Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

"A traveling merchant?" Yelena tilted her head, her gaze fixed on the mobile platform behind him. As if to prove she wasn't a suspicious person, Maxim shouted, "Little Yelse, what are you doing? Get the shop open, don't slack off in the vehicle!"

As the side of the building opened up, a folding metal staircase descended, and the mobile platform quickly transformed into a shop with an open-air counter, wooden signs, and rows of dazzling goods hanging on the horizontal wooden poles.

Only after seeing the signboard and the familiar small commodities displayed by the other party did the wary infected disperse slightly.

Because this does indeed appear to be an ordinary traveling merchant, and they do have some trading needs, as long as the young lady of the farm doesn't drive the traveling merchant away.

Needles and thread, various relatively intact old clothes and shoes, some crudely made toys and tools obviously produced in small workshops, and simple jewelry and scarves that girls like. Children will also have a little bit of rough snacks in this relatively good season.

The most valuable items were the two boxes of Originium fuel rods placed in the most conspicuous spot on the counter. This fuel, made by mixing purified Originium powder with industrial ketones, is the main power source for civilian vehicles and machinery.

The water pumps needed for farm work, as well as the mobile platforms, all rely on it for power. Maxim bought it from those small Originium refineries.

Well, this refers to money that wasn't taxed by the Imperial Tax Bureau, nor obtained from the factory manager through legitimate business channels.

Small refineries cannot produce high-energy-density, multi-faceted liquefied source stone power sources; they can only be purchased from authorized dealers of reputable companies in major cities.

Moreover, due to the characteristics of Originium power, it does not require a fuel tank. Once the liquefied Originium energy inside a polyhedral power source with an etched power supply circuit is used up, it can only be scrapped. In essence, no matter what kind of Originium power it is, it is close to a disposable battery.

Fortunately, this world is not lacking in this mineral. Every natural disaster produces a large amount of Originium material, which is used to refine Originium ore. The main costs are in labor and refining, as well as the loss of labor caused by Originium contamination leading to Oripathy.

“There’s almost nothing the farm needs…” The girl carefully examined each item. The farm had better alternatives for the items it could use, and there was almost nothing the farm needed here, plus she didn’t have any money.

Ursus's currency, like that of most countries and cities, is based on the gold standard. Lungmen Dollars, a type of paper currency, are only used by large commercial entities like Lungmen and its surrounding areas, as well as by other major cities.

In Terra, paper money is difficult to guarantee credibility. On Earth, the issuer can disappear without a trace, but here...

They can run away with the temple on their backs, issue a wave of paper money, collect all the supplies, and then vanish without a trace, leaving you with absolutely nothing to do.

This refers to Longmen, an entity that is almost impossible to sustain itself and relies on large-scale trade.

Lungmen coins, issued due to their special political and economic status, have a certain degree of credibility; however, they are still useless in the rural areas of northern Ursus.

Gold coins made from pure gold and silver coins made from pure silver are the hard currency. In the countryside, gold coins are definitely not seen. The main currency is a 3-gram silver coin called "Little Father" which bears the image of the Ursus monarch.

However, the main form of trade was barter, because even these silver coins were rare; many families couldn't find more than a few. They were reserved for important matters, such as going to a large town for medical treatment when sick, as doctors there only accepted money and not goods.

“Farm?” Maxim listened to the hushed conversations, and one word that was repeatedly mentioned caught his attention: itinerant merchants like himself.

If you don't seize every opportunity and every deal, then going bankrupt and dying on a snowy street is the only outcome.

He quietly noted down information about a nearby farm, and when he could no longer work there, he would pass on this knowledge—which recorded the output, demand, and safe routes of various places—to his successor.

This is how itinerant merchants accumulated capital. If they were lucky enough, they would become stationary merchants after accumulating enough capital, owning their own real trading stations and shops, or even opening small supermarkets in big cities.

After confirming that the guy posed no threat, Yelena got back into the car and began distributing potato and sweet potato seeds to the "agricultural workers" from a small notebook, instructing them to plant them in the ground.

Those infected who felt they had become serfs on a farm didn't seem to have any complaints. For these infected who had escaped from the wasteland and mines, becoming serfs was, in a sense, a good thing.

