After a long while, Secretary Li spoke softly.
"Sir?"
"Yes, send it to the other four." Elder Zhao's voice was a little hoarse.
He raised a hand to wipe the moisture from the corners of his eyes, then followed the emergency exit signs out of the conference room.
Perhaps Great Xia still had hope...
Secretary Li tapped rapidly on his tablet and jogged to catch up.
"Sir, Comrade Zhao Gang has a new report from Bell Base."
"He says we've achieved a major diplomatic breakthrough by improving the Elves' bows."
Elder Zhao took the tablet and read as he walked. By the time he came back to himself, he was already standing outside his office.
He pushed the door open, unable to contain himself any longer, and burst out laughing.
"Good! Good! Good! Zhao Gang really does put my mind at ease!"
"He found exactly the right opening! We can give the Elves the combat capability they urgently need, earn their goodwill, and ensure Comrade Lin Mo's safety in the process. Three birds with one stone!"
"Once this relationship is firmly established, we can find an opportunity to discuss the World Tree."
Secretary Li adjusted his glasses, looking puzzled.
"Sir, why not strike while the iron is hot?"
"They need us most right now. If we offer more advanced weapons technology in exchange for World Tree seeds, our chances should be pretty good."
Elder Zhao shook his head and set the tablet on his desk.
"Li, put yourself in their shoes. What is the World Tree to the Elves?"
"It's their home, their faith, the very root of their race!"
"If an alien showed up right now and offered weapons technology in exchange for the homeland we depend on for survival, what would you think?"
Secretary Li froze.
"I would... I'd refuse immediately and become wary of them."
Elder Zhao patted his shoulder.
"Exactly."
"So we have to take this one bite at a time. Rush, and you'll burn your mouth."
Meanwhile, on the Terra Continent, Lin Mo had become a working man commuting between two worlds.
Using a plan that Great Xia's think tank had worked around the clock to develop, he brought the Elves blueprints for measuring tools and a decidedly rudimentary SOP for standardized production.
Then the entire Elf camp went into a production frenzy as though everyone had been pumped full of stimulants.
Lin Mo sat with one leg crossed over the other, toying with a newly manufactured Repeating Crossbow.
He deftly removed the magazine and inspected the catches inside.
Then he squinted into the sunlight, checking the almost perfectly straight crossbow limbs.
"Huh. Not bad at all."
These long-eared folks had downright monstrous learning abilities.
Before this, they had been a bunch of artsy types who believed anything could be lovingly worked by hand, making everything by feel and according to how poetic the breeze seemed that day.
After the training session, one sacred word echoed throughout the workshop-
"Tolerance!"
A young Elf apprentice rushed over, cradling a gear as though presenting a treasure.
"Master! Master! Look at the tolerance on this part! Isn't it perfect?"
Master Elder took the part, measured it with the vernier calipers he had just learned to use, and nodded.
Then he casually fitted the gear into a standard mounting slot.
It fit snugly and turned so smoothly that even Dove chocolate would have bowed down to it.
"Not bad!" Master Elder praised him.
"Next!"
"Master Elder!" Another apprentice held up a sheet of parchment, his face flushed with excitement.
"The latest batch of gears has a tolerance within plus or minus zero point three millimeters! The yield rate is as high as ninety-eight percent!"
Master Elder, the stubborn old craftsman who had once been able to headbutt granite apart, was now caressing the vernier calipers in his hands as though they were a sacred relic.
He randomly grabbed two more parts from a pile.
Click.
They meshed perfectly.
"No!"
Master Elder suddenly roared. The noise throughout the workshop stopped for an instant, and the apprentice beside him shuddered in fright.
"M-Master?"
"Plus or minus zero point two five! Zero point two five!"
The old Elf sprayed spittle as he pointed at the apprentice's nose.
"That extra zero point zero five is a betrayal of art! A desecration of life! An insult to the god of calipers!"
"Useless! Get back there! Rework it!"
The apprentice scurried off in a panic.
Lin Mo's eye twitched at the sight.
Good grief. I only mentioned industrial standards in passing, and now he's more exacting than those clients back home who keep chanting, "The devil is in the details."
"Sir Lin Mo." Fendona's voice reached him.
Lin Mo turned to see that Fendona had changed out of her luxurious robes into practical leather armor, her silver-white hair tied high.
A little dust smudged her face. Far from diminishing her beauty, it gave her the brisk air of a project manager chasing deadlines.
"Our production capacity has hit another bottleneck." She got straight to the point, indicating a distant row of craftsmen hammering arrowheads with a steady clanging.
"We've streamlined the assembly lines for Compound Bows and Repeating Crossbows, but arrow production can't keep up at all."
"Especially the arrowheads. Forging them entirely by hand is too slow."
Lin Mo looked in the direction she indicated and smiled.
"My lady, that's not a bottleneck. You just haven't changed the way you think yet."
He set the Repeating Crossbow aside.
"Who told you to hammer them out one at a time?"
"How else would we shape them?" Master Elder had drifted over again at some point, his beard bristling and his eyes glaring.
"Every hammer blow is imbued with the craftsman's soul and..."
"Stop!"
Lin Mo hurriedly raised a hand in a time-out gesture.
"Old man, mention souls again and I'll start charging you. We can't have feudal superstition-unless you pay extra."
He thought for a moment, picked up a piece of iron, and drew a simple diagram on the ground.
"Make a die. Understand? Two pieces of iron, one raised and one recessed, with the shape of an arrowhead left between them."
"Put a red-hot iron blank inside, get a big hammer, and give it one good whack."
Lin Mo made a crisp downward striking motion.
"One little sucker per hit."
"That's called stamping. Still not efficient enough? Make more dies and put more people on the sledgehammers."
"Remember this one truth: brute force works miracles!"
Fendona and Master Elder both froze.
Countless stars seemed to collapse in the two Elves' eyes, then reassemble into new universes.
The method was so simple, so crude, and utterly devoid of elegance, yet it struck like a bolt from the heavens, giving them countless new ideas.
Fendona's breathing quickened.
She could almost see countless coldly gleaming arrowheads pouring off the production line like rain, piling into mountains.
"I... gods... I'll arrange it right away!"
She turned to run, overcome with excitement.
At that very moment-
"Wooo-wooo-woooo--"
A bleak, drawn-out horn blast, filled with despair and foreboding, sounded from the distant horizon.
It instantly pierced through the clamor of the entire camp.
Before you continue