Courtyard House: Starting as a mediocre engineer

A month later.

At Mi Cuicui's house, the little girl was galloping wildly on her horse, seemingly "gritting her teeth." She appeared particularly excited tonight...

"Chenzi, I like you so much, do you know that?"

"hehe."

"Good brother, from now on I'll be the factory's statistician! Hehehe."

"Hehe. By the way, I heard you're planning to set up a new peeler production team?"

"Yes! They just hired over 30 new people, so they put me in the office as a manager. Hehe."

Well! It was just that Zhuang Zhongchen casually mentioned it when he met Niu Kesi, and that's how Mi Cuicui was promoted to statistician. Actually, the organizational structure of the large collective didn't change at all. It's just that in the eyes of ordinary people, those who sit in offices are generally leaders?

Curled up in Zhuang Zhongchen's arms, Mi Cuicui drew circles on his chest: "I'm asking you. I've saved up another 25 yuan."

"I'll scrape together 50 yuan for you to pay back Da Chan's colleague first. Next month, I'll try to find a way to pay back Da Chan's relative a few dozen yuan. Then we can have a few more months of peace and quiet."

"Mmm." Mi Cuicui closed her eyes contentedly, quietly listening to Zhuang Zhongchen's heartbeat.

With the substantial income from his writing fees, Zhuang Zhongchen has paid off all the debts owed to his colleagues at work. Currently, apart from the 160 yuan owed to the labor union, Zhuang Zhongchen has been cleared of all wrongdoing at the labor bureau.

To be honest, maintaining a clean reputation is extremely important. In interactions with colleagues, it's best to only discuss work and never involve any financial transactions.

The next phase will primarily focus on paying off the debts owed to Dachan. We'll also take the opportunity to pay off the debts incurred within the Siheyuan (courtyard house).

That said, with the publication of translated papers one after another, the gains over the past few months have been quite substantial, accumulating 32 skill points. This includes 4 skill points from the peeler.

In addition to good deeds and life-changing experiences, I've now accumulated seven shopping vouchers. And that doesn't even include the expenses I've spent feeding Qin Huairu and Mi Cuicui these days.

After checking the system, I found that [Level: Fourth Layer (5320/100000)]

Furthermore, once the fourth level is reached, the system can be upgraded again. After considering for a while, Zhuang Zhongchen did not choose to upgrade the intelligence center, but instead prioritized opening the skill shop.

The next upgrade will require 100,000 points. Following this pattern, will the next upgrade require a million points? Who knows when that will happen? It's better to increase your skills and build a solid foundation.

However, at that moment, Zhuang Zhongchen suddenly pricked up his ears, listening to the sounds outside. He heard several faint footsteps approaching; they passed Mi Cuicui's house and quickly walked further and further away…

"What's wrong, Chenzi?" Mi Cuicui raised her little head curiously.

"It's nothing, it's nothing." Zhuang Zhongchen chuckled. Perhaps he was just a passerby who happened to be passing by at night, and it wasn't someone coming to catch him in the act of adultery at all.

Come to think of it, is it possible that my sharp hearing and eyesight are just for preventing being caught cheating? That's just too bizarre!

Nothing much to say. Without considering any other options, Zhuang Zhongchen directly spent 30 skill points to purchase Fighting Level 0. He then spent another skill point to upgrade Fighting Level 0 to Level 1.

Let's take this absurdity to the extreme! I don't expect the fighting to be of much use, at least I can manage to escape by climbing over the wall with my pants down. Holy crap!

In the early hours of the morning, Zhuang Zhongchen, pulling up his pants, scaled the wall back home, feeling noticeably more agile. Could it be that he had the potential to be a womanizer? Pshaw!

However, Zhuang Zhongchen was woken up early in the morning by a pretty widow.

"Hey Chenzi, you happened to be out yesterday, and Director Wang from the neighborhood committee came to our courtyard for a meeting to praise you. He said you, along with Uncle Yi and Uncle Er, had worked together on technological innovation and developed a new product for the neighborhood factory?"

"Is that so?" Zhuang Zhongchen yawned and carried Qin Huairu to the kang (a heated brick bed). She was already showing, and her round belly looked particularly amusing.

Grabbing Zhuang Zhongchen's stinky paw, Qin Huairu said angrily, "But later they all fawned over the First Uncle and the Second Uncle, and didn't mention you at all. That's too biased! You deserve credit for your hard work, even if you didn't achieve anything! Humph."

"Pfft!" Zhuang Zhongchen was amused. He hadn't expected Qin Huairu to still care about him. However, in the eyes of outsiders, Yi Zhonghai and Liu Haizhong certainly deserved more credit. As for him, he had only "drawn a few blueprints," what credit could he possibly have?

"By the way, I heard the neighborhood committee also gave out red envelopes. 50 yuan per person. Do you have any?"

"That's a consultant's allowance. I, as a government employee, can't accept it."

"Tch, aren't you at a huge disadvantage?"

"hehe."

In those days, seeking help from technicians in other organizations would also earn an individual a stipend; there was absolutely no such thing as helping for free. Even for steel rolling mills making molds, the street factories would pay a mold fee. This was considered extra income for the steel rolling mills, and Yi Zhonghai and his colleagues would receive a small bonus on top of that.

Of course, connections are essential. Otherwise, even if you offered money and begged, the steel mill wouldn't even give you a second glance. So, in this case, Yi Zhonghai and Liu Haizhong truly did a great favor.

On the contrary, government employees like Zhuang Zhongchen are similar to later civil servants. Apart from income from intellectual property rights such as royalties and patent fees, they are not allowed to take on any other part-time jobs, not even driving for Didi Chuxing.

Of course, this refers to cash rewards, which are absolutely not allowed. As for other indirect rewards, that's more flexible.

That said, Zhuang Zhongchen didn't really care about the peeler. He could have as many of these insignificant little inventions as he wanted, and if he gave them away, so be it; he didn't think much of them.

To put it bluntly, the backwardness of this period was comprehensive. In almost any field, a time-traveling genius could easily achieve a breakthrough. It was simply a matter of whether it was a major breakthrough or a minor one.

If we really want to do something, we should do something meaningful.

It's like building a car. I'm not exaggerating at all. Even with the simple, basic models of vehicles from this era, given the necessary machinery and enough materials, Zhuang Zhongchen, along with Yi Zhonghai and Liu Haizhong—just the three of them—could easily handcraft one. Indeed, that includes the engine and transmission; they could certainly do it by hand.

But is this approach meaningful? It's nothing more than handcrafting a "big toy," which might attract attention and make people squeal with delight.

However, only by building a car factory with an annual production capacity of tens of thousands of vehicles and perfecting the entire upstream and downstream industrial chain can the industrialization of the automotive industry be achieved. This is of great significance to the country!

Let's not even talk about complicated things like cars, let's just talk about the simplest thing in the industrial field: pig iron!

At that time, pig iron cost 100 yuan per ton! Based on comparable prices, that's equivalent to tens of thousands of yuan per ton later? Tens of thousands of yuan? One ton of pig iron? The price of pig iron was actually higher than that of stainless steel?

So let's not dream too much and let's bring down the price of pig iron first!