Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

What should we do about the vehicle problem?

"As for vehicles, I'll see if I can buy some engines when I go to Meiquan Town next time. I'll modify them and make a chassis, and it'll be a usable truck..."

"By the way, what about the garage I asked you to fix last time?"

"It's not finished yet. None of us have ever seen those building materials you gave us before..." the village chief said somewhat embarrassedly.

"Okay, get it done quickly. I'll go install the equipment later, and then we can start small-scale production of ordinary transport trucks."

The mechanical arm of the ship is really useful. The only problem is that it is only an auxiliary device inside the ship, and it cannot be used for larger equipment.

Xia Lin has prepared all the necessary cables, motors, gearboxes, pulleys, and various sensors, positioners, and limiters. She has even prepared equipment for cutting, welding, and drilling plates. Once she buys a batch of machinery from Meiquan Town, she can set up a workshop-level repair shop or repair shop.

"Ivan, the biggest problem right now is not finding enough drivers. You'll have to solve that..."

"I'll do my best..." Ivan nodded. Xia Lin's decision not to use her own power source meant that a Terran pilot was needed, one who knew some Originium Arts and repair techniques.

Ivan had never trained any motor transport soldiers, nor had he ever served as one. He had only learned basic driving skills while in the reconnaissance team. Training a group of professional transport drivers would require a lot of detours and time.

Chapter 51 Migrant Workers

Chapter 51

In most areas, winter is the off-season for farming, and rice in the breeding greenhouses is sown for the third time when there is no need for rush planting. After this third sowing, there will be enough rice seeds for full-scale rice planting.

The main reason is that Colony 14 was a desert colony, and the number of rice seeds was significantly less than that of other drought-resistant crops, requiring repeated breeding to obtain enough rice for planting.

The corn and millet in the field have already sprouted some green shoots, and the soybeans further away are also growing well. Xia Lin would walk around the field from time to time to observe their root systems and rhizobia using a portable agricultural scanner.

Occasionally, soil samples are taken back to analyze humus, nutrient structure, and composition to ensure that there is no large-scale local abnormal microbial infection or severe deficiency of a certain nutrient element that could lead to soil degradation.

It seems that apart from the unavoidable Originium contamination, the other problems are not significant, at least within Xia Lin's technical capabilities and are minor issues common in alien agricultural colonies.

The foals and calves, which were six or seven months old, were put into a newly enclosed pasture on the east bank of the stream, where the grass had not yet grown.

So Yelena was responsible for carrying a large iron bucket to feed them every day to prevent them from randomly nibbling on the tender shoots on the ground.

The feed mainly consists of algae, synthetic organic sauce, vitamin additives, and bone meal, which are then mixed with a certain proportion of fermented green fodder before being fed to them.

The two foals had grown much taller than Yelena and were nudging her with their heads, trying to steal the feed from her hands. The two little guys were quite restless and lively, and extremely greedy.

In contrast, the two beef and draft cattle and the two dairy cows were much quieter, standing quietly by the trough, tilting their heads to look at Yelena, like four cow statues.

"Alright, alright," the white rabbit pushed the horse-faced man away, poured the contents of the iron bucket into the trough, and added a few handfuls of hay that the infected had brought, and that was it.

Although hay cannot provide the nutrition of feed, it allows these two little guys to spend some time chewing slowly.

Horses have an extremely fast digestive system; they are practically manure-producing machines that eat and defecate simultaneously.

Comparatively speaking, cows digest food more thoroughly and more slowly due to their rumination mechanism, so it's not as troublesome.

However, wearing work overalls, big boots, and carrying a pitchfork to shovel horse manure was unavoidable. Every time Yelena finished this job, she had to take a good bath to get rid of the strange smell on her body.

After a year of recuperation and training, Yelena now looks much stronger than before, and her face has regained some rosy color.

Girls develop earlier and faster than boys, especially girls around eleven or twelve years old like her. Their height, physique, and strength develop very quickly.

