Chapter 702.2: The Loss Of Order
His obedient demeanor left nothing to criticize. Ample Time glanced at the bodies on the ground and spoke slowly. “Take a few men and bury them.”
Laxi acknowledged the order, turned back to pick up his rifle, slung it over his back, and shouted for a few subordinates to come over and carry the bodies away for burial.
The issue of winning them over seemed not to exist at all. The soldiers did not resent their leader for executing his own men. On the contrary, their gazes toward him were filled with even greater awe and submission.
Their reactions did not surprise Ample Time.
Freshly released from their cages, they were not fully human in the true sense. They were beasts that believed in the law of the jungle and naturally gravitated toward the fiercest one.
Watching Ample Time walk away from Laxi, Peepo hesitated, then finally could not help speaking. “I think at the very least those people should have been given a legal trial. This was actually a good opportunity to use them for publicity, ”
“Enough. They’re dead. What’s the point of putting corpses on trial? The one who really deserved judgment is still hanging on the watchtower.” Interrupting him, Ample Time narrowed his eyes and glanced at the prison warden hanging from the tower, crows pecking at the body, then continued patiently. “What you’re talking about is too far ahead of the curve for them. They’re still in a relatively primitive society. They don’t need that yet. Don’t forget, before the survivors of Clearspring City even had clean clothes to wear, when did we ever waste time putting marauders on trial? That comes after people are fed and clothed.”
“At this stage, I have only one requirement for them, obedience. All they need to do is to listen to us. That’s the only requirement. Even if their discipline is terrible, it’s still far better than an emperor who can send five percent of the population into concentration camps.”
“As for the rest, there’s no need to rush.”
The militias’ atrocities were partly a rebound of vengeance after the oppressed suddenly straightened their backs, but more so an inevitable result of a vacuum of order. The aftershocks of this riot went far beyond the few examples dragged out in the streets and shot.
The insurgents would restrain themselves out of concern for the New Alliance’s attitude, but the thugs who had picked up weapons from routed soldiers would only become more brutal and unrestrained. In those dark alleys, no one knew how many tragedies were still unfolding.
To fundamentally solve this problem, a new order had to be established locally to replace the old order under Governor Nihark.
In fact, he was already doing just that.
Chief Bihari was taking over citywide policing with his lackeys, and militia training was proceeding steadily.
They were not doing a great job, but it was enough. Once the new order was in place, they only needed to ensure that local survivors had enough to eat, clothes to wear, and roofs over their heads... lived with just a shred more dignity than under Nihark. Then their new order would naturally gain enough legitimacy in the people’s minds to sustain rule.
It wasn’t that hard. Some unfortunate fellow had left them a huge sum of money, perfect for exactly this purpose. Taking all that money home would have been a bit shameless anyway.
After deducting reparations, borrowing the rest in the name of the Baiyue Strait Development Company and investing it locally would not only earn goodwill for the New Alliance and French Fry Harbor, but also turn a profit.
“What about them?” Peepo glanced at the two girls slumped on the ground, then looked at Ample Time.
No matter how many solutions there were to the macro-level problems, the immediate issue still had to be addressed.
At least, he thought it did.
All around them, eyes were watching.
Ample Time was silent for a long time, then sighed. “Give them two ship tickets...”
Perhaps the survivors of French Fry Harbor could help them start new lives, like the survivors of the Moonfolk. Aside from giving them some financial compensation and sending them away from this troubled place, he could not think of a better solution for the moment...
...
As the bodies at the entrance of Rowell Camp and the two pitiful victims were taken away, the survivors who had been gathered around the gate to watch the spectacle gradually dispersed, their interest spent.
The fact that those militiamen had completely folded before the iron men left everyone feeling a little underwhelmed, but in the end, they still got what they came for, blood.
That fellow named Laxi was a ruthless one. He didn’t even blink when killing his own men, mowing them down cleanly like chickens. Those few guys who were executed were truly unlucky. It really hadn’t been a big deal, at most they should have paid compensation, maybe a couple of pigs or something, but they ran straight into the muzzle of a gun.
And then there was something else, Apparently, getting shot didn’t mean they died immediately. They would flop around in the blood like a fish for a while before finally going still.
Everyone was satisfied. Their long wait for entertainment hadn’t been in vain.
