Battle Turns Production, Subdues Demons

Chapter 33: 1.33 Chapter War Turns to Production, Demons Subdued

On the 145th day of Wei Keng's arrival in the Pandora World, with the majority of his collective flowing down the Pearl River to return, the second phase of conflict on this plane concluded.

As four hundred Wei Kengs returned from the dock, they sighed with relief, finally able to return to the human world they had built.

Now, at this small dock, fifty percent of the Wei Kengs were soaking wet. This was because on the way back, the Wei Keng Collective had gotten creative. They used the animal skins stripped during the recent battle to inflate rafts, increasing their buoyancy. This allowed them to transport some of the rusty stainless steel parts that hadn't yet corroded from what was likely a derelict parking lot.

However, along the way, large fish in the lake kept attacking their bamboo spears, trying to take a bite. As a result, the inflatable rafts, which Wei Keng had placed great hope in, had their air bladders punctured one by one. By the time they reached the port, all the rafts were half submerged, and some were completely underwater. Thus, upon arrival, Wei Keng had to dive in and retrieve them.

The raft plan had utterly failed. In fact, all organic materials were unsuitable for shipbuilding in this era. If not for Wei Keng's Life Radiation, the wood and skins would have been decomposed by small fish, shrimp, and algae the moment they hit the water. Therefore, steel was essential.

A large pot was set up on the dock. The several large fish, which had been kept "bowed," were removed from their poles, still lively. But their fate was to be gutted, pounded into paste in a mortar, and then cooked.

'Bow fishing' involves threading a line through a fish's nostrils and upper jaw, then tying the other end to its tail (near the anus). This causes the fish to arch like a bow. It's a Fujian folk custom, a true intangible cultural heritage, which helps the gills receive oxygen, allowing the fish to survive out of water for twenty to thirty hours! This was a skill used by Chinese fishmongers in the past, before aerators existed. Wei Keng found this information in the system, tried it, and found it very effective for keeping fish alive. All the large fish that had nibbled at his rafts were treated this way.

The fish paste was mixed with starch extracted from tree seeds and made into fish balls, which were then cooked. On the other side, eggs from the soda ash mud were retrieved, their shells removed. The black eggs were chopped into small cubes and added to the pot with the fish balls. Scallions, ginger, and garlic were placed in a small cloth bag and boiled together. After a vigorous boil, bowls were ladled out. The Wei Kengs, returning from battle, began slurping from their large bowls.

'After eating preserved egg and fish ball congee, even the emperor can't compare to Wu~' a few Wei Kengs sitting in a corner sang to themselves in a "wretched" tone.

War demanded belt-tightening. The entire collective's energy was focused on safely handling external threats. Many internal matters had to be simplified. Like now, this pot of fish ball and preserved egg congee. From the large pot to chopping meat and preparing seasonings, everything was as busy as a festival. This was impossible during the previous wartime. On the front lines, Wei Keng had only managed with "Jing Blocks" and salted roasted meat.

Now, with more free time, if battles could be fought well, construction could naturally be done well! It was all about group collaboration.

Pandora Era, Year 132, November 3rd.

At this time of year, frost had already begun to appear in the Yellow River Basin in the north, and some high-altitude areas in the Southern Kingdom were also chilly. However, the climate in the Pearl River Delta region remained pleasant. Oh, in the Pandora Era, only Wei Keng's area was pleasant.

Zeng Jiakan, a merchant and envoy from Jian City, looked out the window at the greatly changed era.

Farmland had been opened up, with the soil arranged in square plots, free of grass.

Within these plots of varying sizes, plants two meters tall stood like soldiers, their vibrant leaves spread across the open fields. Small and large pollinating insects dotted the small flowers within. The flowering period for these plants was year-round, with buds constantly forming. This attracted flying insects for pollination. After pollination, the flowers would wither, the vines would fall to the ground, and then begin to mature. If not harvested, the seeds would swell on the ground and, during rainy days, drift away to take root in new places.

These plants resembled Earth's flora, but were no longer entirely the plants recorded in the Main World's data.

Zeng Jiakan saw some farmers, some of whom were former soldiers from Jian City, later captured, now organized into production teams, working in the fields. They used single-person push-type harvesters to cut the fallen vines and collect the fruit. At the same time, these farmers looked at the crops, cutting off the leaves of plants with low fruit yield and piling them at the root systems of high-yield crops, diverting water and light to the productive plants. Due to human interference with nature, the strong in this species community became stronger, leading to the proliferation of high-yielders and the transformation of low-yielders into firewood.

