199: Chapter 203 Thirty Million Refugees? Those are the New Batteries on My Assembly Line

The operational efficiency of the Black Market Ring is always driven by greed to break physical limits.

When the deputy supervisor verified the purity of that pile of High Elf artifact fragments, his rough bionic eye almost melted in those flickering blue lights.

Orders were issued. Over half of the Heavy cargo barges in the entire Outlaw Trading Belt were urgently requisitioned.

No luxury cabins, no life-support recycling systems. These barges were originally iron shells used for smuggling highly polluted raw ore.

At this moment, they were being used as trash cans, stuffed with death row inmates from black market dungeons, coolies from defeated civilizations selling themselves to pay off debts, and mutated refugees waiting to die with broken limbs in the bottom of mine shafts.

The barge exhaust plumes pulled a dense net across the void.

They formed a crude, long queue, locking their docking channels tightly onto the open, bottom-level intake maw of the Exile Fortress.

Crash!

The harsh sound of sliding and dumping echoed.

They weren't walking off the ships.

These thirty million people, like foul-smelling kitchen waste being dumped, were "poured" directly into the bottomless Central storage bay inside the fortress by the heavy-duty air valves at the bottom of the barges.

The crowd fell onto the cold metal floor like a human pyramid.

Wails, the crisp sound of breaking bones, and widespread coughing due to oxygen deficiency instantly filled this bottom-level hall, which was the size of a dozen giant football stadiums.

Those black market escorts eagerly cut the tractor locks, fearing they would catch even a bit of bad luck, and sped away in their empty ships from this terrifying fortress that emitted a strong smell of sulfur.

To the deputy supervisor, he had made a killing on this deal.

Using a pile of waste flesh that consumed a huge amount of synthetic rations every day, he had exchanged them for pure materials that even the top fifty guilds on the great map were fighting over.

This mysterious big client hiding in a black shell, afraid to show his face, was likely a sacrificial maniac whose brain had been fried by the Warp.

The blast-proof outer armor of the Exile Fortress was completely welded shut in a heavy sound of hydraulic engagement.

Cutting off all external scanning signals.

Inside the command room, Li Cang pressed the green light indicating the transaction was complete.

He didn't get up to inspect the group of flesh-and-blood assets he had just bought.

His gaze fell on the [Logistics Inventory Countdown Alarm] glowing a high-risk red.

Even if these thirty million people only drank a single sip of the lowest-grade nutrient solution every day, that consumption rate would eat through the fortress's reserves within three days.

"No money to support idle people. I don't keep mouths that eat for free here."

Li Cang's finger tapped on a large section of the console covered with black sludge icons.

No gentle recruitment broadcast for the recruits. No false promises to soothe fear.

The command followed the light waves to the lowest hall of the fortress.

In the darkness, several piercing crimson searchlights suddenly lit up, shining on the group of refugees huddled together like maggots.

Sizzle!

The iron walls, several meters thick around the hall, slowly rose. What was revealed was not a corridor leading to the living area.

It was a Great Crusade-level holographic armament recovery casting living mother-furnace in the most authentic Warhammer style.

The high-temperature dark orange firelight illuminated the entire bottom bay like purgatory.

Spray guns spitting plasma flames of tens of thousands of degrees were everywhere, and a pungent stench of tar leaked from the thick exhaust pipes.

In front of the roaring fire stood a row of tyrannical existences like black iron towers.

Three thousand Mutated Astartes brutes.

They held oil-dripping Melta Chainswords and heavy Bolters with exaggerated calibers. The red light coming through the helmet observation slits looked down indifferently at the writhing merchandise all over the floor.

Located at the very center of the array was Recruit Number One.

He wasn't even wearing a helmet; on that fleshy face covered with stiff scars and neural interface ports, not a trace of human pity could be squeezed out.

"First row, ten thousand people. Step forward." A rasping sound came from the vocoder on Recruit Number One's neck.

In the refugee line, an alien convict with four arms still wanted to rely on his physique to resist, roaring as he tried to grab an iron bar that had fallen on the ground.

Bang! Before he could grip the iron bar, a heavy Bolter shell with an armor-piercing core blasted his upper body into a cloud of drifting blood mist.

His lower body maintained the momentum of charging forward, sliding for two meters before slumping down.

A rain of blood fell on the faces of the first row of refugees.

Silence. A bone-chillingly terrifying silence.

In this metal stomach filled with the roar of massive iron and heartless behemoths, any resistance was a laughable splash.

Li Cang sat above and pressed the execution button.

From the ceiling of the hall, thousands of hydraulic cantilever arms with thick, rusty needles at the ends descended.

