The loading was finished. Li Qingyu said goodbye to Old Sen, jumped onto a cart, and the caravan moved towards the ventilation shaft.
Along the way, they picked up Knife. The driver led the carts around dangerous areas, and after half a day, they reached their destination.
At the entrance, bored guys were already playing cards. Seeing their boss, they jumped up.
After giving orders, Li descended to the tech station for Silent and told him to wait in the wagon.
Seeing everyone carrying sacks, the psyker decided to help. He had already raised his hand, intending to move the entire load with telekinesis, but Li stopped him.
"Stop! Don't blow our cover! Your tricks will backfire on me later!"
"And remember: no wall drawings in the style of 'Warp abstractionism,' no playing with animal corpses, no broadcasting voices from the Immaterium!"
"And most importantly: never, you hear me, NEVER do anything big silently! If you get an urge, if inspiration strikes – tell me first!!"
Psykers in Warhammer 40k are generators of foolish ideas, and since they have power, they are implemented instantly.
"Should I open a portal to the Warp right here? A voice in my head said that if I sacrifice a billion hive dwellers, there will be a surprise. I wonder what kind?"
This is how they create Chaos cults, destroying worlds.
That's why the Imperium hates them. Illegal psykers are caught everywhere.
Those who can be trained are trained and used; those who cannot are burned in the Astronomican.
Who knows if the Inquisition or the Black Ships are here? If Silent is detected, Li will be considered an accomplice. So the briefing was vital.
Silent asked indignantly:
"You're forbidding me to use my powers? What if someone offends me physically or morally?"
Li looked at this "poor fellow" and thought that he himself would gladly offend him physically right now.
"I'm not forbidding it," he cut off. "Just use it wisely. Covertly. Carefully."
Silent blinked.
"How so?"
Li clicked his tongue.
"Okay, listen carefully. Your favorite moves are the gravity strike and the psi-wave. Effective, but too obvious. Visible from a kilometer away."
The psyker slapped his forehead.
"Got it! So, I need to kill all witnesses!"
Li noted mentally: the logic was ironclad. But he barked aloud:
"Are you teaching me or am I teaching you?"
Silent fell silent, and Li continued:
"To kill, you don't have to tear a person apart with a wave of power."
He picked up a rusty bolt from the ground.
"Accelerate this with your mind to bullet speed and drive it into their skull. The effect is the same, but there's less noise."
The psyker's eyes lit up with delight. He could control objects!
"Master! Are there any other secrets?"
"Yes," Li grinned. "The recipe for hellish torment."
"Find the stone in the enemy's kidney with telekinesis and move it back and forth along the ureter. It will make such a concert, they won't forget their own name!"
The method was sadistic. Anyone who has survived a kidney stone attack will understand.
And don't say that not everyone has stones. This is Warhammer: food is garbage, water is a chemical composition of the periodic table. Here, one in ten has stones.
Silent looked at Li with admiration – a new world of power application had opened up before him.
Li patted him on the shoulder – as if to say, learn, student.
Meanwhile, the loading was finished. Li and Silent jumped onto the handcar.
Several rebels looked with interest into the dark maw of the ventilation shaft, clearly contemplating: should they escape down into the Underhive?
Li grinned.
"I know what you're thinking. Leave if you want. The Underhive is hospitable – a dollar to enter, a life to leave."
Jokes aside, there were many ventilation shafts. Li had no doubt: the rebels had ways down.
Why don't they attack the Hive from below? Simple – mutants, gangs, and a poisonous environment. The inhabitants there are worse than PDF soldiers.
Having said this, Li gave the order to depart. It was time to turn three tons of potatoes into hard cash.
The return journey was uneventful. The handcar rumbled into the workshop.
It was time for the first brew.
First, Li sent Knife with men to Reynold of the Water Guild: to deliver a memory panel, buy yeast, and pick up Joel's family.
And he himself dealt with the raw materials.
He hired thirty of Knife's subordinates for ten credits a day – to clean and wash three tons of potatoes.
The clean tubers went into a huge cauldron. They were boiled to a mush and mashed into a puree.
Then water and amylase were added – an enzyme for starch saccharification. This created the base for potato vodka.
The mixture was stirred, heated, filtered, and poured into barrels under an airlock – for fermentation.
The process would take five to six days. After distillation, it would yield 1200 to 1500 liters of 45-degree alcohol.
Li studied the market: both in the Hive and in the army, small 100-milliliter shots were sold for five credits.
But now, when people are chewing corpse starch, and alcohol has become a rarity, the price could be raised several times. This was a debatable issue.
And even by conservative estimates, the batch would yield at least fifty thousand credits!