Siheyuan (traditional courtyard house): Starting with the Korean War, returning home to take charge

The data was retrieved from the system.

Oxygen Top-Blow Converter Technology (21st Century Basic Version)

[Points consumed: 1,500,000]

He Yuzhu watched as the stack of papers slowly materialized from the system space. It was a thick pile, over two hundred pages long. He flipped through a few pages; it was densely packed with diagrams: pipes, valves, furnace structures, parameter tables, and calculation formulas. He recognized some of the symbols, but had to guess others.

He lit a cigarette and started reading.

First, look at the table of contents. Second, look at the pictures. Third, match the text with the images. I read until 2 a.m., the ashtray was piled with seven or eight cigarette butts, and the tea in the ashtray got cold and I kept refilling it.

He Yushui got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw that the light was still on in his room, so she pushed the door open and came in.

"Brother, aren't you asleep yet?"

He Yuzhu looked up. She was standing in the doorway, wearing an old jacket, barefoot, and with messy hair.

"immediately."

He Yushui walked over, stood next to him, and looked at the pile of papers on the table.

"What is this?"

Technical information.

He Yushui couldn't understand the pictures, but she looked into his eyes. The dark circles under his eyes were even deeper than they had been a couple of days ago.

"Brother, your eyes are all bloodshot from staying up so late."

He Yuzhu rubbed his eyes.

"It's okay. Go to sleep."

He Yushui stood there without moving.

"Can't we look at it tomorrow?"

He Yuzhu thought for a moment.

"Okay. I'll go to sleep now."

He put the stack of papers away and returned them to the drawer. He Yushui watched him lie down before turning back.

The lights went out.

But he lay there with his eyes open in the darkness, those images still running through his mind.

On the fifth day, He Yuzhu cornered Yang Deming at the office door.

"Director Yang, there's something here, could you take a look?"

He handed over the proposal. Yang Deming took it, turned to the first page, and looked up at him.

"Did you write this?"

"Um."

Yang Deming continued flipping through the pages. He paused on the third page. On the fifth page, he put the proposal down, took out his reading glasses from the drawer, put them on, and started reading again from the beginning.

He Yuzhu stood to the side, waiting for him.

Yang Deming spent almost twenty minutes reading it. After finishing the last page, he put the plan down, took off his reading glasses, wiped the lenses with his sleeve, put them back on, and read the conclusion on the last page one more time. Then he looked up at He Yuzhu.

"Which expert did this?"

He Yuzhu did not answer.

Yang Deming looked down at the pile of papers again and tapped a page with his finger.

"I've seen Soviet documents on this process route, but they weren't this detailed. The 'top-blown oxygen' you mentioned is still in the experimental stage. Your solution has everything, from furnace structure to piping layout to thermal efficiency calculations. It's at least fifty years ahead of its time."

He raised his head.

"Where did you get this?"

He Yuzhu looked at him.

"When I was in Korea, I captured a batch of US military technical documents. After returning to China, I had them translated and compiled. This set of documents was modified based on those documents and combined with the actual situation of our factory."

Yang Deming remained silent.

After a while, he closed the plan.

"We'll have a technical meeting this afternoon. Call those key personnel together and have them give a presentation."

The afternoon meeting was held in the small conference room on the second floor.

There weren't many people, only seven or eight, all of them key technical personnel from the factory. The youngest was in his early thirties, and the oldest was almost sixty, with gray hair and wearing reading glasses, sitting silently in the corner.

He Yuzhu stood in front of the blackboard and drew the core diagrams from the plan.

He spoke slowly. First, he explained the principle, then the process route, then the equipment modification plan, and finally how much efficiency could be improved. Halfway through his explanation, someone in the audience raised their hand.

"Deputy Factory Director He, I've never seen this top-blown oxygen system before. We're currently using an open-hearth furnace, and the same process has been used for decades. If you suddenly change it and it goes wrong, and production stops, who will be responsible?"

He Yuzhu looked at him.

"What's your name?"

"Li Baotian, head of the technical department."

He Yuzhu nodded.

"Section Chief Li, that's a good question. If it's modified badly, who will be responsible? I will."

No one spoke.

Li Baotian pushed up his glasses, about to say something, when an old worker next to him tugged at him. But He Yuzhu noticed that the gray-haired old engineer in the corner remained silent, only tapping his knuckles on the table, his eyes fixed on the blueprints on the blackboard with a complex expression.

He Yuzhu continued speaking.

The first trial is scheduled for ten days later.

The furnace was a modified old one, the pipes were newly laid, and the oxygen cylinders were borrowed from the oxygen factory. Many people came to the factory that day—from the workshops and departments—even Yang Deming stood by watching.

He Yuzhu stood in front of the control panel, his hand on the valve.

"Turn on the oxygen."

The worker turned on the valve. Oxygen hissed and poured in, the sound shrill and piercing. The furnace began to glow, and the needle on the thermometer jumped upwards.

One thousand degrees, one thousand two, one thousand five.

He Yuzhu stared at the pointer, waiting for it to jump to 1800.

