Courtyard House: From Deputy Division Commander to Civilian, Progressing All the Way

Standing below the stage were more than one hundred senior technical workers selected from across the factory.

There are only twenty spots available.

This is a brutal battle without the smoke of gunpowder.

"First batch, get to your workstations."

With a command from the assessment team leader.

Jia Dongxu, sandwiched in the crowd, walked shakily to his workbench, his legs feeling like lead.

His palms were covered in cold sweat, so slippery that he could barely hold the file.

On the workbench, there was a blueprint and a piece of unpolished high-carbon steel blank.

Jia Dongxu looked down at the blueprints, and his mind went blank for a moment.

The tolerance range marked on the drawing was accurate to the micrometer level! Moreover, the dense Russian annotations and complex geometric structures on it were like a foreign language to him, a third-level worker who barely made ends meet and hadn't even mastered basic drafting!

"How... how do I file this..."

Jia Dongxu swallowed hard, glancing furtively at Lin Yang sitting in the examiner's seat.

Lin Yang was holding an enamel teacup and didn't even glance at him. That complete disregard was more despairing than being verbally abused.

Time passed by, and the workers around them began to skillfully fix the workpieces. The workshop was filled with the teeth-grinding "click-clack" sound of files rubbing against metal.

Jia Dongxu panicked. He remembered the greedy look in his mother Jia Zhangshi's eyes before he left home, and the special allowance of five catties of pork per month. He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, picked up a file, and started haphazardly filing at the high-carbon steel blank.

"Sizzle—"

The file slipped and cut a deep gash directly into the surface of the blank!

This expensive special steel billet was instantly rendered unusable!

"Stop!"

An expert from the Second Ministry of Machine Building suddenly stood up, strode over to Jia Dongxu's workstation, glanced down at the disfigured blank, and was so angry that his beard stood on end.

"Nonsense! You don't even have the most basic fitter's touch! Can you even read blueprints? Have you even calculated tolerances and allowances? This is utter nonsense!"

The expert waved his hand angrily: "Eliminate him! Take him out! Don't waste the country's valuable resources here!"

Jia Dongxu's face turned deathly pale, and the file in his hand clattered to the ground.

"Commander! Expert! Please give me another chance! I just slipped, I can do it right!" Jia Dongxu knelt down on the ground with a thud and wailed without regard for his image.

"Take it out."

Lin Yang sat in the examiner's seat, not even lifting his eyelids, and coldly uttered three words.

Two security officers rushed up like wolves, grabbed Jia Dongxu's arms on either side, and dragged him out of the workshop like a dead dog.

Jia Dongxu's cries came to an abrupt halt outside the workshop.

This scene sent a chill down the spines of all the workers present who were undergoing the assessment. The brutality of the assessment far exceeded their expectations.

Next, it was the forging group's turn for assessment.

Liu Haizhong, heavily pregnant, walked to the pneumatic hammer control panel.

Although he was a seventh-level blacksmith, in recent years he had focused all his attention on how to become an official and how to scheme against others, and his skills had long since become rusty. In addition, his physical strength had seriously declined due to years of being lazy and gluttonous.

The assessment task was to forge a complex, irregular gear shaft blank, requiring perfect control of the heating temperature and force.

Liu Haizhong used tongs to hold the red-hot steel ingot and placed it on the anvil.

He swung the sledgehammer, wanting to demonstrate his level seven craftsman skills.

However, the force of the first hammer blow went astray.

The red-hot steel ingot slid slightly across the anvil, and its shape instantly changed.

Liu Hai panicked. Cold sweat rolled down his fat cheeks and into his eyes, stinging them so much that he couldn't open them.

He quickly adjusted his posture, trying to salvage the situation. But with each fall of the sledgehammer, his breathing became increasingly heavy, and the muscles in his arms began to tremble violently due to lack of exercise.

In less than ten minutes, Liu Haizhong was panting heavily and drenched in sweat.

"when!"

With the final hammer blow, the steel ingot's temperature had dropped, turning it into a deformed lump of scrap iron.

Soviet expert Ivanov stepped forward, took out calipers, measured it, and shook his head mercilessly, saying in broken Chinese, "Unqualified. The force control is a complete mess, and the dimensional error exceeds ten millimeters. This is your seventh-grade worker? Extremely disappointing."

Liu Haizhong's vision went black, his legs went weak, and he almost collapsed to the ground.

He gasped for breath, staring despairingly at the piece of scrap metal. He knew that his pipe dream of becoming a cadre in the Northwest had been utterly shattered by that single blow.

"Next." The assessment team leader's cold voice rang out again.

Finally, it was Yi Zhonghai's turn.

As one of the few level-eight fitters in the steel rolling mill, Yi Zhonghai was originally considered by everyone to be the most promising candidate to pass the assessment.

He walked to his workstation, took a deep breath, and tried to calm himself down.

Picking up the blueprints, Yi Zhonghai's eyes narrowed slightly.

He was, after all, a level eight worker, and although the blueprints were complex, he could understand most of them. He skillfully secured the workpiece, picked up a file, and began fine polishing.

"Shh, shh, shh."

The file moved smoothly across the metal surface, its movements practiced and steady.

It must be said that Yi Zhonghai does indeed have a solid technical foundation.

Just as the workpiece was about to complete the final micron-level grinding.

Lin Yang stood up from the examiner's seat, put his hands behind his back, and walked slowly to Yi Zhonghai's workstation.

Lin Yang didn't speak, but just stood there quietly, his deep and cold gaze fixed on Yi Zhonghai's hands.

It was that gaze.

It was like an invisible mountain that instantly pressed down on Yi Zhonghai's spine!

In Yi Zhonghai's mind, the terrifying killing intent that Lin Yang had unleashed like a god of death at the entrance of the courtyard a few days ago uncontrollably surfaced.

He remembered Lin Yang pointing his finger at him and calling him "a piece of trash whose heart is rotten to the core."

An uncontrollable fear surged wildly from the deepest part of Yi Zhonghai's heart.

His breathing became erratic.

His heart started racing.

Most fatally, his old hands, which should have been as steady as a mountain, began to tremble uncontrollably as they gripped the file!

In this kind of micron-level precision machining, even an incorrect breathing frequency can cause tolerances to be exceeded. Let alone a shaky hand!

"Sizzle!"

A very faint, unusual sound.

The file cut in 0.05 millimeters more than intended at the edge of the workpiece.

Yi Zhonghai froze instantly.

Cold sweat instantly soaked the back of his shirt.

He closed his eyes in despair.

Lin Yang picked up the micrometer on the table, clamped it onto the workpiece, and glanced at the scale.

"Tolerances exceeded, product is scrap."

Lin Yang's voice was completely calm, as if he were pronouncing a death sentence.

He threw the micrometer on the table, turned and left, never looking at Yi Zhonghai again.

Yi Zhonghai's legs went weak, and he slumped against the worktable.

His old face instantly turned ashen, as if all his vitality had been drained away.

He lost.

We lost completely.

He didn't lose because of a lack of skill, but because of a lack of mentality. Faced with Lin Yang's palpable pressure, his pitiful mental defenses were utterly vulnerable.

In this life, he can only rot away forever in the quagmire of Beijing.

……