Chapter 286: Enemies From Beyond The Skies
Han Calendar 2108, August 8th, inside the Pengzhou rainforest. A black panther stealthily crouched on a tree, but after a convoy of automobiles passed on the road below, the black panther crawled into the shadows.
These automobiles were not in the style of old-fashioned cars from this plane’s spacetime, but rather resembled Hummers; they were products once summoned by Eastern Shu’s “See Future” Supernatural Users.
In the previous generation, Eastern Shu’s “See Future” Supernatural Users had always been in the Dian Continent region, guarding the Imperial Ancestral Temple.
But fifty years ago, they left Dian Continent and later came to Pengzhou. Of course, that was also when Eastern Shu lost the “See Future” Supernatural User inheritance.
And Eastern Shu’s last “See Future” Supernatural User established a massive scientific organization in Pengzhou and discovered some super pyramid clusters.
The perspective follows the direction of the convoy, penetrating the rainforest obstructed by various branches, arriving at the pyramid controlled by Eastern Shu people.
At this time, after injecting electrical energy, this mysterious pyramid developed by Eastern Shu sent a segment of radio waves toward outer space.
However, this radio wave did not cross space in a standard manner; after touching a certain area outside the moon’s orbit, it directly disappeared.
Forty light-years outside the solar system, a pitted celestial body that looked half like a scrapped flying ship and half like a garbage artificial object sensed the summons and quickly merged into a spatial ripple directly ahead, with the ripple’s contraction direction being the solar system.
After the Taotie ritual activated, the entire planet seemed to sense the crisis. First was Dragon State, the closest to Pengzhou.
And in the North, Jemint (Xie Ming) put on a hemp cloth cowboy vest and hurriedly arrived at his newly built “Other Shore” monitoring station. This monitoring station was surrounded by rows of steel antenna arrays.
In the underground base, he wore monitoring headphones, from which came a “shh shh shh” sound, while a nearby needle traced zigzag lines on paper similar to heart rate images.
The experts nearby narrated: “We deciphered the frequency band; most of the content seems to be meaningless ‘roars’.”
This expert’s team studied orcas. Orca language has extremely high “maternal content,” often things like “baka” and “mouseless.” Thus, he believed that the more advanced the organism, the more “redundancy” its communication information would retain to accommodate emotional output. For this, the expert suggested establishing communication.
Xie Ming sidestepped his suggestion and nodded: “Confirmed that the turbulence originated from the Southern Region?”
The expert said: “Yes, the specific fluctuations came from the Pengzhou plateau. As for the reason, we’re still researching; it could be a geomagnetic burst or an ozone problem.”
Xie Ming: “No need for you to guess this; I’ll send people to investigate.”
After leaving the experimental base, Xie Ming took a deep breath, then pulled out from his jeans pocket something that didn’t match the early 20th-century style: a mobile phone. He opened a game on the phone, looked at the plot in the mobile game that refreshed to “Taotie has arrived,” and muttered: “So the villain is in the South.”
Xie Ming opened other “software” on the phone and began importing scripts. Note: Relative to Xuan Chong carrying a novel, Xie Ming downloaded an app.
After “Taotie has arrived,” Xie Ming opened the Pinxixi software and opened the online shopping window.
On the official interface, there were various merchants live-selling; these merchants all did business across various planes. And they were divided into interfaces like “Mid-Magic Low-Tech” and “Low-Magic High-Tech.”
For example, refreshing to a certain “Mid-Magic online shopping interface,” a merchant named “Little Dragon Girl” was selling a batch of high-quality “Dwarf” and “Elf” slaves. And there was a pinned positive review.
This buyer named Pudong Noblewoman gave five stars: Dwarves can repair Steam Age locomotives, Elves are proficient in Firearm Age tactics; they are kings of cost-performance! Great, the store owner is beautiful.
But in the negative review section below from buyer photos, there were mocking three-star reviews like “Dwarves don’t know metal formula proportion parameters” and “Elves got sniped.”
Xie Ming skipped these unreliable ones, checked his balance, and slid the interface to the proper “Black Technology Steam Age,” where the buyers were all “punkified” buyers. Xie Ming thought for a moment, confirmed the plane’s energy attributes, and ordered a batch of diesel combat machines.
