Chapter 506 - The New Equipment Testing Ground

"Now this is a weapon," Huang Xiong said, admiring the steel edge. He stood over a freshly opened crate in the temporary camp.

Packed inside were "Second-Generation Standard Spears," mass-produced for the collective's irregular forces. The triangular steel heads, tempered by modern metallurgy, gleamed under a coat of "Hell Oil"—the black, viscous byproduct of coconut oil refining, now repurposed as an industrial lubricant and rust preventative.

The shafts were lathe-turned and pressure-treated, designed to resist rot and pests for years. For a militia force, these were luxury items. While equipping every miner with a Minié rifle was logistically impossible, giving them high-quality cold steel was trivial for the Machinery Works.

Each man received a spear, a cutlass, and two rattan helmets—one for labor, and a reinforced combat model for defense. Armor was deemed unnecessary. If the regulars didn't wear plate, the militia certainly didn't need it.

"Give me these four hundred lads," Huang Xiong boasted, swinging a spear, "and I could take Qiongzhou Prefecture. Rifles? We don't even need them."

"I need them to mine coal, Commander, not conquer cities," Tang Menglong said dryly. "And don't underestimate the Ming garrison. Quantity has a quality of its own."

"Discipline beats numbers," Huang countered, parroting the doctrine he’d learned in officer training. "Three months. Give me three months, and I'll turn them into crack troops."

"They work six days a week. You can drill them on their rest day," Tang compromised.

The miners were currently doubling as construction crews. Under the guidance of Zhang Xingpei and Shan Daoqian, they carved out the camp and laid the roadbed. Their secret weapon was not machinery, but chemistry.

Xu Yingjie of the Chemistry Department, after surviving several laboratory explosions, had finally synthesized nitroglycerin using local coconut oil. Stabilized with diatomaceous earth into dynamite, it was a safe, powerful blasting agent for civil engineering. The Navy, skeptical of its volatility, had refused to carry it, but it had arrived safely aboard the Qionghai Coal.

For the Executive Committee, the Jiazi project was a live-fire exercise—a rehearsal for the massive industrial developments planned for Tiandu and Hongji. They threw every prototype they had at it: modular wharves, mobile field kitchens, portable Lancashire boilers, large-scale water purifiers, and the new "Grassland" field rations.

The infrastructure rose at record speed. Even the rails were imported from Lingao. Huang Xiong marveled at the extravagance of shipping crushed stone and timber sleepers, but Shan Daoqian explained the logic: cutting and treating timber locally took time they didn't have. Importing finished materials was faster.

With the rail line complete, Tang Menglong ordered the first blast. Pan Da detonated the charges, stripping away the overburden to reveal the black seam beneath.

Tang’s geological survey confirmed his suspicions: this was an extension of the Changchang coal belt. The seams were shallow and accessible by open-pit methods, but the quality was mixed.

"Sixty percent gangue," Tang noted, examining the first samples. "Only forty percent is usable lignite."

It was a disappointing ratio, but better than the dirt-coal of Nanbao. The gangue could power the site’s boilers, while the lignite—marginally suitable for coking—would be shipped to Lingao.

"It's a pity there's no bituminous coal on this island," Tang sighed.

There were consolation prizes—kaolin, clay, and peat were found in association with the coal—but without transport capacity, they were useless.

And transport was the bottleneck. The Bopu Shipyard’s flat-bottomed boats could carry only five or six tons each. Even running nonstop, the fleet could move less than two hundred tons a day. The river’s shallow draft limited larger vessels.

For now, the coal would pile up at the Hai family dock, waiting for the Qionghai Coal to ferry it north. It was an imperfect system, but the black blood of industry had finally begun to flow.

(End of Chapter)