Homo Sapiens

Ed stepped out of the dental surgery room and bared his teeth at the mirror.

His formerly crooked Big Yellow Teeth were now perfectly straight and incredibly white. He felt like he'd become a bit more handsome.

Compared to Ed's dental surgery, however...

...things weren't so easy for Lute in the ophthalmology operating room, nor for the two doctors and several nurses performing his surgery.

Lute's left eye had been blinded by a flying pebble, and the eyeball was now basically useless. The lead surgeon therefore chose to remove it and implant an artificial one.

Implanting the artificial eyeball wasn't difficult.

The real difficulty lay in connecting the neural pathways to the artificial eyeball's bionic neurons. This required the lead surgeon to connect them meticulously to ensure his vision would be perfectly intact.

The surgery lasted a full six hours.

Only then was the visual nerve connection between his left eye socket and the artificial eyeball complete.

When the doctor woke Lute, he subconsciously opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the bright, dazzling light of the operating room.

Then it hit him. "My eye... is it healed?"

"We still need to run some tests. Xiaoya, give him a full checkup," the lead surgeon instructed, turning his head toward one of the nurses.

Xiaoya nodded. "Understood."

Lute was led to an eye examination device, where the nurse, Xiaoya, checked his left eye for prescription and color perception.

While examining him, she used a device connected to the artificial eyeball to make careful micro-adjustments until Lute's left eye reached its optimal state.

Due to the special nature of the Assam Branch, the artificial eyeball Lute received was even better than the civilian-grade Artificial Corneas currently offered by the Qingye Group. At the very least, he wouldn't need to replace the cornea every five years.

Lute, who had thought he was destined to be a cyclops for the rest of his life, was now ecstatic.

He walked out of the ophthalmology department and saw many new recruits waiting for surgery. Ed stood up and waved to him. "Lute, we were just waiting for you."

It was exactly 11:30 PM.

The four of them walked out of the hospital's main entrance together.

A wide street lay just outside the hospital entrance. The buildings on both sides were six stories tall, and the "ceiling" above the street was a massive biological display screen.

The bio-display was currently showing a starry sky with a bright moon in the center, looking no different from the night sky on the surface.

The area where the hospital was located consisted of dormitories and some office buildings.

Because Siliguri Base City was designated as a highly militarized zone, there weren't many ordinary residents. Most were relatives of the security personnel.

The prisoner conversion camp within the training base was about 2.3 kilometers from Siliguri First Hospital.

The four of them didn't take the electric bus, choosing instead to walk back to the new recruit barracks.

Even late at night, the streets still had a fair number of pedestrians.

The billboards on both sides would occasionally flash strange advertisements or broadcast various domestic and international news reports.

Ed, who had already applied his bone-conduction patch, suddenly stopped in front of a billboard.

[Today's Breaking News: 1. Large-scale riots have erupted in the Tamil Region of southern Tianzhu, drawing significant international attention...]

Ed even saw a few clips from his hometown, which made him involuntarily worried.

The others stopped as well.

"Tamil? Isn't that where you're from, Ed?"

"Is something happening there too?"

Lute patted Ed's shoulder. "Don't worry."

Ed forced a smile. "Thanks. I don't know what the future holds. If only Tamil could be as developed as Assam is now, how great would that be!"

The others deeply shared his sentiment.

Although they had only joined a day or two ago, from their observations and the various facilities and benefits, they felt that the Assam Branch was truly excellent.

For people like Ed, whose hometowns were in enemy territory, it was easy to see which side was better after comparing the conditions in Assam and Tianzhu.

Take the medical services they enjoyed today, for example. In Tianzhu, forget about low-ranking soldiers like them; even Brahmans and Kshatriyas weren't guaranteed access to this level of medical care.

And that's not to mention other aspects. In terms of food alone, the rations in the Tianzhu Army were notoriously poor.

For some Tianzhu soldiers serving in high-altitude plateau and mountain regions, their daily staple was shockingly just white sugar. Only because the common people of Tianzhu were accustomed to passively accepting adversity could they tolerate such a diet.

As for the common claim on the international internet that Tianzhu has a lot of vegetarians, that's completely easy for people to say when they're not the ones suffering.

If they could afford meat, eggs, and dairy, they would never refuse it. The problem wasn't that they didn't want to eat it, but that they couldn't afford it. Many were vegetarians by circumstance, not by choice.

Tianzhu produces 300 million tons of grain annually for a population of 1.4 billion. It also exports 10 to 13 million tons of rice and 5 million tons of wheat each year, leaving the per capita grain supply at only 203 kilograms.

With a per capita grain supply that low, there's simply no surplus to feed livestock like pigs, chickens, ducks, and geese. Naturally, consuming meat, eggs, and dairy is out of the question for most.

Having served in the Tianzhu Army, Ed, Lute, and the others knew this all too well. Which of the officers from the Kshatriya and Brahman castes didn't eat meat?

Among all the nations of the world, Tianzhu and South America's Redwood Federation were in a special league of their own.

Tianzhu's struggles were at least partly due to its 1.4 billion population, which made raising per capita figures difficult.

The Redwood Federation, on the other hand, produced around 260 million tons of grain annually for a population of only 214 million, resulting in a per capita grain supply of 1,215 kilograms. Yet, 60 million people in the Redwood Federation still went hungry.

This kind of dark, surreal humor was a living reality.

Last night, Ed had eaten the most lavish meal of his life: meat patties, fried eggs, curry rice, and vegetables, all you can eat. As long as you had the stomach for it, the cafeteria offered unlimited servings.

He had assumed it was a special meal to welcome the new recruits, but today he discovered it was the standard daily fare.

According to the instructor's explanation, these ingredients were just common synthetic foods, produced and consumed only in temporary or emergency situations.

At the company's headquarters or in the better-off base cities, people mostly ate higher-quality eggs and meat from pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens, ducks, and geese.

Ed was utterly stunned by this. He didn't know what "humblebragging" was, but he could certainly feel the filthy rich style of the Assam Branch.

In Ed's view, if the standard of living in Siliguri Base City was considered poor, then his hometown in the Tamil Region was a living hell.

It was no wonder that Ed and the others began to wonder: 'If life in Assam is this good, why is my hometown still such a godforsaken place?'

As former soldiers of the Tianzhu Army, they knew a little about the Assam Rebel Army. Their rebellion against Tianzhu had only started about a month ago.

Even if it had been secretly planned in advance, the earth-shattering transformation before their eyes still left Ed and the others in disbelief, plunging them into a spiral of uncontrollable introspection.

'Why has Tianzhu, after more than seventy years, failed to measure up to a suddenly rising power like Assam?'

This line of thinking, while one-sided and full of prejudice...

...left Ed and the others filled with curiosity about everything in the Assam Region. Unconsciously, they even began to develop a fervent admiration for it.

Their attitude toward Tianzhu, however, was completely different, filled with wholesale rejection and contempt.

In truth, this kind of psychological shift was perfectly normal.

Imagine a person struggling desperately in the slums. Then one day, he is adopted by a tycoon and begins a life free from want.

How would that person's mindset change?

Would he miss his days in the slums?

No! Not only would he not miss it, but he would also despise and disdain his former life. He would reflect on why he was so worthless in the slums, yet now he could live without a care in the world.

The vast majority of people would think this way.

That is human nature.