…On the other side of the ocean…
Xuan Chong was busy directing the bricklayers’ work, to complete building these “Helu Small Wealth Buildings” around the factory before winter arrived.
Why choose this? Because it’s cheap and fast to build. Of course, Xuan Chong made some reinforcements: thickening the outer walls to ensure winter warmth, and pre-installing “metal ladders” outside every household’s windows—this ensures escape during fires.
As for whether these ladders would become key points for thieves to climb up? There’s a possibility.
But in the factory compound, there were no visual blind spots between buildings. A thief wanting to openly climb the walls! That thief would indeed be too brazen.
In Xuan Chong’s plan: Once he built the dormitory area, it would materially provide workers the key to breaking free from clans.
Because after the factory area had places for young people to settle, the young people could truly not go home.
In the current clan environment, young people have no home, so they can only live under someone else’s roof.
And the scene from Xuan Chong’s previous life of “elders in the old home raising chickens and ducks, hoping sons would bring grandsons back to visit” does not exist now!
Currently in the clan, old geese peck at children, dogs chase after kids! The elders in the clan leisurely smoke dry tobacco.
Clan elder: “We can’t slaughter the dog and stew the old goose!”
The reason clans have strong discourse power is by using ownership of “farmland and houses” to lock down the young and strong.
Now that the factory has the ability to create “new fixed assets,” and to remove clan influence, improving the living conditions of the laborers must be grasped as the primary task.
In any reform, often only after success do they grasp grand narratives “from top to bottom.”
While in the startup process, it often starts from the bottom, like a nanny, removing the traditional “burdens” from every ordinary participant, so that the young and strong in the reform system can have spare energy to converge into a force for change.
For example, Shang Yang’s grass-cutting orders were not about grass-cutting reclamation giving the top layer massive grain resources, but about freeing the bottom participants from the burdens imposed by old nobles, thereby allowing these thousands, tens of thousands of Qin youths’ strong labor power to support Shang Yang’s reform.
The vassal kings in other regions made mistakes: to catch up to the Central Plains, they set grand goals, treating young adult commoners as cattle and horses. They hypocritically claimed to “cherish the people” and put on some “shows” that seemed benevolent to themselves.
For instance, the vassal king of the Shrimp Barbarian Island recently obsessed over “pardoning death”; even for prisoners who committed great evils, there were few decapitations, instead maximizing their utility as much as possible.
Such behavior cannot “universally bestow favor.” Thus, “the people do not follow,” it’s merely this Buddhist vassal king’s self-satisfaction.
…Slave-owner mindset is an obstacle to industrialization…
Bricks and tiles houses were built within two months. Inside the houses, every household completed move-in and had heating connected. In his contemplation, Xuan Chong also pre-reserved electrical wiring grooves, preparing for renovations twenty years later.
Xuan Chong downloaded materials from the Lin Group side and knew the future technology trajectory.
Electrical equipment would advance extremely fast in these twenty years; regarding steam supercritical control for thermal power generation, Xuan Chong saw that the Lin Group’s subordinate scholar teams had already established “research topics” and were tackling materials. The momentum of this technical breakthrough resembled the “nuclear fusion tokamak” development from Xuan Chong’s previous life.
So Dongtu’s factory dormitory planning needed to consider old city renovations twenty years in the future.
In the workers’ new life movement, to meet the water needs of thousands of people, water supply facilities were ordered from the South.
In addition, canteen staff were specially dispatched to the South to learn how to prepare canteen dishes.
These various expenses made the main family members of the Dongtu Prince’s Mansion, who controlled the funds, feel puzzled. Because the “wasted money” spent on these aspects exceeded thirty percent of the Steel Mill’s own investment.
Ordinary villagers in Dongtu’s homeland, although lacking understanding of the matters, were still blindly guessing.
Some well-informed people said: “The Heir returned from the Southern Region Navy, got used to life in the South, and is not accustomed to the bitter cold in the North?”
As a result, people in Dongtu began discussing “what life is like for Southern Region people,” with the most classic statement being “Southern Region people can bask in the sun on the streets every day.”
