Unexpected Contact

Chapter 21: 1.21 Unexpected Contact

About a hundred kilometers east of the Zhushui Jiao Ruin Zone, there is a human settlement, currently the closest human dwelling to the cluster.

This settlement is called Jian City. Its name is unrelated to the cities people knew before the Great Collapse. Instead, it was built by a village that successfully banded together for survival during the Great Collapse. They found a location with river transportation and hilly terrain to build this city.

The entire city is now surrounded by a three-meter-high city wall. The wall has high platforms at various points, from which dark muzzles overlook the surroundings. This artillery technology is barely breech-loading, with rifled steel barrels. The barrel walls are very thick, and brown powder is used as propellant. Relying on the base rollers on the gun platforms, it can control the surrounding area. Overall, this is roughly mid-19th-century Krupp steel cannon technology.

Civilization has regressed to this point, and the social system has begun to stagnate. Many technologies can no longer be maintained.

For example, chemical engineering! Technically, after preparing potassium nitrate, it can be mixed with hydrochloric acid to nitrate glycerol or guncotton.

Every step is feasible! However, many intermediate products are extremely unstable!

In the 21st century, formal chemical plants require educational qualifications and discipline for hiring, along with good management. Even low-educated technicians in small private workshops, risking imprisonment, could cautiously produce some chemicals under the drive of profit.

Now, with resources monopolized by a few and most people losing their path for advancement, maintaining the production of hazardous chemicals that require many critical steps is bound to lead to major accidents sooner or later! Therefore, it's not that people have forgotten their knowledge, but rather that society determines the relations of production, and the relations of production constrain productivity. Without high explosives, there's no need for high artillery chamber pressure. The military industry gradually sacrifices performance for stability.

For small and medium-sized city-states like Jian City, the overall reliable military technology has decreased to the 20th century. The technology of a few artisans, such as the production of precision gears, wires, and optical glass, barely reaches the workshop level of the mid-20th century.

Now, in the center of this fortified city with artillery.

The city's command center is located within a building resembling a Great Wall watchtower.

The windows on the four walls of this building are very small, and three skylights at the top allow light in. Steel plates can be lowered over the skylights and wall windows, making the room completely sealed.

Inside the building, there are devices like electric fans and incandescent lights. The light filtering through the skylights illuminates several potted plants, two of which are kumquat trees with small, still-green fruits.

An old man in a white coat lies on a wooden chair, resembling a researcher from the 21st century. In this era, being able to retain clothes from hundreds of years ago is very unusual, as humanity has lost cotton resources, and most people are now using linen fibers for clothing.

This is Zeng Longmu, the master of Jian City. He is looking at a report provided by the leader of the Spore Culture Room, which indicates that the fungi in the culture dish have shown abnormalities. The city master opens a book and turns to a page that records the reason for this phenomenon: a major change has occurred in the Gene Colony of the surrounding area.

He turns to another glass display cabinet, takes out a box of tags, and on the tags are the names of the Beast Tamers under his command. He picks up the tag of one of his disciples, then picks up another, hangs the two tags on the nearby kumquat potted plant, and smiles kindly.

Nearly 40 days have passed since Wei Keng transmigrated here. This territory is becoming increasingly prosperous.

Within the settlement, Primitive Blast Furnaces have been constructed, reaching a height of five meters. They are built entirely from bricks dug up from the city ruins. For blast furnaces of this scale, the air-blowing work cannot be sustained by human power alone. Well, mainly because Wei Keng found it tiring.

So, Wei Keng specifically dammed a small river and used levers and a rotating wheel to make the blast furnace's bellows move back and forth, continuously pushing hot air in.

As the hot air blown into the hot charcoal turned into flames, the furnace temperature reached a level capable of melting steel. The metal objects dug from the ruins finally melted at this temperature.

This Primitive Steelmaking technique was widely used in the 1960s, wasting a lot of resources and producing a large amount of useless scrap steel. Therefore, after the 1980s, some literary intellectuals spoke with disdain when mentioning this era and this steelmaking method.

However, in reality, this steelmaking method can produce relatively usable steel. Back in the 1930s, during the homeland's anti-invasion war, weapons were obtained using this method.

The prerequisite for its usability was that in the 1930s, those who used this method to smelt steel were engineering students who had studied abroad. Although it was a crude method, all standards were met.

In the 1960s, during the Great Leap Forward Steelmaking, it was farmers without industrial production awareness. They could not understand the meaning of each indicator for the tasks assigned to them. Relying on enthusiasm, they focused on quantity, hoping for praise and approval. Therefore, the small blast furnaces were not high enough, the inner wall strength was insufficient, and even the furnace temperature was not reached, resulting in scrap steel. There was no technical summary either.

Overall, it was not a problem with the method, but a lack of qualified Talent in industrial production. --Wei Keng: So why are those literary youths cursing? Do you have the quality to smelt steel?

