Chapter 13: The Old Worker
“You have the temperament of a landlord, Zishan,” Wen Desi chuckled. “People talk about a protagonist’s aura. You have a landlord’s aura.”
“Maybe my ancestors were landlords. My dream has always been to have a large manor, grow vegetables, raise chickens, put up a grape trellis, and sip tea in a wicker chair.”
“A fine life. But you could have that now,” Wen Desi said. “We’ve made a lot of money. Your little dream is a piece of cake.”
“A pity the wormhole will disappear one day,” Xiao Zishan said, stretching. “I felt a very obvious energy fluctuation this time.”
“If only it were Doraemon’s Anywhere Door,” Chief Wen laughed.
“I wasn’t finished,” Xiao Zishan said. “And have a few beautiful women fanning me and peeling lychees. A mature woman, an older-sister type, and a little loli…” He paused. “Actually, that loli, Gao Lujie, has potential.”
“That girl,” Wen Desi said, peeling a lychee, “is not Gao Qing’s daughter.”
“Hmm, the DNA difference is quite large.” Xiao Zishan began to log their recent earnings. Engineer Wang had gone back to his machinery factory, his newfound enthusiasm for work a source of amusement for the other two.
“In terms of appearance, she has no genetic resemblance to her father, and only a slight one to her brother. And then there’s her height.”
“Chief Wen, have you taken a fancy to this long-legged loli?”
“Even if I have, it will have to wait. There are more important things to do.”
“Of course. Recruiting troops and buying horses.”
With over twenty million in cash from their third trip, they had the capital to begin their preparations in earnest.
The first task was to find a suitable assembly point, a place to receive the future transmigrators. Guangzhou was out. The ideal location would be remote, close to their future departure point, with enough facilities to house several hundred people, and a large open field, preferably a sports ground.
“A sports ground?” Xiao Zishan was baffled.
“For exercise,” Wen Desi said, eyeing his own arms and Xiao Zishan’s belly. “If nothing else, we should at least be able to outrun the natives.”
They divided the tasks. Xiao Zishan, with his salesman’s knowledge of Guangdong’s coastal cities, was tasked with finding a base. Wang Luobin continued his work at the factory. Wen Desi remained in Guangzhou, preparing for the next trade and scouting for professionals from their online community.
The fourth member of the committee came from an unexpected source.
That evening, as Wen Desi was poring over the discussion boards, Wang Luobin walked in, his work uniform stained with oil, a look of excitement on his face.
“Engineer Wang, you’ve been glowing lately. What’s the good news?”
“I want you to meet someone.”
“Who?” Wen Desi was surprised. Wang Luobin was not a social man.
“My boss. His surname is Zhan.”
“Hmm?”
“I told him about the transmigration—”
“What?!” Wen Desi leaped to his feet.
“Old Wen, calm down,” Wang Luobin said. “His name is Zhan Wuya. He’s a technician, a master of lathing, clamping, planing, and milling…”
“Get to the point. He didn’t think you were a lunatic or a scammer?”
“Not at all. He wants to join.”
“Join?” Wen Desi’s mind reeled. “He wants to go?”
“Yes. The other day, when we were making a hand-cranked Gatling gun together…”
“What?!” This time, Wen Desi really did jump. “Engineer Wang!!”
He lowered his voice. “Are you crazy? Building illegal firearms will land you in jail!”
“It’s nothing. We’ll have to build guns in the Ming Dynasty anyway. Just practice.” Wang Luobin was nonchalant. “What’s it for a machinery guy to build a couple of guns? Some people have even built the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun.”
“Let’s not talk about the Japanese Type 92. What’s the deal with this boss of yours?”
“He admires your thinking. He said to leave the machining to him. He’s preparing to move his entire factory over.”
Zhan Wuya was not the greasy old worker Chief Wen had imagined. He was a man in his early thirties, his hair neatly combed, his rough hands the only clue to his profession.
The two men hit it off immediately, bonding over a shared love of machining technology.
“Let me put it this way,” Zhan Wuya said, his voice filled with working-class pride. “For us in the machinery business, there’s nothing we can’t build. With my little factory, I might not be able to build a tank, but mortars and machine guns are a piece of cake. When I was in technical school…”
He launched into a five-minute story about building a mortar for his graduation project. He and Wang Luobin then began to discuss gun manufacturing—it turned out their friendship was forged in a shared passion for firearms. Wen Desi quickly steered the conversation away from their illicit hobby.
Zhan Wuya listed the equipment in his factory: shearing machines, punch presses, lathes, planers, drills, welding machines, a sawing machine, an overhead crane, grinding machines, and a baking paint room.
“If we have to rough it, the three great machines are all we need,” he said. “The military industry guys back in the day were real experts. With just a lathe and a vise, they could build guns, cannons, and machine tools. But materials are crucial. Without good materials, the things you make will be compromised. We need good steel.”
“We’re going to establish a metallurgical industry,” Wang Luobin said.
“I don’t know anything about that. But if we can solve the material problem, the biggest advantage of machine tools is that they can self-replicate. We can continuously expand our production scale.”
“Indeed. No matter how many supplies we bring, they’ll eventually run out.”
“Right. But there are some things we need to bring enough of, like lathe tools, which are made of alloy steel or sintered ceramic. We won’t be able to make those at the beginning. And grinding wheels, lubricants…”
“We’ll solve these problems one by one,” Wen Desi said, invigorated. “Old Zhan, you’ll be in charge of the industrial preparations.”
“No problem!” Zhan Wuya was filled with a renewed sense of purpose. After ten years of struggling to run his own business, he was bored. An unprecedented new world lay before him, a chance to make his mark.
The Industrial Group of the Transmigration Committee—the Industrial Front, as it came to be known—was established that day. A few days later, another member joined their ranks: Ma Qianzhu, a man who would one day fiercely compete with Zhan Wuya for the title of “father of transmigration industry.”
Ma Qianzhu was a regular on the same forum as the others. He’d initially dismissed the wormhole as pure fantasy, but when he realized they were serious, he quickly signed up. His motivation was simple: he dreamed of a world without microchips, a world where he could build his masterpiece: a luxurious, six-thousand-mu mechanical computing center, with a power of eighty thousand horsepower, capable of twenty thousand operations per second.
He was a steampunk at heart. A forest of smokestacks, roaring boilers, the clash of steel, giant steam-powered trains, and multi-turreted, rigid-hulled, helium-filled flying gunboats—that was his ideal world.
After receiving an invitation from Wen Desi, he quit his job designing mind-numbingly dense highway blueprints and boarded a train to Guangdong.
He was not heading to Guangzhou, but to a small, obscure city, the departure base Xiao Zishan had found. Here, the transmigrators would prepare for their one-way journey to conquer a parallel world.