Moreover, the owner of this farm seemed to be a kind-hearted person, as he provided them with ample pay and tools.

Although clearing land was tough, what in Ursus wasn't tough? Being able to work with steel farm tools and have enough to eat was already a great blessing.

Later, a number of infected people also came to Maxim's shop, exchanging their saved nutritional biscuits for essential daily necessities. Xia Lin hadn't yet reached the point where he needed to provide these people with necessities. Of course, he hadn't even considered this possibility.

The most purchased items were various kinds of sewing needles and thread. The Shield Guard has already begun to move to other places. These days, they are trying their best to settle the infected. Among them, the infected who are relatively strong and were assigned to work decided to simply set up camp next to these farmlands.

It's close to where we work, and it's convenient to run to the farm if anything happens. If all else fails, it can help us deal with problems that even the farm owner can't handle.

For example, during Ursus clearing operations, they can promptly notify farmers to flee together.

This requires a lot of needles and thread to sew the "work rewards" into tents and bedding.

He sold a lot of cheap needles and thread, but the farm tools and various implements that usually sold like hotcakes didn't sell at all, which made old Maxim so angry that he was blowing his beard.

But everyone who comes is a customer. It's better to sell some needles and thread than to sell nothing and waste all that fuel on the trip.

He patted the unusually sturdy coarse-fiber biscuits in his hand. The dry rations these people were trading were quite good. Regular trading posts would certainly look down on these dusty, some even a little moldy food, but for a traveling merchant like him, these biscuits were profitable.

As winter approaches, every village and town tries its best to collect everything edible and combustible. These rather substantial biscuits can then fetch a good price.

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Transaction is Completed

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Upon learning that a mobile trading station had arrived, Xia Lin instructed Yelena to sell some of the tools they had produced in excess, in order to find out what currency the locals used and what the lower limit of their commodity manufacturing level was.

After picking and choosing for a while with a look of disgust, Yelena returned with a small bag of coins, two boxes of Originium fuel rods, and an old Originium-powered machine.

Old Man Maxim's resources were limited, and he couldn't possibly consume all these exquisite products. He could only buy some farm tools and nutritional biscuits, emptying his pockets completely. He even traded a small Originium-powered machine for two large boxes of nutritional biscuits.

The old man from Ursus was not surprised at all by the white rabbit's pickiness. The little girl's food, clothing and daily necessities were at least those of the farm manager's daughter, or even the daughter of the farm's behind-the-scenes owner. It was normal for her to look down on his shabby things.

She even thought the transaction was just a little girl living on the manor being curious about the trading post and these commoner products, and her expression as if she had seen something dirty did not displease the old merchant at all.

No way! This is a big spender! For those glittering little cuties, let alone this little bit, we'd even be willing to get kicked or stomped on—as long as we get more money!

“This is the local currency—” Xia Lin played with the silver coin in her hand. “It looks pretty good.”

Although there are obvious signs of wear from long-term use, both the portrait of the founding monarch of Ursus on the front and the roaring bear head emblem symbolizing the Ursus Empire on the north side are very clear, with rounded edges and distinct relief gradients.

"It was mechanically stamped, and with very high precision..." Xia Lin placed the silver coin under a desktop scanner for further analysis. "63% silver content, silver-copper alloy, and it also contains nickel and beryllium, damn it, and palladium too?"

Xia Lin scratched his head. The locals are quite wealthy. No, I should say they own quite a lot of mines. Is there a family living in one of these mines?

Wait, considering the wide distribution of Originium and the necessity of building mobile cities to cope with "natural disasters," hmm, there's a home in the mine, I'm sure of it!

"I don't know if these rare elements were mixed into the ore used to mint a particular batch of silver coins, but overall, this trade was done well..."

Xia Lin certainly didn't intend to spend these silver coins as money; saving some for future transactions was essential, but more importantly, she planned to put them into the decomposition pool and furnace.

Even with only 1.1% palladium content, we need to expand the scale of trade and collect as many Ursus silver coins as possible.

