Chapter 49: 49 The Su Family Construction Team
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Shuijun Lake, a sleepless night!
A clever catfish with an oversized head, alongside a ferocious snapping turtle, the two rascals teamed up to cause a ruckus in Shuijun Lake, like warlords recruiting strongmen, driving groups of loaches, eels, crabs, and crayfish toward the lake's edge.
In such a large lake, if humans were to undertake this task, it might take a month or two to find all the crabs and crayfish, but the catfish had lived in the water for a while, idly wandering around every day, becoming extremely familiar with every inch of this territory.
Where the crayfish were, where the loaches were abundant, the catfish knew like the back of its fin, leading the snapping turtle straight to the key spots.
The snapping turtle acted timid in front of cats and dogs, leaving one speechless, but in front of aquatic life, it instantly transformed into the most terrifying predator. Any that didn't obey were bitten to death as a snack. Shuijun Lake had plenty of crayfish and crabs, and Suming didn't mind giving his subordinate a bit of a treat.
Suming wasn't idle either. As soon as the catfish locked onto a location, Suming would rush over by boat, controlling all the hole-digging aquatic creatures in the area with his spiritual power, and then hand them over to the snapping turtle to be escorted to the lakeside.
He was busy until three or four in the morning, finally going over the entire Shuijun Lake. Apart from a few that slipped through the net, almost all the hole-digging aquatic creatures had been driven to an abandoned dock nearby.
There weren't many aquatic creatures in the lake, but that's relative to the hundred acres of lake surface. Now, with the loaches, eels, crayfish, and crab soldiers gathered together below the hundred-acre surface, the scene was quite terrifying. In the darkness, the black water churned violently, and dense shadows kept flickering under the surface.
Suming took a deep breath, casting his spiritual power like a fishing net over the densest area of creatures below the water's surface.
Suming issued a simple command to the creatures like the loaches, "Dig towards Huating Reservoir!"
His idea was simple and rough: if Shuijun Lake could be connected to Huating Reservoir, the lake could become a lively body of water, and its quality could significantly improve within a month, rendering future concerns about water quality unnecessary!
"Let's get to work!" Suming waved his hand grandly.
On the surface, Shuijun Lake appeared unchanged, but a huge engineering project had commenced in the pitch-black depths!
Loaches and eels were expert diggers, both in skill and endurance. These creatures, fond of "burrowing," didn't mind hard work and could keep going for days without tiring. In the city's clogged sewage pipes, releasing a few loaches and eels could clear the blockage in no time.
Crayfish and crabs were the best transporters. Perhaps they were kin to dung beetles, as they seemed to enjoy shaping mud into balls and blocking their burrow entrances with them. This behavior was now particularly useful, as they could move the soil excavated by the loaches and eels out of the tunnels and, when encountering rocky obstructions, act as a shock troop to clear the debris.
To prevent the newly dug channels from collapsing, Suming had even obtained the zoo's construction blueprints, starting the excavation from geologically stable directions and keeping the size of each channel within certain limits.
If needed, he would even purchase pipes to lay in the holes dug by the loaches.
The shortest distance between Shuijun Lake and the reservoir was a little over a kilometer. The digging process would undoubtedly produce a large amount of soil, which could conveniently be used to form a thick layer of silt on the lakebed for breeding snakehead fish or perhaps even cultivating economically valuable aquatic plants like lotus roots.
Suming could now control hundreds of aquatic creatures at once, then use these controlled creatures to influence their peers. With the snapping turtle and the catfish assisting on the side as supervisors, they could muster a workforce of about five to six hundred at a time. The remaining loaches, crabs, and the like were organized into shifts, taking turns at the front lines.
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Based on digging for about seven to eight hours a day, the tunnel would not take half a month to complete.
But just two hours later, Suming was already struggling, his spiritual power was nearly exhausted. Even though the amount of spiritual power increased daily after having Monkey Wine, it still couldn't keep up with controlling so many aquatic creatures working continuously.
With no other choice, he had to temporarily halt the work and return to his waterside pavilion for a sleep to replenish his spiritual power.
However, before he could sleep for a few hours, he was woken up by tourists boating outside. Muttering curses, Suming rubbed his eyes and climbed out of bed.
After the initial excitement of the first month, the boat business had settled down from being hot to steady. It was bringing in slightly over ten thousand a week, which amounted to about fifty thousand a month.
After deducting expenses, the 10% management fee for the zoo, and the half-share for Wang Hao, Suming himself could make a stable twenty thousand a month.
He wasn't concerned about the money now, so he decided to temporarily shut down the boating service. Once the artificial lake's channel was completed, he planned to move the boating business there and let the cats take turns collecting money.
If other businesses, such as fish farming, grew, Suming even thought about hiring more park staff to manage the boat business. It wasn't tiring; they could sit back and earn money comfortably. This would be a welfare benefit for the park staff, and it would be a good explanation to Mr. Song since he would need the zoo staff and Mr. Song's support for many things in the future.
But the time for that wasn't now. After getting up, Suming first went to feed the animals.
In the wolf pack, the she-wolf had grown her belly and had a poor appetite, laying listlessly in the house all day, but the Wolf King was indifferent, busying himself with his aloof and cool demeanor, acting as if it's none of his business.
There was no Wang around the Wolf Pen, only the red fox and the black bear family. Black Bear Dad, of course, couldn't run over from dozens of meters to mess with the Wolf King's wife. Even if the red fox had the desire, it lacked the courage, and even with the courage, it didn't have the ability.
Suming was the only zookeeper who dared to enter Haidong Qing's cage to feed it. Upon seeing Suming, Haidong Qing flapped its wings and pounced towards him.
Suming lifted his arm, and Haidong Qing landed steadily on his forearm. Even with the thick protective sleeve, Haidong Qing's talons, sharp as knives, still made Suming's forearm sting.
"I'll find a chance someday to take you out for a flight," Suming nodded to Haidong Qing, knowing the creature longed for the boundless blue skies for more than just a day or two.
Out of a desire to protect Haidong Qing's wild nature, if Suming could tame it, the zoo authorities would permit him to occasionally take Haidong Qing into the wild for outings.
Upon Suming's arrival, the male peacocks in the Peacock Garden all unfurled their tail feathers in a flash, flaunting them seductively, making Suming quite embarrassed. I'm not a female peacock, yet you guys display your feathers at me every day, what's your game?
After tending to the animals, he returned to his waterside pavilion, ready to continue sleeping and replenish his spiritual power to battle it out at the lakeside tonight.
As soon as he entered, he smelled a faint sweet scent.