Munitions Empire-Chapter 957 - 880 - A casual chess move

Chapter 957: 880 – A casual chess move Chapter 957: 880 – A casual chess move The southern city of Nanjiao in the Orc Empire, a city that has recently become very prosperous, thanks to its free trade with humans. Originally a tribe, it has now evolved into a city, an Orc city where humans can be seen everywhere.

Here, humans are protected, and a large number of them work here; although conditions may be a bit tough, the possibility of earning more money is too tempting to pass up.

Desperately in need of a variety of technical talents, the Orcs are willing to pay a substantial amount of gold and gems to attract these experts, to bring their skills over, to stay…

Compared with those nations that are able to send their nephews or trusted insiders, or even go in person, to the Great Tang Empire to learn, the Orc Empire is at a natural disadvantage.

In the Great Tang Empire, orcs can be seen frequently, but these ugly, unfortunate creatures are all slaves, laborers, and are not free to move about.

Therefore, learning new skills is very troublesome for the Orc Empire. The good news is that this time, the humans with the skills seem not to have any severe restrictions, but the bad news is that the Orc Empire has to spend more money to learn these knowledges.

In Nanjiao City, there are many small workshops, all opened by humans, and by each human’s side, there follow a group of Orc apprentices.

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These apprentices are sent over from various tribes and villages, each one carefully selected to ensure they at least have sufficient brains. Because they have to learn the corresponding knowledge and bring it back to help their villages set up basic industries.

Within Nanjiao City, there is also a pilot training school specifically for the Orc race: the instructors here come from all over the world.

Interestingly, many students from poor families who paid for their own flight training in Chu Country end up coming to the Orc Empire’s Nanjiao City after graduation to work for several months as instructors. The pay is excellent, and they don’t demand high flying skills, making it ideal for them to earn back some money for themselves.

Tolerating these ugly creatures every day is a very annoying task, but after all, there are Cat-eared Girls, which numerous men find irresistible.

There are a lot of Cat-eared Girls here, all very beautiful, so many male Beastmen who’ve had their fill of ferocious faces during the day often choose to go to pleasure districts at night to “rinse their eyes.”

From a distance, one can see areas outside Nanjiao City filled with parked cars, which belong to Shu Country, not the Orcs.

Various cars parked here serve as teaching material for the Orcs to use in driving license exams: compared to airplanes, cars are obviously more widely used and easier to learn as new knowledge.

Wanting to be respected in one’s tribe, or at least to get by, learning to drive is obviously a good way: if you have a driving license, you can receive many privileges.

For example, there is no longer a need for drivers on the front lines: such talents are either running logistics in the military or working in their own villages or tribes, and are urgently needed technical workers…

It’s just like Huaxia in the 1980s when being a driver was relatively a popular technical profession; it was highly valued in factories, and everybody would respectfully address them as “Driver Master.”

Thus, around these driving training grounds, you can hear nonstop hysterical shouts: “Left! Left! I freaking said left! Turn the wheel! The wheel! Are you out of your mind?”

Similar curses ring out incessantly, even escalating over time. Many privately run small driving schools might have only two or three cars.

The key is that, compared to the Great Tang Empire, which focuses recruitment on driving family cars, Orcs are keener on driving large trucks.

They prefer to learn the driving skills for heavy trucks because such vehicles are more versatile and are exactly the type of vehicles the Beastmen need.

At this moment, these training sites are still overflowing with people; even if they can’t afford the tuition, standing aside to learn some new terms and develop driving instincts is worth it for the Orcs.

“Reverse! Ease off the clutch slowly! Slow down! Brake! Brake!” The instructor next to the truck yells in agony, his hoarse voice full of exhaustion.

Not all the instructor vehicles have brake pedals installed on the passenger side; most of the cars brought over from Shu Country are regular models, not strictly instructor cars.

These trucks from Chu Country are not intended to be taken back; once they’re old, they’re sold on the Orc side, almost at the original price that Shu Country paid for them!

Not at all an exaggeration, because bringing automobiles over in the first place requires transport capacity and costs. Additionally, the Beastmen were desperate for all sorts of vehicles and were willing to pay for secondhand cars even if they were in less than perfect condition.

Because the number of cars began to increase, the Orc Empire also started experiencing a shortage of petrol: the Orc Empire didn’t have any oil refining facilities, and they didn’t even have any oil fields.

Compared to others, the relatively primitive Orc Empire had not discovered any petroleum within their borders, as they had never seriously searched for it.

Now they were actively inquiring everywhere to see if they could find geologists willing to survey the Orc Empire territory, or professional exploration teams, adventurers, and the like, hopeful that they could help locate oil fields.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t found any oil fields as of now, let alone bought oil drilling equipment, or built a refinery.

Thus, a large number of cars in the Orc Empire needed imported fuel. In fact, the nearest oil fields to them belonged to Qin Country.

It was just unfortunate that the two countries had been waging war near the Iron Fist Fortress, making the purchase of oil from Qin Country’s fields seem unrealistic.

Therefore, the only route for the Orc Empire to import oil was through Shu Country—that is, petrol produced by Chu Country was transported through Shu Country to Orc Empire territory.

Given this roundabout method, the price of these petrol supplies was naturally not cheap, but the Orcs managed to make do with what they could get. Aside from car fuel, all aviation gasoline for the Orc Empire had to be imported from Shu Country.

It’s hard to imagine what future a nation has, that relies on imports for food and energy.

Yet, the Orc Empire managed with its poverty, forging its own style, carving its own niche in the world… This was, in its own way, a miracle.

Beastmen children huddled around a truck suddenly noticed, on the broken road covered in yellow sand in the distance, the appearance of a convoy.

The Orc Empire was adamant against extending a railway line to Nanjiao City, so for a long time, the final leg of the journey from Shu Country to the Orc Empire relied on truck transport.

Amidst the rolling sand and wind, the tarps covering the cargo on the backs of these automobiles flapped and rattled. Just by looking at the style of these trucks, one could tell that they were mostly transporting military supplies.

Different, however, was a sedan that drove at the very front of the convoy, signifying that a new deal had come to the leaders of Nanjiao City.

Beastmen soldiers armed with Shireck-1 bolt-action rifles did not obstruct but merely stood in the shade under the city gate, eyeing the cars within the dust cloud.

With no intention of stopping, the driver of the sedan at the front rolled down a crack in the window and tossed out some copper coins, which clinked as they fell to the ground.

This was the bribe. The previously listless soldiers immediately swarmed, scrambling on the ground, searching for the “gratuity.”

They didn’t even look up at the trucks speeding past mere centimeters from their heads, showing no signs of slowing down.

“This is a barbaric place,” uttered the middle-aged man in the car, glancing at the Shu Country merchant seated in the passenger seat, who had just tossed the coins for bribery.

“You are correct, sir,” the merchant said with a smile plastered across his face because the man sitting in the back seat was someone he could not afford to offend.

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“A barbaric place won’t make much money… They should be wealthier, richer,” the man said as he looked out the window at the severely damaged, pitiful so-called houses on both sides of the street, then spoke again.

“Your wisdom is unparalleled, sir,” the merchant delivered another compliment. He only knew that the man behind him hailed from Shireck, a presence he dared not look in the eye.

What he did not know was that this man actually worked for the far more daunting Great Tang Group. Being in charge of Shireck was just a smokescreen, a lie to use as a cover.

And to the man sitting in the back seat, all of this was nothing more than a casual move in the Great Tang Group’s grand scheme.