After a lot of effort, Yang Yi and Jackson convinced Maria after making a compromise.
Because her husband was killed by the occupying forces and the granary was burned before fleeing, Maria resolutely refused to surrender to the occupying forces. However, continuing to resist is not a way out, especially for the elderly, children and wounded, who have reached their limits and may die at any time.
After consulting with others, Maria divided the refugees into two groups. Most of the women and half of the militiamen followed her, staying in the desert to continue resisting. Yang Yi gave Maria enough food to keep them for at least one month. If the occupying forces are not driven away after a month, the theater headquarters will definitely send troops. The other half of the militia, all the elderly, children and wounded, led by Paul, followed Yang Yi and them to the city of Derwink to surrender to the occupying forces. Although a few militiamen can fight, other personnel are cumbersome, but only in this way can they look like desperate refugees, will not be suspected by the occupying forces, and can smoothly enter the city of Dwink.
Before dawn, the two teams set off separately.
Because of the elderly, children, and wounded, and the harsh environment, the temperature during the day is as high as 50 degrees Celsius, and at night it drops below freezing. They can only rush in the early morning and evening, so the team is not moving fast. Three days later, he walked out of the desert and came to the coastal plain area.
Compared with the inland desert, the coastal plain is a completely different scene.
Standing outside the windbreak forest that divides the desert and the plain, the neat and uniform farmland in front of you can't be seen at a glance. The criss-crossing irrigation canals will be like lines of longitude and latitude, dividing the land into a one-hundred-meter square, uniform farmland. There are pumping stations every ten kilometers, just like chess pieces on this big chess board. The farms, farms and granaries where the stars are falling indicate that these farms have their own owners.
Relying on highly automated agricultural equipment, farming is no longer a manual task.
Such a sight is rare in the entire Southern Alpha Galaxy.
Thanks to advanced science and technology, agriculture has long been factoryized. Since soilless cultivation techniques, artificial light sources, and ecological control systems have allowed agriculture to get rid of the land, the grain produced by a modern grain factory is enough to meet the daily needs of a large city. In the Home Galaxy, almost all the food that civilians can buy comes from grain factories, and the grain cultivated in traditional ways is a luxury that the rich can only afford. Other civilizations of the Galactic Alliance are similar. Only the Hidden Spirit Race, a top civilization that respects nature, retains traditional farming methods. It can be said that the Human Federation is an exception, and Shennong Star is even rarer.
The long-term tradition of focusing on the military has given soldiers a very lofty position in the human federation. Although after the Fifth Greenwich War, the millennia of peace and prosperity reduced the social status of soldiers to the lowest point in the third era, the influence of the military is still in full swing, even those federal officials who look at the soldiers are not pleasing to the eye. It is clear that if the Greenwich War breaks out again, and stand up to defend the human confederation, it will be soldiers fighting the enemy. As long as the Silicon Charm Alliance is still entrenched in the Northern Alpha Galaxy, and as long as the two types of intelligent beings need more space in order to thrive, the threat of war will not dissipate, and the social status of soldiers will not be reduced.
In the Human Federation, soldiers are a veritable privileged class.
Although not all soldiers are citizens, compared with civilians, soldiers enjoy a lot of privileges, and thus become civilians' first job.
The existence of Shennong Star is a direct manifestation of military privileges.
Of course, Shennongxing can become the granary of the third theater of cultivation, which is closely related to its unique natural environment.
That is, the carbon dioxide content in Shennong’s atmosphere is as high as 5%, and the four continents are distributed near the equator with sufficient sunlight. The coastal areas have abundant seasonal rainfall and the perennial high temperature is very suitable for farming. High-yield crops. Because of the extensive use of automated agricultural equipment and greatly improved production efficiency, the production capacity of traditional farming methods is not much lower than that of grain factories.
As for the quality, it is much higher.
Take the city of Derwink, for example, this small town with less than five thousand inhabitants is responsible for one hundred and fifty surrounding farms, each with one thousand farmland. In other words, less than 5,000 people have taken on 150,000 hectares of farmland, and the annual output is enough to support a million-level army. There are hundreds of small towns like Devink City on the Wild Grass Continent. They produce enough food to feed hundreds of millions of soldiers each year, and they only consume two million labors. Counting the other three continents, Shennong Star produces enough food to feed 500 million soldiers each year, while the third theater of war only has 200 million soldiers in peacetime, and it will not exceed one billion after wartime mobilization. Even if measured by wartime standards, the grain produced by Shennong Star is enough to meet the consumption of 50% of the third theater, and the labor cost is only 10 million. If all these grains are produced by grain factories, millions of laborers will be required, and the quality of the grains produced cannot be compared with traditional farming. Although the nutritional content is similar, the difference in taste is very obvious.
