Negotiations with the Rebels

This time, Second Lieutenant Rudosen remained 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 about 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 shred of his dignity.

"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 share it with your brothers is none of my business."

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

"I also want 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 rival for the battalion commander position.

"The regiment commander told me that Lieutenant Winchester is a minor noble from the Spire. He needs to build credentials so he can climb higher.

"The noble faction behind him has already started pulling strings to push him into the battalion commander's seat. Unless he dies, I'll never become battalion commander."

Li Qinwu grinned.

"If I kill him and you become battalion commander, can you make things more convenient for me?"

Second Lieutenant Rudosen nodded.

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

"This two-kilometer-long defensive sector you see belongs to our battalion. It'll all be under my command. This place will be my territory, and no one will care what you do here!"

Li Qinwu licked his lips. With the backing of a military battalion commander, his little business would have no problems at all.

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 handle it. Keep an eye on Lieutenant Winchester's movements. Once there's an opportunity, I'll act."

Then Li Qinwu changed the subject. "Do you have any way to contact the rebel leaders nearby? I want to make a trip and establish a partnership with them."

Second Lieutenant Rudosen thought for a moment before saying, "The rebel leaders don't have fixed bases. Once a base is exposed, we encircle and wipe it out. I don't know where to find them either.

"But some time ago, a group of rebels launched a nighttime raid on the Water Pattern Monitoring Station. My soldiers drove them off and captured one wounded man. Maybe you can use him to find a minor rebel leader."

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 of fire between the PDF and the rebels. The area bore countless scars of war. Shell craters pocked the ground, the houses around them had collapsed, and the land had been abandoned without a trace of human activity.

The two armies had fought here repeatedly. It had already become a forbidden zone of death, and apart from armed personnel on assignment, 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 tied and a black hood over his head.

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

"Are you sure you want to go? You have no idea what kind of person the rebel leader is. If he's a violent lunatic, 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, but the beginning of the soul of vengeance."

He dragged the whimpering wounded rebel out of the vehicle. Second Lieutenant Rudosen wished him luck, turned the vehicle around, and drove back toward 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 looked at Li Qinwu with terrified eyes, his face filled with pleading.

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

Li Qinwu stuck a poison capsule inside his teeth, stepped forward, and pinned the man's neck with his knee. The wounded rebel thought Li Qinwu was about to kill him and began struggling violently.

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

He rose to his feet in confusion and stared helplessly at Li Qinwu. He was wondering whether he should 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 casually, "Take me to meet your leader. Someone who can 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 behind his back, sat quietly on a wooden stump and curiously observed the rebels around him.

This was an army made up of farmers. The camp held over a thousand people, and every structure was made of wood.

Most of them were farming and producing supplies. There were armed men too, but fewer than a hundred. Their guns were terrible, mostly homemade single-barrel shotguns and improvised firearms.

The rebels' weapons were poor, and they barely even possessed metal tools. Li Qinwu even saw a farmer chopping down a tree with a stone axe. The rebels' industrial output was clearly abysmal.

In the warped world of Warhammer 40,000, planetary governors liked to concentrate all factories within Hive Cities to improve industrial efficiency. The rest of the planet basically had no factories at all.

Especially on an agricultural planet like this, there was only one steel Factory on the entire planet, and it stood inside the Hive City.

Once the rebels revolted, the Hive City cut off its supply of industrial goods to the outside world. The rebels had nearly regressed to the Stone Age.

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

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

The leader was a minor rebel chief who looked to be in his fifties, with graying temples.

He looked at the composed Li Qinwu with displeasure.

"Who are you? What is your purpose in coming here?"

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

"I saved one of your soldiers, at least. Is this how you treat the man who saved his life?"

The minor rebel chief did not reply. The guards beside him deliberately or unconsciously aimed their homemade guns at Li Qinwu.

Li Qinwu clicked his tongue and labeled the man cautious.

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

The minor chief snorted.

"I have nothing to discuss with the planetary governor's dogs. Bullets are the only language you understand!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the guard beside him raised his gun. The muzzle, large enough to fit two fingers into, aimed at Li Qinwu's head, and his finger settled on the trigger.

