I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

Da Liu carried the discarded tin oven from the factory clinic into Workshop No. 1, placed it on the cement floor, and rust began to fall off.

Next to the heating element inside, there was a half-eaten white asbestos pad hanging.

Jiang Ming squatted down, straightened the power cord, plugged it into the corner socket, removed the knob casing, and used pliers to clamp the exposed copper shaft and twist it.

A hissing sound of electricity immediately filled the oven.

The dark red heating wire slowly lit up, and a burnt smell wafted out from the seams of the metal sheet.

Xiao Zhao, carrying a multimeter and a megohmmeter, came over, staring at the half-sack of retired Soviet electrolytic capacitors, his face scrunched up in a frown.

"Mr. Jiang, does this thing really work?"

He nudged the edge of the burlap sack with his toe.

"This is an antique left by the Russians. It's older than my great-grandfather's pipe. If it were to explode when electrified, the roof of the workshop would be ripped off."

Jiang Ming picked out a few black cylindrical capacitors with no bulging on their outer shells from the sack, tossed them onto the oven wire mesh, and closed the door behind him.

"It will only explode if you apply high pressure directly."

Just as Xiao Zhao was about to speak, Jiang Ming had already turned the temperature up to sixty degrees.

"If old electrolytic capacitors are left for a long time, the electrolyte will dry out, and the leakage rate will skyrocket."

"First, bake at a low temperature for several hours to allow the contents to redistribute, then slowly cure the insulation layer using low-voltage DC."

Wu Hanzhang stood behind, holding a teacup, his eyelids twitching incessantly.

"Little Jiang, who taught you this method?"

"I hope that the broken oven at the clinic doesn't actually set Workshop Number One on fire."

Jiang Ming stared at the red light coming through the crack in the door.

"Engineer Wu, we've been forced into this situation. We have to create the conditions even if we don't have them."

He pointed to the blackboard on the wall.

"Let's heat the capacitors for now, and go to the scrap yard tomorrow morning to find the Zener diodes and choke cores."

"We need a working solution for the filtering network tonight."

As dawn broke and before the morning bugle sounded, a few people braved the cold wind and ventured into the waste storage area behind the factory.

The warehouse is filled with broken power supply boxes and Soviet aircraft scraps discarded in the early days of the factory's construction.

The smell of rust mixed with the smell of rat urine, and the sheet metal rattled loudly at the slightest touch.

Wearing canvas gloves, Jiang Ming rummaged through the old computer case until his hands were covered in black ash.

"Capacitors alone are not enough to completely remove the noise in the power grid. We need to add a Zener diode and then wind a choke coil."

Da Liu took out a few components from the half-dented crystal radio and handed them to him.

"What about this one?"

Jiang Ming wiped away the dust, glanced at the color ring, and threw it back into the scrap metal pile.

"The resistance is too low; it can't withstand the impact of the test bench. Don't gamble with the tube's life."

Xiao Zhao pulled out a handful of rusty parts from under the old power supply box.

"Engineer Jiang, we only have these few voltage stabilizers left, our legs are practically green with envy."

"Even if it turns green, take it with you first."

"Go back and test them. Throw away the dead ones, and put heat sinks on the living ones."

They searched the scrap warehouse thoroughly before piecing together scraps of a two-stage filter network from discarded power supply boxes and old radio remnants.

Back in Workshop One, a pile of broken copper and scrap iron lay on the floor.

The smell of engine oil mixed with the smell of solder; the capacitors next to the oven had been baking overnight.

Xiao Zhao sat at the tin table and connected the megohmmeter probes to the first capacitor.

The hands strike the bottom.

His hand trembled, and he quickly threw the scrap into the trash can.

"The Russian dates date back to World War II; who would dare put it on the testing bench?"

Jiang Ming separated the qualified products from the defective products and arranged them neatly.

"Keep criticizing, don't stop."

After testing half a sack of capacitors, only four or five were usable; the rest were just scrap aluminum shells.

Old Sun sat at his fitter's bench, with a dismantled silicon steel sheet core spread out in front of him and a roll of enameled wire stripped from an old motor next to him.

Jiang Ming pressed the blueprints onto the table.

"Each layer should be even, with insulating paper in between, and the wires should not cross."

Old Sun chewed on his cigarette, pressing the copper wire in his hand tightly, coil after coil.

Xiao Zhao was getting anxious.

"Not even a little bit off?"

Jiang Ming used chalk to draw the bypass of the parasitic capacitance on the edge of the drawing.

"The test bench is used to monitor microampere-level fluctuations. If there is a gap in the coil, noise will leak through under high voltage."

"All that work before was for nothing."

Old Sun didn't retort, he just pushed the tobacco pipe away.

His rough fingers pressed down on the enameled wire, creating neat lines.

The wrist strength of a level seven fitter rests entirely on these coils of copper wire.

Wu Hanzhang looked at the mess on the ground and spun the teacup halfway around in his hand.

