The Farming Saint in the Starry Wasteland (Elizabeth Schofield) novel Chapter 565

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Chapter 565 Clean Across the Board

Chapter 565 Clean Across the Board

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They had arrived under full sun, watched the light bleed into dusk, then sat through dawn staining the pastures gold again. In that span, the six of them had turned nearly every inch of the farm inside out.

Evander led his team through an inspection so exhaustive it bordered on ritual.

They tested the air in the poultry sheds, the water sources, and the soil, then moved to live sampling of every single Cluckoo Chicken, collecting blood, saliva, fecal matter, and even the follicles at the bases of feathers.

The portable analyzer Elias had brought along ran for more than a dozen hours with barely a pause. its cooling fans emitted a constant mechanical hum while rows upon rows of sample containers accumulated across the temporary workstation.

Yet every result pointed in the same direction. Normal.

The air was normal.

The water was normal.

The soil was normal.

Animal health markers were normal.

The microbial ecosystem was normal.

Even the suspicious pale-green film clinging to the walls of the Crackshell Crab cultivation pools turned out, after analysis, to be nothing more than a harmless cyanobacterial species with no pathogenic properties and no invasive ecological risk.

Every dataset was so clean it looked as though it had been lifted from a textbook.

Evander stood at the temporary testing table, flipping through the thickening stack of reports, his brow drawing tighter with each page until the crease between his eyebrows looked less like a frown and more like a scar.

Nearly 20 years in the Fifth Military, hundreds of safety evaluations under his belt, and never once had he encountered anything like this.

This was a mission undertaken specifically to find problems, only to find that the data gave him nothing to hold onto.

The sensation was so foreign to him that it felt almost physically uncomfortable.

He closed the final report, lifted his gaze to the Cluckoo Chickens pacing lazily across the pasture, and stood in silence for several ong seconds before making a decision.

He called Gunther to his side.

When he approached, Evander lowered his voice and spoke a few brief instructions that left no mark on Gunther’s expression except for a flicker in his eyes so brief it might have been imagined.

Then he nodded and headed toward the transport vessel’s storage compartment.

A quarter hour later, he stepped back down carrying a sealed metal container no larger than a palm, unmarked, unremarkable.

He chose a moment when the others were occupied to enter the poultry sheds alone under the pretext of conducting a second

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Chapter 565 Clean Across the Board

Tound of environmental sampling.

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The chickens had become somewhat accustomed to the human in the white coat, mask, and gloves. None of them displayed anj obvious signs of alarm.

Crouching in a secluded corner, Gunther opened the container and removed a slender injector filled with a colorless, odorless, high-potency neural stimulant. /

The compound was designed to trigger extreme aggression responses in animals within seconds. Even naturally docile creatures could become violently hostile under its effects.

Not strictly illegal, but tightly controlled within the kingdom, available only to military research institutions with special authorization.

Gunther had selected his target with care, a large, golden-brown male Cluckoo Chicken dozing half-lidded on a perch.

The bird appeared to hold a relatively high position within the flock.

He moved in under the cover of a routine sampling motion, brought the needle fast into the feathered hollow of the bird’s neck, and depressed the plunger.

The entire operation lasted no more than two seconds.

Then he stood, pocketed the spent syringe, and stepped back outside the enclosure to wait for the drug to do its work.

Nothing happened.

The rooster remained exactly where it was. Its eyelids drooped lazily. A soft, satisfied rumble continued to vibrate in its throat.

Gunther frowned and glanced at the timer on his wrist.

The stimulant normally activated within three to five seconds.

Ten seconds passed.

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