Courtyard House: A Major Power's Heavy Industry, Hand-Crafted Nuclear Fusion

Inside Laboratory 001, the heavy soundproof door was once again tightly closed.

With a "click," Su Zheng locked the door and casually hung up a "Do Not Disturb" sign.

The sound of the lock closing seemed to shut the whole world out, leaving only the smell of engine oil and the well-prepared dry food and water.

Inside the laboratory, Zhao Ming stared at the large sheet of white paper his master had spread out on the drafting table, swallowed hard, and his voice trembled slightly:

"Master, are we really going to make guns? This is a matter of life and death... Although you have a gun license, the qualifications for making guns... Our factory is a steel rolling mill, not an arms factory."

"Don't worry, Minister Liu already told me to manufacture guns."

Su Zheng picked up a pencil, not even looking up, his gaze focused as if he were sculpting a work of art.

"Furthermore, to correct you, we're not creating, we're 'modifying.' We're transforming that master of outlining into a divine weapon capable of hitting the bullseye from a hundred paces away."

Zhao Ming stopped speaking, his eyes fixed intently on the lines Su Zheng was drawing.

This time, Su Zheng drew not a machine tool, but a gun.

At first, Zhao Ming could still make out that the outline looked a bit like the "Type 56 semi-automatic rifle" that had just been issued to the troops.

But as Su Zheng's writing style wandered, more and more details began to become unfamiliar and seemed somewhat "science fiction," completely beyond Zhao Ming's comprehension.

The stock is no longer made of heavy solid wood, but instead uses a lightweight, hollowed-out structure.

Su Zheng drew inspiration from the polymer stock design of later generations, but due to material limitations, he cleverly designed a high-strength aluminum alloy frame, wrapped with walnut wood to ensure a comfortable grip.

The barrel is longer than that of the ordinary Type 56 rifle, and it adopts a floating design.

The handguard is completely separated from the barrel with no contact points, which completely avoids the influence of the handguard on the barrel vibration during firing, ensuring the ultimate stability of accuracy.

What Zhao Ming couldn't understand the most was the serrated guide rail above the casing—it was the prototype of the Picatinny rail.

And next to it, Su Zhengzheng drew a cylindrical object separately—a high-magnification optical sight.

"Master, this gun... it looks strange. It has so many sharp edges, unlike the rounded guns we've seen before."

"This is called a 'marksman rifle'."

Su Zheng blew away the eraser shavings from the paper, his eyes sharp as knives:

"The standard Type 56 rifle has an effective range of 400 meters. The one I'm building is designed to shoot off the enemy's button from 800 meters away. At that distance, roundness won't save you; only precision matters."

"800 meters?!"

Zhao Ming was so shocked that his jaw almost dropped.

Nowadays, a sharpshooter who can hit a target at 400 meters is already considered a top soldier. 800 meters is the range of an artillery piece, isn't it?

"Stop talking nonsense and get to work."

Su Zheng slammed the blueprints on the wall and rolled up his sleeves: "First step, make the gun barrel. This is the heart."

However, the real difficulties have only just begun.

Manufacturing high-precision gun barrels requires specialized deep-hole drills and rifling broaching machines.

Although Laboratory 001 has a lot of equipment, it is missing these two things.

After all, this is a steel rolling mill laboratory, not a military factory production line.

"Master, we don't have the equipment..."

Looking at the rows of special steel bars, Zhao Ming scratched his head in frustration, "How are we going to drill these deep holes? How are we going to rifling them? We can't just pry them open with our hands, can we?"

Su Zheng looked at the steel bars that gleamed coldly, sneered, and a crazed glint flashed in his eyes:

"No equipment? Then we'll make it by hand! Our ancestors could hammer cannons, so why can't we make a gun by hand?"

……

Late at night.

The Hongxing Steel Rolling Mill was shrouded in a deathly silence, with only the occasional chirping of insects.

But outside Laboratory 001, a dark figure moved slowly along the wall like a ghost.

That was another subordinate of "Groundhog," codenamed "Night Owl."

Since that idiot Xu Damao failed, the enemy intelligence organization has not given up. On the contrary, they are even more curious about this mysterious laboratory.

They wanted to know what Su Zheng, who had alarmed even the top leaders, was up to.

The "night owl" held his breath and cautiously approached the ventilation opening two meters above the ground at the back of the laboratory.

He pulled out a stethoscope-like object from his pocket, stuck it against the wall, and tried to hear what was happening inside.