"Is this money important?" Yelena curiously tugged at Xia Lin's clothes, trying to peek at the data on the scanning table. However, she was petite to begin with, and due to previous malnutrition, she had to jump up to get a glimpse of it.

"This is very important. I can start manufacturing some of the silver alloy wires and electronic components. This is a good thing..."

This means that Xia Lin can manufacture a considerable number of VI chips. Compared to the quantum cell chipset that forms the core of AI, the semiconductor chips that simulate intelligence are much simpler.

The entire production project of electronic and automation control is essentially unlocked, enabling the manufacture of equipment including simple industrial terminals.

Moreover, it's also possible to manufacture simple drones—the hardware can be manufactured, but as for the software… Xia Lin glanced at her personal terminal and her head was spinning.

"I'm terrible at algorithms, I hope I can still pick them up..."

"Algorithm?" Yelena felt that the longer she stayed here, the more strange and incomprehensible knowledge and terms she encountered. Although Xia Lin had prepared many introductory books for her, they were still difficult to understand.

"Hmm, the things I learned in elementary school, now..." Xia Lin started sweating. The Star Alliance's basic algorithm or programming teaching started in the sixth grade of elementary school as an applied branch of advanced mathematics. Then it was included in the computer course in junior high school, and after the subject was further subdivided in the third year of junior high school, it was no longer touched.

For any civilization, there is an unavoidable contradiction: as civilization grows larger and more advanced, the accumulated knowledge also increases and becomes more detailed, making it impossible for any individual to become a polymath.

However, the connections between fields require everyone to have basic interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, and to be able to expand in depth.

The Covenant's solution was to use symbiotes and implants to address the hardware issues, greatly improving human memory and thus eliminating the tedious memorization process.

Then there are automatic translation devices based on AI algorithms that utilize the core of the mind, which eliminate the extremely troublesome communication and language learning, thus shifting the time for humans to master basic knowledge for practical applications from high school to around the third grade of elementary school.

Of course, to avoid burning out the brain, the symbiont and implanted memory are limited to storing knowledge-based memory data. Daily life memories and fragmented memories are still stored in the normal hippocampal memory mode—meaning that this cannot cure your terminal illness of forgetting to bring your door key.

However, this approach cannot completely resolve this cycle of contradictions. Therefore, around the third year of junior high school, Xingmeng students must face their first major specialization and enter one of three different types of high schools based on their test scores.

For example, Xia Lin entered the "Academy of Applied Technology". Simply put, he only needs to master the basic theoretical knowledge and become more proficient in the applied knowledge on top of that. His future development will be based on better integration, use, understanding and even improvement of existing technologies and knowledge theories.

Applied technology schools are also known as "general high schools." For 9% of Star Alliance students, the next step, university education, is a joke—not because of tuition fees, but because of the fact that they don't have enough points.

The second type is for those among humans who are extremely innovative and talented. They will enter a different type of high school, during the peak of their creativity and learning ability in their childhood. They will then engage in in-depth study of specific theories, and the depth and intensity of their learning will be extremely high, beyond what normal people can bear.

Their future lies in basic research and pioneering work, followed by a second specialization where they become theoretical researchers or practical inventors, depending on their focus. This process is completed in the second year of high school, and then, like everyone else in the third year—they still fail to get into their desired universities.

The entrance score for Star Alliance University is a hard requirement, and it is rare but not impossible for a certain year to have no new students.

The specific cut-off scores are determined by the twelve fourth-level mental cores based on current cutting-edge research and the demand for advanced talent. Graduating from university basically means that jobs are fully assigned, and independent employment is out of the question—the Star Alliance's university resources are quite extravagant, with such a large investment, so don't even dream about doing anything else.

The last type is for those who are not good at learning scientific or rational knowledge. It is basically a combination of the old art schools and administrative colleges, cultivating future sociologists, businessmen, artists and other similar roles.

But no matter which one it is, if you fail the final college entrance exam, you still fail.

Because it's not based on how many people take the exam, or on the number of people or the proportion of admissions, but rather on the number of high-level talents needed to be cultivated, and the cut-off scores are based on the baseline qualities of the talents needed.

