Endless Winter: My Camp Upgrades Infinitely

Chapter 1494 - 470: Meticulous Preparation, Jackal Officials, The Uprising Begins (Part 4)

The rice target for this year was already high, so it’s normal for more people to die. It’s just a matter of crossing the deceased off the household register. The authorities above don’t really care; even if they did, it’s just a matter of paying them off.

After making up their minds, Zhang Long and a group of officials quickly reached a decision.

At dawn, over a hundred Cold Resistance Level slaves in the village were the first to move, heading to the rice fields. Zhang Long dispatched five Vice Managers and fifty County Guard soldiers to supervise, while he stayed in the village with the rest, waiting for nightfall.

At night, Liu Zhang, who had proposed the idea, gathered all the Earth-digging Realm members in the village to announce the decision that everyone had to go reap the rice.

The entire village was naturally in an uproar upon hearing the decision.

They had thought they’d endured for almost three months and were about to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Who knew that just as they were at the finish line, the Subordinate Bureau would spring this on them.

Over a thousand Earth-digging Realm Limit members had died, and it wasn’t enough. Now, even the ordinary Earth-digging Realm members weren’t spared.

After the uproar, turmoil was inevitable.

Two months ago, the decision to have the Earth-digging Realm Limit harvest impacted over four thousand people and caused quite a stir; let alone this time, which affected over fifteen thousand people.

Unfortunately, this turmoil was already within Zhang Long’s expectations.

Fifty fully armed County Guard soldiers, three Vice Managers, more than a hundred Cold Resistance Level members from the Subordinate Bureau, and thousands of Earth-digging Realm Limit members surrounding them, perfectly suppressed the turmoil.

It’s said that the arms can’t twist the thighs. People from the Slave Village, it seems, weren’t experiencing this for the first time. After Zhang Long ordered his subordinates to ruthlessly kill dozens, everyone had no choice but to resign themselves and choose to compromise.

A vast crowd of Earth-digging Realm folks, pushing coal carts, headed quickly towards the rice fields on the west under the supervision of Zhang Long and other Subordinate Bureau officials.

......

Three kilometers west of Qingwu Village, there was a large area shrouded in brown dust. If you walked about two hundred meters further into the dust zone, you’d see a field full of yellow-brown rice.

The farmland had clearly been harvested by humans. The rice stalks on the outskirts only had a meter-long stem remaining, and only in the innermost part were there large patches of whole rice stalks.

The rice in the fields grew very neatly, all in rows and columns, with a one-meter-wide path between each column. In the middle of each path was a half-meter deep narrow trench, which wasn’t filled with water but was instead burning coal stone.

The flaming red coal stones continuously emitted heat, offsetting the cold air around, allowing the rice to grow robustly without fear of severe cold. Occasionally people patrolled the paths, either filling the trenches with new coal stones or picking up those about to overflow to prevent them from igniting the dry stalks.

Five Iron Wheel Cars were parked on the outskirts of the rice field, monitored by five Vice Managers and fifty County Guard soldiers.

The five Vice Managers looked at the sparse rice stalks on the Iron Wheel Cars, occasionally turning their heads to look deep into the Su Field with impatience in their eyes.

”What’s going on today? It’s already been an hour into the night, and we’ve harvested less than 100 stalks?”

”Are those bastards slacking off inside...”

”Should we go in and take a look?”

”It’s too hot inside, forget it, it’s too much suffering.”

”Just wait for someone to come out and ask them.”

”The daily target is fixed; if they don’t finish, they’ll just keep working. Slacking off is useless, they’re probably just hard to find. Most of the remaining rice is infested with Black Fireflies, so it naturally takes more time.”

”Be patient; anyway, this year’s target is completed, so it doesn’t matter.”

......

After discussing for a while, the five Vice Managers all gave up the idea of going in for inspection.

The main reason was the high temperature in the rice field.

Earlier, when catching up with the schedule, they practically had to go in every day to personally oversee the slaves harvesting rice. Now that the progress was about right, there was naturally no need to be so meticulous.

Moreover, more than ten thousand Earth-digging Realm members were about to arrive.

Once that huge group gets here, they won’t worry about not harvesting the rice, will they?

While the five were chatting idly outside, about two hundred meters deep inside the rice field, three people wearing red devil masks stood quietly among the rice, looking up at the southern sky.

”Zhang Long and his people are so insane; they’ve actually brought over all the Earth-digging Realm members from the village. Well, well, I was only eighty percent confident, but now it’s a full hundred. Qingwu Village won’t have any slip-ups; we’ll just have to see how the other villages fare.”

The leader spoke with a cold laugh, and his voice sounded very young. He was none other than Zhang Yuchuan, who had left Zhang’s Courtyard a few days ago.

”This rice is worth over 300 taels per ounce, and it’s only a matter of losing a few slaves. Even if more die, they won’t bear any responsibility, so of course, they wouldn’t miss such a good opportunity to rake in money.”

”Three kilometers, though it’s a smooth road, with over fifteen thousand people, it’ll take at least half an hour to walk. They must have delayed a bit in the village just now; it might take an hour for them to get here...”

The person on the rear right, after stating the time it will take for the Earth’s digging Realm members from the village to arrive, paused slightly, then continued in a low voice: ”The Chief’s agreed time to act is during the first hour after nightfall. Won’t we miss it?”

Zhang Yuchuan shook his head with a smile and said, ”Guardian Liu, you’re overthinking. The bigger the matter, the more minor details there are. How can everything be planned so meticulously? If we can act simultaneously during that time, it’ll be great, but each sub-branch in the villages faces different circumstances, so there will surely be time discrepancies...”