Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

However, for Yelena's sake, he still insisted on purifying the food as much as possible.

After all, the amount of Originium she ingests is kept to a minimum level to prevent her Oripathy from recurring.

Chapter Thirteen: Sniper Operator White Rabbit

Chapter XIII

On the other side of the stream, at the makeshift training ground, Xia Lin had already set up more than a dozen targets of varying distances and heights. They were all the most common type of square wooden boards with patterns painted on them, and each was stuck into the ground with a stick.

These targets vary in size and feature patterns ranging from the largest bear to the smallest squirrel. Currently, they are all stationary targets; moving targets are not yet needed, and the associated mechanical structures would be quite complicated.

After several days of basic training, having mastered the basic knowledge of ammunition, safety rules, and gun-holding posture, we began practicing formal shooting today.

They still didn't produce any Originium ammunition, nor did they ask her to switch to a weapon with Originium components, making Yelena think that the guns those old men at the mine had mentioned before were definitely just bragging.

The principles of this weapon have already been explained in the previous disassembly exercises.

In her understanding, the energy comes from that box, which is probably made of Originium (and glows), igniting (ionizing) the ion fuel at the end of the caseless ammunition, turning it into a rapidly expanding plasma that propels the warhead forward.

In fact, it is almost the same. By using instantaneous discharge, the terminal ion material is rapidly ionized and exothermic, turning into high-temperature plasma, which further expands the highly evaporative working fluid in the middle section, thereby propelling the ammunition out of the gun, achieving a fairly high speed and a relatively low recoil.

The Falcon, as a heavy hunting rifle, uses 10mm ammunition, which is as thick as Yelena's index finger and is loaded into a magazine. As a hunting rifle and an electrothermal electromagnetic weapon, there is no need to use a combined electric and bullet magazine.

So the battery is located in the stock of the gun. Xia Lin told Yelena to pay attention to a small light bar near the cheek rest.

It displays the current battery and ammunition status in four colors: green, yellow, red, and white. If it displays white, it means that there is only enough power left to activate once. If it does not light up at all, it means that either the battery is dead or damaged.

Xia Lin required her to check and confirm this part before firing, and also to check if the magazine was empty but the battery was red.

The remaining green and yellow colors indicate that the ammunition and power are normal, with green indicating that the ammunition is fully charged and ready.

In addition to the falcon, Xia Lin also has a 5mm caliber "cattle-type bird gun". Theoretically, that weapon is more suitable for little girls. It has a 7-round magazine and is more ideal in terms of length and weight. It is designed for hunting birds and small animals.

However, considering the heavy armor of the mine guards they encountered that day, Xia Lin felt that it might not be very useful, so she switched to the Falcon heavy shotgun.

Like the Warhammer, it was designed to hunt medium to large prey, but it was more focused on close-range and more impactful animals.

One focuses on killing large, wary animals that are difficult to approach from a distance, such as wildebeest and bison.

"Hold it steady, aim at the target with the sights on the gun. At this distance, don't worry about bullet drop. Relax your muscles a bit, otherwise your shoulder will definitely swell up later. Okay, that's the position, fire!"

Yelena pressed her index finger on the trigger, applying slight force. After a slight click, a tremendous impact came from her shoulder, as if someone had punched her. Then came a crisper and louder "bang" than the Falcon's.

The girl's petite body visibly leaned backward from the impact of the first shot; if she hadn't stretched out her right foot to stomp on the ground, she probably would have been thrown over by the recoil. However, this was merely an unexpected reaction to the first live-fire exercise.

The shot missed without hesitation. However, in Xia Lin's opinion, it was already good enough that the first shot from this heavy rifle didn't knock him down or make him cry out in pain while clutching his shoulder. The next shot was the second one.

This time, Yelena gripped the gun firmly, her body only swaying slightly before she regained her balance thanks to her strong muscles.

The nearest target fell to the ground with a thud. However, it was just a hit; next, Xia Lin had her use a slow, precise aiming method to fire two magazines of ammunition. After that, Yelena rested for a while to allow her sore muscles to recover before starting to shoot at farther and smaller targets.

After becoming familiar with shooting from standing, squatting, and prone positions, she began formal shooting training, where she was required to shoot at various targets quickly and minimize aiming time, which caused her initially acceptable hit rate to drop.

