Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

The number of flour mills in the workshop has been reduced by more than half, but washing equipment has been added to wash out the gluten from the dough.

However, once the gluten strips are made crispy in an air fryer, they become gluten snacks filled with pungent spices after being soaked in cooking oil and seasoned.

In addition, soy sauce production has recently been added here, as the environment in Ursus is really not suitable for fermenting and sun-drying soy sauce.

So they gradually moved to Longmen. Although the business decreased, the actual workload increased significantly. They even planned to expand several workshops to produce jam, biscuits, and other desserts for the market.

At noon, as soon as the bell rings to signal the end of the workday, the canteen's food carts begin delivering meals to the dining areas of various subsidiaries and production parks. Instead of each company establishing its own canteen, VI's efficiency improvement is a central kitchen system, which then delivers meals to each dining area.

There is no ordering system provided. Instead, the menu is based on several seasonal recipes that were initially drafted by Lao Xia, adjusted and improved by VI Nutrition, and allocated by the acting group president. This helps to predict the rise and fall of food prices more than a week in advance and to stock up on supplies, avoiding peak market periods and thus greatly saving on catering expenses.

Furthermore, the enlarged version of Lao Xia Farm's cooking machine is also suitable for processing recipes that are not complicated but produced in large batches, effectively saving a considerable amount of money on chefs.

Meanwhile, dishwashers and UV sterilizers also save on dishwasher fees. After eating, workers only need to place the bowls on the shelf in order, and the conveyor belt will take them away for cleaning.

Today's menu is very ordinary: brown rice, a fist-sized dessert bread, a small box of carrot sauce, a vegetable salad made of seasonal vegetables, a small bowl of fish soup made from tank-raised white fish, and finally a steak that was grilled to a very crispy texture and drizzled with black pepper sauce.

Nobody really cares what kind of meat it is, as long as it's not human flesh. Whether it's taken from live animals or grown in a tissue culture chamber is irrelevant.

The workers aren't Dementors, and they're not particularly picky about taste. What they need is enough energy to sustain them through most of the afternoon's work and a feeling of fullness.

Leftover food is cleaned into a fermentation chamber and turned into nutrients for microorganisms. The remaining portion is used to cultivate black algae, which can produce large amounts of oxygen and starch, thus recovering as much of the food as possible.

This system originated from a self-circulation system on early spacecraft. Although it wasn't perfect due to equipment limitations, it still managed to minimize the amount of trash thrown out.

After finishing their workday, except for those working the night shift, everyone else gradually left the production park and took the same dedicated bus back to the centralized dormitory area. Their lives were regular and simple. The group even opened a supermarket and a small farmers' market near the dormitory area, where the surplus goods produced by each workshop were sold at a price slightly higher than the cost price.

However, most of the buyers are from outside the area, and it has gradually become a cheap commodity market catering to people at the bottom of society. It is especially lively when the group's employees get off work.

After all, everyone in Lungmen knows that the lower-level employees of the Xia Group have some spare Lungmen currency.

Moreover, their workload is not heavy, and they have the time and energy to spend their spare money. The centralized dormitory area ensures a considerable flow of people, which will attract customers who are not members of the group.

Any businessman with a bit of business sense would sense the potential for land and shop upgrades here.

Unfortunately, the land here belongs to the group's private property, so no one cares about these illegally set-up stalls. But if it's an illegal building, the security guard who comes to talk to you won't be so polite.

"Hmm... It's snowing—" A worker who had just stepped off the bus stretched out his hand, and a pale white snowflake fell into his palm, quickly melting away. This was followed by an alarm that Lungmen was about to migrate about 70 kilometers to avoid the natural disaster.

The citizens of Lungmen calmly packed their belongings, preparing to enter the shelter. Normally, the slums would be the most troublesome place at this time, as they might be caught in the deformed machinery of the city if they didn't move quickly enough, leaving no trace of their bodies.

The city bridges were broken, the decks were recovered, the bottom sections separated, the city checkpoints and ramps were reassembled, the elevators were shut down, and the various city areas quickly entered a state of disintegration. Then the power system was ignited, and the city gradually dispersed like a pile of building blocks, turning into a rolling stream of vehicles heading towards the refuge area in the southeast.

The entire process usually takes 1-2 weeks to complete the relocation of Lungmen, and then it takes about 1 week to return it to its original urban state.