However, the walls were too thick, and Su Zheng had done professional soundproofing, so he couldn't hear anything.

He was somewhat unwilling to give up, so he tried to climb onto the windowsill again.

But as soon as they peeked out, they found that the window was completely covered by a thick black cloth, and not a single ray of light could get through.

Only the occasional glimpse of welding arc light leaking through the gaps in the curtains appeared particularly glaring in the darkness.

"Damn, it's like an iron barrel."

"Night Owl" cursed under his breath.

He staked out for three hours, but apart from occasionally seeing Zhao Ming come out to empty a basin of murky wastewater, he didn't get any information.

But he could sense that something terrible was brewing in that room.

The suppressed, continuous, low-pitched metallic scraping sound was like a monster grinding its teeth, sending chills down one's spine.

Just then, the beams of flashlights from a patrol team swept over from afar.

The "night owl" shrank its neck in fright and quickly, like a real cat, silently slipped into the darkness and disappeared.

……

Inside the laboratory, nobody cared about being spied on from the outside.

The air here is so hot it's suffocating.

"Go in! Hold on!"

Su Zheng's voice was hoarse and stern.

Lacking a deep hole drill, Su Zheng designed a simple drilling fixture, which he fixed on a regular lathe.

But the hardest part wasn't drilling, it was rifling.

Rifling is a delicate process that requires precision down to the micrometer level.

Even with a professional rifling machine, the slightest vibration can cause uneven rifling, rendering the entire barrel unusable.

Now, Su is about to take on an impossible task—single-point cutting.

Using the newly built miniature grinder, he spent most of the day grinding out a strangely shaped, high-hardness alloy tool holder.

The blade is extremely small, like a diamond set in a steel needle.

"What is this?"

Zhao Ming looked at the inconspicuous little thing.

"These are our 'hands'."

Su Zheng squinted, feeling the sharpness of the blade with his fingertips. "Since we don't have a lathe, we'll use a regular lathe with this to slowly 'carve out' the rifling."

This is absolutely insane.

Su Zheng stood in front of the lathe, his hands gripping the feed handwheel tightly.

His eyes—those eyes that had opened the "Eyes of Truth"—were now radiating a deep blue light.

On his retina, the world inside the gun barrel was magnified ten thousand times.

The ordinary inner wall of the steel pipe appeared to him as undulating mountains.

What he had to do was to carve out six incredibly precise spiral river channels in these mountains.

"Feed 0.01 mm...Return...Rotation 3.6 degrees..."

Su Zheng muttered the dry, tedious data to himself.

His hands were as steady as a hydraulic clamp welded to its base.

Each cut only removes a tiny iron shaving, thinner than a hair.

Six rifling grooves, each requiring hundreds of cuts.

Every cut must be performed with absolute consistency in force, speed, and angle.

This kind of intense mental concentration is terrifyingly taxing on a person.

Sweat streamed down Su Zheng's forehead and into his eyes, stinging painfully.

But he didn't even dare to blink.

Because if you blink, your hand might shake.

If your hand shakes, the gun barrel is ruined.

Zhao Ming was in charge of adding coolant.

Looking at his master's deathly pale face and bloodshot eyes, he felt a pang of heartache and tears streamed down his face. "Master, rest for a while... it's been ten hours..."

"Shut up."

Su Zheng's voice was cold and hard as iron: "The barrel is heating up. Stop now, as thermal expansion and contraction will cause inaccuracies. Continue adding fluid!"

A full twenty hours.

Su Zheng stood like a sculpture, maintaining that pose as if he had become one with the machine.

When the final cut was made, Su Zheng's fingers were so stiff that he could not straighten them.

He trembled as he pulled out the knife handle and held the gun barrel up to the light.

At that moment, Zhao Ming leaned over to take a look and immediately gasped, goosebumps rising all over his body.

Inside the deep barrel, six rifling grooves, smooth as a mirror, rotate and extend into the distance, presenting a mesmerizing geometric beauty.

The light refracts inside, creating the illusion of a spiral passage leading to hell.

"Perfect……"

Zhao Ming muttered to himself, "This precision is even brighter than a German microscope."

Solving the gun barrel problem was only the first step in a long journey.

Next comes the bolt, trigger assembly, and then the most difficult part—the optical sight.

Since there were no readily available high-strength springs, Su Zheng found piano wire and made his own.

To control the rebound force, he used a traditional oil quenching method, and for each quenching, he would use his "eye of truth" to watch the color of the flame, precisely measuring the temperature difference down to every degree.

