Chapter 310: Plague

Along with the explosive population growth, the main roads leading from Chikan to the western industrial zone had also increased to three.

Apart from one road having a concrete surface, the other two were both paved with asphalt. At present, asphalt was not in short supply: the petrochemical department's crude oil-processing capability was the chief culprit behind the mass production of asphalt.

Including all the jokes about "Type 50" gasoline, the Miaoli side had already produced plenty of laughable incidents in a short time, and nicknames like "17th-century Venezuela" were long since old news on the forum.

Yet the petrochemical side had no choice. Given the Transmigration Nation's current industrial capability, turning black crude oil into various refined products could only be done through atmospheric distillation, so a high volume of waste products was only normal.

To further process and refine petroleum, techniques like hydrocracking were needed. But these processes required all sorts of pressure vessels and pipelines... the moment the word "pressure" came up, the Industrial Party was on its knees.

Any kind of pressure vessel is essentially a bomb. Whether a pressure cooker or a gas canister, none of these things can be produced without a mature industrial system. If you force a project through, just wait for a chain of explosions.

The Transmigrators currently had neither unlocked welding techniques nor the ability to produce qualified steel stock; even their atmospheric valves were barely passable. For a certain power base to produce petrochemical equipment of enormous size and higher grade — this was nothing short of a fantasy.

Petrochemical plants are the jewels of industry. Even a Type 28 chemical plant, with its various corrosion-resistant towers, reactors, tanks, valves, and pipelines, was beyond the reach of a broke, dirt-poor power base.

Those local-tyrant oil-producing nations of later generations, seemingly boasting an annual output of millions of barrels of crude — yet the refined oil products they used themselves were still imported. The petrochemical industry is something only the big hooligans can play with. High-precision, cutting-edge items like an ethylene complete plant — even the Rabbit only smashed through the patent monopoly by the early 21st century.

So, there is a reason Venezuela turned into that ghastly state. Without manufacturing to back it up, a nation is forever duckweed adrift in the wind.

And the Transmigration Nation was now much the same: Syrian child laborers lit firewood under open iron cabinets to distill crude oil, and the oil workers of Miaoli did exactly the same. The difference was that Miaoli was covered in forest, so firewood was plentiful.

This primitive distillation method is the standard setup for the initial stage... no need to fear losing face; Rockefeller started out doing the same thing.

The crude refining capability was the culprit behind the high asphalt output. In Miaoli, the combined annual output of gasoline, diesel, lubricating oil, and lamp oil was only 1 ton — truly enough to make the hearer grieve and the listener weep.

After the majority of the crude oil turned into asphalt, it was all spread on the roads. Compared to the far more useful gasoline and diesel, this construction material that could make road surfaces smooth as a mirror could only serve as a consolation...

Mid-December 1628, over a month after a certain incident, afternoon, Eryi Road.

Usually, early morning and evening were when road utilization was highest: tens of thousands of workers going to and from work would occupy the road like a tide, a truly spectacular sight.

Today was no exception. On the smooth road surface, commuter vehicles chugged along, emitting faint black smoke as they slowly drove past.

Four o'clock in the afternoon was the laziest time: workers coming off shift sat lazily in the vehicles, the road open and uncrowded; they basked in the warm sun, felt the gentle sea breeze, admired the continuous lagoons along the coast, and arrived home before they knew it.

This coal-gas commuter vehicle, towing a string of open wooden-board carriages behind it, was already a second-generation model. Thanks to the ever-improving metal processing technology at the Kiln Area Base, the early wooden-wheeled vehicles had been replaced with steel-wheeled ones, the early damping leaf springs swapped for finger-thick coil springs, and combined with the smooth asphalt road surface, the passengers' ride experience had been greatly enhanced — at least it no longer jolted their hemorrhoids to bursting.

Just as Commuter Vehicle No. 0137 was slowly traveling from north to south, a horse-drawn carriage came clip-clopping from the opposite direction.

Given the Transmigrators' irrepressible habit of "standardizing everything," this horse carriage was naturally no exception.

The carriage body was marked with a serial number. The standard horse carriage belonging to the Public Transport Company was a Western-style four-wheeled model. This model had two draft horses harnessed side-by-side at the front, wearing soft leather straps, and the driver sitting at the front of the carriage was steering the horses with ease — he only needed to twitch the leather straps and give soft shouts to control the horses' movement.

Traditional Chinese-style vehicles had rigid shafts. That kind of cart had only two wheels, with the shafts made of hardwood resting on the horse's shoulders. The horse not only had to provide the force to pull the cart forward but also had to bear one part of the downward weight of the cart and the driver sitting on the shafts.

This resulted in slow carriage speeds, easily fatigued draft horses, and low transport efficiency.

The Western-style carriage, which transmitted pulling force through soft straps, did not have this problem: the horses were only responsible for the forward pulling force, while the weight of the carriage body and passengers was entirely borne by the four wheels.

Anyone who has seen Western films knows that whether it is the carriages pulling passenger cabs on the streets of London or the covered wagons of the American West during the pioneer era, they all used this four-wheel structure suited for long-distance transport.

Dayuan was no exception now: all the draft horses the Transmigration Nation bought from Great Ming were assigned to standard four-wheel freight carriages.