It is not uncommon, but not rare, for a class of freshmen to have fewer than three digits. The most common number of freshmen is around 200. More than 300 is as rare as less than 10. The rarest of all is the tragedy of a few universities having no freshmen admitted.

These kinds of tragedies mostly occur in universities like the School of Space Physics. To put it bluntly, what they need are future Hawkings and Einsteins, and they need to be a dozen of them. Those who don't meet this standard shouldn't waste resources.

Compulsory education for normal people ends at high school, and the subsequent university education is also paid for free by the Star Alliance Council to the entire Star Alliance society.

However, this free access is based on investment in the future; if you don't reach the minimum investment threshold, you won't be able to go to university.

In addition, there is a special type of university that is similar to a preparatory or vocational college, a three-year program designed to allow high school graduates to pursue further education. It also recruits adult students from the general public, with lower entrance scores and requirements, but tuition is paid by the student.

If you really want to get into a real university, then you can consider applying to these colleges. That would greatly increase your chances, provided you don't go into those cutting-edge disciplines and risk getting yourself killed.

Among them, liberal arts universities and these preparatory courses are the easiest. Engineering is extremely difficult from the start, and pure science majors, especially the most cutting-edge scientific majors... don't humiliate yourself if you don't have the intelligence of Einstein.

Given these educational characteristics, Xia Lin, as a legitimate undergraduate student majoring in alien colonization and development, has a slightly lower academic value because the demand for talent in this major is so high that the admission score is at the bottom of the undergraduate level.

However, this also means that his overall qualities surpass those of more than 90% of his peers in the Star Alliance.

Mental fortitude, practical skills, physical fitness, adaptability, judgment, and learning ability all require surpassing over 90% of one's peers, along with solid theoretical knowledge and practical skills, to manage to squeeze in with a position close to the bottom of the list.

Although the salary for an agricultural technician is only 3500 a month, this job is indeed promising for the future. Just look at how the agricultural director of that colony with a dozen or so crickets can afford to buy tea native to Earth, and you'll know whether this thing is "promising for the future".

However, even such a highly skilled person was still sweating profusely when faced with drone programming algorithms that he had lost for almost ten years. He still remembered the algorithms for agricultural drones, and if there were any program malfunctions, he could fix them and even make corresponding improvements.

However, those algorithms are built on the corresponding hardware. To adapt to the chip and control group of a low-end general-purpose drone, it is not impossible to write separate flight control programs and working programs, but the difficulty is also quite high.

As for Yelena, forget about it. The textbooks she's currently using and what Xia Lin teaches her in her spare time are basically basic introductory knowledge at the Star Alliance kindergarten level.

Moreover, since there were no symbiotes or implants for automatic translation, it took Xia Lin almost two months just to teach the Star Alliance's professional language.

Otherwise, she wouldn't even be able to understand the code and various briefing parameter descriptions displayed on her wrist terminal. The difference between the everyday conversational language and the professional language used by the Covenant is like having a C level English certificate but still being helpless when faced with C language.

Everyday communication is fine because Xia Lin has a language translation module. As long as she's not in the whispers of the ancient gods, she can understand them and converse with them in her native language. However, this doesn't work when it comes to learning Star Alliance textbooks and other necessary knowledge.

The system features simple operation and disassembly/maintenance components, and can also be used for teaching through pictures and picture books translated into Ursus script.

However, those professional manuals and maintenance manuals are no good; they can be ambiguous, and you simply can't find the Ursus language equivalents for many of the terms.

The most typical example is the word "leap," which Yelena could only understand as "crossing over" or "leaping over," so she could never understand what Xia Lin meant by the leap engine.

"Looks like I'll have to take some time to go back and review my textbooks." Xia Lin sighed, then looked at the Originium Motives that Yelena had brought back. The white rabbit made no attempt to hide her disgust and aversion to these things.

Originium Motives was a great invention for civilization, but for the Infected and for her, it was the origin of tragedy.

Although there were infected people and Oripathy before Originium Motivation, humans also used Originium as a power source.

However, the dosage used in the witch's pot to brew potions in a handcrafted manner is a different concept from the power consumption of modern industry.