In addition, Shennongxing can have today, which has a lot to do with Zhan Ruilin.
On the way to Derwink City, Lin Feng told Yang Yi a lot about Shennong Star, including after the end of the Fifth Greenwich War, Zhan Ruilin almost met with the federal authorities in order to obtain the jurisdiction of Shennong Star, even after the Fifth Greenwich War ended. Threatening to withdraw from the Human Federation.
Because Shennong Star is far away from the Greenwich Meteorite Belt, and the natural environment has not been completely destroyed during its occupation by the Silicon Magic Alliance. It only takes some time to restore its original appearance. Therefore, the federal authorities hope to classify Shennong Star as its own. Into a tourist attraction. In addition, the Galaxy Alliance also coveted Shennong Star, and the Lei Ling family also proposed that the Alliance should take care of Shennong Star, so that the civilization that has been utterly destroyed in the war can rebuild the country. After receiving the news, Zhan Ruilin acted decisively and rushed ahead of the federal authorities to send ten legions to the Shennong Star, and demobilized the legion officers and soldiers on the spot and exchanged their military exploits for land. Because there are similar laws, soldiers can use their accumulated military merits in exchange for living materials and living space when they are demobilized, so the federal authorities have no choice but to secretly admit to committing themselves.
That's why Shennong Star has today.
In fact, Paul and other colonists who first came to Shennong Star were forced to emigrate to the Wild Grass Continent after the arrival of the soldiers from the Third War Zone. Relatively speaking, among the four continents near the equator, the wild grassland has the worst natural environment and is the least suitable for agricultural cultivation.
Of course, these are things that happened thousands of years ago.
Although at the very beginning, Paul’s ancestors, the first colonists who came to Shennong Star, did not completely obey Zhan Ruilin’s arrangements, and some of them rose up to resist, but time changed everything, especially after the third theater of war. Some of the preferential treatment policies put down the military-civilian conflict. For example, 800 years ago, after Zhan Ruilin appointed the first chief of staff, the Third Theater Command gave the aboriginal people a high degree of autonomy and treated them as quasi-soldiers. The food was sold to the third theater of war and served as a theater reserve in the war. All the militias in the formation had to unconditionally respond to the war mobilization of the theater headquarters.
It can be said that aboriginal people like Paul are themselves a privileged class.
Driven by these policies, Shennongxing has been the most important food producing area in the third theater for hundreds of years, and there has never been a large-scale rebellion. To talk about trouble, it is mainly interstellar pirates who come to harass from time to time, and many of them have been secretly supported by other theaters.
It was exactly the same. After Shennong was blocked, Mayor Alex mobilized the militia and asked Maria to take uncombatable civilians to the farm for a while.
Jackson also mentioned that he brought the warrior mercenary group to Shennong Star to plunder food.
Of course, it's not to fill your own belly, but to be hired. Unfortunately, Jackson did not know the true identity of the employer.
Before leaving the windbreak forest, Yang Yi and the others put away their weapons.
The equipment on the farm is all controlled by the optical brain. Usually no one comes here. Only when the harvest is time, the farmer will come to count the harvest.
After the team traveled on the field road for less than half an hour, a small unmanned reconnaissance aircraft flew over.
After circling a few times above the team, the unmanned reconnaissance aircraft flew away.
Although Yang Yi was a little worried, nothing happened afterwards. Paul didn't say nonsense that the unmanned reconnaissance plane was sent by the occupying forces. After it was confirmed that it was a refugee team, the occupying forces would not launch an attack. That's why Paul asked Yang Yi and the others to put away their weapons.
In the evening, the team came to the outside of Derwink.
It is not so much a city as it is a big town. The whole city was surrounded by a wall about ten meters high, which was built to fight the pirates who came to looting when the city was built. In the city, all houses are less than five floors and the streets are very narrow. If not every household has modern transportation such as air-cushion vehicles, it is hard to believe that this is a modern town.
The team came outside the city gate and was stopped by guards.
Yang Yi and others were mixed in the crowd, and Paul came forward to deal with it. In the past half month, Paul has ventured back three times in order to buy medicines.
After some negotiations, the guards opened the gate.
However, instead of letting the team enter the city on their own, the guards called a patrol team and led the team to the city hall specializing in accommodating refugees. According to Paul, the occupying forces will first identify the refugees' status, and then provide appropriate resettlement based on the refugees' health. Even if they are not sick or painful, they will be isolated separately. After five to ten days of isolation and observation, the occupying forces will let the refugees go home.