was placing the order.

Wei Keng Comms 11: "Ten Individual Nuclear Bombs, please—the Cold War kind, the Nuclear Rocket Launcher with a yield of fifty tons. Yeah, I know how to use one: dig a trench and put on a Protective Suit. Oh, and give me two motorcycles as well. Don't worry about me. Nobody else here signed up to launch one. I'll do it."

There was no shortage of volunteers among the Wei Kengs to launch the nuclear rocket. They all thought it was Tough Guy Gear: you had to try it at least once in your life.

But Bai Linglu quickly shot down their wild idea.

Bai Linglu explained in all sincerity: "Heavy Element Atoms can't remain stable during transit. To transport equipment of this kind, you'd first need to find enough Artificial Element in this plane to calibrate it."

Bai Linglu spoke very politely, but the clueless Wei Keng couldn't help feeling that the tone at the end sounded as if she were sneering, "Broke."

Too poor to have any ideas, Wei Keng couldn't argue back. He could only sigh inwardly.

A few minutes later,

Wei Keng began carefully examining the list of Transferred Materials he could receive. They were all fairly ordinary items—well, they were things he'd already thought of over the past few days.

Wei Keng Comms 34 said to Bai Linglu, "Looks like you've already made a plan."

Bai Linglu: "You've run into difficulties in Plane Exploration. As your overseer, I should help ease your burden."