Fortunately, Xia Lin had plenty of ammunition on hand, and also had a good supply of materials for making electrothermal ammunition. Good shooters are made by feeding them tons of ammunition, and even Yelena, who was quite talented, was no exception.

Moreover, although she is quite talented, without the assistance of a symbiote, her actual shooting accuracy is only passable. At this rate, she will need at least another week or two of practice to become proficient with her weapon.

This is still firearms, which are known for their simple training. Xia Lin herself doesn't know how to fight with cold weapons, and it would be even more difficult to teach her how to use industrial knives.

Because that thing is more powerful and harder to control, using it in combat could easily injure you; it wasn't designed for fighting at all.

Compared to the Falcon, training with the Warhammer double-barreled shotgun was simpler, mainly focusing on getting Yelena familiar with the recoil and the rapid reloading and aiming.

Since it's shotgun shells, as long as the direction is roughly correct and you don't get thrown into the air by the recoil, it's fine.

This is one of the reasons why short guns are harder to master than long guns, and long guns are harder to master than shotguns. This is why it's best for beginners to start with shotguns – because they are relatively much easier to use, especially automatic shotguns.

While Yelena was practicing with firearms, Xia Lin was building a second greenhouse near the stream. Thanks to the architect's equipment, all the building materials and some of the automated machinery needed for the greenhouse and hothouse could be produced.

The second greenhouse was much larger than the first. Although the area was still one acre (100 square meters), the height was much greater.

The manufactured lightweight carbon material supports are quickly softened and spliced ​​together under a hot melt gun, and then a diagonal cross-shaped fastener is snapped into place at the junction to complete the installation of a support.

Since it is an agricultural greenhouse rather than a place for living and bearing weight, a metal outer frame will be installed on the outside later, and armor or cold-proof plates will be added as needed to cope with sandstorms and blizzards.

Judging from the intensity of the so-called "natural disaster" mentioned by Yelena, the workshop should not need to consider the issue of resisting natural disasters at present.

In fact, extreme and unusual natural phenomena called "natural disasters" frequently occur on this planet.

The richer the Originium resources, the more frequent the natural disasters; conversely, the poorer the Originium resources, the less likely natural disasters are to occur. This is a general rule.

However, natural disasters can cause Originium particles in the air to condense abnormally, turning into large amounts of Originium minerals.

Therefore, it is difficult to determine whether the natural disaster was caused by the concentration of Originium or whether the concentration of natural disaster led to the accumulation of Originium into a rich mine.

However, according to Xia Lin's scan, this area is indeed a region with extremely scarce Originium particles, which means that natural disasters will not occur so frequently.

In fact, these safe zones of varying sizes do exist on this planet, and so-called mobile cities move between these safe zones for refuge.

These safe zones vary in size. Some are large enough to accommodate large mobile cities like Lungmen, while others are only suitable for temporary settlements of villages and towns. The kind of safe zones that can accommodate multiple cities and remain safe for a long time are basically legendary safe zones, which are rare and hard to come by.

The three-story-high frame took Xia Lin almost half a week to assemble. Then, installing the panels was much simpler. This task could only be done by drones, whose lifespan was already limited. These drones were not durable models that could be used multiple times. The fact that they had lasted this long was the result of Xia Lin using every makeshift method he could find.

But after using it this time, there's really no way he can make do with it anymore. Unless he handcrafts the parts to replace these drones, replaces the nano-spray guns with more refined industrial construction tools, and then writes more complex control programs, that would be too difficult. Besides, he'd rather build it himself than spend that time doing that.

Drones are indeed much more efficient than humans. After the last drone issued an alarm that its spray gun was out of service, a small greenhouse with a transparent dome appeared on the open ground. The bottom of the greenhouse was made of double-layer carbon material panels sandwiched with a layer of heat-insulating polymer.

The upper level is a transparent dome made of multi-layered graphene composite reinforced panels manufactured on the architect's production line.

This 7-millimeter-thick multilayer graphene-diamond film sheet is used in space farms. Small meteorite fragments and space debris cannot penetrate it. Even if Yelena's Falcon hits it, it would probably only ricochet. Only Xia Lin's Falcon rifle, when overloaded, could possibly crack it.

