Did he trick the young marshal into becoming sworn brothers and then go south to Huangpu Military Ac

Lin Qi turned his head and looked at the young military officer in front of him.

Chiang Kai-shek's position at this moment is very delicate.

In terms of seniority, he is not as senior as Liao Gong and others.

In terms of military power, he didn't even have a full regiment under his command.

He desperately needed an opportunity, a springboard that would allow him to truly gain control of the armed forces.

The military academy under construction was the springboard he had his eye on; running a military academy required money, but even more so, it required guns.

Lin Qi knew exactly what was going on.

The other party's initiative to show goodwill was not because they valued him as a person, but because they valued the 150,000 silver dollars behind him and the soon-to-be-completed arsenal.

"That's very thoughtful."

Lin Qi did not refuse, speaking calmly: "Making guns and cannons is a delicate task that cannot tolerate any outside interference. The storms outside the factory do indeed need someone knowledgeable in military affairs to handle them. This fat man is the brother-in-law of a division commander in the Guangdong Army. If I kill him today, within half a day, there will definitely be people in Guangzhou causing trouble at headquarters. If you can keep these troubles out of the factory gates for me, I will be grateful."

Stand up straight and immediately express your opinion.

"Brother Tuozhi, rest assured. Since the magistrate has entrusted the arsenal to you, this is the highest military order from headquarters. I will be the first to object to anyone who dares to cause trouble! As for the Guangdong Army, I will negotiate with them and will not allow them to set foot in the factory area even once."

Lin Qi nodded; that was exactly what he wanted—for the other party to play the villain.

"Brother Chang is straightforward, and I, Lin, am a sensible man. Once the factory is up and running, the first batch of refurbished rifles and reloaded bullets will not be delivered to the central warehouse at headquarters. I will allocate them directly to the military academy under construction, and to your students."

Upon hearing this, Lao Chang's breathing instantly became heavier.

He went to great lengths to befriend Lin Qi, all for the sake of hearing this.

With this batch of weapons as a safety net, his position in the military academy was completely secure. Whoever controls the allocation of equipment controls the students' loyalty.

The two exchanged a smile, each getting what they wanted.

After leading a few guards to set up the outer perimeter, Lin Qi turned and walked into the largest machining workshop.

The workshop was filled with the pungent smell of machine oil and rusty metal.

The lighting was dim, and several old belt-driven lathes were parked in their original positions, with oil stains and scattered scrap iron everywhere on the ground.

Dozens of veteran technicians and apprentices stood nervously beside the machine tools.

They had just witnessed Lin Qi commit murder and seen the vast ocean, and now they felt both awe and gratitude towards the young factory director.

Lin Qi walked up to an elderly technician with gray hair.

"Master, what is your surname?"

"To the factory manager, my surname is Wang, and I have been working as a fitter in the factory for more than ten years."

Master Wang quickly bent down to answer.

Lin Qi took off his gray Zhongshan suit jacket, casually handed it to the guard behind him, rolled up his shirt sleeves to his elbows, and walked to a milling machine that resembled the receiver of a German Mauser rifle.

Without giving any orders, he reached out and touched the guide rail of the milling machine, grinding his fingers against the dark, greasy sludge on it.

"What kind of lubricant is used? It's lard mixed with diesel oil."

Lin Qi frowned: "This kind of rudimentary method is only good for lubricating farm tools. When used on a high-precision milling machine, the oil film will break instantly once the speed increases. The cutting tool will directly grind against the machine bed, and that's how the precision of the machine tool is ruined."

Master Wang boldly explained that the factory's budget had been cut, and they couldn't afford to buy specialized industrial cutting fluid, so they could only make do with this makeshift solution.

Lin Qi didn't blame him. He walked to the worktable on the side, picked up a freshly cut gun barrel, and looked at the pull wire marks inside the bore.

"How did you do the annealing process? The steel in this gun barrel is brittle, which clearly indicates that the internal stress has not been completely released."

Master Wang swallowed hard and answered honestly that the factory's heat treatment involved heating the gun barrel until it was red-hot and then throwing it directly into a water tank for quenching.

Lin Qi shook his head. It would be a miracle if this kind of primitive steelmaking thinking left over from the late Qing Dynasty could produce good guns.

He found a piece of chalk and started drawing directly on the oil-stained brick wall of the workshop.

Without blueprints, relying solely on a century's worth of knowledge in his mind, he drew a simple structural diagram of a lead bath tempering furnace.

"Water quenching cools the steel too quickly, making it prone to microcracks. When a rifle is fired, the chamber pressure is extremely high, and these microcracks are the culprit for a barrel explosion. Starting tomorrow, we'll build a refractory brick pool outside the workshop and melt the scrap lead in it. After the barrel is quenched, we'll put it in a 300-degree liquid lead bath for constant temperature tempering for two hours. This will allow the carbon crystals inside the steel to rearrange."

The veteran technicians stared wide-eyed. They had spent their entire lives forging iron and had never heard of boiling steel pipes with molten lead.

