It took a lot of effort, and after making a compromise, Yang Yi and Jackson were able to convince Maria.

Because her husband was killed by the occupying forces and burned down the granary before fleeing, Maria refused to surrender to the occupying forces. However, continuing to resist is not a way out, especially those elderly, children and the wounded, who have reached their limit and may die at any time.

After consulting with others, Maria divided the refugees into two groups. Most of the women and half of the militia followed her, staying in the desert to continue the resistance. Yang Yi gave Maria enough food to sustain them for at least a month. If the occupying forces are not driven out after a month, the theater command will definitely send troops. The other half of the militia, all the elderly, children, and wounded, led by Paul, followed Yang Yi to Dwenk City to surrender to the occupying forces. Although all but a few militia members can fight, the rest of the personnel are burdensome, but only in this way can they look like desperate refugees, not be suspected by the occupying forces, and can enter the city of Dwenk smoothly.

Before dawn, the two teams set off separately.

Because of the elderly, children and the wounded, and the harsh environment, the temperature reached 50 degrees Celsius during the day and dropped below freezing at night, so the march was not fast in the early morning and evening. After three days, they walked out of the desert and came to the coastal plains.

Compared to the inland desert, the coastal plain is a different story entirely.

Standing outside the windbreak that separates the desert and the plains, the neatly arranged farmland in front of you stretches as far as the eye can see. The criss-crossing irrigation canals will act like latitude and longitude lines, dividing the land into 100 meters square, neatly aligned farmland. Pumping stations, every 10 kilometers, are like pawns on this big chessboard. The starry farms, farms and granaries show that these farmlands have their own owners.

Thanks to highly automated agricultural equipment, farming is no longer a manual task.

Such a sight is rare in the entire Southern Alpha system.

Thanks to advanced science and technology, agriculture has long been industrialized. Soilless cultivation technology, artificial light sources, and ecological control systems have freed agriculture from the land, and a modern grain factory can produce enough food to meet the daily needs of a large city. In the home system, almost all the food that civilians can buy comes from grain factories, and the food that is cultivated in the traditional way is a luxury that only the rich can afford. The other civilizations of the Galactic Alliance are similar, and only the top civilization of the Hidden Spirits, which has a high respect for nature, retains their traditional farming methods. It can be said that the Human Federation is an exception, and Shennong Star is a rare existence.

The long-standing tradition of attaching importance to military affairs has given military personnel an extremely high status in the Human Federation. Although after the Fifth Greenwich War, a millennia of peace and prosperity lowered the social status of the military to the lowest point of the Third Age, the influence of the military is still in full swing, and even those federal officials who do not like the military know that if the Greenwich War breaks out again, it is still the military who will stand up to defend the human federation and fight the enemy. As long as the Silicon Alliance is still entrenched in the Northern Alpha System, as long as the two intelligent life forms need more space to thrive, the threat of war will not dissipate, and the social status of military personnel will not be reduced.

In the Human Federation, the military is a veritable privileged class.

Although not all military personnel are citizens, they enjoy many privileges compared to civilians, and thus become the first profession of civilians.

The existence of Shennong Star is a direct manifestation of the privilege of military personnel.

Of course, Shennongxing can become the granary of the Third War Zone, and the traditional way of farming is closely related to its unique natural environment.

That is, the carbon dioxide content in Shennong's atmosphere is as high as 5 percent, and the four continents are located near the sunny equator, and the coastal areas have abundant seasonal rainfall and high temperatures all year round, which are ideal for cultivating a variety of high-yielding crops. Because of the extensive use of automated agricultural equipment, which greatly improves production efficiency, the productivity of traditional farming methods is not much lower than that of grain factories.

As for the quality, it's much higher.

Take Dwenck, for example, a small town of less than 5,000 inhabitants that is responsible for 150 surrounding farms, each with 1,000 acres of farmland. In other words, less than 5,000 people took on 150,000 hectares of farmland, and the annual output of food was enough to feed a million 100,000-person regiments. There are hundreds of small towns like Dwenk City on the Wasteland Continent, which produce enough food to feed hundreds of millions of soldiers every year, and consume only two million laborers. Counting the other three continents, Shennongxing produces enough food to feed 500 million soldiers every year, while the Third War Zone only has a total of 200 million soldiers in peacetime, and it will not exceed one billion after wartime mobilization. Even by wartime standards, the food produced by Shennongxing was enough to meet fifty percent of the consumption of the Third War Zone, and the labor consumed was only 10 million. If all this grain is produced by grain factories, millions of laborers will be required, and the quality of the food produced will not be comparable to that of traditional farming. Although the nutritional content is similar, the difference in taste is extremely obvious.

