Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

A small agricultural tractor with a traditional, retro, and minimalist style... and it's even three-wheeled.

Aside from the fact that it doesn't make the classic "putt-putt" sound because it's an electric motor, in terms of appearance, it's no different from those hand-held tractors commonly known as "dog-head tractors." Then again, he just uses this thing to carry ore and specimens and for transportation, so it doesn't matter if it's ugly.

Of course, for safety reasons, Xia Lin reluctantly used graphene material to seal and reinforce the cab, and then installed an enhanced geological scanner on the roof, which made its appearance even more...classic.

Xia Lin tossed the mining rigs, ore crates, plant sample containers, and packed tents—things that were previously inconvenient to carry—into the truck bed. He patted the truck bed and shouted to Yelena, "Get in! We're leaving!"

Theoretically speaking, it would be safer to leave one person on the farm, but this time they won't go too far.

Moreover, Yelena's current shooting skills are not enough to stay behind alone, leaving her behind would only risk her life and offer no other assistance.

However, leaving no one to guard the base does not mean that the workshop has no defenses. Five machine gun watchtowers can ensure that neither wild animals nor natives can be taken down without heavy firepower.

Moreover, they hadn't gone far this time, so hearing the gunshots meant they could immediately return and launch a pincer attack on the intruders.

Furthermore, Yelena also has another use: she can point out which of these plants and animals are edible or have medicinal value.

Although she grew up in a mine, the infected miners were actually better at identifying these things.

It was impossible for them to survive on the food rations that were clearly intended to starve them to death.

Therefore, they would hide the fungi in the mine, various wild plants, and even small creatures they caught as food.

Such suspected escape attempts would be met with extremely cruel punishment if discovered by the guards, yet this still could not stop them from passing on this knowledge by word of mouth.

After bringing back worthless weeds the previous times, Xia Lin decided to bring Yelena along this time. This was Yelena's first time going out since being rescued, or more accurately, her first long trip. The girl was both nervous and excited, and barely slept all night. With dark circles under her eyes, she jumped into the truck bed, hugged her Falcon hunting rifle, and sat on a road signpost bound with fabric.

"Buzz!" The electric motor emitted a low hum, and the three-wheeled tractor rushed down the slope of the workshop and then drove out of the fence. The non-pneumatic carbon material tires were very light, but the shock absorption was poor. Xia Lin was not so extravagant as to use the precious metal materials at present to make shock-absorbing springs. The whole way was as bumpy as a small boat in a storm.

After finally arriving at the location of the small mineral vein he had found earlier, Yelena in the back seat was already dazed. As soon as she got out of the car, she leaned against a tree trunk and started vomiting. Xia Lin was not much better off; his face was also turning pale in waves. It took the two of them more than ten minutes to feel a little better.

The thought of having to ride this strange thing back again sent chills down Yelena's spine, and her face turned deathly pale.

Although her skin was naturally a bit too pale for her, it wasn't as pale as a paper doll.

Xia Lin took out steel pipes and a mining drill from the truck bed. Don't ask why there would be mining equipment at an agricultural site.

After all, if you were to completely rely on ammonia ice mines tens of light-years away to provide you with the organic elements for synthetic fertilizers, you might as well quit this line of work—it's not a question of whether it's profitable or not, it's a question of being crazy.

Therefore, farms and agricultural colonies are equipped with mining equipment. However, compared to the drilling rigs of professional industrial and mining colonies, they can only be described as agricultural machinery. They are mainly used to drill for ores such as phosphorus, sulfur, and nitrate, and on some planets, they can even be used to drill for ammonia ice.

However, if geographical conditions are favorable, such as being near places rich in methane and ammonia like Saturn, it is also possible to rely on external supplies.

However, considering that ammonia ice asteroids and nitrogen are not common substances in the universe, it is necessary for colonies to be equipped with drilling rigs.

Moreover, although it's called a drilling rig, in Xia Lin's eyes, this thing can't be called mining equipment at all compared to the kind of mining drilling rigs that can drill to the mantle. It's a device the size of a standard refrigerator, about 4-5 meters high after the drill rod and laser drill are installed.

Supported by three supports, with the ore outlet on the side, its mining operation principle is to first scan the strata, use lasers to burn away the overly hard rocks to reach the depth of the ore vein, and then begin mechanical drilling and crushing.

It can only be installed on ore veins, and the mining output is not high; it's just that it's much more efficient than someone carrying a pickaxe and hammering away.

This is a pyrite deposit partially exposed on the surface, which is rare because pyrite deposits are not very common in places like this where there are no volcanoes or obvious fissures.

Pyrite oxidation zones are unstable and easily transform into goethite and limonite. Pyrite veins exposed on the surface can only exist in places frequently infiltrated by magma, and this phenomenon mainly occurs in areas that have experienced volcanic eruptions.

Although she was very puzzled by the formation of this mineral vein, Xia Lin still installed the mining machine, took the luggage out of the truck bed, and set up a standard outdoor tent on the nearby open ground.

"Alright, this thing will work all day and won't stop until this time tomorrow. We can go for a walk around and see if we can hunt some prey. Consider it a practical exercise."