This is a greenhouse used to grow rice, the staple food. Given the possibility of "natural disasters" at any time, this material, which consumes a lot of raw materials and production line time, was used. The main reason is that Xia Lin could not find graphite or coal mines, so they relied on wood to recycle carbon raw materials and then press them into graphene and diamonds...

It consumes a lot of energy, and at one point we watched helplessly as the load on the core fusion reactor reached an overload state of 105%.

Fortunately, the amount used was not large; otherwise, Xia Lin would have had to find a way to build a new generator set with sufficient power. At least twenty or thirty kilowatt-class generators would be needed in an array to power this kind of power hog.

After standing in the spacious greenhouse for a while, Xia Lin began to install the internal equipment. Yelena also came to help after using up her practice ammunition for the day. She was petite but agile and strong, which was very useful in installing the equipment, especially the heavy planting supports.

The carbon fiber planting scaffold looks a bit like metal, both being dark gray with a bright luster, hard, dense and slightly tough, and with a smooth, glass-like feel.

In addition to the support pipes, there were also square panels used to assemble walkways and build the stairs. Soon, the greenhouse was filled with supports, sprinkler pipes, walkways with air vents, and simple railings inserted into prefabricated holes.

The planting area is divided into five levels, while the corridor for human inspection is divided into three levels. The planting columns are in standard three columns, and complex pipes run through the planting frame.

Afterwards, Xia Lin moved the planting baskets filled with seedlings over one by one and placed them on the support. When cultivating seedlings, they could be planted densely together. However, when transplanting them into these planting baskets, they needed to be planted slightly more sparsely.

Neither Xia Lin nor Yelena had ever done rice planting before. Fortunately, this standard greenhouse hydroponic cultivation method was a bit simpler because there were pre-drilled holes in the frame, making it purely physical labor.

Ah, in the colonies, that was mechanized work. Robotic arms would accurately transplant the seedlings, and they were much more stable than human hands, without damaging their tender roots.

With the help of the lights, after the transplanting and moving work was completed, it was almost dawn. The two of them could only look at the greenhouse filled with lush green seedlings with exhaustion before going back. After numbly and listlessly digging up some simple mashed potatoes, they collapsed into bed and fell fast asleep.

Agricultural production has its advantages, namely, there's no boss urging you to get up on time every morning for work. While it's true that if you neglect the crops, they'll neglect you in return, that's only true in the long run. Sleeping in for a day or two won't have any impact whatsoever.

Moreover, the more modern agriculture becomes, the less impact this problem has on yields, thanks to the availability of various low-yield, high-quality seeds.

In fact, in modern agriculture, irrigation, mechanization level, seed variety, fertilizer blending, and most importantly, pests and diseases are the biggest factors affecting agricultural harvests, or rather, the impact of technology is far greater than the impact of labor hours.

In Covenant Agriculture, these effects are even smaller, and the working hours of the workforce have almost no impact on the planting and harvesting costs in agriculture.

Transplanting, seedling raising, and breeding are all automated, which in turn requires a high level of professionalism and meticulousness from the workforce.

Moreover, the consequences are much more serious. If you accidentally mix the wrong fertilizer and burn the roots, traditional agriculture might kill one or two acres of land, or at worst, a few hundred acres. But with Star Alliance Agriculture, it depends on where you mix the wrong fertilizer.

If you're unlucky, the entire crop could be wiped out, with the affected area stretching over square kilometers or even thousands of square kilometers.

Because it's very possible that a landmass the size of modern Canada could be planted with only one type of crop, and then all of it could be rendered unusable at once.

In the case of a super-giant space farm like the Sun-Circling Farm, a single crop kill could cause food prices in several nearby star sectors to more than double, forcing governments to open warehouses to stabilize prices.

Although such silly errors are generally rare, and multiple error correction and safety measures can prevent them normally, if one is not meticulous and professional enough, problems can indeed occur at some point.

The planting compartments in the rice greenhouse are arranged in a standard gradient to utilize natural sunlight, while sun lamps are installed to compensate for the angles where natural sunlight does not reach.

