Chapter 48 Production Safety Accidents

When they parted ways the previous day, Shi Ningyu had given Fu Lan a mobile phone card registered under a false identity.

As their cooperation with Boss Tian deepened, Fu Lan would no longer be able to rely entirely on her to relay messages as before; many matters would require direct contact with him personally, making a dedicated phone card much more convenient.

Upon returning to the library later, Fu Lan checked his phone, which he had previously set to silent, and was surprised to find no missed calls.

He opened a few work group chats with "@" notifications, only to find that the mentions were directed at everyone generally. He didn't even bother to reply with "Received," and apparently, no one was going to hold it against him.

It seemed that the "important position" demanding "readiness at a moment's notice" according to his supervisor could still tolerate an hour or two of unauthorized absence.

Of course, he knew very well that getting away with this absence without being caught was simply a matter of good luck.

Although weekdays were filled with a vast number of avoidable, meaningless tasks, leaving his post for an extended period remained out of the question.

Readers possessed the most bizarre methods for breaking library equipment, arguably on par with the various ways the supervisor's computer would malfunction, and in most cases, he was indeed liable to be summoned at any second to clean up the mess.

Fortunately, Boss Tian's side was not overly urgent. They did not arrive until after work hours today, and old Tian didn't say anything either.

The accident site remained under the jurisdiction of the Magical Affairs Bureau, meaning they certainly couldn't go there. However, the surveillance footage that the magical police had failed to recover was currently resting safe and sound inside another hard drive.

At Boss Tian's direction, Fu Lan clicked on a video clip and began watching it alongside the others.

Compared to their crude, makeshift garage, old Tian's breeding farm boasted top-tier configurations.

Hundreds of ball-beasts were confined within individual metal cells, their entrances sealed by thick steel bar gratings controlled by a system.

Much like a chicken farm, each ball-beast was isolated and locked in place, leaving almost no room for movement. Crueler still than chickens, the moment any of them made the slightest unusual movement, the metal cages would automatically discharge an electrical shock to stun them. Constantly patrolling staff members would also monitor the situation closely to handle any issues manually at a moment's notice.

Most of the ball-beasts remained in a semi-comatose state, while those that woke up would lunge toward the feeding troughs to devour the raw meat frantically.

Ball-beasts nearing hatching age were transferred by breeders to specialized incubation areas, far away from their peers. The incubation boxes not only provided a stable hatching environment but also utilized negative pressure pipes to separate the newborns the very moment they were spat out.

Meanwhile, fully grown ball-beasts would pass through an assembly line to be anesthetized, packaged, and loaded onto trucks for sale, or sent to their own refining chambers hidden elsewhere.

Everything was orderly, functioning like a high-efficiency machine—until a flash of red appeared on the surveillance screen.

A ball-beast rapidly turned red and swelled up, reacting far more violently than the one Fu Lan and the others had encountered.

The personnel on-site reacted quickly, unlocking that specific cell to retrieve the ball-beast, throwing it into a blast-proof barrel, and spraying it with liquid nitrogen.

Just as the red color on the ball-beast was beginning to fade, nearing the critical threshold where it could be killed without detonating, another disturbance broke out on the opposite side.

Several people rushed frantically toward a second ball-beast preparing to self-destruct, neglecting even to use the blast-proof barrels as they sprayed liquid nitrogen directly into the cage.

However, before long, in a corner where everyone was too busy to look, yet another ball-beast began to swell and ultimately exploded.

While the metal cage withstood the self-detonation, the creature happened to be a hatching-stage ball-beast, and the explosion directly whipped the separation pipe on the incubation box sideways, shattering a whole row of nearby pipes.

Several ball-beasts that had just finished expelling their young instantly perked up, squeezed through the pipe joints, lunged at the handlers, and chased them scattering in panic, knocking over even more equipment.

Normally, just a few such ball-beasts would not amount to a major crisis; a single magic-wielding security guard could easily resolve it.

Yet misfortune never comes singly. While dealing with the second ball-beast, they had sprayed liquid nitrogen directly onto the cage, freezing and breaking the nearby circuitry.

As those security guards were distracted by the situation in the hatching zone, an entire wall of cage doors suddenly unlocked out of control, releasing over a hundred ball-beasts all at once!

Chaos instantly erupted across the breeding farm.

The already flustered security personnel were immediately overwhelmed by the frenzied ball-beasts, and after losing their sole fighting capacity, the remaining people had no means of resistance.

Flesh and blood flew through the air for a time.

Although the ceiling quickly began spewing massive amounts of anesthetic, beyond making the deaths of the on-site personnel slightly less painful, the situation was beyond saving.

Soon, only a floor littered with corpses remained on the monitor. A large number of escaped ball-beasts had not been knocked out; quite shrewdly, they ignored the fresh food and fled for their lives at high speed.

