Chapter 150: Things Done By Ancient Kings
If Yun Ce had not been taken away by the dragon, his next posting would have been as deputy director at the municipal Development Zone Management Committee.
As everyone knows, the director position is generally held by a top leader, and Yun Ce as this deputy director was actually the one doing the real work.
Therefore, Yun Ce was no stranger to developing a place, but here there was no ready-made Three Connections and One Leveling, no group of freshly recruited civil servants full of enthusiasm at his command.
Three Connections and One Leveling was not important to Yun Ce; the slaves had plenty of strength to level the ground, and those giant livestock were only slightly less useful than farm machinery.
To be honest, cows as huge as elephants, after their brain cores were destroyed by red-hot needles, became walking corpses—absolutely obedient walking corpses. They had no temper, knew no fatigue, and if Yun Ce, their user, did not stop commanding them, they could work until they died.
Not only the cows were like this; the Great Horned Horses recaptured from Cao Wo Post Station were the same, with a needle in their heads that likewise turned them into walking corpses.
Of course, there was also Zhang Min’s Thunder Smoke Beast.
The Red Date Horse was actually also a Thunder Smoke Beast, but Yun Ce preferred to call it the Red Date Horse. Compared to Zhang Min’s dumb Thunder Smoke Beast, the Red Date Horse was undoubtedly a proud and beautiful spirit of heaven and earth.
Many times, Yun Ce would put himself in the Red Date Horse’s place, feeling that he was very much like it: the Red Date Horse wanted to be a person but was bound by a Thunder Smoke Beast body, unable to become human.
Yun Ce also wanted to become a purely human, but after taking the first bite of dragon eggshell, wanting to be a purely human became a purely unattainable dream.
1 However, Yun Ce did not regret it; if he had not eaten the dragon eggshell given by Ao Bing back then, he would not have survived that harsh cosmic travel.
1 There would have been no future at all.
1 They say that being alive is actually carrying a heavy load and moving forward; Yun Ce felt the responsibility on his back was a bit too heavy.
1 The piercing cold of Shuanghua Moon’s falling frost: after the land turned just yesterday was covered in frost, it became a vast expanse of white.
1 The slaves got up very early; they lined up across the vast land, using rakes and hands to pull out the plant roots from the turned soil one by one, sometimes encountering stones, which also needed to be picked up.
1 Once the insects in the land were frozen dead by the harsh cold, the land needed to be smoothed, then plowed again, smoothed again, before seeds could finally be sown.
1 Watching a career emerge from nothing is the greatest reward in one’s life journey.
1 When Miss Hong’s carrier pigeon landed heavily on Yun Ce’s shoulder, and he opened the letter written by Miss Hong herself, he learned that this woman was also doing what he was doing now.
1 Like Yun Ce, she was doing these things on land without Shehuo protection; after Chuyun Prefecture lost its Shehuo, the climate became extremely unstable, yet Miss Hong was organizing those unable to leave Chuyun Prefecture to farm for self-rescue.
1 With Shehuo gone, the danger of wilderness gathering surged; the wasteland not only had many more poisonous insects, but even more frightening were the beasts, many from the ancient wasteland. In this letter, Miss Hong told Yun Ce that her people in Chuyun Prefecture had seen the legendary beast “Ning.”
2 How big the planet where the Great Han is located truly is remains undetermined; though the Great Han territory spans tens of thousands of li, the Great Han people know little about matters beyond the borders.
2 What blocks the Great Han from exploring outward is not desert, but oceans, or towering mountains and forests, jungles. During King Huo’s reign, there were brave Great Han envoys who carried credentials leaving the Great Han to explore outward, hoping like Zhang Qian to open up the Western Regions, find allies beyond the Gui Fang people, and together eradicate the Gui Fang people.
2 Unfortunately, none of the dispatched envoys returned.
2 Later, though some envoys were sporadically sent, with their disappearance without trace, by the late period of King Huo’s reign, no more envoys were dispatched.
2 With Chuyun Prefecture Shehuo vanished and legendary beasts like “Ning” appearing, Yun Ce felt this should be nature’s backlash against the Great Han.
2 After all, disaster and impermanence are nature’s main theme; peace and abundance should be fleeting, yet the Great Han had been abundant for too long, far too long.
2 This was extremely abnormal.
2 There is a saying on Earth: “Born in hardship, die in comfort.”
2 This saying can also be reversed: “Born in comfort, die in hardship.”
2 Just the literal meaning, without deeper interpretation: as long as you are alive, whether hardship or comfort, you must experience it, taste it, only then is your life complete.
