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

Steelmaking workshop.

The heat was intense, and the air was thick with the acrid smells of sulfur and coke. The enormous open-hearth furnace, like a roaring beast, devoured ore and scrap steel, spewing out molten iron.

But at this moment, the atmosphere in the workshop was freezing cold.

"The eighteenth experiment...failed."

With a trembling voice from the inspector, a piece of steel plate that had just cooled down was slammed heavily to the ground. In the center of the steel plate, a gruesome bullet hole was a shocking sight—the mark of a simulated armor-piercing bullet that had penetrated it directly.

"More scrap metal! More scrap metal!"

A middle-aged man in an old military uniform slammed his hat to the ground, his eyes red-rimmed. He was Zhao Gang, the military representative stationed at the factory.

"Comrades! The soldiers at the front are waiting for our new tanks! But look at the steel plates we've made—they're like paper! Installing these things is just sending our soldiers to their deaths!"

Zhao Gang's voice was hoarse and filled with despair.

The technicians around him all lowered their heads, not daring to utter a sound.

Since the Soviet experts withdrew, they took with them the core formula for special armor steel. Domestic technological capabilities have consistently been unable to solve the problem of high sulfur content in domestically produced ore, which leads to high brittleness in the steel.

"Representative Zhao, we have done our best..." the workshop director said with a bitter face. "Our ore grade is just like this. Without the Soviets' 'desulfurizing agent,' even a god couldn't make high-grade steel."

"So we're just going to watch our soldiers bleed?" Zhao Gang roared.

Just then, two figures walked into the workshop.

The young man walking in front was dressed in work clothes and had a calm expression; the young woman following behind him was carrying a stack of documents and had a cool and aloof demeanor.

It was Su Zheng and Ye Xinyi.

"Who says you can't make good steel without the Soviet formula?"

Su Zheng's voice pierced through the noisy machinery and reached everyone's ears clearly.

Zhao Gang turned around abruptly and saw Su Zheng. A glimmer of hope flashed in his eyes, but it quickly faded. "Advisor Su, I know you're a genius in mechanics, but steelmaking... that's a matter of chemistry and materials science. It's a problem I was born with. What if the ore isn't good?"

Su Zheng did not answer.

He walked straight to the piece of scrap steel that had been pierced, squatted down, and gently stroked the broken edge with his fingers.

The Eye of Truth is opened.

The door to the microscopic world opened before him.

What appears to be incredibly hard steel to the average person has now transformed into a loose crystalline structure. Between these lattices, countless black impurities act like cracks, severing the bonds between the metal.

"The manganese sulfide inclusions are seriously excessive," Su Zheng said calmly. "Moreover, the grains are coarse and the stress is concentrated. This kind of steel, let alone armor-piercing bullets, can be cracked even by hitting it with a sledgehammer."

"Yes, yes, that's it! That's the problem!" The workshop foreman exclaimed, as if he had found a kindred spirit. "But how do we solve it? We've tried increasing the amount of lime added and raising the furnace temperature, but nothing works!"

Su Zheng stood up and patted the iron filings off his hands.

He turned to look at Ye Xinyi behind him.

"Dr. Ye, if you were cooking a pot of soup and found that the ingredients weren't fresh and had an off-putting smell, what would you do?"

Ye Xinyi paused for a moment, then pushed up her goggles and smiled knowingly.

"Then add some MSG."

"clever."

Su Zheng snapped his fingers. "Representative Zhao, is there a batch of 'waste soil' transported from Baotou in the warehouse? The one piled up in the corner."

Zhao Gang thought for a moment: "Yes, there was such a batch. The exploration team thought it was iron ore, but when they brought it back, they found that it couldn't be smelted into iron; it was all slag, so they just left it there. What, you want to use it?"

"That's not wasteland."

A glint of fanaticism flashed in Su Zheng's eyes. "That's the vitamin of industry, a gift from God to China—rare earth elements."

……

Half an hour later.

In front of the open hearth.

Su Zheng stood in front of the workbench, holding a freshly written ingredient list in his hand.

"Lanium oxide, cerium oxide... are mixed in proportion and added to the furnace charge."

The veteran workers around looked at each other in disbelief. Adding "soil" to a steel furnace? That was unheard of.

"Listen to Consultant Su!" Zhao Gang roared through gritted teeth. "We'll try anything, even if it's a last resort! I'll take responsibility if anything goes wrong!"

Scoops of grayish-brown "waste soil" were sent into the boiling molten steel.

Su Zheng stared intently at the raging flames inside the furnace.

The Eye of Truth monitors the chemical reactions inside the furnace in real time.