"Pick out the thinnest and the crippled ones. Send them to the first production line to be batteries." Li Cang took a sip of water, his voice as cold as ice shards.

The mechanical arms lowered. There were no anesthetic measures.

Those skin-and-bone refugees were lifted into mid-air by massive alloy claws. Thick electrode tubes with flickering high-voltage blue fire were forcibly drilled through their spines and the back of their heads into their bone marrow!

The shrillest screams lasted for less than two seconds.

Their frontal lobes were physically destroyed and crushed. Consciousness and pain were forcibly stripped and cleared from their bodies.

Their limbs, which were still struggling frantically, went still the moment the main brain system's high-pressure connection was successful.

Like puppets with their strings cut, they hung in a deathly silence.

Then, those Servitor remains were tossed into the conveyor tracks of the mother-furnace. Their eyes were left with only hollow white light, and half of their bodies were forcibly welded onto the blast furnace charging ports and the rails for carrying explosives.

They became cheap screws on this cold war machine—never tired, never complaining, and only burned as fuel after the last drop of life's nutrients had been exhausted.

After the mother-furnace consumed this first batch of nearly one million "human flesh wetware computing power," its production efficiency skyrocketed geometrically. Black solid shells poured out from the other end of the conveyor belt like rain.

The remaining twenty-some million death row inmates and convicts who were still relatively healthy...

...watched helplessly as the living people who were just beside them turned into this inhuman, monstrous black state.

Many people lost their minds on the spot, kneeling on the ground and kowtowing frantically.

Li Cang didn't frown.

This was just the appetizer. He needed cheap frontline fodder infantry who could fight and hold guns.

The console interface flipped.

He brought up the [Primary Gene Enhancement Catalytic Embryonic Toxin Residual Liquid] he had picked up when leaving the Mars ruins.

He took these potent, rotten toxins—which had a high risk of mutation and could never be used in a regular army...

...and injected them all into the giant, murky nutrient solution pools below the hall, whose covers had been forcibly pried open.

"Don't you want to survive? Jump in." Recruit Number One waved the buzzing, frantically spinning Chainsword in his hand, pointing directly at the row of toxic swamp pools emitting acidic gas and green bubbles. "If you survive for thirty minutes without dying, you'll have food. And a gun to get your revenge."

Under the threat of heavy Bolters, the front row of refugees was kicked into the nutrient pools like dumplings into a pot.

Under the stimulation of the potent drugs, which even ignored physiological limits to reset and reshape bones...

...the pool water churned violently as if boiling! Most of those with poor constitutions directly exploded due to organ overload in the intense pain, melting into a layer of rotten blood foam floating on top.

But, because the base number was so massive, the superior gene resilience of the populations from the great map showed its strength.

There were always freaks who survived!

Thirty minutes later.

One by one, large feet with reverse joints and dark red keratinous hard plates—exposed due to skin peeling from rapid maturation—stepped heavily onto the edge of the pool.

These people were completely unrecognizable. Their skeletons had been forcibly stretched to two meters, and their eyes bulged, bloodshot and filled with a tyrannical red light of destruction.

All memories and emotions had been burned away in those thirty minutes of inhuman agony. Only the lowest-level, absolute slaughter-and-obedience steel-imprinted engravings, deeply branded by the Warhammer system, remained.

Heavy scrap iron breastplates, fresh from the mother-furnace and not even deburred, were slapped onto their chests, which had grown tumors and lumps.

Large-caliber live-ammo assault rifles that required two hands to hold steady were thrown into their hands.

In front of the screen, Li Cang watched the troop strength progress bar skyrocket on the regional power map like a rocket!

500,000... 1 million... 3 million... 10 million!

A full 13 million low-spec mutated fodder auxiliary infantry, armed to the teeth, devoid of emotion, and completely fearless!

Just like that, in this dim, steel womb-like hell, they formed into phalanxes, filling four entire floors of the Exile Fortress's standby orbital bays!

"That's more like it."

Li Cang slapped his hands on the console and stood up from his chair. In those cold eyes, a domineering confidence finally seeped out—the kind of confidence that could flip the table and take everything for himself!

"Having big guns without underlings... people outside would think I bought my title of warlord."

He reached out to straighten his collar and slammed the fortress's main helm toward the jump coordinates at the edge of the great starry sky.

"With ten million fearless, armed, oversized meat bombs as backup, my confidence has truly hardened by a significant margin."

"Let's go! Stop shrinking in this black hole and growing mold! Redline the engines to full capacity! Let's go meet those stupid fat sheep on the outer fringes of the guild rankings who are throwing around bounties and red notices for us!"