3 Yun Ce also had no ability to see through the mist, or rather, no one in the world could see through the fog of the future; only through constant trial and error could the veil of the future gradually be lifted.
3 Pretty good—at least Miss Hong had started trying; she was trying to survive in an environment without Shehuo shelter and preparing to battle nature without Ancestral Fire blessing.
3 This was courage, and Yun Ce greatly admired it.
3 He just didn’t know if the people behind Miss Hong and Pei Chuan would support them doing this.
3 When the sun came out, the mist would dissipate, the white frost on the ground would recede, and once the sun fully rose, the slaves who had labored all morning could enjoy their share of breakfast in peace.
3 Breakfast in the Tukeng Camp was actually quite substantial: a large bowl of thick soy milk made from ground beans, two strips of salted meat each palm-long, one inch wide, and half a fen thick; once fried in a pan, it became crispy, and wrapped with pickles in grass cake, one portion could fill an adult.
3 The ten-man leader’s meal tray had an extra quarter egg pancake; though only a quarter, the eggs used to make the egg pancake were very large.
3 “┗|｀O′|┛Aow~~”
3 A beast’s angry roar came from the distance, filled with anger; the slaves eating were not panicked, just looked up toward the sound, then continued eating with heads down.
3 Nothing surprising about it; undoubtedly, the master had caught another abandoned beast. The master liked chaining captured beasts to the edge of the farm territory to deter other beasts wanting to enter and eat people.
4 Now, such beasts had already been captured by the master: eight in total.
4 Yun Ce smashed the other end of the iron chain into a boulder; the chained abandoned beast struggled hard twice, then resignedly lay down by the boulder, as if already submitting.
4 Submitting so easily?
4 Yun Ce didn’t believe it; he raised the steel wire whip and smashed it down indiscriminately on the newly captured abandoned beast, which indeed began resisting again, baring fangs and claws to scare Yun Ce away.
4 The steel whip struck the abandoned beast’s head, stripping fur from its crown; it clawed at its seemingly painless head, the second whip came down, and with only four claws it couldn’t protect its massive body; after Yun Ce whipped it over a hundred times, the abandoned beast lay on the ground like a puddle of mud, not daring to move.
4 “Though this guy’s martial power isn’t top-tier, its recovery ability after injury is relatively strong. I’ve already extracted quite a few reagents from its bone marrow; if you have time, give it a try.”
4 Yun Ce shook his head, rejecting Doggy’s suggestion; ever since eating the dragon eggshell caused his body to mutate, Yun Ce had been vigilant against any biological agents.
4 “Search around; I want to catch a beast king for guarding the gate.”
4 “None, at least not nearby. I have a bold guess: beast mutation and evolution seem related to Shehuo and Ancestral Fire. You saw it in Chuyun Prefecture too—most areas under Shehuo cover were wasteland, plus Chuyun Prefecture’s sparse population and vast land meant more wild beasts entering the Shehuo coverage.”
4 While probability theory still holds, can we consider that Shehuo and Ancestral Fire catalyzed beasts becoming spirits?
5 Speaking of which, Chuyun Prefecture is where the most spirits appear; do you remember those dog-headed people, pig-headed people, bear-headed people?
5 Their strength isn’t great, but their evolution process is astonishingly fast.
5 Yun Ce paused upon hearing this and said, “Shehuo can promote evolution?”
5 Doggy chuckled, “Is standing on two legs steadier than four? Do four legs run slower than two?”
5 Think about it: why do those dog-headed people, pig-headed people, bear-headed people insist on standing on hind legs? You saw on the wasteland too—two-legged pig-headed people and bear-headed people can’t outrun wild boars and wild bears.
5 “You mean they’re learning the human evolution process?”
5 “Yeah, otherwise why would a pig stand up? Their hind legs are so short…”
5 This time Yun Ce didn’t reply; instead, he raised the steel whip and smashed it down indiscriminately on the beast before him until it completely lost any power to resist and exposed its soft belly in submission, then Yun Ce put away the steel whip and headed to the next hunting ground.
5 Recently, over ten thousand food sources arrived on the wasteland, drawing countless beasts flocking to hunt here.
5 Even doggies came from afar, hoping to scavenge scraps behind the beasts.
6 Until Yun Ce appeared alone on the wasteland wielding a steel whip; the doggies sensed the threat from this food source and retreated, but not far, exposing the beasts hiding behind them.
6 This should be a battle among high-level beasts, having nothing to do with them doggies.
6 Until Yun Ce smashed the skulls of seven or eight beasts with his steel whip; the doggies then howled at the sky, and the somewhat organized doggy pack dispersed, reverting to individuals roaming the wasteland feeding on carrion.
