Siheyuan: I, Shazhu, started out as an army and became a general.

Workshop No. 5.

This area is now a "top secret restricted area" of the base.

The guards at the gate were heavily armed, with Zhang Xiaowu personally leading the team. No matter who it was, even if it was the base commander, without He Yuzhu's handwritten note, they would have to obediently squat at the gate and count ants.

Inside the workshop, the incandescent lights were glaringly cold.

He Yuzhu took off his formal general's uniform and was now wearing a tank top stained with oil.

Sweat dripped down the muscle lines, each muscle looking like it was made of twisted steel bars—a violent aesthetic forged day and night by the "King of Soldiers' Engine."

What blocked his way was a large, cold, and lifeless special titanium alloy casting weighing several tons.

What he was clutching in his hand was a dilapidated, even somewhat "rustic" homemade cutting device. He had painstakingly pieced it together last night by scavenging parts from a junkyard, following the system blueprints.

"Mr. He, isn't that a bit too reckless?"

Zhang Xiaowu watched from the side, his eyelids twitching and his heart pounding in his chest: "This titanium alloy is harder than steel! If we accidentally cut it off-center, this gold nugget will be ruined! That's half a year's worth of our foreign exchange reserves!"

He Yuzhu completely ignored him, or rather, he treated everyone around him as if they were invisible.

With eyes slightly closed, the micrometer-level perception in my mind instantly activates.

At that moment, the once cold titanium alloy came alive in his consciousness. It was no longer an inanimate object, but a series of pulsating data streams.

He could clearly see where stress was concentrated and where there were micron-level bumps and depressions invisible to the naked eye, even more clearly than a 4K image.

"One millimeter?" He Yuzhu's voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping against a wall, filled with a fanatical focus. "To an ordinary person, one millimeter is just a crack. But for a nuclear submarine, that one millimeter of error means a difference of hundreds of kilometers in range, and it's the lives of the hundred-plus brothers on board!"

"Buzz—!"

The moment the cutting head bites into the metal, sparks explode like fireworks—it's the roar of industry.

He Yuzhu's hands were so steady they seemed inhuman.

There were no German-imported five-axis CNC machine tools, nor were there any complicated CNC programs.

In this era, He Yuzhu's brain is the most advanced supercomputer, and his hands are the most sophisticated robotic arms.

These hands, which usually wield guns and shovels, are now meticulously carving micron-level details onto this lump of metal.

With each cut, the cut surface became so smooth it could be used as a mirror, gleaming with an eerie cold light.

"My goodness..."

Standing behind the explosion-proof glass, Old Huang pressed himself against it, his breath fogging up the glass.

He was a tech expert and knew all too well just how absurd this scene was.

This is called "human precision machining"! Even in Germany, which is known for its rampant craftsmanship, no veteran technician would dare to boast that he could create the abnormal fluid dynamics curve of a pump blade purely by hand.

That's a perfect curved surface that was calculated countless times to avoid sound frequency resonance!

"Mr. He isn't just processing... is he in love with metal?" A junior technician muttered to himself, watching He Yuzhu's meditative state.

He Yuzhu was not just cutting leaves.

He is also performing a god-like operation known as "stress balancing".

Every seemingly random hammer blow, every imperceptible polishing, reshapes the stress structure inside the metal.

He wanted this thing to remain as stable as a rock even under the terrifying water pressure thousands of meters deep in the ocean.

Time passes little by little.

For three whole days and three nights.

He Yuzhu seemed to be permanently attached to that machine, not moving an inch. Zhang Xiaowu stuffed food into his mouth, and he forced water down his throat from the tap.

On the morning of the fourth day, the first ray of sunlight pierced through the skylight, scattering iron dust everywhere.

"Done."

He Yuzhu turned off the power, wiped the grease off his face, and pointed to the pump-jet propulsion unit on the workbench that emitted a faint blue light.

That's no longer a simple mechanical part.

The seven large, slanted blades resemble a blooming steel lotus, perfectly embedded in the fairing. The edges are so rounded that they exude no sense of menace, yet sitting there quietly, they seem to be cutting through the air, searching for the wind's path.

"Send it to a balancing machine to measure the decibels."

After saying this, He Yuzhu's legs went weak, and he plopped down on the cold cement floor. He lit a cigarette, shivering, and took a deep drag.

Half an hour later.

The entire base suddenly erupted! The cheers nearly blew the roof off the workshop!

"Reporting—! Reporting to General Manager He!"

Old Huang stumbled and crawled into Workshop No. 5, losing a shoe in the process. His glasses were askew on his nose, and his face was covered in snot and tears. He shouted like a madman:

"105 decibels! Only 105 decibels! Running at full power, the noise level is a full 55 decibels lower than the original propeller! This is a miracle!"

"What does 105 decibels mean?" He Yuzhu exhaled a smoke ring, his eyes frighteningly calm, as if all of this was expected.

"That means that even if the Americans' sonar soldiers pressed their ears to the bottom of the ship, they would only hear a group of drunken dolphins singing, all they could hear was a pod of dolphins singing!"

Old Huang rushed to He Yuzhu and bowed deeply at a ninety-degree angle, his voice hoarse: "President He...you are not only our hero, you are a living bodhisattva of our Dragon Nation Navy!"

He Yuzhu stood up, supporting himself on his knees, patted the dust off his bottom, and looked out the window at the deep sea in the distance.

"Bodhisattva? I don't want to be a Bodhisattva. A Bodhisattva only saves people, not kills them."

He reached out and grabbed the military cap next to him, then put it on his head.

At that moment, the ruthless aura that belonged to a naval admiral instantly returned.

"Now that this big black fish has had its heart replaced, it shouldn't just stay in its burrow. Let's head out to sea!"

"I heard that the US Navy has a Los Angeles-class attack submarine that's been lurking near our doorstep every day, calling it 'freedom of navigation'?"

He Yuzhu's lips curled into a cruel smile, his eyes as cold as ice ridges in the dead of winter.

"Let's go and have some 'freedom' with them too."

"Go tell those hawks that from today onwards, this sea belongs to China."