thefictionvixens Chapter 76 Livestock
Chapter 76 Livestock
Chapter 76 Livestock (Bonus Chapter)
Back in his office, Luo Wei locked the heavy door behind him.
Then, sitting in the chair, I closed my eyes and exhaled a long breath.
For the past month or so, his brain has been overloaded almost 24 hours a day in order to cope with various crises.
This mortal body is issuing a warning that its durability is too low.
"Health is the foundation of everything, and it is also the only fixed asset."
Luo Wei raised his hand to rub his stiff temples, silently making a new plan for himself:
If the A-3 experimental field can proceed as scheduled and temporarily relieve the tithe crisis hanging over his head, he must force himself to set aside thirty minutes every day for physical training.
A healthy body is not only for longevity, but also for being able to run faster than those around you when you're trying to escape for your life.
Reaching the position of supervisor was even more tiring than when he was a fourth-level clerk.
When I was a fourth-level clerk, I had to work at my desk for at least fourteen hours a day, facing endless, tedious numbers to check. I felt like a soulless servo skull.
But that kind of exhaustion is just physical exhaustion; you can clear your mind. As long as you balance the accounts, you can barely survive in the cracks.
Now, as the head of the eastern granary, he oversees the food, drink, and daily needs of 120,000 people.
He had to be like a farmer watching the wheat's ear-setting rate, and also like a tightrope walker, finding a balance between the governor, the Mechanic Church, the Executive Yuan, and the lurking heretics.
One wrong move and you're crushed to pieces.
However, high risk is always accompanied by high premium.
Luo Wei opened his eyes and looked around.
Here, the constant temperature system operates at full power, so he doesn't have to shiver in the cold wind like the laborers outside.
Specially sourced Grox meat steaks and real coffee beans replace the nauseating corpse starch.
The high salary credits ensured his basic living.
More importantly, it's about a sense of security.
He was no longer the nobody who could be poisoned to death by his boss with a cup of poisoned wine at any moment.
In this granary, he is the rule-maker; he has the power to decide the life and death of others.
He can decide who is an "asset" and who is a "consumable".
When power is made concrete, it is often just a thin piece of paper.
Luo Wei's gaze returned to the table.
A document was placed on top:
List of personnel responsible for cleaning carbon deposits from underground reactors in Zone B-9.
This is the "bad debt" list that was screened out from 120,000 workers by the Case server after tens of thousands of data cross-comparisons.
During his trips to the test fields, it was printed out by the Case server so he could review it at any time.
The list is short, with only twelve names.
Each name is accompanied by a brief resume and a passport-sized photo.
Most of the people in the photos have smiling faces and gentle eyes, looking like the kind uncles you might encounter when getting food in the cafeteria.
It's like a nice guy who'll complain to you about back pain in the locker room.
Luo Wei picked up the slightly cool coffee, took a sip, and the bitter taste spread on his tongue, keeping his mind absolutely calm.
In his eyes, these twelve colleagues, who were flesh and blood, were just twelve "bad debts" that had to be written off.
His gaze lingered on the third line of the list.
"Old Tom," a senior technician in the second maintenance team.
His resume states that he has been with the company for twenty years and has never been late or left early.
The file notes mention that he was a kind grandfather who always carried a few cheap candies in his pocket and liked to share them with the neighborhood children.
However, the deep monitoring data retrieved by the Case server revealed a different truth.
The candies were coated with trace amounts of pheromones from the Tyranids.
This substance is not immediately fatal, but it subtly alters the endocrine system of young children, making them more receptive to the "holy kiss" and more docile hosts in adulthood.
Every kind pat from Old Tom, every time he distributed candy, was a way of cultivating more loyal followers for the "Children of the Stars" cult.
Lo Wei put down his coffee cup and fell into deep thought.
This is the most terrifying aspect of the Genestealers cult.
They weren't all menacing monsters.
Most of the time, they are more like humans than humans themselves.
They have families, they have love, and they have a spirit of sacrifice.
All their warmth and kindness served a cold and singular purpose: reproduction.
In order to expand their species, they can play any role. Until the "Day of Ascension" arrives, they will not hesitate to turn their swords against their closest kin, offering them as sacrifices to the swarm that devours the world.
"Fake warmth is disgusting."
Luo Wei complained.
He doesn't need interrogation, confessions, or the panic caused by public execution.
Since it's a bad debt, we should settle it in the most cost-effective way.
That's why he signed that death list.
Pulling himself out of his thoughts, Lowe picked up the communicator and connected to Old John, the logistics supervisor.
"John, how's the situation in Block B-9?"
The communicator emitted a noisy background sound.
The hissing sound of high-pressure steam flowing through the pipes was clearly audible.
Old John's distinctively hoarse voice rang out excitedly, "Reporting to the supervisor, everything is going smoothly! Blessed Emperor, these twelve guys are absolute workhorses!"