As for the two girls wrapped in blankets, their fate was just as much a topic of concern.
Some said the iron men had taken a fancy to them, otherwise there was no reason for them to take the girls away instead of just letting them go home on their own.
Others said they would be dealt with quietly. After all, those with the white bandage on their arms had given the iron men such a big favor, surely the iron men had to return something in kind.
Everyone racked their brains in their own ways, trying to explain those strange things they couldn’t understand.
At least they tried.
Watching the commotion outside the window subside, Han Mingyue pushed open the car door and stepped down. She gave the bloodstains on the ground a brief glance, then indifferently continued toward the camp gate.
Ample Time, who was waiting there, looked at her with mild surprise. “You’re not afraid?”
In his impression, aside from the already corrupted followers of the Enlightenment Society, most blue coats in the wasteland had an unusually strong moral fastidiousness. He had even prepared himself to be yelled at by an NPC, but the expected reaction never came.
Instead, he was the one making a fuss.
“Do you think the Great Desert is some peaceful paradise?” Han Mingyue joked casually. “Besides, this is exactly what I study. How could I not know what the survivors here are like?”
That made sense.
Ample Time understood immediately.
The way the woman looked at the people here was probably no different from how Hyrja looked at Little Feather.
Entering Rowell Camp, Ms. Han glanced around, her eyes gleaming with keen interest. “So it really is here...” she muttered.
“Here?” Ample Time looked around.
Aside from layers of pigeon-cage-like housing and rows of open iron-bar doors, he saw nothing particularly special.
But she clearly saw things differently.
After taking a photo of the layout, she spoke with some emotion. “... According to the data I collected in the Great Desert, this used to be a scientific research station. During the Three Year War, a division-level combat unit under the Federation Army escorted a large number of refugees from the southern industrial zone here and maintained order for quite some time in the early years of the Wasteland Era.”
Ample Time suddenly became curious about something. “Is ‘Rowell’ the name of that division commander, or the name of the research station?”
Han Mingyue replied, “It was the commander’s. His name was General Rowell. I found records in the cached data of a signal relay showing survivors’ dissatisfaction and accusations against him, some even demanding that the Federation authorities replace him. Complaints like that never stopped until the end of the Three Year War, but they don’t seem to have accomplished anything.”
“According to the timestamp signatures on the server, the last message was sent by General Rowell himself. It looks like he was trying to report to the Post-War Reconstruction Committee, or perhaps defend himself. Unfortunately, the committee never received that message, and at the time they didn’t have the capacity to concern themselves with survivors in the distant Paro Province.”
“In that message, General Rowell mentioned that, aside from the necessary coercive measures taken for survival, he had adopted some special methods to ensure the local survivors could eat their fill. These included forcing researchers to study how to make soil edible, and forcing some survivors to act as test subjects.”
“Surprisingly, his researchers really did use the station’s equipment to synthesize a single-celled organism capable of breaking down biomass remnants. After being processed by this microorganism, the soil would turn reddish-brown and could be eaten with only simple filtration.”
“Unfortunately, the project only made it halfway before a riot broke out in Rowell Camp. The rebelling survivors buried General Rowell, his researchers, and their research data together in the wasteland north of the camp, near the Everflowing River... That area should have been permafrost at the time. They must have put in a lot of effort to dig pits big enough. If my guess is correct, there should be a stretch of red earth north of Port Gallon.”
Ample Time frowned and asked, “Why did those survivors oppose him?”
Looking at the mud cakes spread out on stone slabs to dry in an open area nearby, Han Mingyue replied casually. “Matter doesn’t appear out of thin air, it just moves from one cycle to the next. Why don’t you guess where the organic material for synthesizing red soil came from?”
Without waiting for him to answer, she continued, “People had to constantly add corpses, excrement, and other organic remnants into the red soil. Only then could the red soil continuously grow. Otherwise, you would have to wait for it to grow on its own.”
“From a carbon-sequestration standpoint, this isn’t actually more efficient than farming. Its only advantage is convenience. General Rowell never truly solved the problem at its root. He probably read some old-era books and, with a simple-minded good intention, did what he thought was right, only to be overthrown by the first generation of survivors who hadn’t yet gone mad.”
Good grief.
So the soil contained corpses?!
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