1950s: After transmigrating into a capitalist, I relied on military industry to achieve a comeback.

"That's...that's a decarbonizing flame!"

Wang Geng's voice trembled. He pushed away his apprentice who was pulling him away, leaned on his cane, and rushed forward two steps without regard for anything, until he was stopped by the scorching heat wave.

His wrinkled old face was illuminated by the white-gold flames spewing from the furnace, and in his cloudy eyes, there was only that one beam of fire shooting into the sky, representing ultimate purity.

As an old steelworker who had spent his entire life guarding the open-hearth furnace, he knew all too well what the color of the flame meant.

The most difficult part of open-hearth steelmaking is decarburization, dephosphorization, and desulfurization. This process is extremely slow, taking more than ten hours, and relies on experienced craftsmen to observe and adjust it little by little. It's like simmering a pot of broth; the heat and time are both indispensable.

But now, what does he see?

He saw a crazy girl using a large iron pipe to blow oxygen into a pot of molten iron, and she completed the most time-consuming and difficult process in just a few minutes in a brutal and efficient manner!

This is hardly steelmaking.

This is simply a miracle!

"Teacher! Sparks are flying over, please step back!"

Technician Li was so anxious he was stamping his feet, wanting to pull him back but not daring to.

Wang Geng whirled around, his knuckles white from clenching his fists, pointed at the roaring furnace, and yelled at his hunched-over apprentices behind him:

"Look! Everyone, open your eyes wide and look! The speed of decarbonization... she actually managed to do it!"

The old man's voice carried a chilling dread, as if his worldview had been reshaped; even his raised arm trembled violently.

"No more standing guard in front of the open-hearth furnace for over ten hours, no more using our old eyes to scrutinize the fire... It turns out there really is such a method of steelmaking! The ironclad rules in textbooks... have been overturned today!"

That shout, though broken, carried an unbelievable shock, yet also revealed a fervent passion for witnessing a miracle firsthand.

The whispers that had been filling the workshop fell silent at the sound. The apprentices exchanged bewildered glances; those who had been jotting down "operational violations" earlier had their pens now lying on the floor...

Everyone's gaze unconsciously shifted from the volcanic-like converter to the seemingly insane old man.

They couldn't understand why the old expert, who had asserted just a moment ago that the furnace would explode, was now as excited as if he'd been injected with adrenaline.

Only Lin Jiaoyue, dozens of meters away, looked at Wang Geng's face, which was flushed with excitement, and the corners of her mouth slightly turned up.

She knew that the hardest stone had been shattered.

"Stop blowing oxygen, raise the oxygen gun." She picked up the walkie-talkie and calmly issued the order.

As the oxygen lance slowly rose, the towering flames gradually subsided. The roar of the converter weakened, leaving only the molten steel rolling steadily inside, emitting a series of pleasant low hums.

"Prepare for sampling!" Lin Jiaoyue ordered again.

A worker wearing heavy heat-resistant clothing carefully approached the furnace opening with a long sampling spoon in hand, scooped out a spoonful of golden liquid from the boiling molten steel, and then quickly ran to the cooling water tank.

"Sizzle—"

The scorching steel sample plunged into the water, stirring up a thick cloud of white mist.

Everyone's heart was in their throats, following the white mist.

A few minutes later, the cooled steel sample was sent to the temporary laboratory in the workshop. Wang Geng, leaning on his cane, was the first to rush in, followed closely by his apprentices and Director Zhang.

In the laboratory, the old-fashioned component analyzer brought from the Soviet Union was emitting a monotonous "beep beep" sound.

"It's out..."

The young technician in charge of the operation stared intently at the paper strip that the machine was spitting out, his hands trembling so badly that the light paper strip rustled in mid-air.

He swallowed hard, glanced at it, his eyes widened suddenly, and he stammered:

"Carbon...carbon content, zero, 0.18!"

No one in the room made a sound.

"Sulfur content..." the technician's voice rose an octave, "0.012! Phosphorus content... 0.009!"

With each digit after the decimal point that was said, Wang Geng's shoulder would twitch violently.

As the last "nine" fell to the ground, the old man's knees buckled, and he slumped down as if his bones had been removed. Had Director Zhang not reacted quickly and grabbed his arm, he would have been kneeling on the ground.

"Show me...show me..."

Wang Geng's lips were bloodless, and he reached out his hand to the technician with trembling hands.

The technician quickly handed over the note. The old man held the small piece of paper, barely the size of his palm, in both hands and brought it close to his eyes. His fingers had even torn the edges of the note.

"Oh God... Oh God..."

He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving, tears mixed with the soot on his face, smearing it all over.

"This is the base of high-quality special steel! It's so clean...so clean! We could work non-stop for twenty-four hours straight in the open-hearth furnace and still not be able to produce steel this pure!"

The technician Li and his fellow apprentices standing behind him held their breath. Technician Li looked down at his notebook, which he had filled with Lin Jiaoyue's "fatal mistakes" a few days ago, and suddenly felt as if it were a hot iron.

The claims that large gaps in the furnace wall make it easy for leaks to occur, and that direct oxygen blowing will cause the furnace to explode, etc., were all rendered absurdly ridiculous by the test report with its perfect indicators, which resembled a textbook example.

Technician Li felt a burning pain on his face, as if he had been slapped dozens of times with the sole of a shoe, and he couldn't even lift his head.

"How long?" Wang Geng suddenly turned his head and stared at Song Siming, who was standing in the doorway. The old man's eyes were bloodshot. "How long has it been since the molten iron was poured?!"

Song Siming, who was frantically recording data in his notebook, was startled by the shout. He looked down at the pocket watch hanging around his neck, his eyes widening suddenly behind his glasses.

Unconvinced, he brought the pocket watch close to his eyes, looked at it again, and then stammered:

"Two... twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds. Count, count twenty-seven minutes."

Twenty-seven minutes.

For veteran experts accustomed to calculating steelmaking cycles in days, this timeframe was like detonating an atomic bomb in their minds.

Wang Geng slowly closed his eyes, tears streaming down his deeply lined old face and falling onto the floor.

He spent his entire life refining steel in an open-hearth furnace, considering himself a leading figure in the domestic steel industry. In the end, however, his lifelong beliefs were completely overturned in just twenty-seven minutes by a young woman in her early twenties.

This isn't about who wins or loses.

When it takes only 27 minutes to produce high-quality special steel that takes more than 24 hours in an open-hearth furnace, the traditional technology he held as the gold standard has already been swept into the dustbin of history. This is a complete and utterly unreasonable defeat.