harleyscars Chapter 85
Chapter 85
Chapter 85
With the ideological issues resolved, the meeting entered a more heated and substantive phase.
"Alright, that's the end of the ghost story. Now let's talk about the specifics of the business."
Luo Wei opened the notebook in front of him and lightly tapped the paper twice with the nib of his pen.
"This week, to save the harvest, we stuffed bones into the mud," and "used up parts in the furnace." We're now settling this score.
This statement immediately ignited long-suppressed tensions within the core team.
On this resource-scarce planet, every post-mortem is a battle for survival rations.
More credit not only means a fuller job for oneself, but also means fewer brothers under one's command will starve to death.
"Sir, the accounts for the past few days must be settled."
Buck put his foot down from the table, making the water glass on the table shake violently.
He pointed to the pale wheat field outside the window and eagerly claimed credit, saying, "The night the beast tide attacked, you didn't let us fire. That was your brilliant decision, and my brothers and I are convinced. The bullets we saved are real money."
"But who led the brothers to the fields for the next few days? The fields were full of strong acid waste liquid transported from the western granaries," Buck said indignantly, rolling up his trouser leg.
There was a patch that had been burned through by strong acid and then haphazardly sewn back together, revealing the festering, red skin underneath.
"It was my men who risked having their legs burned off and being dragged into the wheat fields to be eaten as snacks, digging out one by one the still-melting thigh bones from the acidic mud. That was tens of thousands of tons of calcium!"
He became more and more excited as he spoke, spitting as he spoke.
I need to let out all the frustration I've been holding in this week.
"Father Alpha's oracles only give alarms, saying things like 'insufficient stem strength' and 'severe calcium deficiency'—all nonsense from someone sitting in an office!"
A few days ago.
The rapidly growing Gray Mule-1 encountered a serious physiological crisis.
The wheat ears became unusually heavy because they absorbed excessive amounts of heavy metals.
The slow lignification of the stems caused large areas of wheat fields to show signs of lodging.
This is like a giant who grows too fast and develops severe osteoporosis, unable to support his own head.
And those wheat roots that have been eaten to a bloodthirsty rage—those things pierce flesh and hurt more than a knife.
Lowe's decision at the time was simple and crude:
Calcium supplementation.
The raw material is the dense animal bones left behind by the beast tide.
Susan, who had been silently wiping the wrench, spoke coldly: "Shut up, one-eyed man. If you want to steal the credit, you'd better see who's doing the work."
"You did retrieve the bones, that's true, but who turned them into a usable liquid?"
Susan looked up and said, "The thigh bones of those mutated beasts were as hard as granite. It was me and the women of the widows' group who worked in shifts all night, smashing them with sledgehammers and grinding them with millstones until they were completely ground into powder."
"In order to meet the deadline, two of the sisters had their fingers crushed by the millstone."
She then added, "And do you know what the child laborers sacrificed to clean up those industrial hot air furnaces that had been idle for years in preparation for the baking 25 days from now?"
The projected image in the conference room switched at the opportune moment.
On the left screen is a spectacular scene of "calcium supplementation in bones".
The pale bone meal slurry was sprayed onto the dark green wheat field by a high-pressure spray gun.
After drying, the entire wheat field looked as if it were covered with a layer of pale, bony armor.
Those originally limp stems, after absorbing calcium, became as hard and upright as iron wire again, making a metallic clanging sound in the wind.
On the right side of the screen are those "smallest parts".
The scene is dim, showing the narrow, dark interior of the hot air furnace.
Twenty-five withered orphans, their bodies haphazardly wrapped in coarse hemp cloth like a group of cowering carrion rats, clutching rusty scrapers, crawled deep into the furnace.
It was filled with highly toxic fumes and hardened residue.
It was a dead end that even the most deformed adult laborers couldn't squeeze into.
Even the modified cleaning bots are too inflexible to reach them.
Only these children forgotten by the emperor, these "living pipe brushes" struggling on the brink of life and death for a bowl of synthetic starch green soup promised by Lowell, are capable of undertaking this humble mission.
In the picture:
A child suffered severe convulsions after inhaling an excessive amount of radioactive dust.
He didn't stop, but instead used the back of his hand, which was covered in oil, to wipe his face hard. Mixed with black blood and tears, he continued to scrape the stubborn carbon deposits on the pipe wall with a scraper.
Because his hungry mind knew perfectly well that stopping what he was doing meant that the life-saving green soup would vanish.
Susan pointed at the pale screen and gritted her teeth, saying, "Just for a bowl of inferior green soup, the lungs of these cubs were completely corroded by industrial waste gas, suffering irreversible and fatal damage."
"Just now, three children collapsed deep inside the pipe due to lack of oxygen. If my men hadn't pulled them out in time, they would be part of the fuel now."