Lacking optical lenses, Su Zheng found several pieces of high-purity crystal glass blanks.

"What if we don't have a grinder?"

Zhao Ming looked at the pile of glass lumps with a troubled expression.

"With your hands."

Su Zheng found some diamond powder and polishing powder and mixed them into a paste.

He sat at the workbench, pressed the glass blank onto the cast iron grinding disc, and began grinding round and round.

"Shh...shh..."

The sound was monotonous and dull, yet it lasted for two whole days and two nights.

Su Zheng's palms were rubbed raw, and his fingerprints were almost worn away.

But he kept working on it.

Su Zheng's perception had extended to his fingertips.

Every micron-sized protrusion on the glass surface looked like a small mountain in his hands.

What he has to do is flatten these mountains and grind out perfect aspherical lenses.

Zhao Ming was so exhausted that he collapsed in the corner and fell asleep three times.

Every time I wake up, under the dim light, that figure is still there.

The figure wasn't tall, but in Zhao Ming's eyes, it looked like a towering mountain.

"Master...is it worth it?"

Zhao Ming asked, still a little dazed, "Isn't it just a gun?"

Su Zheng stopped what he was doing, picked up the newly ground lens, and looked at it under the light.

The lenses were so clear and flawless that it was as if air itself didn't exist.

"Zhao Ming, remember this."

Although Su Zheng's voice was weary, it possessed a powerful and moving quality:

"We are not making guns, we are making dignity. In this world, dignity exists only on the edge of a sword, and truth exists only within the range of a cannon. Every drop of sweat we shed means one less drop of blood our soldiers will shed on the battlefield."

Zhao Ming was shocked. At that moment, he suddenly understood his master's persistence.

……

On the morning of the fourth day.

A faint ray of dawn shone through the window at the end of the corridor.

Chief Wang of the security department walked around the corridor countless times with his hands behind his back, like a donkey pulling a millstone, until the floor tiles were almost worn smooth from his wear.

"It's been four days already, and there's still no sign of anything?"

Section Chief Wang stared at the tightly closed door, his heart pounding with anxiety, and his eyes were dark-rimmed.

"I hope Su Gong isn't in any trouble. What if he collapsed inside from exhaustion?"

"Damn it, these researchers, when they get a breakthrough, it's always the same old story—they never give us a moment's peace!"

The more Section Chief Wang thought about it, the more anxious he became.

"What if it explodes? What if I get poisoned?"

Just then.

"Click".

A crisp metallic clang suddenly rang out from inside the laboratory.

The sound wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the quiet morning.

It wasn't the noise of a machine roaring, but a pleasant, crisp sound, full of mechanical rhythm, similar to the snapping of a precision clock.

Immediately afterwards, the lock on the laboratory door, which had been silent for three days and three nights, was moved.

The door slowly opened.

A strong smell of engine oil, metal shavings, and a strong tobacco odor wafted over, causing Section Chief Wang to cough twice.

Section Chief Wang quickly went to greet him.

Su Zheng was standing at the door.

His eyes were bloodshot, his beard was unshaven, and his once clean work clothes were now covered in black oil stains and metal powder. His hands were wrapped in several blood-soaked bandages.

She looked extremely haggard, as if a gust of wind could blow her over.

But Su Zheng stood there, like a sharp sword drawn from its sheath, its edge fully revealed.

In his hand, he held a strangely shaped rifle.

All black, with a slender barrel and a hollowed-out stock that exudes industrial beauty, the large optical sight mounted on the gun body resembles a crouching black eagle.

The overwhelming murderous aura made even Wang, a veteran reconnaissance soldier, take a half step back.

"Su... Engineer Su?"

Section Chief Wang called out tentatively, his voice trembling slightly.

Su Zheng raised his head, grinned, revealing a set of white teeth through his chapped lips.

That smile held three parts weariness and seven parts arrogance.

With a flick of his wrist, he gently tossed the gun in his hand to Section Chief Wang.

"then."

Section Chief Wang hurriedly caught it; it felt heavy in his hand, and the solid texture gave him a jolt.

Su Zheng leaned against the door frame, took out a crumpled cigarette from his pocket, but found that his hand was shaking so badly that he couldn't light it.

Section Chief Wang quickly stepped forward to light it for him.

Su Zheng took a deep breath, exhaled a long smoke ring, pointed at the gun, and said calmly:

"Take it."

"Let's see if we can shoot down the eagle in the sky."