Looking at the well-structured and clearly marked cross-sectional diagram on the wall, everyone understood that the new factory director was truly capable.

Lin Qi threw away the chalk, dusted off his hands, and continued tidying up.

"Go and collect all the Hanyang-made breechblocks from the scrap heap. Don't sell them as scrap metal. Grind them with a grinder and look at the sparks. If the sparks are dark and have few branches, it's high-carbon steel. Keep them to make firing pins. If the sparks are bright and have long tails, it's low-carbon steel. Pick them out to make receiver covers. They can't even distinguish the carbon content of the steel. They mix them all together and use them. The lifespan of the parts they make will be drastically different."

Judging the carbon content of steel by observing sparks was a core basic skill of Western arms factories in the early 20th century, something that domestic factories had no access to in a systematic way.

Master Wang listened with rapt attention, his whole body trembling with excitement.

He had been doing this for over a decade, and when he encountered technical problems, he could only figure them out on his own. Lin Qi's few words directly pierced through the window of opportunity that had stood in their way for decades.

"Factory manager, you're truly knowledgeable. We're just a bunch of roughnecks; from now on, we'll follow your orders completely. Wherever you point, we'll go."

Master Wang took the lead in expressing his opinion.

Lin Qi nodded. The prestige gained from technological superiority is more enduring and solid than that gained from killing.

He not only wanted to change mechanical processing, but also to get involved in chemical engineering.

There are several rows of abandoned bungalows behind the factory area.

Lin Qi had it cleared out and used as a temporary chemical workshop.

High-purity sulfuric acid and nitric acid were unavailable in the south, making it impossible to manufacture qualified single-base smokeless powder. Without smokeless powder, newly manufactured rifles were merely decorative.

Before the German equipment could be smuggled into Guangzhou through the Green Gang's smuggling channels, Lin Qi had to use makeshift methods to get by.

He directed workers to build several simple lead chambers lined with lead plates, and to produce sulfur dioxide by burning sulfur and then using a primitive method to produce sulfuric acid for the lead chambers through a reaction with nitrates.

After several distillations and purifications, it barely met the requirements for cleaning and nitrocellulose.

Under Lin Qi's iron fist and technical guidance, the entire arsenal was like a rusty, massive machine that had been forcibly injected with lubricant, and began to emit a deep and powerful roar.

The machines in the arsenal hummed for three days, and a political storm was brewing in Guangzhou for three days as well.

The fat factory manager who was executed was indeed the brother-in-law of a brigade commander in the Guangdong Army, surnamed Chen.

Brigade Commander Chen had fought alongside the headquarters and considered himself a meritorious officer. His brother-in-law was shot dead without even a word, which made him feel as if his dignity had been thrown to the ground and trampled on.

The morning of the fourth day.

Brigade Commander Chen, accompanied by dozens of heavily armed guards, stormed into the Grand Marshal's Mansion with great momentum.

People blocked the door, and the two sides almost came to blows. The guards stepped in and let Brigade Commander Chen into the study alone.

Liao Gong was also present. When he saw Brigade Commander Chen enter with a murderous look on his face, he frowned.

"Sir, you have to stand up for me."

Instead of saluting, Brigade Commander Chen started yelling: "I risked my life and bled alongside the Master, and some rich kid who appeared out of nowhere, relying on his few stinking coins, didn't even bother with a court-martial. He just dragged my men out and executed them. Does this Guangzhou belong to the Master or to Lin Tuozhi?"

The gentleman sat behind his desk, holding a brush in his hand as he reviewed official documents.

Hearing Brigade Commander Chen's roar, the gentleman did not get angry, nor did he stop writing. He only put down his brush on the inkstone after finishing reviewing an official document.

"Your people."

The man raised his head, his gaze calm yet unapproachable: "The arsenal belongs to the headquarters. When did it become your private property, Chen?"

Commander Chen was speechless, but he argued, "His embezzlement of funds will be judged by the military court. Lin Tuozhi is an outsider. What right does he have to resort to private punishment?"

"Based on the warrant I gave him."

The gentleman stood up and walked to his desk.

Liao Gong watched coldly from the sidelines. He knew very well that Brigade Commander Chen's commotion today was ostensibly for his brother-in-law, but in reality, he was reluctant to part with the lucrative arsenal.

Lin Qi cut off their source of income, and they are using this as an excuse to force the main business to regain its former glory.

The gentleman did not argue with Brigade Commander Chen about revolutionary righteousness; he turned his head and nodded to the bodyguard.

The guards emerged from the study. A short while later, they returned with two soldiers carrying in a heavy, long pine trunk. They placed it on the carpet.

The gentleman walked over and personally opened the box.

Ten rifles were neatly stacked inside, the wood grain on the stocks was polished to a shine, the barrels emitted the dark luster unique to blued finish, and the receivers were coated with a thin layer of anti-rust oil.

Commander Chen, a man of command, was immediately impressed. The quality of this gun was even better than the counterfeit guns that the headquarters had bought from a French trading company at great expense.