"Buck, you've only worn a few scratches on your shoes and scraped your skin a little, while they're mortgaging their last bit of life for cleanliness. How do you plan to settle this bloody score?"
Buck was furious and about to explode, but his arrogance suddenly diminished.
The excuses of "lower class scum" and "imperial assets" were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them back.
Because he keenly caught the cold glint in Lo Wei's eyes.
Reason told him that Susan's words were utterly absurd.
In the eyes of any governor of the hive, the death of a thousand of these "living pipe brushes" was not as heartbreaking as the loss of a single fully armed guard soldier.
Human life is a renewable resource, but training and equipment are not.
However, in this cramped room, or more precisely, in front of this agricultural advisor and the new granary manager, the empire's universal laws were overturned.
He now clearly understands Lowe's attitude towards this kind of thing:
The weight of a voice does not depend on the rank on one's shoulder insignia, but on who has poured more blood and flesh into the meat grinder.
The reason is very simple.
If it were former supervisor Case, he could directly refute Susan.
You can't do that in front of Luo Wei.
Of course, if the meeting were chaired by the former supervisor Case, a widow like Susan wouldn't be qualified to speak, much less attend.
He hesitated for a while, then muttered, "Well—well, it's all for work. Besides, I've fed these kids plenty of compressed biscuits; isn't that part of the cost?"
In the corner, the death row inmate representative, who had remained silent until now, also raised his shackled hand.
His face was covered in sores and patches from recent frequent exposure to highly toxic industrial wastewater, and his voice was hoarse and unpleasant as he said, "Supervisor, don't forget about us either."
"We risked our lives to maintain the sprinkler irrigation pipes in the fields."
"The industrial wastewater from the western granary and two underground nest cities smelled so strong that even gas masks couldn't stop it. Several brothers are still coughing up blood."
"We're just a bunch of worthless people with no other desires but to beg you, sir, for a few cigarettes to numb our rotten nerves."
Lowe watched all of this quietly.
As an auditor, he is used to quantifying everything.
In his eyes, emotions, sacrifices, and achievements are all variables used to achieve the final balance of the financial statements.
He doesn't dislike this kind of competition.
On the contrary, this competitive drive that erupts in order to survive is the lubricant that keeps this massive machine running.
That's enough.
Luo Wei closed his notebook.
This brought an end to the auction about suffering and merit.
"Buck recycled the raw materials, Susan completed the process, the children cleaned the hot air furnace, and the death row inmates maintained the pipelines."
He surveyed the crowd and coldly and precisely gave his price: "I don't care who suffered more, nor do I care who contributed more; I only care about the result. The wheat has stood firm, and the stove is working—that's the result."
Luo Wei took out several receipts stamped with a red seal from the drawer and pushed them to the center of the table.
"Everyone, two extra meat ration coupons at the end of the month. Susan, give those three fainting children an extra dose of high-energy nutritional supplement. Death row inmates, two packs of cheap tobacco each."
Upon hearing the words "hostage" and "tobacco," the atmosphere in the meeting room instantly relaxed from tense to relaxed.
In this world, nothing soothes resentment or makes people forget their pain more than real protein and nicotine, allowing them to continue working like animals.
"Thank you for your mercy, sir!" Buck grabbed the hostage, his gloom vanishing instantly.
Looking at their greedy eyes, Luo Wei remained completely unmoved.
This is not kindness.
This is just the maintenance fee that must be paid for maintaining the tools.
However, this ease did not last long.
Father Alpha, who had been silently monitoring the data, emitted a series of rapid binary beeps.
He extended his mechanical tentacles and forcefully inserted a complex dynamic spectral analysis chart into the center of the large screen.
On the chart, two glaring red curves:
One line represents "toxic residue";
One line represents "physical hardness".
Like two out-of-control venomous snakes, they coiled and climbed, eventually breaking through the red line that represents the safety threshold.
"What is this?" Luo Wei asked, frowning.
"This is the price, Advisor. The output of Grey Snail-1 is indeed astonishing, but it's built on the foundation of a frenzied consumption of industrial waste."
Father Alpha pointed to the first curve and said anxiously, "First is physical hardness. In order to survive in highly acidic soil and support the heavy ears of wheat, these plants activate an extreme defense mechanism: biosilicification."
"They pump all the absorbed silicates, calcium, and iron ions into the wheat husks and awns. The outer shell of the wheat grain is no longer plant fiber, but a layer of micron-sized biological armor," with a hardness comparable to granite.
He immediately brought up a set of physics simulation screens.
In the footage, the old-fashioned flour mill in the eastern granary emits a piercing shriek the moment it comes into contact with wheat grains.
It lasted only three seconds before the alloy gear snapped off and flew out, scattering sparks everywhere.
"Our equipment simply can't 'bite' them."
"If we force the grinding, we won't get flour, but a pile of industrial waste mixed with gear shavings and stone powder."
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