Therefore, boys at this age are usually physically stronger than girls of the same age. However, relatively speaking, girls tend to enter a plateau phase earlier after their rapid development period ends.

But in any case, Yelena now does look like a proper farmer's daughter. She is tall and has strong, long limbs. Due to long hours of working outdoors, her face has become fuller and rosier. She is no longer the thin, small, and unhealthy sick cat she used to be.

However, whether it was due to her innate talent or the drugs that Xia Lin used to suppress the Originium reaction, it seemed that the ultraviolet rays did not leave any marks on her body. Even Xia Lin herself got a little tanned, but her skin remained fair and delicate.

Standing among children of the same age in the infected community, she stood out like a crane among chickens, or a young lioness among a group of kittens, so distinctive that she could be seen at a glance.

This was Old Man Maxim's second visit, and this time he brought more and more exquisite goods, since the people here seemed to have considerable spending power. However, as soon as he entered the farm's catchment area, he began to wonder if he had taken the wrong road again.

The original snow forest had disappeared in large patches, like bald spots, and turned into fertile black fields. A thin film of unknown material covered the ground, which Maxim kept complaining about as a waste, saying that it was meaningless.

However, after driving for a while, the trading station was on a standard farm road. The road, which had been made by bulls, was quite flat and sturdy. Although it was not as good as a paved road, it was much more comfortable than the previous rough road.

Following the road, Old Man Maxim saw the so-called farm, with its towering metal walls (actually carbon fiber) topped with electric fences to prevent climbing over, searchlights that remained on even during the day, three greenhouses with rounded roofs, and the main workshop structure resembling a tower.

From any angle, he felt that the Imperial prison was only larger than this place; that thing was a farm.

In fact, every infected person and visitor had the same thought when they first saw Xia Lin's farm—is this a prison or a military outpost?

On the open ground next to the farm, a group of infected people were working hard, sweating profusely. The roar of the cutting machine and the sound of the nail gun could still be heard even from this distance. During the off-season, in order to prevent these guys from getting drunk again, Xia Lin gathered the bored people to help build new workshops and repair shops.

A row of open spaces stretched southward from the farm, and with not enough manpower available, warehouses were built on the other side, creating a strange feel of a workshop processing street.

With a large number of workers working in the fields, as well as people transporting processed planks from the infected and delivering food, the Yeti Squad, without Yelena's prompting, voluntarily set traps and cleared away wild animals to prevent them from causing trouble.

Patriots and Shield Guards were trained in the Ursus army in building field fortifications and setting up temporary repair yards.

Otherwise, what if their mobile outposts and armored platforms malfunction? They'll have to be repaired, and they'll also need to set up field camps.

Thanks to his extensive experience, Patriot now looked just like an ordinary construction foreman, holding a thick stack of blueprints, with the bright yellow hard hat provided by Xia Lin hanging around his neck.

It wasn't that he didn't want to wear a helmet, but rather that the person who designed it never considered how to make someone with horns on their head wear it.

Considering that this guy is a cyborg, and it's not a high-rise construction site where it's hard to say whether his head was hit first or the brick was broken when a brick falls from above, Xia Lin just let him be.

After whispering for a while with Xia Lin, who was dressed like a foreman but wearing a safety helmet with the words "Safety First" written on it, Patriot looked up and swept across the construction site. He quickly picked up the brightly colored megaphone hanging on his right hand and roared in a hoarse but authoritative voice, "Rudolph! Put on your gloves!"

The other shield guards were also teaching these people how to use the tools and how to build a camp quickly and well while they were working.

"Xia Lin, where do we put this?" White Rabbit came running over carrying a stack of wooden boards, her little face covered in a layer of dust, her tender white hair soaked with sweat from running and sticking tightly to her face.

"Put the planks over there, and go check with the kitchen to see how long it will be before dinner is served..."