In these square fields, amidst the neatly arranged plant armies, there were always a few gaps. The original plants in these areas had been used as firewood due to insufficient yield. Of course, according to Wei Keng's plan, after each planting, the fields with the most eliminated plants would have their crops used to fill these gaps. New rows would be planted in the vacated fields, and the replenished fields would begin a new round of competition.

The Pearl River Delta had good sunlight and water, suitable for growing leeks? Hmm, a good place for agricultural development.

Wei Keng: "Three harvests a year? Not enough, not enough. Young crops must strive; they must have a wolf spirit. If crops in other fields can drop a pound of fruit per week, why can't you?"

Under the care of Wei Keng and the other farmers, these crops continuously dropped fruit after growing.

Hmm, the fallen fruit tasted like peanuts. The people who had settled here now joyfully gathered these fruits and sent them to the oil press workshop to extract peanut oil and residue.

To get more fruit, these former captives, wearing large straw hats, squatted in the fields they contracted. Every day, as soon as dawn broke, they counted the number of fallen fruits on each plant in their fields. This kind of "Zhou Bapi"-like landlord spirit gave the crops in the fields no chance to evolve towards trickery. Those that dared to drop empty fruits, fruits with insufficient oil and starch, were all found out by the fiery eyes of these contractors. Their complex cultural lessons might never improve, but their attitude towards farming was likely imprinted in their genes.

Arriving at the city, Zeng Jiakan ate a meal at a brick house inn. A pot of bubbling, fragrant "Jing Zi" was brought up.

Jing Kuai! This was common fare in Jian City. Zeng Jiakan's family had lived on this when he was young. After joining a commercial company in Jian City, he had strongly rejected such cheap food. But now? These mushrooms, cut into decorative patterns and seasoned, made him pick up the bamboo chopsticks, roast them over the provided charcoal fire, and eagerly start eating.

Ten minutes later, the pot was finished! He also drank three bowls of flour paste soup. And a plate of stir-fried vegetables? Oh, Wei Keng couldn't say what kind of vegetable it was. When he found this plant in the cultivation area, he thought it was quite tender, so he created a vegetable garden for it.

Any excellent ingredient! Adding salt makes it flavorful, and oil makes it fragrant! This is an unchanging truth.

Putting down the plate, Zeng Jiakan thought for a moment. He decided not to open the toothpick box on the table like the commoners. He stood up and looked at the street view outside. He had been casually watching the bustling crowd, but then suddenly realized that many people in the crowd looked alike. Only then did he realize that this was no ordinary city. A few months ago, in the perception of Jian City's people, this place was a ghostly realm inhabited by strange beings.

He looked blankly at this area that he should have found unfamiliar and should have been constantly vigilant about. But this merchant and envoy had to admit that he felt more comfortable here.

The productivity revolution that occurred in the settlement built by Wei Keng can be understood by looking at Wei Keng's discoveries during his northern campaign:

When Wei Keng captured the Node Creature that dared to bring its own head during his sweep operation, it experienced extreme emotions and began to have destructive thoughts towards its regenerative ability and life ability. Not only did he burn it with charcoal, but he also inserted wood into it.

However, a Node Creature is a Node Creature. Inserting plant organic matter would not cause swelling and then be pulled out like a splinter inserted into a human finger in the Main World. Instead, it fused directly. At that time, Wei Keng, who had blackened to his strongest stage, received a system prompt and finally snapped out of his state, beginning his research.

Before the Pandora Era, plants in the natural world could be cultivated through grafting technology. A Master Gardener could make one tree bear seven or eight flowers and three types of fruit!

However, in this world, the information of a large number of weak individual lives spreading freely in the natural world was a natural phenomenon. Grafting technology no longer existed. If you inserted any plant branch, within a week, the genes of all the cell nuclei within the branch would become the same as the main trunk.

However, while grafting was not possible, direct hybridization was. The genes of two species could mix in a Node Creature within a Gene Colony to create a new kind.

Oh, there were precedents for this. The types of Mechanical War Beasts in the surviving Human City-States around the world could be counted. There were six hundred and seventy types. Most of them were Automated Combat Machines that, before the Pandora Field spread globally, had captured Node Creatures from the Pandora Field and then taken them to laboratories on the edge of the Pandora Field, implanting desired genes into them to evolve hybrids!

