James had never missed cars and airplanes so much. At the same time, he couldn't help feeling grateful that this era at least had steam trains and a relatively well-developed railway system. Thank goodness Mr. Watt had improved the steam engine so early.
After Christmas, James, Tom, Daniel, and the others headed to the United States to settle the details of the factory sites and other matters.
This time, James indulged himself to his heart's content in "spending money like water." He spent the Howlett Family's fortune in great handfuls, buying up vast tracts of land in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia.
As unrest across the United States grew worse, land became increasingly cheap. The plots were all in places no one else wanted. Everyone tried to stop James's reckless spending, but to no avail.
If the distance hadn't been so great and the situation so chaotic, he would even have gone "shopping" in southern California and Texas.
This made Mr. Tom Weddell wonder if he had misjudged young Mr. Howlett. Starting factories and building an industrial business was not the same as being a plantation owner; more land wasn't necessarily better.
Nearly half a year of inspections and acquisitions had given James a thorough understanding of America in this era. In particular, he had come to realize the injustice, discrimination, and even hatred that Mutants would face in ordinary human society in the future.
Even in the northern United States, where people favored abolishing slavery and the economy was based on capitalist industry, Black people still had no rights or dignity to speak of.
Aside from the population of enslaved Black people who had not yet been entirely freed, every city had designated and marked which places Black people could enter. Restaurants, inns, bars, even restrooms were segregated by race.
James had firsthand experience of this. His grandfather, Mr. Howlett, was an out-and-out hater of Black people, due not only to his ingrained, narrow-minded racism, but also to the fact that his brother had died of an infectious disease contracted from enslaved Black people.
He knew all too well how difficult it was to eliminate opposition rooted in people's beliefs.
In truth, James was just a fighter. Learning to be a plantation owner and an upper-class businessman, and managing an enterprise, had already left him struggling to keep up.
Construction of the Underground Palace was in its final stages. It would be ready for use in three months at most. After Christmas, Dudley Vernon assigned all the workers who had finished their other projects to the Howlett Estate project, greatly speeding up the Underground Palace's completion.
He had to finish this strange cellar project as quickly as possible so that he could secure the contracts for the six factories James was about to build in four cities. Even for the largest construction contractor in Canada, this was enough work to keep them busy for two or three years.
The equipment cast at Boss Tom's foundry was nearly complete and would be shipped to the estate in batches, where it would be assembled in the Underground Palace. Those hulking machines couldn't be assembled first and then carried inside. James's training could finally get underway in earnest, too.
Mr. Daniel decided to spend one last month making preparations before setting off for Africa. It was a journey of uncertain length, and the agreement between him and James was, in some respects, merely a gentleman's agreement.
Daniel had promised to do everything he could to find Wakanda. If he was quick, he might have news in a year or two. If he never found it, he had the right to decide when to call off the mission.
In the blink of an eye, the weather turned cold. Two months earlier, James had seen Mr. Daniel and his party of seventeen off. The expedition included nine family retainers whose families had helped the Howletts establish their fortune since their grandfathers' generation. They were responsible for the safety of the entire party, especially Mr. Daniel.
It also included three Black slaves who had been brought across the ocean from different parts of Africa. James had promised that they would be free from the moment they agreed to take on the mission, and that they would receive a substantial payment upon their return.
The remaining four were skilled men with the essential wilderness know-how, including medicine and cooking. Once they reached Africa, they would also hire local guides and porters to carry their equipment and supplies.
In early autumn of 1857, James extended the first hand in this world that would alter the course of history.
Construction had begun on the factories in the United States. In the end, Herbert Vernon couldn't take on all the projects by himself. James had insisted that all six factories be built concurrently and completed one after another, so a well-known construction company in Washington took on the construction of two of them.
At this point, the Western world was in the transitional period between the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. The age of the steam engine was at its peak, while the internal combustion engine had yet to appear. Three of the six factories were steelworks that would produce various mechanical materials; two were machine shops; and the last was a "mechanical experiment factory" whose purpose baffled everyone.
Entering a completely new industrial field wasn't as simple as having the money to buy land and build factories. During his half-year of inspections, only a small portion of James's time had gone toward choosing sites and buying land. Most of it had been spent on tedious matters: acquiring poorly managed steelworks and machine shops, finalizing sources for mineral raw materials, and learning about the American industrial market.
After seeing Mr. Daniel off, he had traveled around the United States for more than two months, taking care of numerous matters. He had also hired professional geological surveyors to explore the Howlett Family's land in Canada for mineral deposits. The family had sprung into action, working at a frantic pace.
If all went well, the factories would officially open a year later, gradually transforming this plantation owner, whose livelihood came from crops and livestock, into a rising industrial magnate.
At last, that winter, James had put all the necessary arrangements in place. He had some free time to train in his boxing techniques and could also devote himself to his grandfather's final days.
Mr. Howlett had been bedridden for some time and could only manage liquid food. The butler, Vane, and O'Hara stayed by his side all day, caring for him without a moment's rest. Any of the old man's surviving comrades who were still able to walk took turns visiting his bedside each day to talk with him for a while.
Most of the time, Mr. Howlett could only struggle to breathe and let out a hoarse "huh... huh..." in response. Every day after dinner, James personally fed the old man and washed him, then sat meditating beside him until dawn.
He hoped that, at the moment his only true loved one in this world passed away, the old man wouldn't be alone in bed, staring into the bewildering darkness. Instead, he would be able to see his beloved grandson and pass away in peace.
About thirty meters beneath the Howlett Estate, the thunderous rumble of a pile driver echoed through an immense space nearly the size of two modern soccer fields, spanning thirteen thousand square meters and standing nine meters tall.
It was an underground palace divided into multiple chambers and sections. In a training hall of roughly two thousand square meters, James stood bare-chested, his body corded with muscle like twisted steel. He threw punches and whipping kicks at a giant, five-meter-tall iron "mace," sometimes ramming it with his shoulder, elbow, or knee. His figure shifted and surged across the floor.
In the deep, still underground space, braziers of charcoal and blazing torches illuminated the surroundings. After almost half an hour of relentless blows, James landed one final punch, then slowly withdrew his fist and walked around to inspect his "punching bag." He had finished his warm-up for the day.
"The quality's excellent." He nodded in satisfaction. "Even going all out, I can only leave a shallow mark on it. I'm still nowhere near being able to 'spin' the Iron Stake. It'll keep me busy for a long time..."
He called the giant iron creation, shaped like a Wing Chun wooden dummy crossed with a mace, the "Iron Stake." It would take an impact force of at least three tons to move the enormous post. For now, he was nowhere close.
After checking the Iron Stake, James walked over to a steel rack piled high with thick weight plates. He hoisted a custom iron bar as thick as his forearm and began with the most basic modern strength-training exercises, including squats and deadlifts, gradually increasing the weight to test the limits of his current physical strength.
"A 520-kilogram squat, a 580-kilogram deadlift, and a body weight of roughly 130 kilograms. That's more than four times my body weight..." James recorded the figures in a notebook, muttering to himself.
A healthy ordinary person could reach a strength level of twice their body weight with strength training of sufficient intensity and duration. Elite athletes could reach three times their body weight, or even a little more. At that level, each additional kilogram was a major hurdle. That was the limit of human physical strength.
James had already far surpassed that limit, and he still hadn't fully tapped his body's potential. Now, mastering his boxing techniques wasn't simply a matter of understanding how to use force and training the muscles, bones, skin, and membranes throughout his body as it had been at the beginning. He had to reach the very bottom of his physical limits and uncover his potential.
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