Negotiations with the Rebels

This time, Second Lieutenant Rudosen stayed silent for a long, long time—so long that Li Qinwu felt as if a century had passed, so long that he thought this incompetent officer was going to refuse him.

But in the end, Second Lieutenant Rudosen merely sighed and covered his eyes with one hand, as though it were the last scrap of dignity he had left.

"I... I want a cut."

Li Qinwu hurriedly said, "I'll give you thirty percent of the net profit. Whether you pocket the money yourself or split it with your brothers is none of my business."

Second Lieutenant Rudosen still covered his face, leaving only his mouth exposed.

"I also need you to help me kill someone."

Li Qinwu narrowed his eyes.

"Who?"

"Lieutenant Winchester."

"Who is Lieutenant Winchester?"

"One of the company commanders in our battalion. He's my only competitor for battalion commander.

The regimental commander told me Lieutenant Winchester is a minor noble from the Spire, and he needs to pad his record to climb higher.

The noble faction behind him has already started pulling strings to push him into the battalion commander position. Unless he dies, I can't become battalion commander."

Li Qinwu grinned.

"If I kill him and you become battalion commander, can you give me greater convenience?"

Second Lieutenant Rudosen nodded.

"If I become battalion commander, I can control three PDF infantry companies and one motorized company.

This two-kilometer-long defensive sector you see belongs to our battalion. I'll be fully responsible for it. This place will be my territory, and no one will care what you do here!"

Li Qinwu licked his lips. If he could gain the support of a military battalion commander, there would be no problems with his little business.

Second Lieutenant Rudosen lowered the hand he had been using to deceive himself and said:

"Lieutenant Winchester is a cautious man. During combat, he only stays inside a Chimera Transport. Killing him won't be easy."

Li Qinwu said confidently, "I'll find a way to do it. Keep an eye on Lieutenant Winchester's movements. Once there's an opportunity, I'll make my move."

With that, Li Qinwu changed the subject. "Do you have any way to contact the rebel leaders nearby? I want to pay them a visit and establish a partnership."

Second Lieutenant Rudosen thought for a moment. "The rebel leaders don't have fixed bases. Once their location is exposed, we'll surround and wipe them out. I don't know where to find them either.

But some time ago, the Water Pattern Monitoring Station was raided at night by a group of rebels. My soldiers drove them off, but one wounded man was left behind and captured. Maybe you can use him to find one of their minor leaders."

Li Qinwu nodded. "Good. Hand that rebel over to me, give me an Autogun, then drive me part of the way."

Half an hour later, an open-top military vehicle stopped in the middle of the line where the PDF and rebels exchanged fire. There were signs of war everywhere: shell craters pocked the ground, the surrounding houses had collapsed, the land had been abandoned, and there was no trace of human activity.

The two armies had fought here many times. This place had become a forbidden zone of death. Aside from armed personnel on missions, no one came here anymore.

Second Lieutenant Rudosen stopped the vehicle. Li Qinwu sat in the back, carrying a PDF Automatic Gun. Beside him sat a wounded rebel soldier with his hands bound and a black hood over his head.

Second Lieutenant Rudosen pulled the handbrake and turned to look at Li Qinwu seriously.

"Are you sure you want to go? You don't know what kind of person the rebel leader will be. If he's a violent bastard, he might shoot you dead the moment he sees you. Then everything we discussed will be over."

Li Qinwu left him with a meaningful remark.

"Death is not my end. It is the beginning of the soul of vengeance."

He dragged the whimpering wounded rebel out of the vehicle. Second Lieutenant Rudosen wished him luck, turned around, and drove back to the PDF Camp.

Once the open-top military vehicle disappeared, Li Qinwu removed the wounded rebel's hood, revealing the face of a middle-aged man.

It was the face of an ordinary farmer. He looked to be in his forties, though his actual age was unknown.

The man stared at Li Qinwu with terrified eyes, his face full of pleading.

Li Qinwu drew his dagger. The rebel soldier let out muffled screams and tried to run, but with his hands tied behind his back, he fell after only a few steps.

Li Qinwu tucked a poison capsule into his teeth, stepped forward, and pressed his knee against the man's neck. Thinking Li Qinwu was going to kill him, the wounded rebel struggled desperately.

But after struggling for only a moment, Li Qinwu stood up. The wounded rebel froze. The rope binding his hands had already been cut.

