[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse":3,"chapter-from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-chapter-161":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","From Special Forces to the Multiverse",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2315211,4527,"Chapter 161","from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-chapter-161",161,"\u003Cp>When the first spring wheat of the Hetao irrigation zone was harvested, Director of Agriculture He Mingyuan squatted on the field ridge, rubbed a stalk of wheat in his palm, counted the grains, then counted them again. He stood up and told the statistician behind him, his voice forced calm, but his pencil-clutching fingers trembling slightly: “Two hundred and eighty jin per mu.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The statistician wrote the number down in his notebook. Two hundred and eighty jin meant little in Jiangnan, where paddy fields yielded four hundred jin per mu. But this was the steppe—last year still covered in waist-high wild grass, abandoned farmland, the estate of Western Xia nobles left fallow for at least five years. To harvest two hundred and eighty jin of spring wheat from newly opened wasteland meant something to He Mingyuan—it meant the soil of Hetao could truly feed people, that the twenty-thousand-mu irrigation zone was no mere drawing on paper, that the hundred thousand mouths who had fled across mountains from Western Xia would no longer rely on the base’s grain reserves. Not only would they no longer be fed—they would, by autumn, send surplus grain back into the base’s granaries.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Harvesting began in early August. All three agricultural regiments of the Hetao Corps were deployed, and two thousand militiamen were temporarily drafted to help. Sickles were insufficient, so the cooperative’s blacksmith shop worked day and night, forging the last stock of iron ingots into sickle blades. Zhang Chu’an issued a note, diverting a small steam engine from the arsenal’s steam hammer workshop to drive a thresher shipped from Jiangnan. When the thresher arrived at the field, every member of the agricultural regiment gathered around. Old Zhou squeezed to the front, watching the iron machine swallow entire bundles of wheat and spew out golden cascades of grains—his mouth hung open, unable to close. In his life, he had always threshed wheat by hand with a flail, managing barely a hundred jin in a full day. This iron machine produced in the time of one pipe-smoke more than he could in three days.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“How much can this thing thresh in a day?” he asked the technician beside him. The technician was a young woman from Jiangnan, sleeves rolled to her elbows, face smudged with chaff and sweat. She smiled: “Grandpa, if it runs nonstop, it can thresh twenty thousand jin a day.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Old Zhou said nothing more. He squatted down, scooped a handful of grains from the pile spilling from the thresher. The grains were plump, heavy, rolling in his palm. He put them in his mouth and chewed—sweetness emerged. Then he stood, tucked his sickle into his belt, and turned toward his own field. After a few steps, he suddenly stopped and said something to his young son, Zhou Mancang. Zhou Mancang later wrote those words into the Hetao Corps’ Third Battalion’s autumn harvest summary—still locked in the corps’ archives today: “For the first time in my life, I feel the grain is mine.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After the autumn harvest, the total yield of the twenty-thousand-mu Hetao irrigation zone was reported. He Mingyuan personally compiled the figures, working through the entire night with an abacus in the earthen-floored headquarters building. The next morning, he delivered the report to Zhang Chu’an’s desk. Zhang read it, said nothing, only passed it to Guo Jing and wrote a single line on the back with his fountain pen. Guo Jing took it and saw: the report showed fifty-six million jin. On the back, Zhang had written: “Next year, thirty thousand mu.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The first change after grain storage was the cooperative’s counter. In past years, before winter, the grain counter was the quietest place—the reserve grain was prioritized for military and factory needs; herders received fixed rations, strictly limited per person per month, and extra purchases were impossible. This year, after the harvest, the wooden sign was replaced. The old sign read: “Each person limited to thirty jin of grain per month.” The new sign kept the same words, but beneath “thirty” was a smaller line: “For additional needs, unlimited purchase permitted with labor vouchers.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unlimited. Those two words carried more weight on the steppe than any slogan. An old herder from the former Kerulen lands stood before the counter, staring at the sign three times—he could not read, so the female clerk read it aloud, word by word. When she finished, he reached into his chest, pulled out a cloth bundle, unwrapped it layer by layer, revealing a thick stack of labor vouchers, varying denominations, saved over a full year. He placed the bundle on the counter and said: “Give me fifty jin of white flour.” The clerk blinked: “Grandpa, can you even eat fifty jin?” The old man pushed the bundle forward again: “I can’t eat it. I’m steaming buns for my grandson. White flour buns.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>White flour was a luxury on the steppe. Previously, only nobles and nayans ate white flour buns; ordinary herders ate coarsely ground oat gruel and potatoes. Now, behind the cooperative’s grain counter, sacks of white flour stacked higher than a man; potatoes filled the warehouse to bursting—some sliced into dried chips, some fermented into alcohol for the arsenal’s solvent workshop. In his report to the logistics department, He Mingyuan used a phrase from his childhood he had never used since university: “The pigs can’t finish it, the people can’t finish it, and we can even trade it for salt.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Salt indeed arrived. The first batch of refined salt from the Hexi Salt Company reached the base’s cooperative in late autumn. Previously, herders ate coarse salt—black, bitter, causing throat irritation when consumed in excess. This salt was snow-white, uniform in granules, packed in one-jin coarse cloth bags stamped with “Steppe Salt Company.” The cooperative priced it extremely low—so low that a herder could exchange the smallest labor voucher for two jin. Someone objected, saying such a low price meant losses. Zhang Chu’an’s reply was one sentence: “Salt is not a commodity. It is life. Life cannot be priced.