Merfolk Descend

"Impressive, huh?" Chen Zhao asked.

"Impressive. Seriously impressive!" Lu Xiaoxiao exclaimed.

The two stood by the dock, looking at the portion of the Merfolk visible inside the shipyard dry dock. It was enormous, smooth, and black, like a steel whale. Yet it was more complex than a whale, fitted with countless wheels, mechanical arms, and thrusters.

Many workers in gray uniforms were inspecting the thrusters along the Merfolk's lower hull. The thrusters resembled rocket engines, but they were an entirely new type designed specifically for high-speed underwater travel. There was nothing else like them anywhere in the world, and Chen Zhao had naturally supplied the technology.

An old worker in red was suspended high up on the Merfolk by a rope around his waist, welding rivets into place. Chen Zhao watched him intently for a long time.

The old worker's hair was shaved down to three millimeters, practically bald. He looked just like some poor old farmer from a northern village, squatting at the village entrance and playing cards.

But he was anything but poor. Chen Zhao had gone to great lengths to borrow this top expert from the missile corps. The old man could manually polish a missile sensor gyroscope to an accuracy of three ten-thousandths of a millimeter, and weld parts with greater precision than a machine.

He had come to work on the Merfolk, spending fifty seconds on each rivet and earning three thousand yuan. Even that was a discounted rate, lowered for Chen Zhao's sake. On a previous business trip to work for Russia, the old man had charged three thousand... US dollars per minute. And the Russians had still had to beg him to come.

Earning five figures in under a minute—that was the earning power of a top-tier worker.

There was no helping it.