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Chapter 634: Ten Years

However, Li Weiyang's friend's concerns ultimately proved unnecessary.

Aside from a single, lukewarm complaint, nothing else occurred.

The councilors seemed to have more pressing matters, with no time to concern themselves with such a trivial, peripheral figure.

...

The power of the Spirit Energy era largely had little to do with one's so-called temperament or Aura; it was more like a pure tool.

Like a nuclear bomb, as long as one had the authorization, anyone could press the button and bring death to others.

As for the person pressing the button, whether their character was noble or their conduct upright, what did it matter?

Of course, there were some exceptions, such as the Martial Path.

Those who cultivated the Martial Path could be crazy, they could be fanatical, but they could never be weak-willed or indecisive.

Because his power cast an invisible shadow over everyone.

As long as they couldn't break free from it, they could only spin in place.

Fortunately, as time passed, Bai Mo's shadow gradually began to recede from the Federation, and martial artists, unwilling to remain idle, gradually found a way to cope.

They used special mental techniques to refine the shadow brought by Bai Mo into a whetstone that continuously sharpened their will.

This even led to the birth of a unique school of thought known as the Courting Death Style.

Martial artists of this school specialized in seeking out opponents they couldn't possibly defeat, purposefully creating psychological shadows within themselves.

They would then refine these psychological shadows into mental whetstones, transforming them into stepping stones for further progress.

However, many also perished in the process of challenging insurmountable foes, as not everyone could exercise restraint like Bai Mo.

...

Since the globe-shaking Star-Grabbing and Moon-Seizing incident, ten years had passed in the blink of an eye, and it was now the Thirteenth Year of Daoyuan.

Humanity had experienced its most stable decade since the Spirit River Autumn.

There were no foreign invasions, no displacement, no internal strife, and no wars; everyone had enough to eat.

...

One lead ship after another ascended, vastly expanding humanity's living space, so people no longer needed to cram onto the small Moon.

Not to mention the hereditary lead ships that had become private territories, just the Great Thousand World-level giant lead ships each had an internal space equivalent to half the Moon's previous area.

Twenty-four Great Thousand lead ships brought a colossal amount of land, nearly equivalent to Earth's surface area. Of course, the cost was that one-sixth of Mars's mass had disappeared.

Billions of tons of material mined from Mars were used to fill the lead ships' sub-spaces, which had been expanded by Empty Profound Crystals, becoming the foundation for human survival within them.

However, simply having more living space wasn't enough to bring a decade of rare stability to the Federation, which was already a high-pressure cooker simmering with internal contradictions.

The true trump card was actually the newly established food factories and artificial meat factories.

...

As early as the Earth era, agricultural industrialization had been the tireless pursuit of many researchers.

People once envisioned cultivating crops on dozens of floors within a single building, using artificial light sources for illumination, thereby maximizing land conservation.

Today, such technology had been realized by the Federation.

It was merely achieved through a more fantastical method.

From carefully selected plants, the chloroplasts responsible for photosynthesis were individually extracted and steeped in a specially formulated Active Spirit Liquid.

Then, in sterile devices, large amounts of carbon dioxide were fed into the spirit liquid mixture. The chloroplasts, activated by the Active Spirit Liquid, began mechanical photosynthesis under perpetually bright artificial light sources.

In a sense, this was a biochemical reactor for plants. Just as animal biochemical reactors exploited animals, plant biochemical reactors exploited the surplus value of plants, forcing their chloroplasts to work at full capacity, 24/7, without cease.

The lifespan of a batch of chloroplasts was only about three months, but the amount of starch and specialized cellulose produced was astonishingly high.

This was due to the immense loss from respiration being eliminated.

Originally, a large portion of the energy converted by plant photosynthesis was used to maintain the organism's survival, with very little actually accumulated.

However, the plant biochemical reactors transformed plants into half-dead, half-Spirit Energy mechanical lifeforms. Aside from continuously performing photosynthesis at full capacity to produce useful carbon-chain organic compounds for humanity, all other life activities were suppressed to their weakest state.

Thanks to the plants' "007"—their selfless dedication of 24/7 labor—a thirty-story-tall factory agriculture headquarters, spanning twenty mu of land, could produce enough carbohydrates daily to feed two million mouths.

As for cost, the production cost of each kilogram of starch was less than a dime.

Highly industrialized carbohydrate production directly crushed most grain farmers. Aside from a few cutting-edge farms that pursued the premium food market, catering exclusively to the upper echelons, all others were forced to switch to cultivating cash crops.

It was precisely because of the extremely low cost of low-end grain production that the Federation directly treated it as a welfare benefit. Each person could receive three kilograms of starch for free daily by simply scanning their face with facial recognition.

Since anyone could collect it, there was no market for reselling it anyway.

...

Equally astounding were the artificial meat factories.

Stimulated by another type of specialized spirit liquid, the stem cells of livestock such as pigs and cattle would continuously divide, much like cancer cells.

These dividing stem cells would then be injected into specialized molds, where they would be induced to differentiate through Spirit Energy radiation of various frequencies, ultimately producing standardized clean meat steaks, piece by piece.

Currently, the Federation had achieved artificial production of chicken, pork, and beef. These three flavors of artificial meat tasted very similar to real meat.

With a little heavy seasoning, or by using more robust cooking methods like spicy hotpot or deep-frying, it was practically impossible to distinguish between natural and artificial meat.

Since cell division grew exponentially, the raw material cost for artificial meat quickly became extremely low. The market price was essentially stable at one yuan per kilogram, making it affordable for everyone.

And thanks to artificial meat, natural meat could now only take the high-end route...

The wealthy ate spirit-seeded pork at 500 a tael, while ordinary people ate artificial meat at 50 cents a catty. This was the current situation in the Federation.

Undoubtedly, technological development had improved life for everyone. It was just that before, commoners gained one unit while the upper class gained a hundred; now, commoners gained two units while the upper class gained five hundred.

"Thank goodness we live in a civilized era."

A tattered beggar emerged from a Federation food aid station, holding a package of food from the grain factory in his left hand and a bottle of slightly turbid wine in his right. His eyes hazy with drunkenness, he gazed at the slogan written on the aid station.

A meteor streaked across the sky.

PS: Chapter comments are back... so satisfying.