This ensures that each rice plant receives roughly the same amount of sunlight in the entire planting area, and that their accumulated temperature and nutrient absorption are also roughly equivalent in an almost sterile and windless indoor environment.

Some rice planting plots require adjustments due to random factors, but these are all simple adjustments, at least in the first generation. The later generations will be a little more complicated. The Covenant's agricultural technology company also knows that land reclamation is the most difficult part, so they try to make the land reclamation process as simple as possible to help colonists gain a foothold.

As for the trouble that follows, that's where the fees come in, and Xia Lin is the technical specialist responsible for solving various problems with crops from the third or fourth generation onwards—yes, she charges a fee.

While Xia Lin and Yelena were fast asleep, wrapped in their blankets, an Ursus scout slid down from a tree some distance from the farm. "What's going on? What are they building?" asked the burly bear-eared man holding a crossbow, who was standing guard under the tree. "Is it a prison? Or something else?"

“Uh…” The scout shook his head, his expression quite strange. Yesterday, the transparent house did look like some kind of prison, with black iron bars (carbon fiber), perforated armor plates, and cage-like structures. But this morning it had turned into…

"Tell me quickly, what is it?" His companions were getting a little anxious when they saw that he hadn't said anything for a long time. They were here to scout ahead for the guerrillas, and the main force would be passing through here soon, so they had to make sure they were safe.

"It's... a greenhouse, full of green seedlings..."

"what!?"

Chapter Fourteen: Agricultural Machinery Encyclopedia - Hand-held Tractors

Chapter Fourteen

As summer gradually arrives, the snow stops falling from the sky, and the bright sunshine shines all day on the deep blue earth and forests. The snow has completely melted, and colorful wildflowers adorn the ground under the trees and among the rocks. In this season, you can also see a relatively large variety of animals roaming and foraging in the forest.

After a completely arduous and deadly process of carrying ore by hand, they finally accumulated enough material to manufacture a simple electric motor.

Thankfully, he had actually learned during his training how to manufacture various electric motors and even internal combustion engines using agricultural machinery workshops. Of course, he also learned how to repair them. Otherwise, trying to do it all from scratch would have been agonizing.

The advantage of having studied it is that Xia Lin's PNIS contains blueprints for commonly used agricultural power sources in the Covenant, so there is no need, or at least not entirely, to rely on manual labor to build them.

It took almost a month to gather the materials, but the nano-honeycomb structure took only 25 minutes to manufacture the chassis and electric motor. Of those 20 minutes, 20 minutes were spent processing the metal materials, and the actual processing time was only about five minutes.

Of course, the parts and modules manufactured using honeycomb in a "rapid printing" mode are generally not very strong. They are formed by nanomechanical decomposition and replication of themselves, followed by structural assembly and re-de-energization. To put it bluntly, they are not able to withstand high power and high horsepower output.

Now, Xia Lin's garage finally has a practical use, as the approximately 75-horsepower electric motor is powered by a superconducting battery.

If he doesn't install any of those fancy, power-consuming accessories, the range on a full charge is about 400 kilometers, provided you don't drag anything too heavy.

As for the chassis, which is still a metal main beam and carbon fiber structure, it has been warned multiple times by the built-in system because its structural strength is far below the minimum industrial product standards of the Covenant. For safety reasons, this type of chassis cannot be used to manufacture vehicles.

If it weren't for the broken communication antenna, Xia Lin felt that she would probably soon be listed as a key monitoring target by the manufacturing association because she was suspected of manufacturing seriously substandard counterfeit products and entering the market.

After all, although the Covenant's technology and social systems are relatively advanced, the basic quality of human beings has remained largely unchanged.

It's not exactly news that workshops rebrand products as genuine, and accidents and injuries caused by their serious quality deficiencies occur.

Therefore, the governments of the Star Alliance countries have taken very strict measures to crack down on such sites, especially closely monitoring those with manufacturing capabilities.

While some of the remaining car body and mechanical equipment such as the operating and steering systems can be printed via the honeycomb, a significant portion still needs to be hand-printed by him.

Regardless, on this sunny afternoon when the outdoor temperature was neither too hot nor too cold, Xia Lin finally pulled open the roller shutter door of the garage workshop, revealing the results of her hard work over the past two days—