With the addition of rare earth elements, the originally turbid molten steel began to undergo a remarkable transformation. The stubborn sulfur and phosphorus impurities, under the adsorption of rare earth ions, transformed into high-melting-point compounds and floated to the surface.

Even more amazingly, the originally coarse iron atom lattice seemed to be compressed and refined by some force, becoming dense and orderly.

"Temperature 1650 degrees! Hold it!"

Su Zheng shouted loudly.

Ye Xinyi stood beside him, holding a stopwatch, and precisely counted down: "Thirty seconds to go... twenty seconds... slag remover ready!"

The two worked together as if performing a delicate surgical procedure. Su Zheng was the lead surgeon, and Ye Xinyi was the perfect scrub nurse.

Every instruction and every action was executed flawlessly.

"Produce steel!"

With Su Zheng's command, the steel tapping spout opened.

The golden-red molten steel roared into the mold like a fiery dragon. Sparks flew, reflecting off the faces of the two men.

Su Zheng stared at the molten steel, his eyes reflecting the flames.

People of that era were unaware that the land beneath their feet possessed the world's richest rare earth resources. In later generations, this would become the secret weapon that made China's steel industry unparalleled—rare earth steel.

……

Two hours later.

range.

The wind howled.

A brand-new steel plate was erected on the test stand. It looked no different from the previous one, except that its surface had a deep, dark blue sheen.

500 meters away.

An 85mm cannon stands proudly.

"One armor-piercing round loaded!"

"put!"

boom!

The earth trembled.

An armor-piercing discarding sabot round, accompanied by a piercing whistle, struck the steel plate at a speed of 1000 meters per second.

Everyone instinctively closed their eyes.

Zhao Gang's heart was in his throat. He silently chanted to himself: I must hold on! I must hold on!

When the smoke clears.

Zhao Gang was the first to rush out. He ran so fast that he didn't even realize his shoe had fallen off.

He rushed to the steel plate and froze instantly.

There is no hole.

There are no cracks.

In the center of that steel plate, there was only a shallow, white dent, as if someone had pressed it with their finger.

The armor-piercing projectile, powerful enough to penetrate a Soviet T-34 tank, had shattered into several pieces and was scattered on the ground.

"this……"

Zhao Gang reached out his hand, trembling, and touched the white spot.

The steel plate was scorching hot, burning the skin on his hands, but he seemed not to feel any pain.

"Not wearing anything? Not wearing anything?!"

Zhao Gang suddenly turned around and looked at Su Zheng, who was walking slowly towards him. Tears streamed down his face.

"It didn't penetrate! Consultant Su! We succeeded!"

"Our tanks have bones now!!"

At this moment, this man who shed blood but not tears on the battlefield cried like a child.

The technicians and workers around them went crazy. Some threw their hats into the air, some buried their heads in their hands and wept, and some knelt on the ground and kissed the steel plate.

In this blockaded land, every technological breakthrough meant that the lives of countless soldiers were protected, and that the backbone of this country was strengthened a little more.

Ye Xinyi stood outside the crowd, watching Su Zheng surrounded by people in the middle.

The man wore a faint smile, as if all of this was within his expectations.

"Industrial vitamins..." Ye Xinyi murmured softly, her eyes gleaming with thought. "How did you know there were rare earth elements in those 'wastelands'? And how did you determine the proportions?"

She could see through this man less and less.

He is like a huge mystery; just when you think you've seen a part of him, he reveals an even more amazing side.

But the more mysterious he was, the more he attracted her to explore and follow him.

Su Zheng seemed to sense her gaze, turned his head, and winked at her.

The mouth shape reads: Secret.

That evening, a top-secret telegram was sent from Base 001 to Beijing.

The telegram contained only one sentence:

[Special rare earth armor steel has been successfully trial-produced, codenamed "Black Tortoise," and immediate deployment is recommended.]

However, Su Zheng was absent from the celebration banquet at the base.

He and Ye Xinyi were hiding in the laboratory, studying the shattered armor-piercing projectile.

"The spear we have now is no good," Su Zheng said, toying with the bullet fragments. "Now that we have the strongest shield, shouldn't we also get an even sharper spear?"

Ye Xinyi looked at him, a slight smile playing on her lips: "You mean... depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds?"

Su Zheng smiled.

Talking to smart people is so much easier.

"But before that," Su Zheng pointed out the window, "I have to take care of some personal matters first."

"Personal matters?"

"A letter has arrived from the courtyard house."

Su Zheng's eyes turned slightly cold. "My good apprentice Zhao Ming said that someone is trying to take advantage of my family's wealth while I'm away."

"It seems the lesson I taught them before I left wasn't profound enough."