Chapter 13: The Old Worker

"Zishan, I do believe you have the makings of a landlord." Wen Desi chuckled. "Some men carry the air of kings; you carry the presence of a country gentleman."

"Perhaps it runs in the blood. My dream has always been a sprawling estate—vegetable gardens, chickens pecking about, a grape trellis overhead, a rattan chair beneath it, and nothing to do but sip tea and watch the afternoon drift by..."

"Sounds delightful. But what's stopping you now?" Wen Desi drawled. "We've made a fortune. That modest little dream is well within reach."

"Too bad the wormhole won't last forever." Xiao Zishan stretched. "This last crossing, I felt distinct energy fluctuations."

"If only it were Doraemon's Anywhere Door," Director Wen laughed.

Xiao Zishan grinned. "I wasn't finished. The estate would also feature several cool beauties at my side—fanning me, peeling lychees. One mature woman, one imperious elder-sister type, one little loli..." He paused to consider. "Actually, that loli Gao Lujie is fine stock."

"That girl," Wen Desi said, lounging on the sofa while peeling a lychee, "is definitely not Gao Qing's daughter."

"Significant DNA discrepancy, I'd say." Xiao Zishan turned his attention to cataloging the porcelain. After each crossing, inventory duty fell to him. Engineer Wang had returned to his machinery factory, his enthusiasm lately nothing short of astounding—not only working overtime every day, but coming home still brimming with energy and excitement.

"Her appearance has none of her father's features," Xiao Zishan continued. "Slight resemblance to her brother, maybe. And that height."

"So Director Wen has taken a fancy to this long-legged little loli?"

"Even if I have, it'll have to wait. Too much real work ahead of us. Let's see what needs doing."

"Recruitment, obviously."

After three crossing-trades, they now controlled over twenty million yuan. The conditions for serious material preparation had finally been met.

Recruitment meant first selecting an appropriate staging point—a facility to receive those who would answer the call. Guangzhou was clearly unsuitable. They needed somewhere relatively remote, close to the future crossing point, with sufficient living quarters for several hundred people, plus a large outdoor space. Ideally, a drill ground.

"What do we need a drill ground for?" Xiao Zishan asked, puzzled.

"Physical exercise." Wen Desi glanced pointedly at his own thin arms, then at Xiao Zishan's belly. "At the very least, if we ever have to run for our lives, we should be able to outrun the Ming's natives."

They divided the labor three ways. Since Xiao Zishan had worked in sales and knew the coastal cities of Guangdong, scouting fell to him. Wang Luobin would continue at his machinery factory. Wen Desi would remain in Guangzhou to prepare for the next crossing-trade, manage the online board, and identify talent. The first list of invitees was already drafted.

The fourth person to join the committee, however, did not come from the internet—which was somewhat unexpected.

That evening, Wen Desi had just finished checking the board when Wang Luobin walked in wearing an oil-stained uniform. He plopped onto the sofa, face beaming.

"Engineer Wang, you've been coming to work beaming every day lately. What's the good news?" Wen Desi asked.

"Director Wen, I want you to meet someone."

"Who?" This surprised him. Wang was normally taciturn, and he wasn't local either. Why the sudden introduction?

"My boss." Seeing Wen Desi's confusion, he added: "The boss of the factory where I work. Surname Zhan."

"Hm?"

"I told him about the crossing—"

"What?!" Wen Desi nearly jumped off the sofa.

"Old Wen, don't get excited." Wang Luobin held up a calming hand. "His name is Zhan Wuya. He's a technician, very skilled—lathe, planing, milling, drilling—he knows it all..."

"Fine, fine. Get to the point. He didn't think you were mentally ill? Or running some kind of scam?"

"No—in fact, he wants to join."

"Join?" Wen Desi's mind didn't quite register the word. "He wants to go too?"

"That's right. See, that day when we were working together on a hand-cranked Gatling gun—"

"What?!" This time Wen Desi really did jump up. "Engineer Wang!!"

He quickly lowered his voice—even though the room's soundproofing was excellent.

"Are you insane?! Manufacturing illegal guns is a prison sentence!"

"It's fine—we'll have to make guns in the Ming anyway. Might as well get some practice." Wang Luobin looked utterly nonchalant. "We're machinists. Making a couple of guns is nothing. Someone even knocked off a Japanese Type 92 infantry gun once."

"Forget the Type 92—what's the deal with this boss of yours?"

"He's very impressed with your approach. Says to leave all machining concerns to him. He's planning to bring his whole factory over."

