Homo Sapiens

January 16th, '22.

Although Tianzhu and Assam had not yet formally declared a ceasefire, both sides had a tacit understanding and had ceased direct hostilities.

However, Assam did not respond directly to Lucia's mediation efforts. Instead, it chose to "close its borders," sealing all its frontiers and deploying extensive minefields along them.

The outside world found the completely sealed-off Assam Region to be a thorny issue. Clearly, Assam's actions were not those of a normal power.

Hongsawaddy.

Yangon.

Inside the office building of Zhongliang Group's Hongsawaddy Branch.

Lai Shengli had obtained a lot of data. A special technical assistance team that had arrived from back home was also there with him.

The leader of the assistance team was a man with glasses.

"Manager Lai, what are Hongsawaddy's grain production and inventory levels for this year?"

Lai Shengli put down the satellite remote sensing analysis report. "This year, Hongsawaddy can produce about 30 million tons of rice. Including corn, soybeans, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, the total can reach 110 million tons."

He paused for a moment before continuing, "As for inventory, Hongsawaddy doesn't have official reserves. However, the reserves of the three major groups can be considered semi-official. According to disclosed information, their grain reserves should be around 33 million tons."

The man with glasses picked up the analysis report on Hongsawaddy's grain exports. It listed the quantities, destinations, and prices of the exports.

According to the data collected by the Zhongliang Group from various sources.

Currently, Huaguo is Hongsawaddy's largest grain purchaser. The contracts to be executed this year amount to 32.63 million tons, including 14.27 million tons of soybeans, 11.3 million tons of corn, 270,000 tons of sweet sorghum, 560,000 tons of peanuts, with the rest being rice.

The second-largest purchaser is Persia, followed by Luzon, Xiba, and South Korea.

These procurement contracts were all verifiable, so the man with glasses didn't doubt their authenticity. What he was truly concerned about was Hongsawaddy's inventory of 33 million tons of grain.

After all, according to satellite remote sensing data, all the farmland in the entire Assam Region had been abandoned. Only a part of the River Valley Plain in Zuyu still maintained agricultural production.

One had to remember, the entire Assam Region, including Zuyu, has a population of 55 million.

Such a large population would consume at least 11 million tons of grain a year.

With no agricultural production, how could Assam possibly feed 55 million people?

Among Assam's neighboring regions, only Hongsawaddy could supply such a massive amount of grain. This was the very reason the man with glasses had come to Hongsawaddy.

He was almost certain that some power in Hongsawaddy was backing Assam and stirring up trouble, but 11 million tons of grain was no small amount.

The border between Assam and Hongsawaddy is mostly mountainous terrain, without a single decent road. This made the man with glasses extremely puzzled as to how Hongsawaddy could possibly transport grain to Assam.

This was another reason why Tianzhu had chosen a temporary truce.

After all, with 55 million people not farming, even if Assam had seized previous grain stocks, they surely couldn't last for long.

Tianzhu was waiting for Assam to collapse on its own, then it would seize the opportunity to reclaim its lost territory.

The man with glasses looked at the satellite remote sensing map, adjusted his glasses, and fell into deep thought.

Suddenly, a thought popped into his head: 'Could it be underground tunnels?'

He connected this to Assam's current situation, where they had almost completely transitioned to tunnels and small mountain villages. Assam's cities were now basically devoid of population.

Tens of millions of people living in the mountains and underground was indeed insane. It also indirectly showed that Assam's tunneling technology was quite good.

If they could dig a large number of tunnels in the mountains on the border between Hongsawaddy and Assam, they could indeed evade satellite reconnaissance from above.

However, the man with glasses estimated that, with Assam currently under a full-blown wartime system, they would need not just 11 million tons of grain, but also large quantities of daily necessities, firearms, and ammunition.

To meet this level of logistical demand, the number of underground tunnels would have to be substantial.

The man with glasses casually looked up last year's data for Huaguo on his phone. The total length of its railways was 147,000 kilometers, and in '21, they had transported a total of 4.77 billion tons of cargo.

Even if Hongsawaddy's railway transport capacity was the same as Huaguo's, it would still require about 1,000 kilometers of railway.

And this would be an underground railway. The mere thought of the engineering work involved made his scalp tingle.

'Over a thousand kilometers of subway,' the man with glasses mocked himself internally. 'I'm overthinking this.' He quickly pushed the unrealistic idea out of his mind.

But besides the possibility of an underground railway, he couldn't think of any other explanation.

This was a puzzle that baffled intelligence agencies around the world.

Hongsawaddy and Dongba, as the most likely sources for grain and supplies entering Assam, had been meticulously analyzed multiple times by major intelligence agencies, yet no issues were found.

Apparently, the Assam Region's rate of food self-sufficiency was difficult for the outside world to comprehend.

A population of 55 million might seem large, but the Assam Region had over three hundred underground bases secretly invested in and built by the Homo Sapiens Company, which could accommodate 12 million employees.

The current expansion project of the Assam Branch is expected to increase the number of underground bases to over one thousand within six months, reaching the maximum capacity to support 24 million employees for long-term underground survival.

At the same time, secret underground cities hidden in the western mountains of Hongsawaddy (some of which were doomsday bases) could also take in 8 to 12 million temporary employees transferred from the Assam Branch.

The Zuyu branch could officially accept 3 million temporary employees, and its secretly expanding underground bases could accommodate another 5 million.

The remaining temporary employees were in various mountainous areas, where they had established small agricultural cooperatives and farms.

By the end of this year, the various small mountain villages will also successively build their own underground towns and then transition completely underground.

Currently, a portion of the Assam Branch's grain reserves came from previous confiscations, with about 14.73 million tons of grain collected from the civilian population.

Combined with the 2.62 million tons of grain previously stored in the various underground bases by the Assam Branch, there was actually enough to feed all 55 million temporary employees for 18 months.

Furthermore, the bases themselves could also produce grain and various other foods.

At present, the Assam Branch's food self-sufficiency rate is around 31%. It will increase to about 50% in June, and can reach about 90% by the end of the year.

And this self-sufficiency rate was actually calculated based on a population of 55 million employees.

But in reality, the Assam Branch currently has about 11 million temporary employees residing in the western mountains of Hongsawaddy, and this group is being supported by the Hongsawaddy Branch.

In other words, by the end of this year, the Assam Branch will feel no pressure supporting its 44 million employees.

It has no need for grain imports from the Hongsawaddy Branch at all.

This was especially true for the dozens of bases near the Assam oil and gas basin. Using the extracted natural gas, they were developing large-scale non-photosynthetic plantations underground. Not only had they achieved food self-sufficiency, but they could also produce large quantities of meat, eggs, milk, vegetables, and fruits.

The bases in the mountainous regions adapted to local conditions: where possible, they developed underground hydropower; where there was oil shale, they used it for gas-fired power generation.

In the unfortunate places that had nothing, they simply didn't expand and maintained the status quo for the time being.

To the outside world, it looked as if Assam had abandoned agricultural production. In reality, Assam's agriculture was developing at an incredible pace.

After all, the crops in the non-photosynthetic plantations were more than ten times as efficient at producing organic compounds like starch and sucrose compared to conventional photosynthesis.

This meant that, under the same conditions, non-photosynthetic indoor agriculture was also more than ten times as productive as traditional photosynthetic indoor agriculture.

For the underground Assam Branch, this non-photosynthetic indoor agriculture solved the problem of limited subterranean space and improved energy utilization efficiency.