Snowflakes drifted down, and soon a thin layer of snow covered the buildings and decks. The thick clouds were illuminated by the sun as it dipped below the horizon, turning an eerie blood red. Soon, as the sunlight disappeared, the sky turned a gray-black, with only fine snowflakes dancing in the lamplight.

[PS]

The Great Depression was not a slow decline; on the contrary, it ushered in a period of great prosperity.

However, while workers' and farmers' incomes did not increase, industrial output doubled, coupled with consecutive bumper harvests. At the same time, widespread automation led to the reduction of numerous jobs.

When social groups significantly reduce their spending, exceeding the spending growth of other social groups, a rapid decline in consumption ensues. This decline in consumption exacerbates job cuts and unemployment caused by automation.

Prices plummeted, yet people couldn't afford to buy anything. This led to infamous scenes like coal miners freezing to death because they couldn't sell their coal, losing their jobs and being unable to afford coal, and milk being dumped into rivers. The Great Depression ensued.

This is essentially a "disease of affluence" of capitalism, not a "disease of poverty," and the solution is simple—

Let's have a good fight, consume the excess population and output, and then create more jobs through post-war reconstruction—the "Maxim method" among the three pillars.

Chapter Seventy-Two: The Land of the Dark Moon

"Click!" A crisp sound rang out, and one by one the large lights on the ceiling turned on, illuminating the entire hangar. In the central open space, a behemoth lay quietly asleep.

The wings are blended and fold upwards at the ends, with a full wingspan of 77 meters and a length of 65 meters. It has four engines, two large and two small, and no vertical tail fin or cockpit. The black and gray protective paint surface has some scattered markings and white stripes remaining (see picture at the end).

The Covenant Redtail Falcon carrier-based attack aircraft model... only has four engines that are actually moving; all other mechanical and avionics components are just empty shells.

As the oldest carrier-based attack aircraft, the rocket propulsion engine it uses is within the scope of Lao Xia's manual work. Considering the material issues, it is uncertain how much of its performance can be preserved. However, the avionics and other mechanical parts are beyond the scope of his capabilities.

Equipped with an omnidirectional laser attack bay and a bomb bay similar to the disc-shaped radar of an early warning aircraft, its primary mission is to attack ground and orbital facilities. Therefore, it features an aerodynamic shape and folding wings designed for atmospheric flight.

Because the earliest version used a chemical rocket engine instead of a nuclear propulsion engine, it was named "Red-tailed Falcon" because the end of its tail was red due to incomplete combustion. It is an unmanned attack aircraft that can carry four heavy ground attack missiles or a total of 60 precision-guided bombs at a time.

Orbital bombardment is a delicate task, not a silly thing like dropping rocks. It's true that asteroid rocks are cheap.

But whether it's a bomb or a missile, its warhead isn't expensive. However, the engine that propels an asteroid weighing tens of thousands of tons and the navigation equipment that guides it are expensive, and the effect is not as good as a dedicated missile warhead. [So, stop saying the stupid thing about bombing asteroids being worthless...]

Orbital attack aircraft are primarily used for precision destruction, typically for seizing occupied or controlled colonies and orbital facilities.

Since the equipment and supplies belong to our own people, we can't just use the indiscriminate attack method of dropping gravity bombs from orbital bombers.

Later, these dedicated ground attack aircraft were replaced by specialized multi-role fighters, mainly due to the widespread adoption of carrier-based precision attack systems, which eliminated the need for these attack aircraft to enter the atmosphere to contest air superiority and conduct precision bombing.

"This thing is yours. You can take it apart for research, or modify it to make a bomber, whatever you want."

"It's really beautiful." The doctor looked up at the massive fuselage, which was no less impressive than the single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft built by the Terrans.

If we consider that its original configuration also included a micro warp engine, which could allow it to rush at sub-light speed, its technological sophistication would be even higher.

"Don't get too excited. The boss said it's just an empty shell. Apart from the engine, which can actually ignite and fly, the rest is all empty."

Andrei, who manages the Lungmen warehouse, tapped the fuselage of the aircraft, producing a hollow echo. "By the way, the shell is real too. Hmm, the outermost ablation protective shell is also real. It can really fly, provided you give it a brain and a spine."

“That’s enough.” The doctor gave a rare smile. “That’s enough. I’ll take it to Rembiton for the next phase of construction. I hope it really is what your boss said—I mean, the thruster.”