He stood up in confusion and looked helplessly at Li Qinwu. He was wondering whether to run or listen to what this man had to say.

What Li Qinwu did next completely stunned him.

Li Qinwu tossed the PDF Automatic Gun in his hand to the man, pulled out a cigarette and lit it, then said indifferently, "Take me to see your leader. Someone who can actually make decisions. I have business to discuss with him."

Half a day later, in a dense forest forty kilometers north of the PDF Camp, there was a rebel stronghold housing around a thousand people.

Li Qinwu, his hands tied, sat quietly on a tree stump and looked around curiously at the rebels.

This was an army made up of farmers. Their camp held more than a thousand people, and every building was made of wood.

Most of them farmed and produced supplies. There were armed men too, but fewer than a hundred. Their guns were terrible, mostly single-barreled shotguns and homemade firearms.

The rebels had poor weapons and very little metal in their hands. Li Qinwu even saw a farmer chopping down a tree with a stone axe. Their industrial output was predictably pitiful.

In the twisted world of Warhammer 40,000, planetary governors liked to concentrate all factories inside Hive Cities to increase industrial efficiency. There were basically no other factories anywhere else on the planet.

Especially on an Agri-World like this, there was one and only one steel factory on the entire planet, located inside the Hive City.

Once the rebels revolted, the Hive City cut off all supplies of industrial goods. The rebels had nearly regressed to the Stone Age.

Seeing the rebels' current state, Li Qinwu felt even more confident about the coming negotiations.

After sitting on the stump for several minutes, a restrained-looking rebel arrived surrounded by more than a dozen guards. The real target had arrived.

The leader was a minor rebel commander who looked to be in his fifties, his temples streaked with white.

He looked at the calm Li Qinwu with displeasure.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

Li Qinwu raised his hands and shook the hemp rope around them.

"I saved one of your soldiers, didn't I? Is this how you treat your savior?"

The minor leader did not answer. The guards beside him casually aimed their homemade firearms at Li Qinwu.

Li Qinwu clicked his tongue, immediately labeling the man as cautious.

"Fine, fine. Let's get straight to the point. I'm here to discuss business."

The minor leader snorted.

"I have nothing to discuss with the planetary governor's lapdogs. The only language you understand is bullets!"

As soon as he spoke, the guards beside him raised their guns. Barrels wide enough to fit two fingers aimed at Li Qinwu's head, their fingers resting on the triggers.

Seeing that he was about to die, Li Qinwu immediately burst into laughter and activated Death Delay.

"Why are you laughing?"

Sure enough, the minor rebel leader asked in confusion. Li Qinwu could only conclude that laughing heartily before death worked in every world.

He stared at the minor rebel leader with mocking eyes.

"I'm laughing at your overestimation of yourselves. The Hive City has cut off your industry, you're so poor you're about to enter the Stone Age, and yet you still want to throw away the opportunity to change your fate!"

The minor rebel leader snorted again.

"Our revolution will eventually succeed. That is inevitable. The planetary governor and his exploitative lackeys will be swept into the garbage heap of history!"

Li Qinwu clicked his tongue several times.

"Your revolution? Smashing through the Hive City's dozens of meters of Ceramite armor with rocks? If that's the plan, then I really ought to give you a thumbs-up!"

His words enraged one of the guards beside the minor leader. The man practically shoved his homemade gun against Li Qinwu's forehead and roared with a twisted expression:

"We aren't afraid of sacrifice! Countless comrades and I will smash open the planetary governor's exploitative fortress! We have wills of steel!"

Li Qinwu nodded repeatedly.

"Yes, yes, yes. You have countless comrades, but the PDF has unlimited bullets. You have wills of steel, but the PDF is equipped with steel that has a will.

I'd really like to see what happens when your wills of steel collide with steel that has a will!"

"Fuck your mother!"

The words enraged the guard. He could not take it anymore and swung his gunstock at Li Qinwu's face.

Li Qinwu kicked him squarely in the crotch. The man howled and collapsed to the ground, clutching his balls as tears and snot poured down his face.

The other rebels flew into a rage. More than a dozen guns were thrust into Li Qinwu's face as they shouted for him not to move.

Li Qinwu remained expressionless. He lowered his head and glanced at the guns that were nearly poking his eyes out.

"Tut, tut, tut. This gun doesn't even have rifling, does it? Can it pierce PDF body armor?"

Then he sniffed the air.