"Okay!" The white rabbit put the plank on the stack of planks, then turned and ran towards the temporary rest camp not far away. Her lithe and long legs leaped and ran across the field, fully demonstrating the girl's vitality and explosive power.

"Are you planning to build a shopping street? Or a market?" Maxim stopped the trading post a short distance away and walked over under the watchful eye of the farm security guard, who was carrying a hunting crossbow and a hunting knife. "When are you planning to open the market? I'll help you promote it."

"A market? No, this is just a regular workshop, that's a warehouse over there, and a repair shop too..."

Xia Lin said without turning his head, "I still have to keep an eye on these amateur migrant workers (real migrant workers)."

"Why is the workshop built on the ground?" A question mark popped into Maxim's head. Wasn't he afraid that a natural disaster would destroy it all?

In fact, the infected also had such questions, but the tools, nails and other things they used all belonged to Xia Lin, as did his wages and food. The land might even still be his, so whatever he said was fine.

Moreover, judging from the farmer's situation, it seems that he is capable of dismantling these things, loading them onto a truck, and making a getaway in a short period of time.

Moreover, natural disasters vary from place to place. Here, the most common natural disasters are blizzards, and occasionally there may be flash floods caused by thunderstorms or heavy rain.

The probability of earthquakes and ground fissures is very low, and volcanoes and tsunamis are almost impossible. The most troublesome thing is the Originium meteorites that can be found everywhere, but Xia Lin told them not to worry about that, so they stopped worrying.

In the event of a blizzard, the infected individuals who had used the boards and insulation materials provided by Xia Lin remained remarkably calm.

Especially with Xia Lin preparing to dig a biogas digester, there was plenty of fuel, enough potatoes and freeze-dried vegetables in the cellar, and the house was fully reinforced with that black carbon material, so a blizzard was no big deal.

As for thunderstorms, the Terrans also have lightning rods, and the farms can manufacture a large number of lightning rods and corresponding equipment to prevent the effects of thunderstorms and EMPs at any time. In Covenant equipment, protection against EMP and thunderstorm attacks is considered a basic design.

There is some trouble with flash floods, but there are no signs of heavy rain right now. There are no large rivers or mountains nearby, so the probability of a flash flood on that small hillside is really low. In fact, the water output of the streams and springs is very limited, and it will definitely not be enough when we start planting rice and sugarcane. Xia Lin is preparing to build a larger reservoir and build irrigation canals from a more distant water source.

The only remaining concerns are earthquakes and ground cracking. However, the damage caused by such things is not significant, especially since there are no tall buildings and lightweight carbon fiber and wood-based materials are used. Collapses are unlikely to cause much harm to the robust Terrans.

Despite his doubts, Maxim didn't dwell on the matter. He was only concerned with what these workshops produced, what they needed, what they provided, and whether there was any profit to be made.

"That's a distillery. We're going to make potato wine and several other kinds of alcohol..."

The energy drink production line is inside the workshop, and Xia Lin doesn't plan to dismantle it, besides, these infected people can't handle that stuff anyway.

"This is the cannery and fruit and vegetable processing center..." Jams and simple luncheon meat cans certainly don't need to go through his automated production line. Only things like fruit cans and fresh meat cans that require complicated sterilization and aseptic preservation are produced in Xia Lin's workshop.

"Later, we may also make dried fish, fish fillets and shrimp paste..." Aquaculture has already started, and now we are releasing the second round of fish and shrimp fry, and even some freshwater shellfish through bottom seeding.

"That's a sauce workshop over there, they produce sauces and seasonings." "Wow, that's impressive!"

Maxim's face was a mixture of surprise and joy, which meant that he could be provided with a large quantity of cheap canned goods, condiments, and alcohol without the stamp of the Imperial tax collectors, which were hard currency in northern Ursus!