“Who knows—” Andrei was a disabled member of the Yeti Squad, having lost a leg and an arm during the previous anti-Ursus siege.

Although the boss fitted him with a very powerful self-cloned new leg, due to the poorly crafted nerve reconnection technique, he was still unsuitable for going back to the battlefield and became an old guy guarding the warehouse.

Here, no one can betray him and steal things from the warehouse to sell. His artificial robotic arm, which he chose specifically instead of self-cloning, is no pushover. With 45 horsepower of electrically controlled nanomuscles, it can crush a head as easily as crushing an egg.

One of the agreements reached between the Doctor and Xia Lin was this aircraft. He needed a more convenient vehicle that could be deployed to a small elite combat force, while also preparing for the possibility of entering the starship to control some of its equipment.

Of course, this is also an important card in his hand, and he must prepare it before going to talk to Kosic.

"As long as it looks decent, that's fine." The doctor wasn't picky. "Can the engine be test-driven?"

“Sure, the boss built a test bench over there, you can give it a try.” Andrei had received authorization from the boss, so he naturally had no objections.

After completing a series of test drive procedures, including taking photos and recording videos, and confirming that the engine was indeed working, the engineers at Rhodes Island transferred this behemoth to the deck of Rhodes Island, where a thick layer of cold-proof and moisture-proof cloth secured it.

Rhodes Island then left Lungmen and headed toward Duke Kosichell's capital. It was a month before winter, and winter was coming to Kazdel with heavy snowfall.

White blizzard, a type of blizzard with snowflakes as large as feathers, accompanied by howling cold winds, withers pastures, and livestock will freeze to death if they lack warm hay, not to mention people. In autumn, when the pasture turns yellow, the cow dung and hay that are dried in the sun are used for warmth.

Even in the cities of South Kazdel, a significant number of impoverished people freeze to death every year. However, at Xia Lin's agricultural production base, the scene is quite different.

Water flows gently in the pre-dug drainage ditches. Snow is shoveled into the snow melting furnace by hand, turning into irrigation water at about 15 degrees Celsius, which then flows into the drainage ditches to keep the soil warm.

Even in the midst of a blizzard where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, the potatoes and beets in the fields grew very well.

"Clang—" The engineer from Lungmen knocked on the iron pipe beside him. The sound traveled far away through the metal. After hearing the knocking, the workers on the distant tower turned four purified Originium fuel rods into the furnace. Soon, a bright flame shot out from the top pressure relief port, like a torch in winter.

High-temperature steam was sent into greenhouses, flower houses and residential areas through pressurized pipes. Although the snowstorm in Kazdel was greater than that in Ursus, the temperature was not as drastically low. Relatively speaking, the power of the thermal furnaces needed for heating was not very large.

"Heating's on! Heating's on!" The herdsmen and laborers gathered around the maintenance site cheered. Even the former nobles were no exception. Even minor nobles felt a chill run down their spines in the blizzard.

The heat pipes buried in the building's mezzanine slowly heat the entire interior environment. Although the power is not high and the temperature will not rise above room temperature, it is still quite welcome in this kind of winter.

The snow didn't last long; the snowfall each winter was one of the few precipitation opportunities in northern Kazdel.

However, the cold wind did not stop. The dry and cold wind was like a knife cutting into people's skin. If you didn't cover your hands and face, you would get a lot of frostbite and chapped skin when you came back from outside.

This is when the herbal crops inside the greenhouse dome come into play. These are herbs transplanted from Ursus, and the most useful one is a herbaceous plant called "Froststar" that produces tiny, frosty white flowers. Its seeds can be used to make antifreeze oil, which can be applied to frostbite sores to effectively relieve pain and accelerate wound healing.

Inside the greenhouse, by the oasis lake, countless tiny flowers bloom in abundance. In another two weeks, during the coldest part of the season, they will begin to produce seeds, then wither and die, using their remaining branches and leaves to provide nutrients and warmth for the seeds to develop in the spring.

Meanwhile, on the moon, Johnny, wearing a heavy extravehicular activity suit, moved forward across the boundless white desert, leaving deep footprints in his wake. The probe hanging on his chest emitted a rhythmic beeping sound, which made him somewhat irritated.

Ice is scarce on Terra, but the planting troughs require a considerable amount of water. Although, with Old Xia's guidance, he successfully built the greenhouse and most of the cabins, and even used beehives to make some furniture and tools from the abundant titanium-iron particles on the moon, water remains a huge problem.