The old and young discussed their interest in the South only because of the factor that “Xuan Chong studied in the South.” This was just like their past discussions about Liu Dangzhen; such discussions were an unconscious “Totem” worship activity, where in darkness and cold, they anticipated relying on “central” power to solve everything.
How exactly should “new quality production” be developed?
This kind of “Totem worship” style discussion among clan members, even if Xuan Chong listened seriously, would not yield any constructive opinions.
Among the various branches of the clan, it was basically just about who had more seniority and whose words to listen to. The play “Teahouse” describes this: when a certain gentleman enters, everyone around stands up, cups their hands, and says, “Mr. xx, please tell us.”
There is a familiar term that describes this kind of conversation, namely “shooting the breeze.”
Xuan Chong criticized: Shooting the breeze has no effect on “efficiency discussions”; it is not communication; ultimately, it is about deciding “who is more impressive,” and to decide “who is more impressive,” one must ultimately invoke “authority” to endorse one’s words.
Vaguely, Xuan Chong suddenly understood why Maozi experts “love alcohol”: after men drink, their guard drops, as the saying goes “in wine there is truth,” allowing honest communication based on what they know, disregarding hierarchy. This just allows shooting the breeze to continue. Oh, those Wei-Jin folks who took Wushi powder also loved “pure talk” gatherings.
After research, Xuan Chong designed a set of social interactions to replace clan-style socializing while fitting Dongtu’s local atmosphere. In this reform, Xuan Chong selected a “coal mine screening” squad for a pilot.
Hold a life discussion meeting once a week.
At the discussion meeting, each person refines their speech to one hundred words. The team leader summarizes everyone’s recorded speeches, and after each person signs to agree, the team leader submits the total report upward.
Every one of Xuan Chong’s “sudden whims” caused complaints from the selected group.
But as the Heir, Xuan Chong’s future days in Dongtu would be long. So the groups selected as pilots all pretended to be “full of enthusiasm” and carried it out.
…Copying homework…
The saying that “Liu Haoxing likes to waste money” spread throughout Dongtu areas. Even investor merchants from the South came to audit the accounts.
Xuan Chong patiently explained to the Southern Region investor merchants: “The money was not diverted for a luxurious life, but to ensure ‘personnel production member efficiency’.”
Xuan Chong had the work group prepare a report of tens of thousands of words.
For example, “For the dormitory building part, we calculated the situation of leaving the dormitory at eight in the morning to go to the factory for work and returning at six in the evening.” Xuan Chong listed for the investors the “controllable standard entry time for workers into the factory” and its fit with the production plan.
As an “enlightened” existence, Xuan Chong listed relevant data from the seven Steel Mills established in Jiangnan over the past twenty years, such as factory construction periods, industrial output scales, and even worker efficiency, all in formulas.
Most merchants actually could not obtain the data from certain Jiangnan factories cited in these formulas!
This was commercial information Xuan Chong accessed through his connections with Xu Xi and Qin Tianyi.
The merchants telegraphed the formulas to their own Steel Mills, and after checking, found them completely accurate, thus approving Xuan Chong’s planning.
As a result, the original audit turned into additional fund investments—this additional funding was not directly given to Xuan Chong, but participated in personnel training and planning for Dongtu.
For Southern Region merchants, there were only three risks in the investment process.
1: Uncontrollable local interference.
2: Unable to determine construction period.
3: Unaware of fund flows.
If money could lock in a key person to make the project controllable, investors were willing to add twenty percent more investment.
If the construction period planning table for every step could be determined, even with an “acceleration key,” investors would add fifty percent more investment to grasp the “acceleration key.”
If every detail of the project and every fund flow could be determined, investors would add double the funds, then insert fund review personnel into the links. Because mastering all risks equaled control.
Xuan Chong guaranteed the investors that before winter set in, that is, by October, before local temperatures dropped, Workshop No. 2 could start trial production operations.
The workers organized by the new life, accurately speaking, the Dongtu young and strong laborers motivated by treatment far higher than clan life, were actively and proactively adding bricks and tiles for the Steel Mill.