"Hmm!" Yelena had clearly recovered, nodded while holding the gun, and gave a faint smile.

"Speaking of which, are there any settlements around here?" If possible, it would be feasible to obtain some supplies through trade, since it would be too much work to gather and process everything ourselves.

"I remember there used to be one, but I don't know if it's still there now."

Due to the existence of natural disasters, most people live a nomadic life. Some move between a few locations regularly, while others live aimlessly in search of water, grass, and prey—well, that's an adjective; in reality, they might be moving in search of Originium veins.

"Which direction is it? Let's go take a look, and maybe gather some things along the way. Do you remember what those wild vegetables and herbs look like?"

"I remember," Yelena nodded, pointing to a clump of unassuming black fungus under a tree root not far away, "That, black fungus, is edible, but it's very bitter..."

"Oh, let me see," Xia Lin nodded. She hadn't expected to find something as soon as she came out. It seemed that bringing her along was a really good idea.

"Hmm, are you sure this is edible? This thing contains metallic components. Oh, eating a small amount should be fine. Hmm, let's collect it first. It seems it can be used as a mineral for biological reference."

Xia Lin carefully stored this "black fungus" in a container, preparing to see if it could grow into an edible fungus without metal components on a normal culture medium made from fermented wood chips.

The two then headed towards the settlement that Yelena had passed through when the mines migrated to escape the natural disaster, as she remembered. Along the way, Yelena would occasionally tug at Xia Lin's arm, indicating that she had discovered something useful from her memories.

“That one with long, thin leaves can stop bleeding…” Xia Lin dug up a plant that looked similar to an orchid and labeled it “Hemostatic Herb A-1”.

"And that, if you get an upset stomach, you can eat those leaves..."

"Hmm? This thing contains a lot of... never mind." Xia Lin labeled the vine plant as "diarrhea herb".

"That wild vegetable is edible, the gray one with fuzz, but it has to be thoroughly cooked."

"Oh, the oxalic acid level is too high. I suggest you stop eating it, in case it forms calcium oxalate crystals... Well, you could plant some."

"Oh no, that mushroom is poisonous!"

“I know, I did it on purpose…” Xia Lin put the brightly colored mushroom labeled “Hallucinogenic Fungus” into her pocket. “Even poisonous things have some value.”

Yelena found fewer and fewer things after that, and they were all repetitive. Basically, that was about all the useful plants and fungi she recognized. More often than not, Xia Lin would ask her what something was, and she could only look at her blankly and shake her head.

The so-called settlement address was just a clearing on the edge of a forest, with a vast, gray-white wasteland not far away. The saline soil and salt marshes stretched to the horizon, dotted with small clumps of gray-white shrubs and sparse shrubs.

"Hmm, it seems they'll probably come back." Xia Lin crouched down. The scanner showed numerous heavy tracks on the ground, clearly indicating the presence of tracked vehicles under fluorescent light.

The so-called mobile villages and towns and mobile cities do not actually move the entire city or village to a single transport platform. Instead, they are composed of multiple transport platforms, like a large convoy of vehicles. The largest of these is the so-called "core city," and then there are various functional platforms of different sizes, each powered independently during migration.

Once they reach a safe zone, these transport platforms will release their brakes, just like the caravans of the West in the past, and quickly transform into functional platforms, which then move closer together or disperse to form cities and various urban blocks.

If it were a village or town like the ruins before us, each building would be a tracked motorhome. When the village was relocated, it would quickly turn into a convoy and run away. Then, when it reached a safe point, it would form a circle or scatter on the ground according to the size of these "motorhomes" to re-form a village.

Xia Lin, combining Yelena's description with the ruins before her, imagined what it would be like for the mobile city to begin disintegrating and moving.

Suddenly, a gust of wasteland punk wind, accompanied by the roar of diesel punk tracks, swept over his head:

Between the massive, land-based aircraft carrier-like upper city platforms lies the staggered middle city. Between the enormous tracks and locomotives, the mobile platforms of the civilian areas, roughly the same size and height as RVs, are connected to each other by chains or something similar, clanging and rattling as they wander between the giant beasts' hooves.

When the city stops moving, the tall decks and bridges are pieced together, and beneath the arches and spiderweb-like traffic bridges formed by the upper city lies the bustling middle city, where dense buildings extend as high as possible to save platform space.

Due to the difference in elevation, the cross-section of the Shangcheng District and large industrial blocks, which resemble cliffs, is covered with colorful neon advertisements.

Dense crowds, a light drizzle from the upper levels, streets mostly shrouded in darkness by crisscrossing bridges and open decks, and within this darkness spreading poverty, chaos, and rigid class divisions—

Needless to say, you can guess just by listening to what Yelena said, or even without this information.

Smaller mobile modules cannot support more people, but because they are cheaper, they end up carrying an overloaded population. Bustling commercial districts can rely on power and supplies from large urban areas, but just a wall away, there may be ordinary civilian areas.

Their sewage, engine exhaust, and especially since they reportedly use Originium as an energy source, they are likely to produce a large amount of exhaust containing unfinished Originium powder, all of which will accumulate in the lower and middle districts.

