Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

It should be noted that although the Federation kept a close watch on Marner, they did not actually treat him like a cheap animal. His salary was still quite generous, and the Federation would not make any mistakes in this superficial "respectability".

"Then, how do those Grand Knights, who are only allowed to own no more than a thousand acres of land according to the Knight Laws of Kazimierz, maintain their mansions and estates?"

Having traveled throughout the country, Marna knew how difficult it was for basic livelihoods and how little the land could produce. So how did the Grand Knights and Grand Knight Commanders maintain their expenses, gambling funds, and manors?

"So if you investigate the slave trade, you won't find anything; if you investigate who is plundering towns, you won't find any real planners."

You might even want to investigate how those natural villages with fertile land disappeared, and where those lands and people that mysteriously vanished from the accounts are now.

You won't find out unless you storm into the castles of those respectable gentlemen, drag them off their thrones like that man just now, and lift them by their hair.

"Uh……"

"Come on, you still have a lot to learn and a lot to see. Soon you will discover what the magnificent city relies on to exist, what it chews on and devours, and then you will understand that the knights' castle has always been sitting on a volcano about to erupt."

"What about the federation?"

“At least they intend to keep this mess going, and that’s enough.” Marner didn’t say anything good about the Federation. “Even if their mansions are smoking, at least these people know to pour some cold water on the smoking area…”

The equestrian tournament, opening up trade routes to Colombia, and merging villages into towns with small-scale processing industries—these were all cold waters poured on this smoking house by the federation.

As long as enough benefits flow in, and the lower classes can get a share of the profits, the fire will be delayed for a long time before it starts to burn. As long as there are continuous benefits flowing in, it may never even start.

Meanwhile, "Is this Kazdel?" Swire squinted. Before her stretched an endless expanse of lush green fields. Seedlings, oblivious to the changing seasons, thrived in the chilly autumn winds. This round of planting was rye, a raw material for brewing. The yield was low, but field care was somewhat troublesome. This was a good time to let everyone expend their excess energy.

"It's not quite the Kazdel I imagined..." In my imagination, Kazdel was a barren, gray desert, with resilient, withered plants spreading across the plains. There were only poor, backward tents and mud houses, no roads, no industry, and people struggled to survive by herding livestock and growing drought-resistant wheat.

Now, however, the fields are neatly divided by rows of shimmering, silvery ditches. The late autumn weather is clear, and the blue sky complements the vast farmland, giving one a feeling of instant openness and expansiveness.

If you look at the satellite map, a patch of lush greenery is spreading across the entire Kazdel, and many herders and farmers who fled from Theresis's rule have come here to beg for food.

Realizing that their population was dwindling, the nobles under Theresis quickly increased the collective punishment and sent out patrol cavalry to organize the escape of these people. What would they eat if they all ran away?

"Speaking of which, where's Lao Xia?"

"I've been tinkering with things in the workshop for a few days now." Yelena unwrapped a candy and popped a lollipop into her mouth, completely disregarding the numbers on the scale. After realizing that the implanted symbiote wouldn't give her any room to lose weight, the little one had let herself go.

Although her weight is rising rapidly, she remains slim because most of the fat has been converted into higher density and stronger muscle fibers, which requires her to consume a lot of protein in her diet.

"Let's go take a look!" Old Xia's workshop was right next to the Aretosha stop, a very ordinary little house. When we went in, he had just finished his work and was holding a strange device in his hand, which looked like a metal ball.

"Are you done?" Yelena picked up the metal ball and looked at it. "What's this?"

"time……"

"what?"

"Okay, a graviton device, the core component of the shield. The Cataclysm messenger has been here, and a Cataclysm storm is coming soon, so I modified the ship's shield."

"Can it be defended against?"

"No, but we can deflect it." Natural disasters are essentially a natural force, and it is difficult to completely resist them, but it is entirely feasible to use gravity to deflect the storm to another location.

"What does this have to do with time?" "It can buy us time." Moreover, the essence of gravity is spacetime, so it's not wrong to say it's time.

"You can do this too?"

"I didn't know how to do it before, and I was actually quite worried..." Old Xia said honestly. He learned and worked on it by referring to the technical information on Johnny's ship. Fortunately, this adjustment was just a very simple custom function.

Instead of actually making technical improvements and adjustments, if he could do that, he wouldn't only have enough points to get into the agricultural college.

The activation process of the graviton shield is very ordinary; you won't feel anything if it's deployed in a concentrated manner.

It might give people a sense of disorientation, but if it's spread over such a wide area, it has almost no effect.