"It reeks of sulfur. Don't tell me you're still using Black Powder Propellant?

Come on, this is humanity's fortieth millennium. Have you fallen so far behind that you're using weapons from the 2K era? Can the iron shot from these things even scratch the paint on PDF armor?"

Seeing Li Qinwu remain so calm with ten guns aimed at him, the minor rebel leader grew curious about what made this man so fearless.

"Stranger, what exactly do you want?"

Li Qinwu stared into the rebel leader's eyes.

"I told you from the beginning. I'm here to discuss business."

He nodded toward one of the rebels—the man Li Qinwu had released. The man still held the PDF Automatic Gun Li Qinwu had given him.

"See the Autogun in that man's hands? It has rifling, solid materials, and military-grade Propellant. Its bullets can hit targets a kilometer away, then blow apart some unlucky bastard's head.

That is a real weapon, a real industrial product—not the trash you people are holding!

And I have a way to get you a steady supply of weapons like that!"

After all that effort, they had finally reached the main point. Hearing that Li Qinwu could get them PDF Automatic Guns, the rebels exchanged looks and lowered their homemade guns slightly.

These rebels understood the power of the PDF Automatic Gun all too well. One soldier equipped with a PDF Automatic Gun and body armor could handle a hundred rebels without issue.

PDF soldiers could begin accurate single shots from hundreds of meters away, while they, carrying homemade Black Powder guns, had to get within a hundred meters before they could fire. How many people would die during that approach?

The rebels also had their own steel factory and Chemical Plant, converted from prewar civilian factories, but their output was extremely low.

The number of Autoguns produced by those factories was limited, and there was even less qualified ammunition.

For a barely usable homemade rebel gun to be distributed from headquarters, one gun for every hundred people was already cause for celebration.

When Li Qinwu proposed selling them high-quality firearms, everyone was tempted.

They all looked toward the minor leader. Even the man Li Qinwu had kicked in the balls stopped groaning and fell silent, waiting for the minor leader to speak.

The minor leader looked at Li Qinwu as a storm of thoughts raged in his mind.

He did not know where this man had come from and instinctively distrusted him, but the high-quality firearms he offered were simply impossible to refuse.

"You... what do you want?"

Li Qinwu grinned. This deal was as good as done.

"I'll give you one good gun in exchange for three tons of grain!"

The minor rebel leader's mouth twitched.

"Three tons of grain! Do you know how much three tons of grain is?!

You want to trade three tons of grain for a gun weighing less than five kilograms? Are you serious?"

Li Qinwu nodded seriously.

"Although I've never seen how much grain three tons would be piled together, I know grain isn't scarce for you at all.

You control the entire planetary surface. Pick any patch of land, dig it with a hoe, scatter some seeds, and in a few months you'll have a harvest. Grain is a cheap resource to you.

But the PDF Automatic Gun is a genuine industrial product, manufactured by Tech-Priests inside the mechanical cathedrals of the Hive City.

The Adeptus Mechanicus use high-energy explosives to blast apart the crust, extract metals from it, smelt them into steel ingots, then use tens-of-thousands-of-ton stamping machines to press gun casings and high-precision drills to cut rifling into barrels. Then they pray and assemble them.

These guns, these industrial products, are things you could never grow no matter how many lifetimes you spent farming.

I'm asking you to trade grain that can be found everywhere for industrial products you could never make in a lifetime. Is there a problem with that?"

The minor rebel leader blinked. He felt Li Qinwu had a point, but he still did not want to agree to the deal.

"What do you need so much grain for? To supply the PDF?

My comrades and I now control all the land outside the Hive City. The exploiters inside the Hive City cannot get food, and sooner or later they'll starve to death!

Are you trying to open a food route to fill the bellies of those damned exploiters?"

Li Qinwu rolled his eyes. "You want to starve the tens of billions of people inside the Hive City to death? Come on, don't be naive. Do you know how absurd Promethium-Waste Starch Synthesis Technology is?"

Humanity in Warhammer 40,000 could travel between stars. One prerequisite for unlocking interstellar travel technology was artificial starch synthesis.

The Imperium of Man possessed the most mature synthesis technology: using Promethium waste to synthesize starch. Although Li Qinwu did not know how it worked, he knew its efficiency was extremely high.

One such machine could produce enough starch every day to feed tens of billions of people. It was simply impossible to starve the people inside the Hive City through a food blockade.