The mechanical insect swarm is like a line of Lng waves, coming from the north and rolling forward. The Bloody Council is the largest reef in front of the waves. The Tao Line crossed the Bloody Council and continued onwards. However, as the wave line moves forward, the density of the mechanical insect swarm also decreases, and leaks and voids inevitably appear.

From the civil war of the Bloody Council to the emergence of mechanical swarms, the entire Northern Continent is in chaos, with nearly half of the displaced people killed in the flames of war, and the rest fleeing in all directions. In large-scale wars, the battlefield has long since extended beyond its original sphere of influence, and many small-scale forces have been destroyed. For example, large and small companies, and then for example, the Alloy Brotherhood. Smaller forces or organizations perished silently, they had little influence while they were alive, and they could not die with a bang. In the era of ability, ordinary people have no chance even if they want to work hard, in other words, they have no chance to be a tragic hero.

But in the midst of the stormy times, no one noticed that a whole new human settlement was thriving in a quiet part of the south. Now the settlement has grown from a few hundred people to nearly 2,000 now, most of whom are absorbed outsiders, but the first few hundred are obviously the backbone. The water from the forest surface of the settlement, the river water is injected into a stepped continuous pool through the guò canal, and after filtration, precipitation, absorption and other steps, it is initially transformed into clean water, and most importantly, the radiation level has also been reduced, which can be used as daily drinking water for the people in the settlement. Several large fields of farmland have been carved out around the settlement, and several strange plants are cultivated in them, which are not conventional food, but they are all edible, and the yield is not too low. On top of that, they are extremely vigorous and seem to mature in less than a month or two.

Even more striking is a factory next to the settlement. This turned out to be a real factory! Several large steel tanks were erected side by side, heated with steam. The boiler that produces steam also drives a small generator that supplies the settlement with a small but precious amount of electricity. Next to the plant, a second plant is already taking shape and equipment is being installed. The so-called equipment and assembly lines are produced by the residents by hand and then assembled. Not far from the second plant, where the foundation is being excavated. If you are a technical official from the Bloody Council, you can see at a glance that these three connected factories are the cornerstone of the development of the Bloody Council, the Synthetic Food Factory. The Bloody Council has not lacked energy since its inception, so the synthetic food factories it has established are basically fully automated, and the products are also very focused on quality, and the products are all truly high-end products that are both nutritious and tasteful, and at the same time completely uncontaminated by radiation. All people with status basically use this synthetic food as the main ingredient. Of course, there are also really upper-class people who can enjoy really natural and pollution-free goodies, such as Morgan's coffee.

The food factories in the colony work on the same principle, but there have been considerable changes in the processes and details. A large number of links have been streamlined, and many finishing processes have been directly canceled, so the production is completely inedible waste, which is rough, tasteless, and has a lot of impurities and radiation. The only thing that is desirable is that it is high in calories, but this is precisely what the upper class people who need to stay in shape hate the most. The modified process consumes less energy and is more dependent on electricity than ever since, with coal, a small open-pit coal mine left over from the war, not far away, producing little but more than enough to supply the settlement. Such a synthetic food factory does not even produce semi-finished products, but the production is more than doubled, and it is still edible. Everyone in the settlement can eat it. In the eyes of the big guys, such things can only be regarded as pig food, and the homeless people in the wilderness are actually inferior to pigs in their eyes.

But once the plant is built, the significance is obvious. It is simple to build, can be built by hand, and has a wider demand for energy, such as fuel coal, and oil is of course better. The variety of input ingredients is wider than that of the prototype factory, and there is a sufficient supply of raw materials in the wilderness, and many plants that are not eaten can be turned into ingredients for synthetic food. And the output can feed 5,000 people. In the wilderness, that's definitely a lot of money. And water, an almost unlimited supply. With these two guarantees, coupled with the rapid reproduction of human beings and the shortening of more than half of the development cycle, it will not take 20 years for this settlement to develop into a city of 10,000 people.