Suddenly, the furnace shook.

Before he could react, a ball of fire, orange-red and as high as a three-story building, shot out of the furnace. People nearby gasped and dodged, some falling, others shouting, "Turn off the oxygen! Turn off the oxygen!" He Yuzhu rushed over and tightened the valve, his hand stinging from the heat.

The fire slowly died down. The furnace was still humming, like something was rolling around inside.

Li Baotian squeezed out of the crowd, his face deathly pale.

"What did I say? What did I say? This thing won't do!"

Yang Deming stood to the side, his expression also grim. He looked at He Yuzhu but didn't say anything.

He Yuzhu ignored them. He walked to the furnace and squatted down to examine the weld.

It cracked.

The crowd gradually dispersed. He Yuzhu was still squatting there, touching the crack with his fingers. Yang Deming walked over, stood beside him for a while, and said, "Let's go back first and think of a solution slowly."

He Yuzhu nodded but did not get up.

When he got home that night, He Yushui was already asleep. He sat alone in the room for a long time, the blueprints spread out on the table, but he couldn't concentrate. The fire and the muffled thud from that afternoon kept replaying in his mind. He lit a cigarette, but after only a few puffs, the ash fell onto the blueprints. He quickly blew it off, only to find that the spot he blew off was right on the mark of that weld seam.

He remembered the old engineer's fingers tapping on the table in the corner, and Li Baotian's deathly pale face. Had they been waiting for this day all along?

The cigarette burned his finger, and he stubbed it out.

The second trial was conducted a month later.

During that month, He Yuzhu revised the plan five times, recalculated the furnace structure twice, and changed the material of the pipes to a higher grade. Li Baotian would always avoid him, but the old workers started following him around. One day, the gray-haired old engineer stopped him in the canteen and handed him a piece of paper covered with calculation formulas.

"I thought about something similar when I was young," the old engineer said. "Not as detailed as yours, but it might be useful in some situations."

He Yuzhu took the paper and looked at it for a long time.

Not many people were allowed to watch this experiment. Just Yang Deming, Li Baotian, and a few key personnel.

He Yuzhu stood in front of the control panel, his hand on the valve.

"Turn on the oxygen."

Oxygen hissed as it was poured in. The furnace began to glow. The thermometer jumped upwards.

One thousand, one thousand two hundred, one thousand five hundred, one thousand eight hundred.

There was no earthquake.

two thousand.

The light inside the furnace grew brighter and brighter, almost blindingly so. The molten steel churned and bubbled inside, like porridge boiling in a pot.

The operator stared at the sampling port, waited for a few minutes, and then waved his hand.

"sampling!"

The molten steel was scooped out and poured into a mold. After cooling and solidifying, it was placed on an inspection table.

Li Baotian leaned closer and examined the piece of steel with a magnifying glass. After staring at it for several seconds, he looked up, his expression as if he had seen a ghost.

"The impurity content is more than half that of an open-hearth furnace."

Yang Deming walked over, picked up the piece of steel, and weighed it in his hand. He then took out a piece of steel made using the old process from his pocket, and placed the two pieces side by side on the table for everyone to see. The old piece had a rough, sandy surface; the new piece had a fine, silvery surface.

"How long does it take to process one batch?"

The operator glanced at his watch.

"Forty minutes."

"What about the open-hearth furnace?"

Four hours.

Yang Deming put the piece of steel back on the table. He looked at He Yuzhu for a long time.

"You're... ten times more efficient?"

He Yuzhu didn't say anything.

The room was silent for a few seconds.

Then the older workers started clapping. Li Baotian stood there, his expression shifting repeatedly, and finally clapped twice as well. But the applause was sparse, as if everyone was carrying something on their mind.

That evening, He Yuzhu was organizing the experimental data in his office.

The window was open, and the evening breeze blew in, making the papers on the table rustle. He stood up, intending to close the window a little, and saw a letter on the windowsill.

There was no stamp, no address, just one line of text: For Deputy Factory Director He.

He picked it up and opened it.

The letter contained only one line of text, handwritten:

"Mind your own business."

He Yuzhu turned the letter over and looked at it; there was nothing on the back. He folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

The voice in my head rang.

Side Mission 2: Technical Challenge Completed

[Mission Reward Points: +3,000,000]

[Points consumed: -1,500,000]

[Current total points: 45,090,000 + 2,000,000 - 1,500,000 = 45,590,000 points]

He glanced at the string of numbers but didn't think much of it.

Outside the window, the factory lights were still on, and the chimneys were still belching smoke.

The letter was in his pocket; it wasn't thick, but it felt a bit heavy. He remembered the piece of paper the old engineer had handed him, the evasive look in Li Baotian's eyes when he clapped, and the worried look on He Yushui's face when she woke up in the middle of the night to see him staying up all night.

He reached into his pocket, touched the corner of the letter, but didn't take it out again.

The night sky in the distance was dark and gloomy, and the firelight from the steel furnace was reflected under the clouds, flickering on and off.