The driver hauling a cartload of white radishes spotted the commuter vehicle's driver from far off and began waving. When the two were about to pass each other, the horse driver casually tossed over a fist-sized white radish: "Old Wang, try a radish, juicy, just pulled from the field!"

Driver Old Wang reached out a hand, but unexpectedly missed the radish — it was caught by a worker in the carriage behind him. Amid the workers' raucous laughter, they took a bite each, and with a series of crunching sounds, polished off the radish. The driver just laughed heartily and shouted to the horse driver: "Coming to your place for drinks tonight!"

"Don't come tonight, meet at the Mess Hall!" As the horse driver drove off into the distance, a crucial piece of information drifted back: "Swine plague at Seven Bridges!"

"Ah! The pigs have plague again!?" Upon receiving this news, everyone, including the driver and passengers, immediately beamed with delight. The next moment, Old Wang, wearing an indigo canvas work suit, cranked the coal gas generator's power to maximum, and the vehicle's speed quickly picked up, merrily towing the whole string of carriages toward the terminal stop, "Seven Bridges."

"Seven Bridges" was a place name. As one of the countless bridges the Transmigrators had built on the Tainan Plain, "Seven Bridges" was very unremarkable. The only thing people might remember about it was probably the pig farm near Seven Bridges.

Just as the commuter vehicle was hurrying toward the terminal stop, a motorcycle was speeding like lightning across "Seven Bridges," which was built from prefabricated concrete slabs.

This was a Harley-Davidson with a classic high-set frame, flowing leather tassels, and a rider clad in full leathers and boots — the thick hippie vibe could be smelled from far away.

The only slightly discordant note: sitting behind the sunglasses-wearing rider was not a girl with her rear stuck out, but an iron cage... containing two black-skinned piglets squealing wildly.

After crossing Seven Bridges, the motorcycle continued roaring along, leaving a trail of gasoline smell over the 17th-century coastal plain. Not long after, the motorcycle plunged straight into the crude Seven Bridges Pig Farm.

With a sharp "Screech—", the motorcycle's solid tires left a black skid mark on the ground as Huo Xiong swung off the vehicle.

Huo Xiong was a man of dark skin and thick eyebrows, his face full of tough flesh, tall and burly. His biker jacket was stretched taut over his frame, and paired with the pistol at his hip and the dagger behind his boot, he exuded a heavy thug-like aura.

Yet no one would ever guess that this living, breathing outlaw biker's true identity was a graduate student in biology from a top-985 university.

Looking at the three men and one woman, four pig farm workers standing before him trembling, Huo Xiong impatiently tossed over the iron cage holding the piglets: "Where are the corpses?"

"In the backyard!" The one who hurriedly caught the iron cage was a man in his thirties with a perpetually miserable face. This man was called Shan'gen, the pig farm's Chief Steward — he managed his own wife and the other two workers.

Hearing this, Huo Xiong pushed past Shan'gen, strode around to the backyard for a look, and instantly flared up in anger: on the ground lay four Second Senior Brothers with black hair, neatly arranged in a row.

"Weren't there three!?" Huo Xiong turned his head, his expression menacing.

"J-just now another one collapsed, right before you, sir, came in."

"Am I a plague god?" Hearing this fellow speak so tactlessly, Huo Xiong's furious hair rushed to the crown, and he kicked out with one foot.

Seeing the well-prepared Shan'gen nimbly dodge, Huo Xiong gave an angry cold snort: "Bring a knife."

Shan'gen's wife, a short woman with dark skin, timidly handed Huo Xiong a butcher's knife. With a cold snort after taking the knife, Huo Xiong then turned around, squatted down, and began dissecting the four black pigs.

In fact, extensive dissection was unnecessary. These four dead pigs had purple spots on their skin; bleeding points on their ear roots, abdomens, inner thighs, and eyelids; putrid intestines; and blood in their feces... It did not take Huo Xiong long to determine the Second Senior Brothers' cause of death: classic swine fever.

Standing up and patting his forehead, a certain person knew he would be busy now.

"How many are still alive?"

"Three half-grown ones, kept in a separate pen."

"Separate pen, my ass!"

As Huo Xiong spoke, he walked to the pig pen and carefully examined the three surviving sub-adult pigs.

"Move these few to the backup site immediately."

"Yes! Master."

Swine plague, also called "swine cholera," is an acute, highly contagious viral disease with high transmission, usually spreading among pig herds and posing no direct harm to humans.

In later generations, the vaccine against classic swine fever had an immunization period of over one year and was widely recognized as a safe, highly immunogenic, and genetically stable attenuated vaccine.

However, the Transmigrators had no such thing.

Not only did they lack a vaccine, the Transmigrators had none of the common veterinary antibiotics and medicines — a power base that was still struggling to climb the sulfonamide technology tree still had a long road ahead before reaching antibiotics and vaccines.

There was no helping it; the Crossing Faction had arrived in this plane less than two years ago in total, and simply had no time to construct these branch technologies.

So Huo Xiong, as the head of the livestock industry, had to find the source of the infection today. Otherwise, if it turned into a widespread Pig Plague, that would be a disaster.

So he picked up his Knife and began a second, meticulous dissection of the dead pig on the ground.