Zhan Wuya was not the grimy old worker Wen Desi had imagined. He appeared just over thirty, wearing a T-shirt, his hair neatly combed. Only his large, rough hands betrayed his occupation.

Because of his work, Director Wen often dealt with small processing shops like this one. The two quickly launched into a deep discussion of machining, and their common ground dissolved all barriers. Before long, they were chatting like old colleagues.

"Director Wen, let me put it this way: in machining, there's nothing we can't make." Zhan Wuya's speech carried the pride of a working man who knew his craft. "Take my little factory—I won't claim we can build tanks, but mortars and machine guns? Piece of cake. When I was at trade school..."

He launched into a five-minute account of building a mortar for his graduation project. Then he and Wang Luobin dove headlong into discussing gun-making—it soon emerged that they had bonded so quickly because both were fanatical firearms enthusiasts. Wen Desi hastily cut off their animated discussion before anyone might mistake them for an illegal-weapons gang.

Zhan Wuya walked them through his factory's main equipment: two shearing machines, one 80-ton bending machine, one 63-ton punch and one 5-ton punch, two lathes, one planer, one radial drilling press, three bench drills, one cutter, five arc welders, one spot welder, one band saw, one overhead crane, one grinder, two grinding wheels, one oxy-fuel welding set, one air compressor, and one paint-baking facility.

"Actually, if you're willing to rough it, the Big Three machines are sufficient," Zhan Wuya said. "When I was a student, I read memoirs of old defense-industry workers. Those were the real masters—give them a lathe and a vise, and they could make guns, artillery, machine tools." He paused. "But materials are critical. Without good materials, whatever you make will be compromised. Especially steel. You must have the right steel."

"We plan to build a metallurgical industry," Wang Luobin said. "Iron smelting, steelmaking—the whole process."

"That's beyond my expertise. But if you can solve materials, machine tools can manufacture all kinds of specialized equipment. The biggest advantage is self-replication; production capacity keeps expanding. Sustainable development, you might say."

"Indeed—no matter how much you stockpile, eventually you'll run out."

"Exactly. But some things you still have to bring in quantity. Cutting tools, for instance, which are usually alloy steel or sintered ceramic—we won't be making those at first. Same with grinding wheels; they need special materials and sintering. Also lubricants. I don't know if substitutes will work..."

"We can solve these problems one by one." Wen Desi felt invigorated. "Old Zhan, why don't you take charge of industrial preparation?"

"No problem!" Zhan Wuya had never felt so fired up. Since leaving the factory to start his own business nearly a decade ago, he had struggled and scraped. Though he had built a small operation, life had grown dull—always scrambling to satisfy clients, always chasing the next job. Now, an unprecedented new world stretched before him. His fighting spirit surged.

The Crossing Committee's Industrial Group was founded that very day. In time, it came to be known simply as "the Industry Sector." A few days later, another member reported in—Ma Qianzhu, who would later fiercely contest with Zhan Wuya for the title of "Father of Crossing Industry" in their respective memoirs.

Ma Qianzhu had frequented the same forum as Xiao Zishan and the others; they vaguely recognized each other's handles. At first, he hadn't joined the wormhole discussion. He had been absorbed in another thread entirely, devoted to his all-mechanical calculating-center system—christened "Gear Model 5"—an elaborate exercise in alternate-history design. Initially, he assumed Director Wen's wormhole was speculative fiction. When he discovered these people were actually preparing to travel to the Ming, he hurried to sign up.

His motivation was hardly surprising: only by creating a pristine new world—free of microchips, where he himself stood among the elite—could he realize his dream. A luxury mechanical computing center covering 6,000 mu, powered by 80,000 horsepower, performing 20,000 calculations per second. The thought of this colossal machine made his soul tremble.

Ma Qianzhu's tastes ran to steampunk. Keywords: rivets, steam, steel. Forests of smokestacks, the roar of boilers, black smoke billowing from burning coal, great clouds of steam, the thunderous clang of steel on steel, giant locomotives racing across the land, multi-turret airships kept aloft by helium-filled compartments—this was his ideal world.

Upon receiving Wen Desi's invitation, he packed his bags without hesitation, quit his job drawing highway-design diagrams, and set out by train for Guangdong.

His destination was not Guangzhou, but a county-level city he had never heard of. After getting off the train, he still had to transfer to a long-distance bus. This was the staging base Xiao Zishan had found—where the transmigrators would groom their horses and sharpen their weapons, preparing for a one-way journey to conquer a parallel world.

(End of Chapter)