The community-level mobile platforms of ordinary people cannot support many purification devices, so they have to endure them. Then one day, their physical coordination completely fails, and they become infected by Oripathy, with their only destination being the lower-level slums and mines.

At least these can be considered the world under the sun, even if it's just sunlight leaking through the gaps between the upper city and the commercial district, sunlight that's like murky sewage through the pervasive smoke and exhaust fumes from the power generation engines.

So the real slums are those places at the very bottom of all the decks, those truly dark and gloomy places where people scurry like rats through the waste disposal pipes and sewers.

Of course, the first and second decks of the upper town and commercial district may also be bustling indoor shopping streets and apartments.

But further down, closer to the walking structures, in those crevices where flesh and blood could be turned to mush at any moment, lies the home of the infected and the poor.

Chapter Fifteen: Alafia's Wrath - Mixed Vegetable and Venison Soup

Chapter 15

Xia Lin swallowed hard, deeply shocked by the cyberpunk-esque mobile city she had imagined.

A dark curtain of rain, towering skyscrapers like cliffs or the bulwarks of a moving city, colorful neon lights, infected people stripped of their human identities and the poor, and crowds of people weaving through narrow streets riddled with spiderweb-like cables...

My god, if this were some kind of cyberpunk art exhibition, it would be absolutely thrilling—but seeing it in reality is just terrifying.

However, it must be said that the sight of these industrial behemoths moving around really does have a fin-de-siècle feel to it. The roar of tracks, the billowing dust, and the mobile platform vehicles that look like swarms of fish surrounding the giant landships even give it a bit of the look of a Covenant land army group being deployed.

"What are you looking for?" Yelena squatted down next to Xia Lin, looking at him curiously. There were only some marks on the ground, nothing at all, not even a few weeds. "Nothing. Why would they live here? Are there any resources around here?"

"It is said that there is a small source rock mine..."

"Source Rock Mine?"

"Yes, it's... those yellow stones, you can refine them into Originium ore, that's it." Following the girl's finger, clusters of uneven hexagonal rocks stood out prominently on the wasteland. "Hmm, the content is quite high..."

The content is about 17%, which is a very high grade for an ore.

"This is solid source rock, and the ones below are the source rocks. Solid source rock is very hard, and it's not easy to mine without tools." Yelena had been in the mine for a long time and was very familiar with these things. After all, she had to rely on these to exchange for food to survive, even though she was only ten years old.

Beneath the hexagonal rock were some clumps of something with a soil-like texture. Xia Lin reached out and touched them; the scanner showed that the content was approximately 3% to 4%.

However, its hardness and feel are roughly the same as plaster, so it can be dug by hand or with wooden tools.

"What's the price of Originium?" he asked. Since local villages and towns were mining it, it must be a relatively common mineral, perhaps something like coal.

"I don't know, the mine guards won't tell us these things..."

"Hmm, I see..." Xia Lin took out Zhou Bo's utility knife and easily cut off a large piece of solid source rock, preparing to take it back to refine and extract source stones, which might be useful for trading with others in the future.

"Alright, let's head back now. If we delay any longer, it'll be almost dark."

Xia Lin finished packing up the samples and said that the sun was about to set, and flocks of birds were circling in the treetops. It would take some time to get back to the mining machine and prepare for camping.

On the way back, Yelena discovered a creature that looked very much like a red deer. She called it the Efila Giant Deer, a close relative of the Efila tribe.

Of course, despite being close relatives, the Aeraphia people living in the Sami and Ursus regions show no mercy when hunting these creatures.

The animal seemed quite bold, standing on a distant high ground, watching Yelena and Xia Lin. Having never seen a gun or hunting rifle before, it seemed completely unconcerned about the threat these humans posed to it, even though the distance was beyond what a crossbow could reach.

The locals clearly didn't have firearms, and probably not even many crossbows, which is why the animal was so bold as to stand at a distance with little cover and observe the two armed hunters.

Xia Lin took off his Falcon assault rifle, switched it to single-fire mode, and aimed at the opponent from a standard crouching position. Perhaps it was an instinctive warning, but the strong stag kicked its hoof uneasily, preparing to turn and run away.

"Fire!" Yelena, who was also crouching and firing, aimed at the giant deer and pulled the trigger.

However, on her first attempt to shoot at a moving target, she unsurprisingly missed. The gunshot startled the stag, which immediately tried to dash into the dense forest, but the pursuing electromagnetic flare accurately brought it down.

With the aid of the symbiote and neural implants, Xia Lin's shooting accuracy at this distance makes it very difficult for her to miss the target.

However, this was largely due to the fact that the giant deer had never seen firearms before and was not very wary of humans.

In fact, the biggest trouble in hunting is finding the animals and not scaring them away, with finding them accounting for 90% of the difficulty.

Even the most simplified hunting games are, for many, walking simulators because they simply can't find any prey.

Humans with animalistic features are still human. Therefore, Yelena doesn't mind hunting rabbits, the Erafias don't mind hunting giant deer, and Ursus bear hunting is a tradition among traditions.

However, the sight of the white-furred rabbit struggling to drag the bleeding giant deer still felt somewhat incongruous.