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Along with salt came cotton cloth. Jiangnan’s textile factories shipped core components of hand-crank sewing machines via software transmission this autumn; the steppe’s own carpentry workshop fitted them with wooden frames and tabletops, assembling the first fifty hand-crank sewing machines. These machines were not sent to factories—they were distributed to cooperative branches in every settlement, where female members were trained to operate them, establishing “Convenient Sewing Stations.” Herders brought their own cloth; the stations stitched garments for free—no charge for cutting or sewing, only payment in cloth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Old Zhou’s wife was the first herder’s family member to enter the sewing station. She brought three chi of machine-woven cotton cloth to make a new jacket for Old Zhou and a new headscarf for herself. The seamstress measured her, then spun the hand-crank wheel rapidly. From the hum of the needle, she heard a rhythm she had never known before. Later, she told Old Zhou: “It sounds like summer river water.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Improvements in housing began before winter. The base’s first batch of brick-and-wood permanent houses were completed in the core settlement of the Hetao irrigation zone. These were no longer semi-subterranean dwellings—though warm, those were low, damp, poorly lit, and prolonged stays caused coughs. The new houses were brick-and-wood: walls of blue brick, roofs of wooden beams with red tiles, windows glazed with glass, floors of compacted lime-soil. Each household had three rooms—a main hall, a bedroom, a storage room—plus a small courtyard with chicken coops and sheep pens. A pressurized well was dug beside each house, its head cast iron; when the handle was pressed, groundwater gushed forth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On the day Old Zhou’s family moved in, his wife stood in the main hall for a long time, then did something no one expected—she took off her worn boots and stepped barefoot onto the compacted lime-soil floor, pressing down again and again, then looked up at Old Zhou and smiled. There was no excitement, no tears—only a quiet calm, as if something had been smoothed out. “Husband,” she said, “the ground is flat.” Old Zhou said nothing. He squatted on the threshold, lit a cigarette, and watched the pressurized well in the courtyard gleam iron-gray in the sunlight.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His neighbor was an old miner from the Heishuicheng mine district, a man surnamed Liu who had spent thirty years bent over hauling ore in Western Xia’s pits, his spine bent like a bow. On his first day in the new house, his son—who now operated a hoist in the mining regiment—brought home something from the cooperative. Not food, not clothing—a wooden chair with armrests. Liu had worked in the mines for thirty years and had never sat in a chair with armrests. He sat down, back against the chair, hands resting on the arms, closed his eyes, and said nothing for a long time. Then he opened them and told his son: “This chair is better than any chair the nayans I’ve ever seen sat on.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The most profound change in education was felt by Zhou Mancang. He was now the clerk of the Third Battalion of the Hetao Corps, but after winter began, the base’s Education Bureau issued a new notice: all able-bodied youth under twenty-five, regardless of employment status, must attend winter literacy classes, three evenings per week. The textbook was newly compiled, its cover printed with “Steppe Literacy Textbook”; each lesson included illustrations—the first lesson showed a steam locomotive, beneath it the Mongolian characters for “train”; the second showed a cooperative counter, beneath it “labor voucher.” Instructors were trainees from the Military-Political University, each assigned to a settlement, teaching literacy, then arithmetic, then simple practical writing. Zhou Mancang, already a clerk, did not need literacy training—but he volunteered as an assistant. On his first night, he watched dozens of adult herders—shepherds, miners, female clerks who had stood all day at the counter—each gripping a stone stylus, laboriously scratching their names onto slate boards. Suddenly, he remembered two years ago, himself, beneath the same oil lamp, first writing “Zhou Mancang” on a slate.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The change in healthcare began with a number. The base’s field hospital conducted a smallpox vaccination rate survey after winter began—the result was ninety-seven percent. The remaining three percent were new immigrants who had fled from Western Xia before winter; they were still in quarantine and would be fully vaccinated upon release. The hospital director, Sun, was the same young doctor who had given Old Zhou his first injection at the Guihua reception station. In his annual report, he wrote: “Two years ago, half of all newborns on the steppe died before age five—mainly from smallpox, tetanus, pneumonia, and diarrhea. Now, the annual incidence of smallpox is zero. Tetanus incidence has dropped by ninety percent. Pneumonia mortality has dropped by seventy percent. Diarrhea mortality has dropped by sixty percent. Behind these numbers are vaccines, penicillin, disinfection protocols, and boiled drinking water.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Old Zhou’s wife could not read these numbers. But she knew one thing—her granddaughter, now two, was conceived after they arrived at the base. The child was delivered by Dr. Sun himself, using sterilized scissors and gauze. On the baby’s first month, Dr. Sun rode out to vaccinate her and left two packets of sulfonamide powder. Now the child ran everywhere, spoke a mix of Mongolian and Tangut, and pointed at the red flag outside the cooperative, calling it “qiqi.” One day, as her grandmother held her in the courtyard, basking in the sun, she said something she had never said before—a sentence Old Zhou later repeated to his neighbor Liu, who passed it on to his mining comrades, and somehow reached Zhang Chu’an’s ears. After listening, Zhang was silent for a moment, then said: “That sentence is the meaning of everything we’ve done.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She said: “This child will live better than we did.”\u003C\u002Fp>",1971,"2026-06-20T13:48:22.834Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","d174a8b5e1195da6834e0a02ed3653d1d7ccb7a7f889a23d925c442695cdfabe","from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-chapter-162","from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-chapter-160",205,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Ffrom-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-cover.jpg"]