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 chief asked in confusion. Li Qinwu could only say that laughing loudly before death worked in every world.

He stared mockingly at the minor rebel chief.

"I'm laughing at your overconfidence. The Hive City has cut off your industrial supply, you're so poor you're nearly back in the Stone Age, and yet you want to throw away an opportunity to change your fate!"

The minor rebel chief snorted again.

"Our revolution will triumph sooner or later. That is inevitable. The planetary governor and all his exploiters' lackeys will be cast into history's garbage heap!"

Li Qinwu clicked his tongue several times.

"Your revolution means smashing through the Hive City's dozens-of-meters-thick Ceramite shell with rocks? If so, then I really have to give you a thumbs-up!"

His words enraged one of the guards beside the minor chief. He nearly pressed his homemade gun against Li Qinwu's forehead, his expression twisted as he roared:

"We aren't afraid of sacrifice! My countless comrades and I will definitely smash open the planetary governor's fortress of exploitation! 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 really want to see what happens when your wills of steel collide with steel that has a will!"

"Fuck your mother!"

The guard was enraged. He could no longer tolerate it and swung his gunstock at Li Qinwu's face.

Li Qinwu kicked him hard in the crotch. The man howled and fell to the ground, clutching his crotch as tears and snot streamed down his face.

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

Li Qinwu's expression did not change. He lowered his gaze to the guns that were nearly poking his eyes.

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

Then he sniffed the air.

"Smells like sulfur. Don't tell me you're still using black powder as propellant?

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

Seeing Li Qinwu remain so calm with ten guns aimed at him, the minor rebel chief began wondering what gave this man such confidence.

"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 gestured with his chin toward one of the rebels—the man Li Qinwu had released. He was still holding the PDF Automatic Gun Li Qinwu had given him.

"See the Autogun in that man's hands? It has rifling, solid materials, military-grade propellant, and bullets that can travel a kilometer before blowing some unlucky bastard's head apart.

"That is a real weapon, a real industrial product, not the garbage you're 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 the homemade guns pointed at him slightly.

These rebels understood the power of PDF Automatic Guns all too well. A single soldier equipped with a PDF Automatic Gun and body armor could take on a hundred rebels without issue.

PDF soldiers could begin accurate aimed fire from several hundred meters away, while the rebels, carrying homemade black-powder firearms, had to get within a hundred meters before they could shoot. How many people would die during that approach?

The rebels also had steelworks and chemical plants of their own, converted from civilian factories from before the war, but their output was extremely low.

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

When a barely usable homemade rebel gun was distributed from headquarters, a hundred men getting one of them was already considered a blessing.

Li Qinwu's offer to sell them high-quality firearms tempted everyone.

They all turned to look at the minor rebel chief. Even the man Li Qinwu had kicked in the crotch stopped groaning, shut his mouth, and waited for the chief to speak.

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

He did not know this man's background and instinctively distrusted him, but the high-quality firearms he had brought were impossible to refuse.

"You... what do you want?"

Li Qinwu grinned. This deal was in the bag.

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

The minor rebel chief'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 that weighs less than five kilograms? Are you serious?"

Li Qinwu nodded seriously.

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

"You control the entire surface of this planet. 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 PDF Automatic Guns are genuine industrial products, manufactured by tech-priests inside the Hive City in the temples of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

"Those oil boys use high explosives to blast apart the crust, extract metal from it, smelt it into steel ingots, then use tens-of-thousands-of-ton stamping presses to form 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 couldn't produce even if you farmed for your entire lives.

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

The minor rebel chief blinked. He felt Li Qinwu made sense, but he still did not want to agree to the deal.

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

"Now that my comrades and I control all the land outside the Hive City, the exploiters inside won't be able to get food. Sooner or later, they'll starve to death!

"You want to open a food route and fill the bellies of those damned exploiters?"

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

Humans in Warhammer 40,000 could travel between stars. The prerequisite for unlocking interstellar travel was artificial starch synthesis.

The Imperium of Man possessed the most mature synthesis method: using promethium waste to synthesize starch. Although Li Qinwu did not know how it worked, he knew it was extremely efficient.

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