In reality, the air molecules that are truly affected only experience a slight tendency to thermal motion, an effect that is extremely minor.

However, when multiplied by range and time, the butterfly effect eventually causes the storm cyclone to shift in other directions.

But even the doctor who calculated all of this couldn't predict which side it would lean towards. All that could be said was that it wouldn't crash headlong into New Kazdel and raze all the farmland and cities that had been built to the ground.

"Speaking of which, how did you end up here?"

"You still dare to talk back!" The little tiger restrained the urge to scratch the guy's face. She was thrown into marriage by her family, that's exactly what it meant.

"Ah, that would be a bit rushed if we were to get married." Old Xia was certainly open to it, but it would be a bit difficult for Little Tiger to get over this hurdle.

On the other side, on Rhodes Island;

"The sun's brightness has decreased."

"So, the storm is coming earlier than expected?"

“No…” The doctor shook his head, looking at the complex data and curves in front of him. “This is just a normal phenomenon.”

Over the next three hundred years, the sun will repeatedly experience periods of diminishing and then regaining its luminosity. On a cosmic timescale, this is like a light bulb starting to flicker due to an unstable power source. Compared to the lifespan of a star, which is tens of billions of years, a few hundred years for a cricket is indeed frighteningly short.

This means that the hydrogen in its core is nearing depletion, the thermal pressure is constantly decreasing, and the degeneracy pressure is constantly pushing the helium closer to the fusion point.

However, hydrogen elements on the shell can also fall into the core due to reduced gravity and thermal pressure, thus maintaining hydrogen fusion.

Therefore, during this period, the sun's luminosity is like a light bulb running out of power, repeatedly weakening and strengthening. With each cycle, the luminosity becomes weaker than before, and the volume shrinks. After reaching a critical point, that is the flash that can be seen throughout the entire universe.

The expanding stellar mass will then directly embrace Terra, even though by then Terra will be a dead star without an atmosphere or any life. It will end up as a small black pixel on the corona, and after a period of time, even that pixel will disappear without a trace.

"However, with reduced light intensity and decreased ambient heat and light energy, Originium will tend to release energy..."

"Natural disasters will become more frequent, though their intensity will decrease." This is also a death knell hanging over the heads of the Doctor and his team. Not only will they face inevitable destruction in three hundred years, but before that, frequent minor natural disasters lasting for centuries will also greatly hinder production and development, and even trigger large-scale famines and disasters.

It's probably like the late Ming Dynasty, which coincided with the Little Ice Age, and was ruled by a group of feudal bureaucrats who would stop at nothing to exploit people. At that time, the best description would be that there was no way to reverse the situation.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Wedding Preparations

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A wedding is a traditional ceremony held at dusk, preceded by elaborate decorations and preparations.

For example, making wedding dresses, preparing the new house, inviting guests, stocking up on food, preparing musical instruments and venues, etc., and the newlyweds will only begin to receive blessings from relatives and friends at dusk and officially get married.

The wedding customs in Terra were roughly the same as what Lao Xia knew, and the various factions were almost at each other's throats over which ceremony to use.

In the end, Lao Xia decided to use the simplified version of the Star Alliance – otherwise, all those rituals would be too time-consuming.

"Why are there black and red dresses in your wedding dress list?" Little Tiger flipped through the Star Alliance's clothing list with a curious look. She had no choice but to get married, even if she didn't want to. Old Tiger and her mother came over, and after seeing Kazdel's situation, they immediately started a double whammy of parental pressure.

"Well... it's best not to choose either of these..."

"Hmm?" Old Xia scratched his head. "The reason for the black wedding dress is..." If the fiancé comes back alive, it's a wedding dress; if he doesn't, it's a mourning dress. It's that simple, but tragic.

"Uh……"

"During the war, white came to have a similar meaning, while red was invented after the war to distinguish things and add a touch of less bleakness and desolation."

"How many people died?" The little tiger touched the holographic projection of the costume and asked after a moment of silence.

"We can't get a statistic, but almost everyone in the 20-35 age group has disappeared."

Old Xia didn't really want to bring this up at this time either. For the Star Alliance members, bringing this up would really be like performing a magic trick called "how to make a smile disappear in an instant".

"Uh……"

"Why are we bringing up this damn topic here, at this time?" the little tiger said angrily.

"I don't know, didn't you start it?"

"You still dare to talk!"

"Ahem, I understand how you feel, but everyone's still waiting, can you hurry up?"

Kal'tsit stood at the door with her arms crossed. The little tiger was grabbing Old Xia's collar, while the latter was grabbing the tiger's tail. One hand was on his shoulder, and the tiger was almost riding on him.

