Homo Sapiens

The car traveled along a rural road, the mountain forests on either side shrouded in mist.

After a light rain, the air had turned surprisingly cool.

Fang Xinwu hummed an old song along with the melody as he drove:

"...Every teardrop for a dream I held dear... Slipped away with each passing year... Lost in a circle, finding myself here... Riding the currents, both fortune and fear..."

Lush foliage filled the mountains amidst the gentle winds and fine rains of April.

Around a bend, the terrain suddenly opened up.

Before him lay a sizable mountain River Valley Plain. The rice paddies were already planted with delicate young shoots, and a river flowing down from the mountains nourished the land.

Across the widened highway bridge was a small town nestled halfway up the mountainside.

Fang Xinwu glanced at the mountain behind the town. A large chunk had been carved out of it, a clear sign of local terraforming efforts.

Construction vehicles procured from Dongfeng Group and Sany Heavy Industry were busy with excavation, transportation, and leveling work.

The pace of construction in Shan State was indeed surprisingly fast.

Terrain like that of Mengli Town was common on the Shan Plateau, a result of having no better options.

The main issue was that the river valley plains were hot and humid with abundant mosquitoes, and prone to flash floods during the rainy season. Therefore, settlements had to be established halfway up the mountainsides near the river.

But this came with its own set of disadvantages, such as poor transportation, difficulty accessing water, and the risk of landslides and mudslides.

To solve these problems, Qingye Group promoted the consolidation of villages and towns on the Shan Plateau, strengthened infrastructure, and engaged in large-scale projects to level mountains and fill valleys.

Mengli Town was currently undergoing such a project. Once the transformation was complete, the town's usable plateau area would be about seven times its current size.

「Noon.」

Fang Xinwu and his companions were having a meal at the town's Qingye Fast Food Shop.

"Brother Xinwu, this Qingye Group has its hands in everything. They even have fast-food restaurants," Fang Xinxin remarked with curiosity, stepping forward.

Mao Shuihe, who understood Mandarin, replied in a thick accent, "Their company is enormous. They'll do any business that makes money. From food and clothing to housing and transport, Qingye Group has a hand in all of it here."

"Doesn't Hongsawaddy's government do anything about it?" Although Fang Xinxin had been a shut-in for the past few years, she still kept up with some news online.

For instance, she remembered the recent controversial incident back home where internet giants started selling groceries, which had sparked intense public debate.

Fang Xinwu gave a wry smile. "Their boss has close ties with all the major players in Hongsawaddy. Qingye Group is one of the three major conglomerates specially supported by the government, and Shan State is basically Qingye Group's turf."

"Isn't that a plutocracy?"

"Yes, and a very powerful trust at that."

But Mao Shuihe, a Hongsawaddy native, seemed unconcerned. "Call it a trust, call it a plutocracy, it doesn't really matter to ordinary people like us. In fact, thanks to big companies like Qingye Group, a lot of people now have stable incomes."

Fang Xinwu remained noncommittal, but he didn't launch into a tirade about Qingye Group's monstrous evils either.

The main reason was that Mao Shuihe's attitude reflected the true feelings of the vast majority of locals.

After decades of civil war between warlords, life in Hongsawaddy had become unbearable for the common person. The demands of the poor were simple: they just wanted to live a peaceful and stable life.

As a result, many locals felt no animosity toward Qingye Group for steadily consuming Hongsawaddy's assets; some were even grateful.

The mindset of the impoverished masses was simple: as long as they could eat their fill, avoid the chaos of a lawless society, and have a steady job, they were content.

As for lofty ideals like the rise of Hongsawaddy, or freedom and democracy—they couldn't care less.

For the poor, who lived hand-to-mouth and struggled just to survive, such things were far too remote.

Fang Xinwu wasn't some naive, angry youth fresh out of school. He'd seen this story play out before. He was in no position to condemn Qingye Group's greed, nor to look down on the short-sightedness of the common people of Hongsawaddy.

It was just as Maslow's hierarchy of needs described.

The need for survival is always number one.

Without a material foundation, everything else is just a castle in the sky.

The fast-food shop was bustling with customers.

Many of them were Qingye Group employees, chatting and laughing about topics like wages, houses, and women as they ate.

"Did you hear?"

"What?"

"The head office plans to turn all of Shan State into a specialized agricultural zone."

"What's a 'specialized agricultural zone'?"

"It means each town will only grow a few specific crops. I heard Mengli Town has been designated as a rice, lemon, and pomelo cultivation zone. From now on, they'll only grow those three things."

"For real?"

"Of course. My buddy from the next village works for the agricultural company."

"What about our Shan Dong Region, then?"

"That area's been zoned for sugarcane, oil palm, soybeans, rice, and tobacco, I think."

The construction workers enthusiastically discussed Qingye Group's recent moves.

Fang Xinwu, meanwhile, silently took note of everything.

The plan to develop specialized agriculture was a clear sign of Qingye Group's tight control, implemented to prevent destructive internal competition.

After all, many farmers tended to be shortsighted. They would easily jump on the bandwagon whenever they saw a crop with high prices and fast sales.

But this approach was often fraught with risk.

For farmers, cyclical market fluctuations could sometimes be fatal.

The satsuma mandarin industry in Huaguo, for instance, was a classic example.

Blind expansion of cultivation areas across the country eventually led to supply outstripping demand, forcing everyone into a brutal race to the bottom.

At the same time, rural distribution channels are very limited, making it difficult for individual farmers to stand up to distributors.

Qingye Group, however, was already powerful enough in Hongsawaddy to act without such constraints. It directly assigned specific industries and production quotas to each town, mandating that they only grow designated crops.

From production and transportation to processing and sales, every stage was controlled by Qingye Group's own Qingye Agricultural Company, ensuring stable market prices.

To analyze domestic and global agricultural production volumes and price fluctuations, Qingye Agricultural Company had even established a secret global agricultural analysis office, equipped with a dedicated supercomputer with a processing power of one exaflop.

Having lived in Hongsawaddy for many years, Fang Xinwu could feel the earth-shattering transformation taking place.

One of the most significant signs of this transformation he could see was that commodity prices in Hongsawaddy were gradually falling.

Whether it was locally produced goods like rice, sugar, fruit, and seafood, or imports like palm oil, home appliances, daily necessities, and motorcycles, prices were steadily dropping across the board.

This was thanks to the stable value of the Jin yuan and the fact that Qingye Group's competitive products were bringing in a large volume of goods in exchange.

Take palm oil, for example. To secure enough Jin yuan, Malaysia and Java had been forced to sell shipments of it to Qingye Group at low prices.

Combined with this year's soybean harvest in the Shan Dong Region, which yielded large quantities of cooking oil and soybean meal, Hongsawaddy now had its own domestic cooking oil industry.

Hongsawaddy's agricultural potential was indeed immense.

It was the first time Fang Xinwu realized that, within a powerful system, the region's agricultural potential could be developed to such an extent.

The natural conditions for agriculture here were simply too good. As long as internal chaos could be avoided, it was only a matter of time before Hongsawaddy became the breadbasket of Asia.

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