Not only water, but also nitrogen and phosphorus are problems, and they can only be obtained in small quantities by recovering spacecraft wreckage.

However, meteorites that fall to the moon may also bring substances such as ice, ammonia, and phosphorus, and he is now looking for such a gift from heaven.

For modern industry, the hundreds or tens of kilograms of material in a mineral vein formed by a meteorite are completely meaningless.

But for someone who just needs to make a living, finding a vein formed from such an ice meteorite would be enough for Johnny to live comfortably for more than a decade.

"Beep beep...beep beep—" The buzzer sound changed, which immediately alerted him, and he slid down toward the crater ahead.

"Carbon-bearing meteorites? That's really rare." Carbon rarely forms elemental meteorites. The source of carbon is stellar helium flashes and helium flashes in the shells of red giant stars. About 6% of the mass of a star is ejected. It is generally not easy to form elemental meteorites, but exists in the form of dust.

So-called interstellar dust is mainly composed of carbon-based graphite particles and ice particles, with a maximum diameter of only about 0.01 millimeters.

As for distribution density, generally speaking, even if a detector traverses the entire dust belt, the number of interstellar dust particles it can capture is only in the double digits.

If it were a high-density dust cloud, it would have coalesced into a planet much earlier in the star-forming era. The carbon in meteorites is mostly in complex structures formed with other substances.

Of course, this refers to small meteorites. If it were an asteroid, the chances of it containing carbon would be much higher.

Johnny slid down to the bottom of the crater. The lunar dust had long since covered the original impact debris. He needed to dig through the thick layer of lunar dust on the surface and the lunar soil underneath to find the carbon meteorite.

Based on his high school level of space geology, he believes it is most likely graphite or small pieces of diamond formed by the impact of a carbon-containing iron meteorite, reiterating that diamonds are truly worthless in the universe, practically worthless.

Soon, the surface dust was scraped away, revealing a sheet-like, jet-black substance about the size of a palm. It had sharp edges and a mica-like structure, reflecting a shimmering luster under the light. "Hmm? What is this?"

It doesn't look like soft graphite, nor does it look like diamond; it's some kind of heterogeneous carbon mineral.

Could it be coal or charcoal? That fibrous structure does look a bit like it. Finding natural coal and charcoal on the moon would be absolutely ridiculous, so ridiculous that Johnny could go back to his middle school teacher and give him a good scolding.

"It's quite heavy—" Johnny pulled the object out with force. The object was slightly curved, with a smooth surface, and it was indeed quite heavy. "Huh?"

Johnny noticed something white on one of the surfaces. He brushed away the dust, revealing text that had been perfectly preserved in the vacuum: “Black Mole-class mobile factory ship - O-65…” The rest of the text was cut off.

"Wait, that's graphene outer armor. And Black Mole-class... why does that sound so familiar?"

Johnny carried the armor plate up the impact crater and headed toward the far side of the moon. Since the fragment was here, other debris was probably scattered around as well.

Johnny continued walking, crossing the shallow Tranquil Plain, climbing the dark, towering hills behind it, and finally saw what he was looking for.

Beneath the crater, the remains of the behemoth lay silently in its circular grave. The hull was broken into more than a dozen pieces, and the engine had flown at least 200 kilometers away. The fragments were distributed around it according to their mass, making it look as if it had been caught off guard and crashed into the moon.

Moreover, it appears that the accident has been going on for quite some time, long enough that the spacecraft's emergency power modules have already run out.

“Explorer… I do think I’ve heard that name somewhere before.” The text on the surface was composed of English, Chinese, and French. This style was different from any of the Star Alliance ships that Johnny remembered. The shape, text, and style were quite different from what Star Alliance was like now.

"Let's go back first and contact Brother Xia Lin..." Johnny didn't risk going inside. Derek ships have always been a major challenge in space exploration. Even though its emergency power is exhausted, the danger is still enormous if it accidentally triggers any device.

For example, reactor fuel that has lost maintenance or leaked, containing highly toxic and corrosive chemicals.

For example, superfluid helium can freeze it to near absolute cold in a few seconds.

Pressure explosions are the simplest cause of death and consequence when exploring and dismantling wrecked ships. Accidentally igniting a pipe with flammable gas left by a laser and being blown up is a more serious cause of death. Dismantling wrecked ships is truly a technical job.