Wei Keng now needs to smelt steel for his own use, and all related processes are being summarized.

Copper and iron dug out from the city are sorted, steel goes into the No. 1 large furnace, and copper goes into the small furnace.

After the steel is smelted, it flows directly from several discharge ports to the shell casting area for casting! Another discharge port flows into the forging area, where it is forged into shape, then drilled with a drill bit, then extruded, and finally becomes a 30-centimeter long, mineral water bottle-thick iron can, with a bracket welded to the bottom. Oh, the angle finder is omitted. The system provides a visual ballistic marking system. This is a Grenade Launcher! A simple steel pipe, with a cast iron block for the charge. Simple and convenient to use!

After confirming that these explosion-resistant iron frames and steel pipes could be produced in batches, Wei Keng immediately announced, "I don't want to use Sling anymore."

As for the copper smelted in the small furnace, it is forged into copper sheets while hot, and then cut into specific specifications.

After heating and extrusion, they become Copper Pen Sleeves and Copper Pen Nibs. The Copper Pen Nibs need to be counterweighted by pouring in molten lead.

These clanging items are sent to the measuring team to test the pushing mechanism, then taken out and filed for processing.

These Copper Pen Sleeves are filled with black particles, and then the "Copper Pen Nib" is inserted. A large stapler-like frame is used to squeeze and crimp the front to prevent the pen nib from falling out.

In fact, the most complicated part of the technology is the bottom part of the copper sleeve. The tutorial provided by the system is very complex.

Fortunately, there is hot spring and sulfur in this place. With sulfur, sulfuric acid can be prepared. With sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid can be prepared from table salt. Heating hydrochloric acid with Pyrolusite can produce Yellow-Green Gas, and this Yellow-Green Gas can be used to prepare Bleaching Powder through potassium hydroxide.

Then, Snapdragons can be made. Find Realgar (one hundred words omitted)

Nitration of the substance in the thermometer? Too dangerous. Preparing that requires formal industrial technology. All operating steps need to be below eighty degrees Celsius, a condition that can be reached even by a slight touch.

Rows of "Border Region Made" items are coming off the production line from Wei Keng's adobe workshop.

After a day of industrial production, the water used to cool the equipment flows through dried bamboo pipes and is sprinkled onto Wei Keng, who has been soaking in the pond. After bathing and drying, he smears crushed Panax Japonicus Leaf from a jar onto his body.

These days, Wei Keng and the others have been greatly annoyed by a swarm of female mosquitoes demanding vital essence to reproduce. In fact, all the mosquitoes that have sucked Wei Keng's blood have died. The adobe houses are in urgent need of Grass Mats.

The only drawback now is that Wei Keng, who is focusing on heavy industrial production, is very inefficient at weaving Grass Blankets.

Wei Keng: "If a group of Girls came to weave Straw Shoes and Grass Blankets for me, wouldn't that be wonderful."

Oh, Wei Keng did not say this in front of the Observer. Although his emotional intelligence is a bit low, he still senses that because he is unwilling to cooperate with certain things, he and this Girl seem to have some disagreements about this plane. When disagreements arise, the goal should be to avoid arguments. As for telling jokes, they will not generate good feelings, only disgust.

Wei Keng judges the relationship between himself and the Observer: in the words of the 21st Century, their Personalities are incompatible? Consumption concepts are incompatible, and living habits are incompatible. In short, he is too rustic and cannot match up with an air hostess.

However, in the Dimensional Space Bubble, the Observer Bai Linglu is continuously reviewing Wei Keng's activity records from these days. Of course, for some unsightly scenes, such as the scene in the morning where golden streams of water formed an arched corridor, she directly activated the intelligent censorship system.

This Girl's impression of Wei Keng has greatly improved, and positive evaluations have appeared: "Very decisive hands-on ability, considering with full residual capacity, now very reliable."

Regarding the current project of nitrate treatment she's reviewing, Wei Keng's plan only set an initial output of three kilograms per day. However, during execution, they set the highest possible standards, directly damming the river and capturing a large quantity of fish. They added the internal organs to the nitrate pile, ensuring a pure nitrate output of fifteen kilograms per day.

Although this was just a small part of a tiny, tiny plan, Wei Keng set a goal and absolutely achieved it, making Bai Linglu feel that the overall plan for this dimension was executable.

So, the question is, how to get Wei Keng to agree to stay here?

Bai Linglu: "He's not talking to me anymore, what should I do?" She didn't send this worry to the Gravity Well.

Wei Keng wanted to stay in the Ruined Area for a hundred days in peace and then leave, but existing here inevitably led to some unexpected encounters.

Forty days after arriving in this dimension, A boat passed by from upstream and lingered outside Wei Keng's residence. Its furtive appearance was just like that of a sneaky spy.

For this, Wei Keng naturally had to be hospitable and invite them off the boat for a drink.

Bullets hit the river surface, warning them to stop the boat.