"They heard that if they could scrape the carbon buildup off the inside of the reactor, they'd get double work points and the 'Imperial Servants' medal, so they were all incredibly motivated. I even heard them singing hymns when I went down the mine just now."
"Is the hatch welded shut?" Lowe asked.
"As you instructed, Level 1 containment procedure. The hatch has been completely sealed with welding, and three mechanical locks have been installed on the outside. Unless the entire reactor is blown up, not even a fly can get out."
"Great, start the program."
"—Understood, supervisor. Initiate the high-temperature cleaning procedure."
Luo Wei hung up the call.
He didn't listen to any of the sounds that might follow: screams, pleas for mercy, or cries for help to so-called gods.
Under the instantaneous flushing of high-pressure nitrogen-filled steam and neurotoxin cleansing agents, the central nervous system of carbon-based organisms will immediately shut down, and even the pain signals will not have time to be transmitted to the brain.
For these twelve hybrid monsters who disguised themselves as humans for the purpose of reproduction, this could be considered a form of mercy.
In their extreme enthusiasm, for the sake of a fake Imperial Servant Medal, for the sake of bringing home a few more cans of food, they will suffocate on their posts, preserving only the most intact shells.
After doing all this, Luo Wei got up and walked to the French windows.
Outside the window, a leaden haze still shrouded the earth, and acid rain tirelessly washed the glass, leaving winding, filthy streaks.
Lowe did not arrange for the twelve bodies to be cremated.
Burning such high-purity Tyren biomass in the resource-scarce Fengrao No. 2 is a serious loss of assets.
They are sent deep underground and, after a simple preservation process, become special feed for the "Gluttony Wall".
Alternatively, they can be put into fermentation tanks, where they are decomposed by microorganisms and transformed into high-grade nutrients to nourish experimental fields.
Then, a procedure of "genetic screening and payment of compensation" will be carried out on their families.
This was not imperial practice.
According to the Ministry of Justice's standard procedure for handling gene stealer infections, a more efficient and thorough "purification" process is usually adopted.
Alternatively, seal off the entire apartment building and inject poison gas.
Either execute all the residents of the area as a whole.
Lowe used his supervisory privileges to add this cumbersome testing procedure.
Although he knew in his heart that the probability of these twelve family members passing the test was infinitely close to zero.
The wives, children, and elderly of these twelve people have probably already become part of the swarm network.
What awaits them is most likely not compensation, but the same fate as the twelve corpses: becoming fertilizer.
Mary's husband's refusal to give his wife the "sacred kiss" against the will of the community was ultimately just a statistically extremely rare outlier.
A miracle is called a miracle because it is not replicable.
"In this world, waste is the greatest crime."
Luo Wei straightened his collar and calmed himself down.
Then they plunged into busy document processing.
If the officials of the empire were on Earth, Luo Wei believed they would all be model workers.
half a month later.
The A-3 core experimental field underground in the eastern granary.
This place was originally a saline land, but it has now been transformed into an alchemical laboratory, full of cyberpunk style.
Thousands of high-power sodium lamps provided ample illumination.
Wearing a heavy lead apron to protect against radiation, and holding a recording tablet, Luo Wei was inspecting the fields.
Beside him, Father Alpha was manipulating six mechanical prosthetics to take a metal rod that emitted a faint blue light from a lead box marked with a radiation warning symbol.
Drill-60 radioactive source.
This is an antique that Loewy's "Special Waste Recycling Team" recently unearthed from a 50-year-old abandoned medical station in the lower levels of a hive city.
In the Warhammer 40 universe, this could be considered a kind of "relic technology".
"Advisor, this level of radiation will drive the machine spirit insane."
Father Alpha's data cable was trembling, and his logic core was frantically alarming.
"According to Article 73 of the Agricultural Bible, this level of blasphemous exposure to seeds can lead to unpredictable mutations. We might create monsters that devour everything."
"We're already creating monsters, Father."
Through the thick lead glass beside him, Lowe watched several plants in the isolation room, which were fixed in culture tanks.
The first generation of "Ironclad Mai".
They look ferocious and terrifying, with sharp serrations along the edges of their leaves, and their roots pulsating in the nutrient solution like blood vessels.
Once someone gets close, they will raise their stems like venomous snakes, attempting to attack.
This crop has an astonishing yield and is incredibly resilient, but it is also highly aggressive and capable of self-reproduction.
If this substance is allowed to leave the experimental field and spread into the wild, the entire ecosystem of Fertility No. 2 will collapse within a few years, turning into a dead world full of man-eating plants.
At that point, the planet will be destroyed on its own without the Tribunal even needing to intervene.
"What we need are livestock, not wild beasts."
"I can say that calmly," Luo Wei said.
"The genetic chain in their embryos must be disrupted. I want to turn them into disposable mules: this generation grows fat and produces food, but the next generation will be extinct."
This is not only for ecological security.
It is also for control.
If seeds can be propagated indefinitely, then the managers of other granaries will soon find ways to steal his research results.
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