If it weren't for the fact that one hand is clenched into a fist and about to smash down, the scene would be quite ambiguous.

Old Xia was then kicked out because Kal'tsit and W would be helping her try on clothes and make some adjustments, and there was still some time before the wedding.

As for Lao Xia, he needs to handle venue and miscellaneous tasks. Everyone usually has a lot of government affairs and things to deal with, so it is difficult to free up enough time. They can only constantly squeeze out fragmented time to do these things.

Moreover, this was not without reason. Even the people of the Satti Oasis sensed the approaching war. A grand wedding or celebration could effectively relieve and release the pressure on the people. This is why grand ceremonies and events must be prepared before the end and the beginning of a war.

It's not the meaningless behavior that some so-called decisive and ruthless novices imagine, nor is it an act of diminishing intelligence. Human nerves cannot remain tense forever. If we don't want to develop war-weariness before the fighting even begins, then appropriate activities to release stress and highlight justice are very necessary.

Of course, it is also important to demonstrate strength and show that you have many allies and are not isolated.

In this way, the people will have the will and the will to support a war to continue—if the enemy is determined to exterminate the race, then some of these things can indeed be omitted.

The Star Alliance wedding was close to a simplified Western-style wedding, partly to save time, and partly because using a Chinese or other style would have made the parents' role somewhat awkward.

Ninety-nine out of a hundred couples may not even have an urn containing the ashes of their parents or older siblings. If the wedding were to be held in a traditional Chinese style with a grand ceremony, the scene would be extremely desolate and frightening.

Even with a more Western-style layout, and including neighbors, friends, and even lower-level staff, the number of people still seemed small. It wasn't until Xia Lin's generation that things improved slightly.

It is said that in his father's generation, when people got married, everyone would do their best to make a ruckus and try to create a lively atmosphere.

However, even when the entire neighborhood is gathered together, it still feels deserted, especially after the ceremony ends and the crowd disperses, leaving one feeling as if they are in a deathly silent graveyard.

Old Xia, still shaken by the experience, followed the Covenant's usual practice and summoned everyone. Fortunately, Kazdel had plenty of open space.

Otherwise, we really wouldn't be able to accommodate so many people, but it has to be said that there are close to five thousand people.

The sheer number of people, equivalent to that of a middle school, certainly made the entire venue very lively.

In order to accommodate so many people, everyone needed to help set up the venue. The Ursus Snowfield provided the necessary bouquets, as it was the honey harvesting season there, and the mountains and fields were covered with planted flowers.

Even so, those black bees still need to be fed by hand, otherwise the organic matter provided by pollen and nectar is simply not enough for them.

At the same time, they also provided the hardwood they needed, which was cut directly from the mountains. Old Xia also brought a lot of fast-growing softwood from his plantation. Timber is the most expensive export product of the Covenant agricultural colonies, especially decorative hardwood, because it is natural timber that really needs time to grow slowly.

After all, the purpose of buying it wasn't for convenience or lightness, nor for durability or suitability for space colonies, but for prestige. The whole high-tech, fast-growing hardwood is really useless—

People are buying the premium for time and labor, not the wood itself—after several agricultural technology companies that thought they had grasped the secret to wealth went bankrupt, the remaining people realized that they should stop investing in such futile efforts.

Cork is used to make arches and fences, while hardwood is used to make tables, chairs, and benches. Of course, once these are used up, the locals can take them back with them; the bouquets are delivered along with mud balls.

So they are currently being grown in the dome planting area, and when needed, flower balls, bouquets, and flower arches will be made.

Old Xia's racing horses have also found a purpose. Genetic engineering has strictly controlled their coat color, and four solid-colored foals have been selected and are undergoing simple training. These tall and strong horses are professional racing horses with long limbs and excellent visual appeal.

However, to avoid these manure-generating machines polluting the environment, they are kept in stables and only brought out on the day of the ceremony; otherwise, the venue would soon be covered in horse manure.

The ingredients were actually the simplest: honey from Little Deer Bee Industry and candy from White Rabbit Sugar provided several containers. Besides being used at the venue, these would also be distributed to everyone as part of the final celebration before the war, so they could have a more comfortable winter.

The wedding cake was prepared by a top Victorian pastry chef hired by the Swire family. Although Victoria's diet was terrible, it was a consequence of a large number of country maids entering the kitchen.

In fact, aristocratic cuisine remains very refined, especially desserts, which are among the world's best.

In reality, the same applies to Britain. Criticism of British cuisine generally refers to the food eaten by ordinary people before or after the Industrial Revolution, while the diets of the aristocracy remained very rich and unique.