The merchants who disembarked stammered, claiming to be from Jian City and that they saw a new human settlement here and wanted to do business.

Wei Keng certainly wanted to do business. Tea, cotton cloth, tung oil, he wanted it all.

He himself had come to be a Time-Space Merchant, and he still had quite a few Gold Bars on hand. Of course, he wanted to buy them to make tea for constipation, set up mosquito nets, and brush waterproof cloth.

Wei Keng invited these panicked suspected merchants to the camp to discuss business, but after entering the camp, these guys couldn't stop trembling. Wei Keng already had trouble understanding the dialect of the Yue Region and relied on the Translation System, making communication even more troublesome.

The reason for the merchants' trembling was not hard to understand. A human settlement suddenly appeared in what was originally a ruined area, and upon entering, they found that these humans all looked exactly the same.

In the Pandora world, there were all sorts of strange Gene Colonies. Some Gene Colonies were not short of humanoid individuals. They were called Fused Humans. Although some individuals looked very similar to humans, their lives had extremely bizarre actions for normal people. For example, being human for a year and then turning into a beast after pupating for ten years. These Gene Colonies only utilized the thinking ability of the human brain; as for human morality and social habits, they never existed.

Wei Keng was now like these strange Gene Colonies, and because he looked exactly like a human, it further triggered the "Uncanny Valley" effect.

Of course, for this reason, Wei Keng stubbornly argued, "If there were a thousand identical beauties, you wouldn't have the Uncanny Valley effect at all. The Gold Bars in my hand are much more attractive than beauties. Show me your capitalist greed, the kind that would sell a noose for ten times the profit."

The system prompted again: These guys might not be merchants, at least not pure merchants.

While discussing business, they were being insincere. They didn't bargain with Wei Keng over the parameters of the tea and cloth at all. Whatever Wei Keng said, they agreed. They were clearly just going through the motions.

That night, when Wei Keng deliberately left an opening, they escaped. As a result, they fell into a latrine and almost suffocated to death, showing what kind of opening Wei Keng had left.

"Ahhh, Mom, Dad..." In the pit, the unlucky ones whose minds had collapsed, thinking they had been swallowed by something, cried out for their parents, as the rolling stench continuously rose.

Wei Keng squatted at the edge of the latrine, threw down a rope, pinched his nose, and said, "Everyone, since you came to do business, why did you repeatedly act without permission in my area? This is hardly the way to be a guest."

Wei Keng's shouting made the people in the manure pit slightly relieved. They probably realized they weren't in the belly of some Evil Beast. Look, there were even dry leaves Wei Keng had thrown down for wiping their bottoms in the latrine.

Wei Keng's questioning received no answer for several minutes. Just as Master Wei Keng was about to untie his crotch and rinse them with hot water, Finally, a strong voice shouted, "We are not guests, you are the uninvited ones." Then a pile of feces was thrown out, almost hitting Wei Keng, who had shouted.

Wei Keng was silenced and stopped arguing. After pulling them up, he simply splashed a basin of water on them and laid out a map on a wooden board a few meters away.

Wei Keng issued a warning to these merchants: "Do you see this map? With this river as the boundary, your city's armed forces are not allowed to cross it within six months. Do not say I did not warn you." Then he threw a small, simple wooden map.

From the group that crawled out of the Filthy Tunnel, a few spineless individuals, with snot and tears, accepted the map provided by Wei Keng. Then, this group rushed into the jungle without looking back, as if the Ghostly Realm was behind them and they dared not linger for a moment.

Wei Keng and his men watched the direction they disappeared, lowered their heads, and thought carefully, feeling that the current situation was very insecure. He then dispatched a small team to follow them from a distance, to confirm their return route. Of course, it was also to confirm intelligence about Jian City.

A week later, some members of the Reconnaissance Squad returned, and another part of the team was sent to rotate reconnaissance.

In Wei Keng's eyes: This was a somewhat remote city with Cement City Walls, but the outer cement walls were pure black, and some damp areas were covered with Moss.

The reconnaissance team climbed onto a nearby mountain high ground to observe the situation of this dilapidated Old Human settlement.

By counting the Animal-Drawn Carriages parked in the open areas and combining it with the road conditions on the map, they deduced the strength that could be mobilized: they could mobilize a force of about a thousand people, equipped with heavy weapons such as Artillery, to strike the area they occupied.

Of course, this offensive force was the upper limit in the most ideal scenario.

Even the system of the Mongol Empire during the time of Genghis Khan, with extremely sufficient reasons for war, could not commit all its strength in one direction.

And judging by the lushness of the shrubs around the city, the soldiers in the city had not engaged in large-scale marches or other military training for a long time.

Under the current circumstances, the highest central command of this city, even with the highest authority, after a long period of defending its position, would not be able to mobilize more than one-tenth of the city's total mobilizable force to initiate an external war.

But even if this were truly the case, Wei Keng was still uneasy. -- War means death, and he was very afraid of it.