Building a Brewery

(Thanks to .NFNW. for the donation bonus chapter)

Li Qinwu now had a large number of Poison Needles and Rage Drugs. He first fed in eight Poison Needles to break them down for materials.

A batch of these took only twenty minutes, making the efficiency quite high. Li Qinwu planned to do other things and check back from time to time, first breaking down all the medical materials.

Just then, a knock came from the Hideout entrance. Li Qinwu picked up his pistol, walked to the door, opened the small window, and saw Little Knife outside.

He opened the door. Little Knife set down two large buckets of food starch and said respectfully, "Boss, this is the food I collected today. I brought it over for you. Is there anything you need me to do?"

Little Knife was now one of Li Qinwu's men, working for him.

Li Qinwu had handed chores like collecting food from the safe zone to Little Knife. Every few days, Little Knife would bring food to Li Qinwu's door, set it down, and ask whether he had any work for him.

Li Qinwu stroked his chin and glanced at the pipes outside the Hideout on both sides.

He had a sales channel for alcohol and grain, but nowhere to brew it. Now, he could start building a Brewery.

First, he needed to claim the land—build walls on both sides of the passage, turn this area into his private territory, and then install the brewing equipment.

Li Qinwu said, "Little Knife, I need people to do some masonry work. I want to build two walls nearby and turn this passage into my private territory. Can you find some people? I'll pay them 100 Fertilizer Coupons a day."

Little Knife's eyes lit up, but he immediately considered things from Li Qinwu's perspective. "Boss, 100 is too much. You can make those rats work for ten bucks for several days. If you pay too much, people will think you're an easy mark."

"Then give them ten a day. Go find people for me. You'll be responsible for buying all the construction materials, including Ceramite Powder.

Tell me how much it costs. The walls have to be solid—the kind bombs can't blow open. If you handle this well, I'll reward you with an Autogun."

Little Knife's eyes went wide, and he nearly drooled. An Autogun—an actual Autogun!

With an Autogun, he would practically rise an entire class in the Lower Hive!

"Bo... Boss! I'll definitely get it done! I'll go find people right now!"

Little Knife dashed off in a hurry. Li Qinwu watched his retreating figure and chuckled.

He had intended to give the Autogun to Little Knife anyway. Little Knife was one of the few men he had. Keeping him armed at his side might produce unexpected results at times.

Before long, Little Knife returned with over thirty people. They were all members of the Fertilizer Gang, each one looking fierce.

But when they arrived before Li Qinwu, every one of them lowered their heads and addressed him as Boss Li. He was a major benefactor; calling him boss cost them nothing.

They carried scrap metal and bags of Ceramite Powder, both common construction materials in the Lower Hive.

Li Qinwu began directing them to build the walls. Using the door of the Hideout as the center point, they extended fifty meters down each side of the passage, claiming a full hundred meters at once.

The passage was essentially a giant tube six meters in diameter, with plenty of space. Claiming a hundred meters at once was more than enough, and he could expand farther later if needed.

Little Knife and the workers he brought immediately got to work. They used all kinds of tools to drill holes into the walls, then inserted steel rebars one by one.

That way, the newly built walls would connect to the main body of the passage and have guaranteed strength. Otherwise, a wall built in the middle of the passage could be pushed over from outside.

Once they had installed the rebars above, below, left, and right, they began laying the walls with Ceramite and the Ceramite Blocks prepared in advance.

As they built, they embedded steel plates within the walls to increase their defensive strength.

Li Qinwu required the walls to be at least half a meter thick. A Ceramite wall of that thickness, reinforced with embedded steel plates, could already withstand direct fire from most conventional weapons on this planet.

If anyone came to attack Li Qinwu's Brewery, the half-meter-thick Ceramite wall would become their Sighing Wall.

If the attackers could obtain unconventional weapons capable of piercing the wall, Li Qinwu was not afraid either.

Any force capable of obtaining weapons like that would be anything but ordinary. If he could not beat them, he might as well wait to die.

Little Knife and his companions worked quickly. In just one day, they finished one of the walls.

At Li Qinwu's request, they left a doorway wide enough for two people to walk through side by side, with a rail track running beneath it.

Every passage in the Lower Hive had rail tracks embedded in the ground. This had been part of the Hive City's original design, intended for small trains that transported supplies.

The Fertilizer Gang had many small self-powered trains, like the kiddie trains found in shopping malls during the 2K era. They used these trains to transport all kinds of raw materials back and forth.

As time passed, most Lower Hive passages were abandoned, and the little trains stopped running on these tracks.

Li Qinwu needed to brew alcohol, which meant transporting raw materials from the surface down into the Lower Hive.

From where he was to the ventilation shaft, it was about twenty kilometers horizontally and roughly fifteen kilometers vertically.

If he had to run back and forth carrying raw materials on foot, he would have no time for anything else. At that distance, it would exhaust the hell out of him.

Therefore, he also needed to acquire a self-powered little train, drive it from the Lower Hive to the ventilation shaft to haul the rebels' goods, and maintain that transport route.

On the second day, Little Knife and his companions finished the other wall as well and sealed it with a large iron gate twenty millimeters thick.

Li Qinwu now had a dark passage one hundred meters long as his private territory.

But this was not the end. Next, Li Qinwu needed to build a large Water Purifier, a large distiller, heaters, and fermentation furnaces.

Then he needed to get a self-powered little train and send people down the passage to see whether it could run all the way to the ventilation shaft.