"Trust me, the situation is already the best it can be now."
"If you were a male fox, you'd probably have already worked yourself to death, your portrait hanging on the wall, and your remains soaked in formaldehyde."
Master Fortune Fox sighed deeply, raising his paw to pat the Fennec Fox's shoulder.
The Fennec Fox was silent, but its face still wore a defiant expression.
Though what Master Fortune Fox said made sense, it was incredibly frustrating and depressing.
You're female, I'm female too.
Why are you flaunting all the time in front of me? If you're really capable, go find a male to flaunt at!
"Speaking of which, how's the funding status of our Fox Ecological Protection Fund?"
As they walked through the courtyard of the Fox Kingdom Hotel, Master Fortune Fox looked at the Fennec Fox and asked.
"There should be a couple of billion left, right? I'm not sure; anyway, two more people joined the shareholders' seats, one seems to be a mining boss, the other does dyeing."
"Wang Ya came to check the water meter, followed by accounting breaking in to audit. The foxes sing for money..." the Fennec Fox said, talking about Fox Kingdom's revenue figures.
Currently, most of the income comes from shareholder donations, the talents at the shareholders' seats are involved in gray industries, smuggling, and false accounting, having formed a group chat to discuss voluntary donations with the accountants.
The Fox symphony earns about thirteen thousand with each performance, roughly half a day.
Livestreaming income isn't worth mentioning, it's just to increase the fame of the Fox Kingdom Hotel.
The expenditures of the Fox Foundation aren't large, mainly to hire hunters to bring back North American Red Foxes and some previously released Arctic Foxes from Qinling, and vaccinate the native Red Foxes before returning to the Fox Kingdom.
For now, expenditures include labor costs and the foxes' meal expenses at the college.
"The shareholders... really have money!"
Ansheng sighed, as he and the Fennec Fox took a tour of the backyard before returning to the hotel to enjoy a massage in the Fox massage room.
Meanwhile, Xinxing Agricultural Science College was incredibly busy.
A Mercedes S-class entered the campus, followed by two trucks labeled "Ecological Base" parked in front of the teaching building.
The S-class door opened, and a fat cat sitting in the back seat ran over to the trucks, opening their doors.
"See those materials over there? Those white buckets and black coils? They're what we need. Everyone, get moving, quietly. We don't want to alarm the old professors in the lab."
As the truck doors opened, a truck full of bears, the fat cat instructed the black and Tibetan bears to move the waterproof materials, then ran back to another truck and tapped on the zoo-loaned gorilla at the driver's seat: "Drive forward; we need to load the rebar and cement..."
"Ooh..."
The gorilla nodded, stepped on the gas pedal, and drove towards the experimental fields.
Meanwhile, the macaque driving the Mercedes S-class began backing up, blocking the road to prevent outside vehicles from entering.
"... Friends, is this a robbery?"
The soldier at the security booth knocked on the car window, asking with a face full of black lines.
"Chirp chirp!"
The macaque lowered the window, chirped, and took out a printed A4 paper from the armrest box.
[Master Fortune Fox needs bricks for building, we're here to take two red bricks.]
[Since we're here, you have waterproof materials, so we'll borrow two buckets to roll and brush back.]
"..."
Seeing the black bears loading up a truck with waterproof materials, the soldier in the security booth was speechless but reported the situation to his superiors.
Under the fat cat's direction.
The woodland behind the cafeteria gradually set up the familiar modular fencing seen at construction sites.
The two trucks filled with borrowed construction materials unloaded in the woodland.
Black bears and monkeys donned safety helmets, picked up shovels, and entered the fenced area to start digging the house foundation.
"Everyone, work hard! Let's build our villa behind the cafeteria. In the future, life will be full of good days, eating and sleeping to your heart's content!"
The fat cat, carrying rebar, encouraged the black bears digging diligently.
After ten days of hard work come years of comfort.
"Roar—"
The Bear Race roared and dug with all their might.
......
While the experimental fields were being excavated for a foundation, the fat cat started digging the foundation for its den.
Once the experimental fields were compacted, they began pouring concrete beams on-site, but the fat cat drove overnight, leading the robust black bears to steal the poured beams from the students.
Principal Yang twitched his mouth, but said nothing, simply made a call, instructing the school's finances to immediately buy a batch of prefabricated concrete beams.
These days, concrete beams and bridge piers are sold as finished products.
Due to economies of scale, buying prefab concrete components is far cheaper than on-site pouring. Moreover, they meet national standards and complete the complex curing procedures and are ready for immediate use.
Having students pour concrete beams themselves was just an educational exercise.
After all....
Regardless of the agricultural students' specialization, their future work will involve remote areas.
Don't expect those areas to have commercial concrete mixing plants.
Concrete mixing skills are essential for environmental science students to learn.
As progress in the experimental field matched the pace of the den's construction, both were super synchronized.
Whatever was missing at the construction site, the fat cat borrowed.
Whatever the fat cat borrowed, the principal bought.
And the students were stunned.
The first thing they did every class was tally the number of materials disappearing into thin air, and report it to the teacher.
Though the fat cat claimed to be just a cat daily.
Its strength was immense, easily lifting a mid-size truck in deadlift.
Each night, in just five minutes, it could discreetly haul off five or six tons of building materials from the experimental field.
When Master Fortune Fox took a visit, he even swiped the soil along with the surveillance cameras and generators.
Even with the students forming patrol teams and running on-site daily, at night, with just a few minutes of slack, their underwear was stolen.
......
The campus experimental fields were nearing completion.
The college den was already in the curing phase, waiting for the electricians to pull the optic cable in.
"Hey! Little fox, want some fish?"
The students from the School of Animal Science squatted by the lake, while those engaged in lake irrigation beckoned to Ansheng.
"No thanks, keep it to cuddle at home!"
The little fox glanced over, seeing the students and instructors from the School of Animal Science restraining a crocodile, expertly binding it with electrician's tape.
Ansheng grimaced and let out a squeal, leisurely heading towards the dormitory.
The students of the School of Animal Science.
Previously, Ansheng wasn't familiar with them, but with the two weeks of interaction.
Ansheng felt they were all a bit quirky...
They often help locals with castrating pigs, chickens, or cutting up cows' bulks.
Though these tasks are pretty normal, the weird part comes later.
The bulks they cut up aren't discarded nor handed to Lingren and others for composting, but sliced into thin pieces, blanched,
Then, they'd place the blanched items on racks to dry and dehydrate, making small snacks to feed the small animals they raise in the School of Animal Science.
Faced with the students intending to feed it.
Ansheng politely declined.
As for crocodile, it's not that serious, but Ansheng really feared they might offer him basket-thin pancakes as a snack.
"Our sheep pen... collapsed in the earthquake?"
Just returned from the lab to his dormitory door, Tang You had just sat down to rest before showering, when a phone call came in.
Tang You's brother spoke in a low tone, mentioning the earthquake back home.
Tang You was shocked, eyes wide:
"Lost... over a hundred sheep? Dozens of cows?"
The little fox poked its head out the window, and upon entering, heard Tang You's shocked exclamation.