50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 861 Nine-Day Tour of Leningrad

Each of these ultra-large high-pressure storage tanks is tens of meters high and has a volume of 10 cubic meters.

The storage tank wasn't full, but he didn't care. He simply transferred tens of tons of each of the silane (SiH4) and diborane (B2H6) into the space and then turned around and left.

Once he was far away from the chemical plant, his heartbeat calmed down. He then chuckled self-deprecatingly. Being afraid of death isn't shameful; who isn't?

He knew that as long as the workers operated according to the design requirements, there would be no danger, but humans always seem to be courting death.

Almost all chemical accidents in history have been caused by human factors, and he didn't want to gamble his life on whether others would follow the rules and regulations.

After returning to Stockholm, he continued driving to Sandvik, where there is a company called Sandvik that mainly produces metal cutting tools, specialty materials, and so on.

In particular, their metal cutting tools are among the most durable of all precision machine tools, thanks to their secret metal formula.

Even in the 21st century, the formulas for these classified materials have not been leaked, and Sandvik's cutting tools still hold a 60% share of the global CNC machine tool market.

Thinking about the machine tools at home, which require replacing a set of cutting tools every few hours, it would be a lie to say I don't feel bad about it.

This isn't something that happens once or twice; it's a long-term process. Materials science is a tough hurdle; if you can't get past it, you just can't get past it.

Their high-speed steel cutting tools are durable; even after hundreds of thousands of cuts, their precision can still be maintained at one ten-thousandth, truly capable of cutting through iron like mud.

Catching up with this technology isn't a matter of money at all.

They rely on long-term technological accumulation. Sandvik has been established for over 100 years, and the formulas for these tool materials have been developed over time.

He wanted to go to Sandvik's headquarters to see if he could get his hands on their metal formulas, especially those for various specialty metals.

Each successful project can save billions of yuan in domestic R&D funds and years of R&D time.

Sandviken is a little-known city; you can't even find information about it on Baidu (from the author's frustration).

The Sandvik Group is everything in this city; the entire city revolves around the Sandvik Group.

This is similar to Raccoon City, the headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation in the movie, where most families work for Sandvik.

After arriving in Sandviken, Sun Zhiwei pretended to be a tourist and wandered around the city for half a day without finding anything.

There were targets everywhere, but none of them were what he wanted. The so-called headquarters building was full of administrative documents; the secret formula he wanted wasn't there at all.

It wasn't until he turned to the outskirts of the city and was stopped by security that he realized the difference ahead.

That's a small road leading to the mountainous area east of the city. Why are there checkpoints and security personnel blocking the road here?
Instead of forcing his way through, he turned and left, finding a place to hide. After dark, he walked through the dense forest where there were no roads, avoiding several checkpoints along the way.

Even in the dense forest, several metal fences were erected, each equipped with an alarm.

Sun Zhiwei immediately realized that he might have found a place. He found a hidden spot on the outskirts and began to dig downwards, then headed towards the mountains.

Finally, they discovered a secret vault in a mountain a few kilometers away.

This vault is hidden deep in the mountains, accessible only by a narrow passage leading into the mountainside. There are metal gates in the middle, and without a password and key, it is impossible to force your way in.

Sun Zhiwei, however, dug a hole directly into the mountainside, getting close to the vault inside.

The vault wasn't large, only a few rooms in size, but it was surrounded by rooms made of an ultra-hard alloy metal. Based on Sun Zhiwei's experience, these rooms couldn't be breached by an ordinary nuclear bomb. Fortunately, he didn't need to blow it inside; from several hundred meters away, he could clearly see what was inside through spatial perception.

It was full of technical documents; the metal formula he was looking for was in a safe in the innermost small room.

This smallest safe contains the lifeblood of the Sandvik Group, whose entire exclusive business comes from these metal formulas.

It's not surprising that such a trillion-dollar fortune would be subject to such confidentiality measures.

The item has been found, but we can't make a big fuss about it yet. If it gets discovered, it will cause more than just commercial problems.

All he has to do now is sneak into the village, without firing a shot.

After retrieving the documents remotely from the safe, Sun Zhiwei hid in the passage he had created and took pictures of each one with his camera. After taking the pictures, he put them back into the safe as they were.

After doing all this, he returned the way he came and blocked the passage he had just opened up behind him again with the stones he had dug out.

Once he left the mountains and returned to the ground, he slowly left the city as if nothing had happened.

These things are too precious to be taken lightly, so he didn't intend to send them through the embassy; he had to bring them back personally.

Tomorrow is the departure date for the tourist flight, so after finishing his business here, he drove directly back to Stockholm.

Time flew by, and a day later, Sun Zhiwei arrived in Leningrad successfully using his new identity.

He and the other tourists were put in a standard hotel catering to foreign tourists, and each of them was given a tourist brochure: "Nine Days in Leningrad".

During the day, they formed a large tour group and visited typical Soviet-era sites.

Although they are tourists, it's hard to say whether there are any ill-intentioned people among them.

Sun Zhiwei also noticed that each tour group was accompanied by several "guides" who didn't look like tour guides. Their identities were no secret to Sun Zhiwei; they were KGB agents, after all, they were everywhere.

Therefore, Sun Zhiwei did not go his own way, but instead followed the tourists to visit the main attractions.

Here you'll find Nevsky Prospekt, as old as the city itself; the Bronze Horseman on Decembrists' Square; and other historical landmarks such as the Winter Palace and Summer Palace.

Sun Zhiwei even saw a Pepsi billboard on Nevsky Prospekt, showing that many Western things are entering this great country.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was not caused by a single year; it was the result of long-standing contradictions accumulating until that day, when the final straw broke the camel's back.

The dam, riddled with holes, was already showing signs of decay right here on Nevsky Prospekt.

On the third day, a group of Finnish students arrived at their hotel; they were there for a graduation trip to Leningrad.

That evening, two boys from the Finnish student group got drunk.

They stripped naked in the hotel lobby and ran to the fountain to swim—or at least try to swim. The water level in the fountain wasn't even ankle-deep.

The police arrived early in the morning, furious, and arrested the two men.

(End of this chapter)