Evelyn Ford took some videos and photos of the pig farm. She and Ronan Kendrick waited for a gap when the workers were gone, then jumped into the pen to inspect the pigs. Their eyes were clean, their fur was normal, and their skin was fine—they were all normal pigs.
"Evelyn, these pigs are probably a new, genetically modified breed."
Ronan Kendrick turned on his flashlight and shone it on the pigs’ fur. In the direct light, their bristles had a reddish sheen.
"They might be a crossbreed of wild boars and white pigs."
"Eating pork from them won’t have any side effects, right?" Evelyn Ford’s heart sank as she looked at the tens of thousands of pigs in the pen.
"They’re normal pigs. The base must have experts for this. The goal is to make the pigs more productive, so they specifically cultivated a new breed." As Ronan Kendrick spoke, he grabbed the ears of two nearby piglets.
"Let’s put these two in the space. We can test their blood when we get back. If there are no issues, we can start breeding them."
Evelyn Ford gave Ronan Kendrick a thumbs-up. "Great idea."
The two of them did a lap around the pigpen and, finding nothing unusual, slipped away quietly.
"Their feed is just leaves and chopped straw. Was what Mason Morgan said about them feeding corpses to the livestock just a false rumor?"
’He was so detailed and convincing, it really didn’t seem like he was lying.’
"It’s probably true. Let’s go to the next livestock shed."
The Second Base’s production chain was incredibly complete. The livestock area had a pig farm, sheep pens, chicken coops, rabbit hutches...
After looking around for a while, they discovered that all the animals raised at The Second Base were newly cultivated breeds. Their common traits were their large size, clumsy appearance, high meat yield, and rapid reproduction.
In another livestock shed, Evelyn Ford saw densely packed tree worms. Raising tree worms wasn’t much different from raising silkworms. The tree worms only ate wood shavings, making them even easier to raise. Tree worms usually grew inside oak trees, and under normal circumstances, they were only about the size of half a hot dog. However, the ones being farmed here were huge, almost as big as small mice.
Evelyn Ford had no interest in tree worms. The things looked like maggots, and just a glance at them made her skin crawl.
But then, an idea struck her, and Evelyn Ford still furtively snatched a few of the tree worms.
"Ronan, when we get back, let’s put these tree worms on Quincy’s bed to scare him."
"Then let’s catch some bullfrogs and stone frogs later."
Evelyn Ford snickered. "Okay, but bullfrogs are pretty nutritious and don’t have poison glands. We can catch a few extra to raise in the space."
’Even if we can’t go on a zero-cost shopping spree, we’ve come all this way. We can’t leave empty-handed.’
After touring the entire livestock area, Evelyn Ford and Ronan Kendrick found nothing out of place. They decided to check the vegetable greenhouses next.
The base didn’t lack electricity. With artificial lighting in the greenhouses, the vegetables and fruits were growing quite well. Military control was reliable, as expected, but the biggest advantage was still the geographical environment.
"Ronan, the fruits and vegetables here must also be specially cultivated. Look at those eggplants—they’re as big as pumpkins! And these napa cabbages are a meter tall."
’Are the vegetable experts here from Shale Province?’
The Second Base’s vegetables were even better than Westeria’s. Evelyn Ford couldn’t resist and stole two napa cabbages.
"It’s so strange. They’re growing even better than the ones we have in the space."
Evelyn Ford squatted in the vegetable patch and dug up a pinch of soil to examine it.
"The soil is normal. No fertilizer or manure."
Ronan Kendrick gave a helpless smile and pulled her out. "It’s probably the seeds. If not that, it could be the water source. Come on, let’s go check the water they use for irrigation."
"We’re like a couple of thieves."
Ronan Kendrick retorted with a straight face, "This isn’t stealing. It’s... relocating."
"You’re right."
There were irrigation pipes inside the greenhouses. Evelyn Ford filled half a bucket with water and stored it in her space, planning to test its quality later. The water didn’t smell of bleach and, aside from some sand and sediment, was fairly clean and clear.
The base had many production areas. Evelyn Ford wasn’t interested in the canning factory or the compressed biscuit factory. The place she most wanted to see was the pharmaceutical plant. She had become keenly interested in the base’s pharmaceutical plant ever since meeting those two merchants with the horse-drawn carriage on the road.
The base was more like an industrial park, and the residents living there were like factory employees. Mason Morgan had said that working in the base’s factories required a fifteen-hour workday, an hour longer than in Westeria.
’Salary equals point tickets, ID cards equal access passes, and point tickets equal debit cards.’
Evelyn Ford remembered her parents telling her that when they first started working, they needed meal tickets to eat at the hospital cafeteria. The tickets came in three colors: red tickets were worth one yuan, yellow were fifty cents, and green were twenty cents. The point tickets were just like those meal tickets, settled daily. Once you got your point tickets, you could go buy supplies.
Back at Wyrmrest Base, they could still use point cards. But Frelia was at a high altitude and hadn’t restored its power grid, so it could only maintain a basic electricity supply.
The pharmaceutical plant was no different from a regular factory. It was brightly lit inside, with the continuous hum of machinery. In the workshop, workers were busy at their stations. Evelyn Ford watched them through her binoculars for a long time. The medicines they were producing were mostly hydrogen peroxide, medical alcohol, povidone-iodine, gentian violet, and safflower oil.
"The plant is just producing medicine for treating wounds. Let’s go."
They had to return to the island within ten hours. After getting a handle on the situation at the base, they needed to get back as soon as possible. The sudden disappearance of those four men would surely cause a stir. To avoid complications, they couldn’t waste time on pointless things.
On this trip to the base, they had already dealt with the four culprits who had been torturing and killing refugees and had also collected a sample of the base’s water. As soon as they found the livestock being fed on human corpses, they could leave.
The pair left the factory district and headed to the residential area. The common residential blocks looked like the corridor-style apartments from before the apocalypse. Hundreds of thousands of people lived here. Besides the apartment buildings, there were also large communal dormitories—places where the lowest class of residents lived, no different from a refugee camp.
There were many residents hurrying along the road, most of them carrying their meals. Every face wore an expression of deep-seated bitterness and resentment.
"This way." Ronan Kendrick took Evelyn Ford’s hand and led her into a dark, unlit alley.
A commotion could be heard up ahead. Ronan Kendrick pulled Evelyn Ford into a hidden spot around a corner. A crowd had gathered in front of a nearby residential building. From the clamor of the crowd, Evelyn Ford managed to pick out a few keywords.
A child in this building had died from a sudden illness. The base’s corpse collection team had come to take the child’s body but were being refused by the parents, who wanted to take their child outside the base for a proper burial.
However, the base had a rule: all deceased individuals must be handed over to the corpse collection team for unified processing. Even family members had no right to bury their own dead.
The alternative was to be expelled from the base. As the two sides were locked in a standoff, many residents stood by, watching the spectacle.
Only the child’s mother was crying herself hoarse, while the father stood in front, blocking the corpse collection team from entering the building.
"There’s something fishy about this corpse collection team," Evelyn Ford whispered.