As for how the magical police cleaned up the aftermath afterward, it was not shown in the footage, nor was it the focus of this investigation.

The entire accident lasted only a few minutes and was quite brief. Fu Lan watched the footage from all four angles, while Shi Ningyu drifted off into distraction halfway through the second one.

Boss Tian waited until they finished watching before asking, "What shortcomings do you, Teacher Fu, think our emergency response had?"

Knowing that old Tian was testing him, Fu Lan did not answer immediately.

Having never managed a breeding farm of this scale, he couldn't speak to the finer intricacies. They had taken shortcuts from the very beginning and never encountered these sorts of problems.

Consequently, he merely mentioned superficial matters, such as the placement locations of the blast-proof barrels.

"Then can your technology resolve this?"

This question was also within expectations; the technology would have to be handed over sooner or later. Thus, he requested a ball-beast and simply demonstrated the method using a small red tethered ball.

"J-just... just like this?"

Boss Tian and his subordinates stared in astonishment.

"Damn it! Can you really do that?"

"Who the hell could have ever thought..."

Fu Lan slapped the ball-beast, then tugged at the corner of its mouth, yet it continued to stare blankly at the pendulum with a daze-like expression. "Yes, you can mess with it however you like and it won't wake up, as long as you don't let its gaze drift away from the pendulum. Furthermore, this state does not interfere with eating."

The group exchanged glances, feeling that the breeding facility they had spent a fortune to build had turned into an absolute joke, making them lose face.

However, Fu Lan's next words made them feel considerably better.

"This can only be considered the icing on the cake. The original design of the breeding farm was already comprehensive enough; only on that foundation can the hypnosis technique play a greater role. This technology alone cannot sustain the entire breeding process."

"Ah, the professional competence of you two is truly top-tier in the industry! With such outstanding talent assisting us, our breeding farm will surely be able to rebuild quickly and reach new heights!"

Boss Tian showered Fu Lan and Shi Ningyu with extravagant praise, resembling an old state-owned enterprise leader commending model employees.

The others chimed in as well, continually playing along to flatter the pair.

Yet Fu Lan appeared completely oblivious to these compliments, expressionlessly pointing out that the current priority was to find the cause of the self-detonations, while figuring out how to improve the breeding farm was Boss Tian's own affair, in which it was inappropriate for him to interfere.

"However, judging solely from the footage, it's impossible to glean much useful information," Fu Lan stated. "For instance, if a mole had tampered with these few ball-beasts well in advance, it wouldn't be visible in these few minutes of video.

"At least for now, the reactions of both the people and the ball-beasts on site seem reasonably justified.

"The only suspicious thing is that three ball-beasts self-destructed almost simultaneously."

Boss Tian nodded. "Understood. All I want to know is the cause of the self-detonations; there's no need to trouble yourselves with the rest.

"Unfortunately, retrieving the surveillance records is already the limit of what we can manage.

"How about this? There are a few other recordings I obtained from peers; I must trouble the two of you to look at those as well. I'll see if I can arrange an opportunity for you to conduct an on-site investigation afterward, how does that sound?"

Though spoken politely, he was still ordering them around.

In any case, since he was already under old Tian's protection and could be considered half a subordinate, Fu Lan had no choice but to agree.

Leaving a burly man behind to wait nearby and telling them to ask him if they had any questions regarding the breeding farm, old Tian led the others away.

Arriving in another room, he adjusted his glasses and looked thoughtfully at the documents in his hand.

A moment later, he glanced back at Fu Lan, who was intently studying the footage on the monitor, and Shi Ningyu, who was spinning idly in a swivel chair, before shoving the documents straight into the shredder.

One of his subordinates remarked, "Their information is definitely problematic; an expert has tampered with it. Just give me a little more time..."

Old Tian replied, "No need."

"But Boss, aren't you worried about letting people like that get involved?"

"I know what I'm doing." Old Tian spread his palm, gazing at the small tethered ball used for the demonstration earlier. "He should still be holding something back.

"This hypnosis technique is certainly astonishing, but it doesn't solve the issue of emergency response, which is just as critical as safety control.

"They wouldn't have the confidence to negotiate a cut with Brother Chen based on this alone."

Beyond that, there was also the frozen fish from yesterday.

Old Tian knew this was Shi Ningyu's warning to him.

Silent casting—an advanced technique mastered only by uniquely gifted mages—was potent enough to be used for the most covert assassinations.

If she could cast spells on that fish flawlessly right under the noses of several mages acting as bodyguards, she could naturally do the exact same thing to him.

Yet, all the better.

Having a temper and harboring cautions proved that they were acutely aware of their own worth. Such treasures were truly worth digging into, weren't they?