Maxim doesn't need to worry about the imperial tax collectors targeting this place and causing prices to rise. Just look at those well-equipped guys who call themselves hunters and security guards, practically armed to the teeth. Those shrewd imperial bureaucrats won't come unless they've drunk an unbelievable amount of vodka the day before.

Not to mention, the imperial bureaucrats aren't fools. Not only will they not cause trouble, they'll even have their merchant guilds and front men go on a buying spree.

After all, taxes belong to His Majesty the Emperor, and tax payments are cold and hot to the touch, but the profits from one's own family, or even from a business association run by one's wife, are warm and comfortable!

Those methods of extortion and bribery only require a small amount to satisfy the greed of officials of all ranks.

Of course, they didn't dare use too much, after all, these weren't ordinary small factory owners and minor nobles.

Taking a few canned goods during a routine purchase or inspection is fine, but if they want to extort money, they'll have to see if their stubbornness matches the strength of the "security guards'" crossbow bolts.

According to Patriot's evaluation of the trial, if the Empire had equipped itself with these crossbows and heavy crossbows 20 years ago, those guys in southern Ursus would have been finished long ago.

Xia Lin didn't mind introducing the new workshop to Maxim at all, since everything here needed to be organized and monetized, partly to meet his own consumption and needs, and partly to be converted into other materials.

He urgently needs to obtain a large amount of hetero iron, a material called a polymerizer, and RAM-24 mineral, which can conduct Originium energy.

Locals use this mineral as an excellent material for conducting Originium Arts, as well as white horse alcohol for making bipolar nanosheets.

However, in Xia Lin's case, they can be made into low-impedance supercapacitor arrays and acceleration orbits, so there is no need to worry about Originium disasters falling on their heads.

After discovering the actual properties of this mineral and the local people's manufacturing capabilities, Xia Lin slightly raised the level of Terra's metallurgical industry.

Whether they discovered some kind of natural mineral or smelted scrap iron from their ancestors' advanced civilization by digging it out of some so-called ruins, they all have the ability to mass-produce these things to some extent.

The case of heteroferrite is somewhat special. Strictly speaking, it is not a metal, but an active nano-metal ceramic, a mixture of nano-worms, metals and other components, which has self-repair and reorganization functions.

Iron fragments spontaneously aggregate to form a structure with mechanical properties equivalent to titanium-aluminum alloys. Under specific conditions, they can be inerted and purified to form an iron matrix composed entirely of nanoparticles and separated ceramic particles.

After undergoing complex processes, these resulted in the Terra Iron Block sample in Xia Lin's hands, a standard metal-ceramic material used in the main structure of starships, primarily for starship hulls, linings, shielding shells for high-energy equipment, and insulating heat shields.

At the same time, if it is processed and combined with carbon fiber nanomaterials, it can be used as a starship keel. If this thing is a natural mineral, Xia Lin can tear up all his relevant certificates and degree certificates - it can't possibly be natural.

The Terrans did not collect "iron ore," but rather "iron fragments" that were separated during the normal mining and smelting of metal ores.

However, this also explains the structural strength of Terra's mobile cities, especially the stress resistance of its walking mechanisms.

If this is the structural keel material used in large starships, then it is more than sufficient to support the weight and walking structure of a mobile city.

Chapter Fifty-Two: The Golden Spirit

Chapter 52

Xia Lin was basically uninterested in the goods Maxim brought this time, compared to the goods in the shopping mall in Meiquan Town.

The quality, quantity, and price were all quite unsatisfactory, but the infected people were quite interested.

The farm only provides standard synthetic fiber fabrics. To be honest, this fabric, which is mainly used for making cold-weather and dust covers, is not comfortable as clothing material and was not designed to be made into clothes and bedding.

In the era of affordable high-end synthetic fiber technology, natural plant fiber fabrics were generally considered personal hobbies or luxury items, much like bespoke suits. Body scanning combined with rapid filament spinning nozzles could complete a perfectly fitted garment in just a few minutes.