Chapter 311: Next Manual Operation
Lao He went out, and Li Muzhi lowered his head to continue the work in his hands.
This was the device inside the Hell Cannon Shell, already in the final stages.
After busying for more than an hour, the device was completed, and Li Muzhi finally assembled the two sample rounds.
One was assault type, and one was fragmentation type.
Standing up and stretching his body, Li Muzhi walked out of the laboratory and happened to see the Guard Captain patrolling over here.
“Guard Captain, come over here.” Li Muzhi called out to the Guard Captain.
“Factory Director Li, what’s the matter?” The Guard Captain hurried over.
“I have two Hell Cannon Shells here. Send someone to deliver them to Regiment Commander Kong and have him test them as soon as possible,” Li Muzhi said. “Test if the shells can fire normally, and bring back the explosion and trajectory data to me.”
“Okay, no problem.” The Guard Captain nodded and immediately sent a few people to deliver the shells to Kong Jie.
“Factory Director Li, do you want to take the Emperor for a walk to rest now?” The Guard Captain smiled as he looked at Li Muzhi.
Li Muzhi had finished the Hell Cannon Shell device, which was equivalent to completing a phase of work.
“I’ll take the Emperor for a walk in the afternoon.” Li Muzhi shook his head and said to the Guard Captain, “Help me take the Emperor out for a walk.”
Through Li Muzhi’s intervention, the Emperor no longer rejected the Guard Captain, and the Guard Captain could take the Emperor out alone for a walk.
“Alright.” The Guard Captain nodded and strode toward the dog kennel.
Li Muzhi did not immediately return to the laboratory but first inspected the factory workshops.
Confirming that the factory was operating normally with no issues, he then went to the assembly workshop.
Here, several skilled workers had received coconut shell activated carbon from the students and were about to leave.
Seeing Li Muzhi arrive, these skilled workers all showed respectful expressions: “Factory Director.”
“How is it? Did you discover any shortcomings in your own production of coconut shell activated carbon?” Li Muzhi asked with a smile.
“Yes, the temperature was wrong.” The skilled workers nodded quickly, then directly praised the students: “Factory Director, these students are really too smart. In the future, they will definitely all be able to take charge independently.”
Hearing this, the students felt extremely pleased in their hearts.
Although we were excellent to begin with, being praised and elevated by the workers was a form of recognition, which naturally felt even better.
These worker uncles spoke as pleasantly as our teacher.
“Hehe.” Li Muzhi chuckled and said, “Of course. People who aren’t smart can’t enter our arsenal anyway.”
Li Muzhi’s words were equivalent to praising everyone in the arsenal, including the skilled workers in front of him.
“Hehe, Factory Director, you’re overpraising us. We’re just rough laborers; how can we compare to these smart students.” The skilled workers laughed heartily, said a few words, then quickly returned to the workshop to improve the coconut shell activated carbon production process.
“So, classmates, how is your research on these equipment going?” Li Muzhi got straight to the point.
“Teacher, we’ve basically figured them out, but we think this equipment is too worn out. Even if it needs repair, it’s not easy to fix,” the students answered.
“Really? You’ve basically figured them all out?” Li Muzhi paused. Their efficiency was quite fast, he said, “Alright then, tell me one by one what each of these is, and what their uses are.”
“Okay, Teacher.” The students nodded and began answering in front of Li Muzhi.
Li Muzhi listened patiently, his expression growing increasingly satisfied.
In just this short time, the students had truly figured out all this equipment.
Finally, Liu Fuxing summarized: “Teacher, aside from being too worn out, even if this equipment were intact, it still wouldn’t work.”
“Where wouldn’t it work?” Li Muzhi asked.
“Gas masks made with this equipment can’t filter the Japanese Army’s poison gas,” Liu Fuxing said. “Also, the poison filter canister has poor sealing, the filter materials are very inferior, and most importantly, this mask—the equipment has defects, so the masks produced probably can’t seal tightly against the skin.”
In the face of poison gas, the mask must seal tightly to the skin without any gaps.
Otherwise, the poison gas would be inhaled through the gaps between the mask and the skin.
Li Muzhi nodded affirmatively: “Exactly right, Liu Fuxing. What you said is very correct—these equipment and materials indeed have the problems you described. But if there were no issues with the equipment, and the direct lineage side could produce qualifying gas masks with it, would they have easily swapped the equipment to us!”
And that was indeed the case.
Otherwise, the direct lineage side’s gas masks mainly relied on imports.
Precisely because this batch of equipment couldn’t produce high-quality products.
Li Muzhi then looked at Liu Fuxing and the other classmates and said, “Since you’ve all discovered these problems, do you have the confidence to solve them?”
Originally, Li Muzhi had planned to teach them how to repair this equipment.
But the students had already seen the problems very clearly themselves and knew where the shortcomings were.
So Li Muzhi could perhaps consider letting go and allowing these students to figure it out on their own.
The students were a bit flattered: “Teacher, aren’t you afraid we’ll break the equipment?”