When the required hybrid evolved, this hybrid was theoretically part of the Node Creature's attempt to construct a new Species Community! Therefore, after the hybrid was born, in order to stabilize its genes, the original Node Creature had to be destroyed, allowing the hybrid to become an individual no longer constrained by the original community. Then, through generations of adaptation to human Mechanical Modification, it became a Companion Species that was deformed relative to nature but met human needs. Before the spread of Pandora, Earth's technology was at its peak, and the variety of Mechanical War Beasts was at its greatest. Now, capturing a Node Creature was very difficult, and this technology, due to a lack of Practical Conditions, no longer existed in various small city-states.

Strictly speaking, the crops Wei Keng developed after the war last month were just the simplest form of this technology. The principle was the same, but why was it the simplest? Plant hybridization was much easier than animal hybridization. And animal deformities could lead to death, while plant deformities could sprout in various ways. In the Pandora Field, hybridization could even occur without the Life Field of a Node Creature, but in the wild, it would quickly deteriorate if it did not belong to any Gene Colony.

Of course, even so, using Node Creatures to rapidly cultivate plant species seemed too extravagant. For the existing Human City-States, the conditions required to face a Node Creature and capture it were too harsh. As for Wei Keng capturing a Node Creature with his bare hands, it was unimaginable to Contemporary People.

The danger of the Life Field radiated by the thing Wei Keng captured was like a Nuclear Reactor to Ordinary People. It represented the convergence of a large amount of Carbon-Based Life information at the Life Activity Center of an entire community. Directly inserting it into the Gene Sequence close to the individual was far more serious than the chromosomal abnormalities caused by the simple Neutron Radiation from a Reactor shattering genes.

If humanity today were fortunate enough to obtain a Node Creature, it would certainly be used to cultivate stronger War Beasts! To control more territory and open up more Transportation Nodes between cities.

The Transmigrators who had come to this world in the past had all reached a unified conclusion: War Beasts were the core of this world! If you could defeat an Apostle-level Node Creature and create a powerful War Beast species when it was weak, you could elevate your city's power to the top tier. Thus, their Mindset was also influenced.

Wei Keng, who was like a blank slate, could be said to have no Transmigration Experience, but his Mindset was very independent: planting vegetables was important, and in my field, there must be things I planted!

The Node Creature was not dead yet, but now, what about the other species in the community it represented? They had all been annihilated by Wei Keng in the war. As a community, when all Subordinate Species were extinct, the Central Node would also perish. But it was still alive, meaning that now, its Lower Hybrids had seized enough energy in the Natural World to support a community.

A large pool was dug five kilometers away from the Residence, built with Blue Bricks. The pool had multiple water channels at both ends. The plump Node Creature that had once swallowed Wei Keng was now soaking in the pool. However, it was beginning to become plant-like. Countless former Flesh and Blood Veins had become water-absorbing Tentacles. Now, it looked like a Watery large radish hiding in the center of the pool.

Of course, no matter where it hid, there were four concrete corridors that extended deep into the center of the Artificial Pool. All Evasion was futile.

The administrators here are all Wei Keng. Every day, he uses large iron pliers to hook this species and inserts steel rebar-like tubes into its interior to collect tissue and observe its life status!

This community, which once spawned numerous animals, was suppressed by Wei Keng and is now being observed and controlled step by step here, transforming into a Plant Gene Colony.

If it doesn't transform, Wei Keng will help it transform.

Every day, excellent crops collected from the farmland are sent here, and then the entire life organism is inserted into it, physically outputting gene information. Wei Keng tirelessly educates it that photosynthesis is good and that photosynthesis contributes to the world.

Now, this gene colony has basically accepted its status as a Producer within the Farmland Ecosystem constructed by Wei Keng.

By the pond, Wei Keng's harvesting work for the day is finished. The Long Rod Iron Hook is placed back into the card slot by the pond, and the small cart carrying the sample glass tubes is transported back to the Laboratory. Four Wei Keng are left to conduct final checks.

One Wei Keng claps his hands, looking at the pond filled with root tendrils and floating leaf surfaces, and suddenly gets poetic: "Seeing this scene, I want to recite a poem about Pond Moonlight."

Another Wei Keng squats by the pond, rambling to a Super Large Radish that is gradually escaping towards him: "You have been enlightened by me, abandoned ferocity for goodness, and offered yourself to all beings. Your merit is immeasurable, immeasurable. Come, come, I will chant the Great Compassion Mantra for you to hear, and you can contemplate it."