A large slogan was hung on the factory building: “The Steel Mill is my home, love the mill as I love home.”
…Migratory birds raise white wings and begin flying south, frost starts forming at night…
Xuan Chong finished the masonry work and began picking up books again. During this holiday, he had also sorted out Su Ming.
Su Ming, who had just entered the imperial examination field, knew he had transmigrated, but did not know that Xuan Chong was his lord from his previous life; yet vaguely he felt “a debt of gratitude as heavy as a mountain.”
Following the System strategy, Xuan Chong discovered Su Ming, this disciple from a poor family, like Bole finding a steed, then provided him financial support for diligent study, wrote a letter of introduction, and helped him enter under a famous teacher.
In the moral atmosphere of Xian Han, such patronage meant Su Ming must repay in the future.
After seeing Su Ming’s achievement in the Scholar Examination, Xuan Chong gritted his teeth.
Xuan Chong: “Damn it, there really is such a photographic memory prodigy in the world?”
As a student who grew up without a father and studied only a few months after sponsorship, Su Ming scored nearly full marks in mock exams in Alchemy, Mechanics, Physiology, and even Criminal Law (principles and righteousness).
Inspired by excellence, after snapping out of it from Su Ming’s achievement, Xuan Chong felt a sense of frustration about his recent “lack of effort” and “distraction by trivial matters.”
Worth mentioning, Xuan Chong still did not know that the person he summoned, due to “traits,” caused direct brain infusion of “mature learning thinking” when studying for the imperial examination system.
Characters from “novels,” no matter how powerful, were subordinate to Xuan Chong as a student.
Xuan Chong knew the origins of the world Su Ming transmigrated from, and the attributes added by the System, while Su Ming knew nothing of Xuan Chong.
This kind of “vassal” relationship commonly appeared on “students'” “recess items” summoned and influenced characters.
Xu Xi and Qin Tianyi’s “exercise field” and “musical score” can also establish a “vassal” relationship with some groups in the plane.
Ordinary “students” won’t compete with their own “vassals”. Basically, free transmigrators won’t do this either—Pu E never competed with Zhao Cheng.
“Vassals” are generally obsessions, and in a certain aspect, because they are obsessed ones, they have an obstinacy beyond ordinary people.
But “vassals” will weaken as the number of transmigrations increases, with the obsession continuously depleting and fading, while “students” grow.
Most students won’t directly compare in “related subjects” with vassals whose “obsession has not undergone five transmigrations and has dulled”.
But there are no lack of some who can’t think straight.
For example now, Xuan Chong witnessed Su Ming’s excellence and gritted his teeth to start grinding through Neo-Confucianism exam questions.
…Math teacher: Stop! Back to math exam…
After September, snowflakes drifted. Just as Xuan Chong had read a textbook for an hour, he suddenly sensed something, so he raised his head to look at the sky.
Outside the planet, a battered meteorite suddenly appeared between Earth and the Moon, then abruptly turned and smashed toward Earth.
In the evening, as Xuan Chong was marveling “rosy clouds flying together with flocks of gulls, summer waves blending one color with sea and sky”, it seemed heaven was also rebuking this shameless poetry plagiarism. A great meteor shining like the sun streaked across the long sky, quickly appearing from the east of the sky, crossing the entire sky, and shooting toward the west.
Half an hour later, huge rosy clouds appeared in the west. Of course, the rosy clouds were not produced by the meteorite impacting the ground, but formed by reflection after disintegrating into massive dust in the sky.
At this time, Xuan Chong on the boat could already read the newspaper text clearly without electric lights.
Xuan Chong looked at the rosy clouds in the northern sky and murmured: Tunguska big explosion?
Then Xuan Chong unfolded the torque system and began measuring the asteroid’s descent trajectory to determine the impact point.
This world is destined not to be peaceful; math class doesn’t allow Xuan Chong to make up for language arts.
Ten hours later, the communicator in Xuan Chong’s hand rang. A signature with the Lin Group code required him to report to Weihai immediately!
Helplessly, Xuan Chong paused his imperial examination career once again.
Xuan Chong: So annoying, there are always vile commoners obstructing my study.