In addition, Shennongxing can have today, which has a lot to do with Zhan Ruilin.

On the way to Dwenk City, Lin Feng told Yang Yi a lot about Shennong, including after the end of the Fifth Greenwich War, Zhan Ruilin almost met with the federal authorities in order to obtain the jurisdiction of Shennong, and even threatened to withdraw from the Human Federation.

Because Shennong is far away from the Greenwich meteorite belt, and the natural environment was not completely destroyed during the occupation by the Silicon Charm Alliance, as long as it takes some time, it can be restored to its original appearance, so the federal authorities hope to designate Shennong as their own and develop it into a tourist attraction. In addition, the Galactic Alliance also covets Shennong, and the Lei Ling Clan also proposed that the alliance host Shennong Star to re-establish the civilization that suffered from the devastation of the war. After receiving the news, Zhan Ruilin immediately made a decision, rushed to the federal authorities, sent ten legions to Shennongxing, and let the officers and soldiers of the legions be demobilized on the spot, and exchanged military merits for land. Because there is a similar law, soldiers can exchange their accumulated military merits for living materials and living space when they are demobilized, so the federal authorities have no choice but to secretly admit it.

It is precisely in this way that Shennong Star is what it is today.

In fact, Paul and other colonists who originally came to Shennong Star were forced to move to the Wild Grass Continent after the arrival of the soldiers from the Third War Zone. Relatively speaking, among the four continents near the equator, the natural environment of the Barren Grass Continent is the harshest and the least suitable for agriculture.

Of course, this was all a thousand years ago.

Although at the beginning, Paul's ancestors, that is, the colonists who first came to Shennong, did not completely obey Zhan Ruilin's arrangement, and some of them still resisted, but time changed everything, especially the subsequent preferential policies introduced by the Third War Zone to quell the military-civilian conflict. For example, 800 years ago, that is, after Zhan Ruilin appointed the first chief of staff, the Third Theater Command gave the aborigines a high degree of autonomy and gave them quasi-military treatment, and the aborigines only unconditionally sold excess grain to the Third Theater and acted as a theater reserve in the war, and all militias in the organization could unconditionally respond to the war mobilization of the theater command.

It can be said that indigenous people like Paul are themselves a privileged class.

Driven by these policies, Shennong has been the most important food producer in the Third War Zone for hundreds of years, and there has never been a large-scale rebellion. If you want to talk about trouble, the main thing is the interstellar pirates who come to harass from time to time, and many of them are covertly supported by other war zones.

It is precisely because of this that after the blockade of Shennong, Mayor Alex mobilized the militia and asked Maria to take the incapable civilians to the farm for shelter.

Jackson also mentioned that he had brought the Warrior Mercenary Group to Shennong Star to loot food.

Of course, not to fill one's belly, but to be employed. It's a pity that Jackson doesn't know the true identity of his employer.

Before walking out of the windbreak, Yang Yi and the others put away their weapons.

The equipment on the farm is all controlled by the light brain, and no one usually comes here at all, and only when it is time for harvest will the farmer come to count the harvest.

The team had been on the field road for less than half an hour when a small unmanned reconnaissance plane flew over.

After circling a few times above the ranks, the unmanned reconnaissance aircraft flew away.

Although Yang Yi was a little worried, nothing happened then. Paul did not say nonsense that the unmanned reconnaissance plane was sent by the occupying forces, and after confirming that it was a refugee team, the occupying forces would not attack. It was precisely because of this that Paul asked Yang Yi and them to put away their weapons.

In the evening, the team came outside Dwenk City.

It's more of a big town than a city. The entire city is surrounded by a wall about 10 meters high, which was built to defend the city against raiding pirates. In the city, all the houses are less than five floors, and the streets are very narrow. It's hard to believe that this is a modern town if it weren't for the fact that every household has modern means of transportation such as hovercraft.

The procession came to the gates and was stopped by the guards.

Yang Yi and the others mixed in the crowd, and Paul stepped in to deal with it. In the past half month, Paul has ventured back three times to buy medicine.

After some negotiations, the guards opened the gates.

However, instead of letting the team enter the city on its own, the guards called a patrol and led the team to the town hall, which was dedicated to hosting refugees. According to Paul, the occupying forces will first screen the refugees for their status and then resettle them according to their health. Even if you are not sick or painful, you will be isolated alone. After five to 10 days of quarantine and observation, the occupying forces allow the refugees to return home.