When observed from so far away, the workers who were busy working on the furnaces, the tubes, and the iron scaffolds were like black and brown ants.

Most of them had covered themselves tightly in gray capes and were wearing simple protective respirators and eyepatches. Their skin that was exposed to the air, however, had been smeared into brown and black because of the dust and the pollutants. Also, because of the protective earplugs that they were wearing, they were somewhat sluggish and inert, like a bunch of mechanical reptiles that were not fully-wound or a group of lifeless zombies.

Li Yao finally understood why Nepenthe could spread far and wide in the area without being noticed. Whether or not the workers had practiced the Serenity Arts, they looked equally emotionless, like machines experiencing mental fatigue.

Most of the workers were occupied inside the mines or the factories and could not be directly noticed. However, Li Yao did notice that workers were dragging carts of raw minerals from caves in rows.

Even such a simple job that could absolutely be taken over by spiritual puppets was shouldered by the hominoid miners. As far as Li Yao’s eyes could reach, the only spiritual puppets he saw were the monitors at the commanding heights. In the Great Iron Plants, it was machines that were supervising the work of humans and maintaining the cruel and bloody order!

Li Yao even saw a cross-shaped execution terrace in a corner of the factory area. A hominoid miner was tied to it, and a battle puppet was slapping the miner’s back that was full of scars brutally with an electromagnetic whip.

Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa!

Flesh and blood were splashing together with sparks. The hominoid miner was screaming miserably because of the excruciating pain.

A hundred hominoid miners were forced to watch him by the battle puppets. There was no telling their countenance because their faces were covered by the masks, but judging from their shaking shoulders, they were obviously in extreme fear and anger.

Also, based on the bloodstains around the execution terrace, it was clear that somebody was sent here for punishment every other day.

Clenching his fists, Li Yao mumbled to himself, “What crimes have this worker committed to deserve such whipping?”

Long Yangjun said, “He has been whipped more than ten times. So, it is probably a major crime like damaging the mining magical equipment instead of a minor crime like spending too much time in the toilet.”

Li Yao was rather surprised. “What? Spending too much time in the toilet is a ‘crime’ that needs to be punished by whipping?”

“Of course. The Immortal Cultivators keep so many workers and offer them wages every month not because they want you to go to the toilet every day.”

Long Yangjun said, “According to sex and age, everybody is given a toilet time. If you are more than five minutes late before you return to your post, you will be violating the rules of the Great Iron Plants and have to be whipped once.”

Li Yao was stunned for a long time. Observing the commanding heights and the firing points around the entire Great Iron Plants, he continued asking, “I can tell that the battle puppets that the Immortal Cultivators have deployed in this place are indeed much more advanced than Xiao Xuance’s Grand Illusionary Soldiers years ago, but why are there not many civil puppets? Many simple, repetitive, and cumbersome works can be accomplished by civil puppets, can’t they?

“That’s rather odd. The Imperium’s overall technological abilities are at least decades more advanced than the federation’s. It is the case in terms of the military magical equipment and the battle puppets, but the Imperium’s advantages are not so obvious when it comes to the civil magical equipment, the civil puppets, and the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus. The federation even has greater advantages in certain fields!”

“Don’t you understand? It’s because there is no demand in those aspects!”

Long Yangjun said in a low voice, “The Star Glory Federation paid more attention to the benefits of the ordinary people. As a result, the cost to hire ordinary people is extremely high. In order to lower the cost, the new technologies and the new resources must be devoted to industrial automation and the development of civil puppets, replacing the previous workers with civil puppets. It is because of the demands in the aspects that the technologies have thrived.

“The Imperium, on the other hand, does not have such concerns at all. They can reduce the cost to use the hominoids to the minimum blatantly without considering their benefits, rights, or occupational diseases.

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“In the meantime, the Imperium also has a lot of approaches that have severe side effects, such as, for example, activating the demonic genes or using excitants excessively to increase the work efficiency of the hominoids and the cost advantage.

“Under such circumstances, it is only natural that the civil puppet industry is never developed in the Imperium. All the new technologies and new resources are devoted to the exploitation of hominoids!

“Same goes for the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus. In fact, neither the four Kurfürst families, the warlords in the local areas, nor tycoons such as Li Minghui like the idea of connecting the entire Imperium because the Spiritual Nexus means information, and information is innately equal, dangerous, and uncontrollable.