"Xiao Jiang, twelve hours of full-load heat circulation is no joke."

"Can these things dug out of the garbage dump really hold up?"

Jiang Ming picked up a voltage regulator tube, wrapped it in tin foil, applied thermal grease to the contact surface of the copper heat sink, and handed it to Da Liu to fix.

"Since we don't have standard equipment, we just put a layer of purification netting over the testing environment."

He pressed the wrench down on the table.

"Whether it's a black cat or a white cat, if it can smooth out the ripples in the power grid and allow a microammeter to read the true capabilities of a tube, it is a vital national asset."

Just after noon, the two-stage inductor-capacitor filter network was finally assembled.

Wrapped in black insulating tape, it looked bulky and less like a precision piece of equipment than a lump of iron dragged out of the ruins.

Jiang Ming connected the filter device to the power input terminal of the test bench, and then connected a milliohm-level non-inductive sampling resistor that had been calibrated by the bridge to deduct the phase shift error.

Wu Hanzhang stood beside him, watching him connect the phone.

"Should we connect the differential measurement as well?"

"Continuing from here, let's not let the filter deceive us."

Jiang Ming took two steps back, rubbed the dust off his hands, and pulled down the main switch.

The current drilled into the hand-operated choke coil, and a deep hum immediately spread.

One by one, the instrument lights came on, and Xiao Zhao rushed to the instrument panel, his eyes glued to the emission current pointer.

The black pointer swung half a tick and stopped at 275 microamps.

The periodic vibrations caused by the motors in the foundry workshop of the factory have disappeared.

Xiao Zhao's Adam's apple bobbed.

"Is it a sure thing?"

Jiang Ming looked at it for thirty seconds before picking up the chalk and writing the life test restart time on the blackboard.

"The second tube, withstands pressure for twelve hours, let's start again."

No one spoke again.

Outside the workshop, the sun was setting in the west, casting long shadows on the metal door.

White gas billowed from the liquid nitrogen tank, the hum of the vacuum pump and choke suppressing all other noises.

Six hours later, the emission current was still above the red line, and the mica ceramic pad had withstood the high temperature.

Eight hours later, the pointer did not deviate, and the coating did not show large-scale powdering.

Xiao Zhao was recording data in the top-secret ledger. His wrists were sore and stiff, but he dared not slow down even a little.

Wu Hanzhang, holding a chipped teacup, stood to the side of the testing platform, his gaze passing over the watch face and landing on Jiang Ming's back.

He spent half his life working at the Third Electronics Factory.

I've seen boastful students who studied abroad, technicians terrified by Soviet standards, and even useless people like Liu Shouxin who only knew how to exploit loopholes in personnel matters.

But he had never met someone like Jiang Ming.

This young man can dope rare earth elements into electron tubes.

They can also squat on the ground and build a measurement system using a broken oven and half a sack of discarded capacitors.

He knows where the data can lie, and he knows how to expose the lies.

As Jiang Ming was inspecting the frost formation on the liquid nitrogen cold trap, the bronze-covered "Record of Human Connections" deep in his mind suddenly became hot.

He closed his eyes and sank.

In the database of name cards, Wu Hanzhang's gray name card is fading.

The gray edges faded, and a bright golden halo spread along the edge of the name card.

The light gradually approached Qian Xuesen's life-or-death pact, and even the lines connecting the technological lineage of the Third Electronics Factory below became much clearer.

The system did not prompt for an upgrade.

But Jiang Ming knew that Wu Hanzhang's trust in him had reached the level of a close friend.

Once this pipe passes the final test and plugs the hole in the Northwest, the opportunity for Bai Dingjuan to be promoted to Xiucaijuan will be ripe.

More historical fragment query permissions will also be enabled.

He opened his eyes and regained his composure.

There are still three more psychic summoning slots available tonight, but we can't waste them waiting.

The lifespan test results were stable.

The real hurdle lies in the next step: batch verification of the entire system and the practical environment in Northwest China.

Inside the administration building, Director Wang and Factory Director Zhang were waiting for the finished products to be packed and loaded onto the train.

On the Gobi Desert, the intelligence agency's listening vehicle is still consuming sand and dust.

Enemy agents could try again at any time by using Lao Lei's old frequency band.

The time moved towards midnight.

Workshop No. 1 quieted down, with only the noise of the vacuum pump and the hum of the choke coil remaining.

Old Sun has stopped smoking his pipe.

Da Liu stood beside the liquid nitrogen tank, rubbing his hands together.

Xiao Zhao held a fountain pen, its nib hovering over the top-secret tent.

All eyes were fixed on that small microammeter.

The second hand ticked away, one tick at a time.

The clock finally struck twelve.

The dull timekeeping ended.

Xiao Zhao stared at the reading of 275 microamps, his eyes suddenly reddened, and his thick-rimmed glasses fogged up with tears.

He slammed his pen on the top-secret tent, stood up, and roared out two words.

"Passed!"