Another layer of significance is that the simplified synthesis factory can be built by hand, and does not require a lot of energy, nor does it require a lot of powerful people, but individual equipment may need to be carried by several second-order power people. In the wilderness, second-order ability people are not very popular, but there are definitely a lot of them, and the proportion is about the same as that of tall men in the old era. This means that ordinary humans living in the wilderness are back in the industrial world, and can rely on their own strength to obtain food through guò production. You don't have to survive by looting, scavenging, and hunting, as you did in the past. Until then, the only ones who could build a synthetic food factory were superpowers like the Bloody Council or the Radiant Crusaders, which had the strength, material, and technological resources. The factories they built were of course only for the middle and upper classes, and the inhabitants of the wilderness, who really needed a lot of low-quality food, had neither the resources nor the skills to build a synthesis factory. Decades have passed, and everything has become habit and nature, as if those who are able should eat better, while those who are incapable always have to struggle with life and death.

The settlement has been walled and guarded, and the interior appears to be in good order. In one corner of the settlement, there is a small church, and the square in front of the church is quite wide, with six completed statues erected, and in one corner of the square there is a stone, which has just been cut a few sides, and is placed there. The chapel is still lit and the priest is reading the book of Revelation in the dim light. The door opened softly, and Sally entered. She was visibly thin, her eyes were sunken deeply, and her face was sickly pale. But the thin body gives the impression that there is still a vigorous flame burning.

"Sally, why are you here? Can't sleep, that's not okay, you need rest instead of working. If you fall ill, then the settlement has lost its soul. The priest smiled.

Sally smiled weakly and said, "I don't know why, I always feel very uneasy tonight, as if I am afraid of something. However, the synthetic food factory is almost ready, the design ideas for several new factories have just been completed, and the simplified steam turbines have also been thought of, and if they can be completed, then we will not be short of electricity, as long as we find coal. When the steam turbine is built, there's really only so much I can do. ”

"Don't underestimate what you've done, in this chaotic era, you've actually opened up another path, a way for ordinary people to live and live well without relying on their abilities." The priest said kindly. He always encouraged Sally, and he was not empty-hearted, and he had something to say.

Sally's gloom faded considerably, and she turned her attention to what the priest was reading, and asked, "How long will it be before we see the statue of the seventh apostle?" ”

"This .......," the priest pondered, and finally shook his head, and said helplessly, "I don't have a mature idea yet, and I have no inspiration at all. Seventh apostle....... I can only wait for the day when the Lord will reveal it to me. ”

Sally was particularly uneasy tonight, she always wanted to say something, but it didn't matter what she said, the main thing was that she didn't want to leave. Only staying in the chapel would make her feel calm and safe. So she tried to find some topics, and in a trance, she asked a question that had been swirling in her mind for a long time: "Father, what are the apostles?" ”

In fact, Sally had asked this question before, but at that time the priest gave either an ambiguous answer, or simply talked about it, but tonight, the priest pondered for a while, and said slowly: "Sally, you know that our human abilities are divided into five major areas of ability. ”

Sally nodded, this is the common knowledge of every ability, even a first-order ability knows this, so she is a little puzzled why the priest suddenly mentioned this.

"The apostles are the embodiment of God walking on earth, the messengers of God's will. Therefore they must have supreme power in order to make God's will pass and to resist the slander and attacks of the unbelievers. The priest's words may sound like a common preacher and a repetition in the book of Revelation, but his stern expression and deep voice suggest that this passage is not a simple religious brainwash that is empty and insubstantial.

"Dividing the competency domain into five domains is not arbitrary. Perhaps it was a bit of a coincidence that the five major domains of power were originally divided, but how could this coincidence not be manifested in an unknown way that God's will was revealed? In the decades that followed, new capabilities were discovered, old ones were updated and strengthened, and almost all of the original theories about capabilities were proven to be more or less wrong, and only the criteria for dividing the domains of capabilities remained, and they were constantly proven. The foresight and accuracy with which humans divided the domains of competence surpassed common sense. The apostles, in fact, correspond to these five power domains, and each power domain has a unique apostle, who has unparalleled abilities in their own exclusive domain, and their abilities are as powerful as miracles. Or according to the hierarchical classification that we have become accustomed to, every apostle should have mastered a twelveth-order ability in this field. ”

The priest's words made Sally's mouth open and speechless for a moment. N