“They prefer to keep themselves secluded and be kings in their own territories, only letting in the information that is in their favor to brainwash the hominoids. It would be a miracle if the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus can be developed under such circumstances!

“Therefore, it is not because the Imperium is not as technologically capable as the federation but because they have chosen different directions of development. Don’t look down on those battle puppets. I once stole one of them and dismantled it. They are truly precise, complicated, and advanced!”

“I know.”

Li Yao watched a team of battle puppets whipping the hominoid first before the medical puppets, which had been painted white, began treating the punished. Then, another team of battle puppets escorted all the other miners back to the wells. The whole process was in order and did not have any accidents. There was not even a single Immortal Cultivator supervising the situation.

It meant that the control crystal processors of those battle puppets were advanced enough to make complicated logic judgments spontaneously.

With such powerful control crystal processors, their combat ability couldn’t be weak.

However, Li Yao was still more or less confused. “Why are no Immortal Cultivators seen around the entire Great Iron Plants, and the order is only maintained by the battle puppets? Is Li Minghui not here?”

“As you have seen, the environment here is too harsh. The Immortal Cultivators naturally would not stay here all day.”

Long Yangjun said, “Normally speaking, the administration made of the Immortal Cultivators and the private troop of the Black Iron Troop will stay five hundred meters right above the Great Iron Plants. There are a fairly large training field and rest area up above. That is the place of residence for the Immortal Cultivators.

“Li Minghui, on the other hand, spends even less time below the ground. He is mostly occupied in pulling strings and negotiating businesses with other Immortal Cultivators on the surface of the planet!

“However, it is true that the Great Iron Plants is particularly undefended in recent days. The turmoil you caused on the surface of the planet raised tides below the ground too. A lot of underground sects and groups who were attached to the Dongfang family are now homeless dogs living in fear all day. So, Li Minghui is taking the opportunity to expand his territory and devour the forces large and small nearby by leading the most brutal bandits under his command. The Dongfang family’s properties are all becoming the Li family’s. How else can he make up for the losses when he changed sides?

“It is exactly because of the chaos in the underground worlds that Nepenthe is planning an uprising. There is still one last day for that!”

After observing the distribution of guards and the environment in the Great Iron Plants, the two of them retreated into the caves and snuck into the living areas near the Great Iron Plants through the unknown gaps.

The messy huts and caves were the homes of the workers. Not only were the families of the workers living here, but there were also many entertainment providers and sometimes even merchants who traveled among different underground districts.

Compared to the depressing, cold, and lifeless factory areas, while the living areas had been developed without any order like crazy ant nests or beehives, such places were at least full of vigor. People’s shouting and bickering could even sometimes overwhelm the noises above their heads.

According to Long Yangjun, the Immortal Cultivators had been leaving the hominoids outside of the factory areas to themselves. They barely went deep into the stinky cottages in the living areas to search for suspects and maintain order, mostly because none of the Immortal Cultivators were willing to come to such a dirty place where they could gain nothing.

Before this, Li Minghui had thought to restrain all the hominoids roughly with the battle puppets as the police in the living areas. Then, it occurred to him that the unexpected situations were too many and the environment was too complicated in the living areas for the battle puppets’ crystal processors to handle. In order to transform “soldiers” who were purely responsible for slaughter and suppression into “police” that had to take care of the most insignificant trivia, the crystal processors of the puppets had to be upgraded by at least two generations.

The price was too high, and there was not much necessity. So, Li Minghui dropped the idea and simply assigned certain seemingly obedient, seasoned miners as the managers of the living areas. His attitude was obvious. As long as the productivity of the factories was not affected and no great trouble was caused, he did not really care what the living areas of the hominoids became.

The Grand Guardian of Nepenthe, named “Xu Zhicheng”, was a model worker of the Great Iron Plants that everybody knew in the beginning. After his two sons passed away one after the other, as a special treatment, the corporation had nominated him as the manager of a living area.

Since Xu Zhicheng was qualified to be the Grand Guardian of Nepenthe, he certainly had ways to manage the area that was assigned to him well. It was the safest and least troublesome area for the Immortal Cultivators. The workers living in the area were exceptionally diligent and hardworking. Gradually, he won the trust of the leadership of the corporation. More and more living areas were administered in his ways, and they joined Nepenthe one after another. Today, all the living areas nearby had been highly infiltrated and controlled by Nepenthe, surrounding the Great Iron Plants and the Black Iron Group instead!