This was equipment that could produce gas masks, even if it was very worn out and even if the quality of the products it made was poor.
But it was the Border Region Arsenal’s only equipment.
Its importance was beyond doubt.
Yet the teacher wanted to entrust us fully with the repair and improvement—wasn’t that a bit too much trust in us?
“Write a report quickly on how each piece of equipment should be repaired and improved,” Li Muzhi said. “Once I review the report and confirm no issues, the equipment will be yours to repair and improve—consider it the next manual assignment I’m leaving you.”
Although Li Muzhi said this, Liu Fuxing still asked, “Teacher, you really aren’t worried we’ll break it?”
“This batch of equipment is already so worn out; even if we break it more, how much worse can it get.” Li Muzhi was very calm.
“Teacher, rest assured—we definitely won’t disappoint you!” The students guaranteed confidently.
“Mm.” Li Muzhi acknowledged, gave a few more instructions, then returned to his laboratory.
Li Muzhi took out the Hell Missile diagram he had drawn earlier, then slowly modified it with a pen.
The anti-disassembly device inside this Hell Missile was actually much simpler than the one in the Hell Cannon Shell.
The Hell Cannon Shell had to withstand a certain primer chamber pressure, which was a considerable instantaneous force, requiring higher standards for the device.
Whereas the device in this Hell Missile had lower requirements.
After all, the Hell Missile didn’t need to withstand primer chamber pressure—just gunpowder boost, with speed gradually increasing, unlike the shell which gained huge thrust instantly.
So, downgrading and adapting the Hell Cannon Shell device for the Hell Missile should be no problem.
While Li Muzhi was revising the diagram, the two Hell Cannon sample rounds were delivered to Kong Jie’s hands.
“Regiment Commander Kong, Factory Director Li said these are test rounds—one assault type, one fragmentation type. He wants you to test if they can fire normally, and also bring back data on explosion range, trajectory, etc.,” the guard said to Kong Jie.
“Okay, got it. You can go back,” Kong Jie nodded, receiving the two sample rounds.
The Battalion Commander beside Kong Jie was troubled: “Regiment Commander, the sentry posts and strongholds in this area have mostly been removed, and there are no more small Japanese Invaders transportation teams. We temporarily have no test targets.”
Now that we had firepower, the nearby sentry posts and strongholds all became removal targets.
After these days of activity, the sentry posts and strongholds in this area were basically all gone.
Of course, saying there were no test targets on the surface, there was actually still a big one.
That was the Kumamoto Division army.
Cough cough!
Although they were short on grain, they weren’t to be trifled with—we weren’t going to provoke trouble.
“No big targets? Then hit small targets,” Kong Jie said.
“Hit small targets?” The Battalion Commander was stunned. “Small targets are just some traitorous landlord bullies. Using Hell Cannon Shells on them would be like using anti-aircraft guns to shoot mosquitoes—overkill.”
“How is this overkill!” Kong Jie said seriously. “The guerrilla teams below don’t have much artillery and can’t take down these landlord bullies’ houses. But if we use the Hell Cannon to make an example, it’s killing the chicken to warn the monkey. Let those traitorous landlord bullies see clearly: if they don’t surrender to the guerrilla teams below, our cannons aren’t for show!”
These traitorous landlord bullies that the guerrilla teams couldn’t handle all had a certain number of private guards at home, equipped with rifles and artillery, and some sons of turtles even had light machine guns.
Their firepower was even stronger than the guerrilla teams’.
Some guerrilla teams had even suffered considerable losses from attacks by these traitorous landlord bullies.
The Battalion Commander thought for a moment: “Regiment Commander, I get it—this is your so-called psychological warfare, right?”
When the Hell Cannon was first produced, Factory Director Li from the arsenal tested it on a traitor stronghold, scaring it into surrendering quickly.
We applied the lesson and used this psychological tactic on other strongholds, with great effect.
If we could push the Hell Cannon to bombard those traitorous landlord bullies, using this psychological tactic well would definitely achieve the effect of knocking on the mountain to shake the tiger.
Once done, the guerrilla teams below could push fake cannons over and scare other traitorous landlord bullies into surrendering and disarming voluntarily.
“Mm, exactly.” Kong Jie nodded, looking at the Battalion Commander: “Among the traitorous landlord bullies, which one deserves to die the most? We’ll hit him. Name one, and we’ll go hit him.”
The Battalion Commander gritted his teeth: “Among these traitorous landlord bullies, there’s no ‘most deserving’—they all deserve to die!”
Then the Battalion Commander said: “Hit Liu Dachang. That bastard donated all his earnings to the Japanese Invaders and often helps them solve other logistics problems, like capturing civilians to build roads for the Japanese Invaders, collecting grain and medicine for them, etc.”
“How many private guards does he have?” Kong Jie asked.
“Probably forty or fifty, equipped with two Type 11 Light Machine Guns,” the Battalion Commander answered.
“Alright, we’ll hit him.”