The man picked up a rifle, pulled back the bolt with a crisp click, and felt no sluggishness in the movement of the mechanism.

He threw the gun directly to Brigade Commander Chen.

Brigade Commander Chen instinctively caught it, his fingers touching the barrel and sight, his eyes filled with shock.

"These are guns that Takuchi refurbished and polished using scrap and defective parts that you threw away in the warehouse, less than four days after he took over the arsenal."

The man's voice wasn't loud, but every word struck Commander Chen's heart: "Your men have been in charge of the arsenal for three years. Apart from pocketing money for themselves, have they ever produced a single gun that doesn't explode?"

Brigade Commander Chen's face was deathly pale, and his hand holding the gun trembled slightly.

"Last night, the arsenal delivered the first batch of 20,000 rounds of loaded ammunition. It uses newly refined smokeless powder."

The man stared intently at Brigade Commander Chen: "Tuo has made a pledge that next month, the arsenal will be able to stably produce 100,000 rounds of reloaded ammunition and 500 refurbished rifles. Anyone who dares to lay a finger on him will be the root of our headquarters."

The gentleman walked back to his desk and sat down, his tone becoming extremely stern.

"If you feel wronged, I'll hand this arsenal back to you right now. Next month, you'll give me 100,000 rounds of ammunition and 500 good guns. If you're short even one round, I'll hold you accountable. Do you dare to accept it?"

Commander Chen couldn't utter a single word. Even if he sacrificed his entire family, he couldn't produce a single bullet.

The overwhelming power brought by industrial strength is more effective than any political rhetoric in this chaotic world where only guns matter.

Commander Chen lowered his head, swallowed all his resentment and anger, and slunk out of the study.

This political storm targeting Lin Qi was completely quelled without even a ripple, thanks to Mr. Lin's unwavering and strong support.

That night.

The factory director's office at the Ishii Arsenal.

Lin Qi sat at the table with an open English telegram in front of him, a secret telegram sent by Du Yisheng from Shanghai.

The telegram contained only a few words, written in business jargon.

This means that the first batch of high-precision lathe tools and special crucibles ordered from German trading companies have been loaded onto cargo ships of the British Jardine Matheson Company, under the guise of textile machinery, and will arrive in the waters off Guangzhou in five days.

With this equipment, the arsenal can completely move beyond the repair and renovation phase and truly begin to independently produce gun barrels and artillery parts.

There was a knock on the door, and someone pushed it open and came in.

He had just witnessed his husband overpowering Commander Chen at the Grand Marshal's Mansion today, and now the look in his eyes when he looked at Lin Qi was not only admiration, but also utter awe.

"Brother Tuozhi, you must have heard about what happened at the Marshal's Mansion during the day."

He sat down in the chair opposite the desk, his tone friendly: "The magistrate truly listens to you without question. Commander Chen was thoroughly humiliated and didn't dare utter a sound. From now on, no one in Guangzhou will dare to covet the arsenal again."

Lin Qi folded the telegram and put it in the drawer.

He knew that the man had withstood the pressure, which was expected. As long as he could provide a steady supply of weapons, he would be the most protected figure in the Southern regime.

"I'm sorry to trouble you to make this trip, Brother Chiang."

Lin Qi picked up the teapot and poured himself a cup of tea: "I don't care about the storms outside, I only care about the factory's output. I can make guns and cannons, but just having lumps of iron is useless. You'll have to put in a lot more effort to get the people who wield them."

Chang K Shen's hand, holding the teacup, froze in mid-air, and his heart skipped a beat.

Lin Qi looked at him with deep eyes.

"The current troops at headquarters are too mixed, and they have too many old warlord habits. It's a waste for them to have good guns. We must have a new army that we train ourselves and that has firm beliefs."

Lin Qi tapped his fingers on the table: "The military academy on Huangpu Island can't be delayed any longer. I'll provide the money and the weapons. Brother Shen, you have to take the position of principal. You have to shoulder the heavy responsibility of training the troops."

Chang K Shen was breathing rapidly; he had been waiting for Lin Qi to say those words for far too long.

With Lin Qi as his financial backer and the military factory providing full support, his bargaining power in the struggle for the position of military academy principal in his base camp will become incredibly strong, unmatched by anyone.

"I will never forget Brother Tuo's kindness in recognizing my talent."

He put down his teacup and solemnly cupped his hands in greeting: "I hope you can give me your guidance on the preparations for the military academy."

Lin Qi leaned back in his chair and spoke softly.

"I wouldn't call it guidance; besides the infantry drill manual, the military academy curriculum includes two additional courses."

Lin Qi's gaze sharpened: "The first is modern artillery and infantry coordinated tactics. The second is basic mechanical maintenance and logistics coordination. The guns and cannons that come out of our factory cannot become useless firewood on the battlefield just because a firing pin breaks. Our officers must understand industry."

Nodding repeatedly, he was completely impressed by Lin Qi's profound foresight.