"Boss Slick! You're the best Ork I've ever seen. I can see Gork's gaze on your left shoulder and Mork's smile on your right." Kuka's voice brimmed with fervor and devotion.
"I can see Gork and Mork protecting you, favoring you. Boss Slick, I want to learn Chinese. I want to be the bridge that lets you communicate with Gork and Mork."
Hiss... why does Kuka's description sound so creepy? Cheng Mingrui felt as though ghosts were perched behind his shoulders. Sure, I'm an Ork now, but we come from different cultures. Don't go saying stuff like that!
Fortunately, his bluff had worked. Things would be easy from here.
"Mm, I can teach you Chinese bit by bit, but a powerful language with Word of Power can't be taught all at once. We have to take it slowly. If I teach you too much, I'm afraid you won't be able to bear it or take it in." Cheng Mingrui spoke to Kuka like a kindly, caring mentor.
"The first sentence goes like this: 'Primary objective: immediately erect statues and fashion Golden Bodies for Gork and Mork. The bigger, the better; the prettier, the better; the more Waaagh!, the better!' In the Ork language, it means..."
Kuka repeated it several times. Perhaps because this was his first encounter with Chinese and the sentence was rather complicated, he couldn't reproduce it very well, though he remembered its meaning.
That sentence wasn't Cheng Mingrui's real goal anyway, so he reassured him, "A sentence like that really is difficult for a first lesson. Now I'll teach you a simpler second sentence."
The second sentence was what Cheng Mingrui really wanted Kuka to learn, so he spoke slowly and carefully. "Besides being an Ork who's good at fighting, Gork and Mork say you also have a talent for manufacturing machinery."
This time, Kuka studied even more attentively, using psychic power to record Cheng Mingrui's words and reciting them over and over.
"You need to practice these two sentences a lot. With the Boyz competing lately, say the second sentence to every losing team. Not just in Chinese, but in the Ork language too. If they don't understand it and don't sincerely believe it, it won't work."
At last, Cheng Mingrui revealed his true intentions, but by then Kuka no longer cared about his motives. He only wanted to practice the miraculous language of Chinese more, hoping to master it soon so he could communicate with Gork and Mork.
Delighted that his scheme had succeeded, Cheng Mingrui kept encouraging Kuka. "Remember to practice Chinese with those Boyz often. It doesn't matter if you fail. As long as you don't give up, you'll definitely master this powerful divine language."
With ork logic at work, as long as some of the Boyz believed Kuka's words, they would think themselves into awakening their mechanical talent. Cheng Mingrui's lie could never be exposed.
They were short-handed now. Every extra Mekboy was a gain.
He had done everything he could. The rest was up to fate. As the boss, Cheng Mingrui had other work to attend to, such as farming.
Ever since learning how extraordinarily adaptable mushroom farms were, Cheng Mingrui had realized that his old, rigid thinking had completely misled him. He could expand his mushroom farms and grow mushrooms far more effectively.
Previously, Cheng Mingrui had assumed that plants needed sunlight to grow, so apart from a few mushroom farms in natural shelters such as the canyon, nearly all of them were out in the open.
In fact, growing them on the surface imposed far too many limitations. With no vegetation on the rocky planet, every gale whipped up a gray haze that blotted out the sky and sun, seemingly capable of swallowing the whole world.
The surface mushroom farms had suffered considerable losses lately, severely affecting the Orks' reproduction rate. There was an upside: the gales could spread Ork spores more widely across the planet. It would just take much longer to see results.
Mushrooms could rely on their microbial ecosystem to draw nutrients from the surrounding environment while transforming the barren land around them, which made underground a better choice.
Planting underground would first eliminate the damage caused by the gales. Even if sunlight might make the surface mushroom farms more productive, that still couldn't compare with the stability underground.
The trouble was that large-scale underground cultivation was difficult. Digging tunnels and turning them into mushroom caverns would also require a tremendous amount of labor.
How could he make tunnel digging more efficient? Tools! Cheng Mingrui already had a blueprint in mind. He could build a digging tool like a Tunnel Boring Machine to excavate on a massive scale.
Every tunnel could become a bottomless mushroom farm. Once the Orks inside matured, they could climb out in an endless stream.
The problem was that such an enormous Tunnel Boring Machine would be difficult to manufacture. The Boyz, already being worked like beasts of burden, couldn't manage it, and producing large numbers of Mekboys would take time.
That left Cheng Mingrui to do it himself. With his Mekboy Armour, he was already the most powerful mobile manufacturing plant.
After teleporting to their only mine and helping himself to enough construction materials, Cheng Mingrui buried himself in work. He intended to build a large Tunnel Boring Machine within half a month.
Then, while using the Tunnel Boring Machine to dig tunnels for farming, he could also search for minerals, especially gold deposits, so he could gild the statues of Gork and Mork as soon as possible.
The metals smelted by the Boyz lay in a disorderly heap nearby. Their purity, type, and size all differed, without the slightest hint of standardization. Each had its own character, depending entirely on the maker's mood.
When building precision instruments and equipment, skipping standardization simply wouldn't do. Even the error compensation provided by ork knowledge had to respect some reason.
One of the three Magnetic Explosion Coils on Cheng Mingrui's back held the metal in place. Another softened it with a stronger magnetic field and extracted the metallic elements he needed. The third then shaped the extracted metal into neat, rectangular ingots.
Cheng Mingrui held the ingots in his large claws. The arms of his Power Armour were equipped with drills, welding tools, and cutting equipment. After putting on his goggles, he began making the parts by hand.
Ork quality. Handmade. A name you could trust.
With his mechanical talent awakened once again, Cheng Mingrui became completely absorbed in manufacturing, losing all sense of time. By the time he snapped out of it, most of the Tunnel Boring Machine's basic components were finished.
He had used up all his materials. He needed to restock at the mine.
After teleporting successfully, Cheng Mingrui found himself facing a stripped-bare mine and almost thought he had entered the wrong coordinates. Repeated checks confirmed that he hadn't.
How many days has it been? They've already mined out this whole area? Is my memory off?
Puzzled, Cheng Mingrui teleported to the mine entrance, in the canyon where the Boyz often gathered. A crude Ork city had already been built there, filled with Ork-style decorations and ramshackle yet sturdy, durable houses.
Unlike usual, the Ork Boyz in the city weren't fighting or making a racket, and most of the houses stood empty. This made Cheng Mingrui feel even more puzzled.
Suddenly, Death Metal music blared from the center of the city.
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