Conquering the world from the Kaiser's driver

"Miss Wang, do you like living on the fourth floor?"

Lin Shangzhou asked and answered his own question, and then he heard Wang Zhaoming say, "Well, I like to live on a high floor or on the top floor. I think it's quieter there."

"Oh~ That's it."

After climbing up to the fourth floor, Lin Shangzhou put the box on the ground, took out the key to the fourth floor from his pocket while panting, opened the door to the fourth floor, and turned around to hand it to Wang Zhaoming.

"This is the room key. Although I have a spare one, I still hope you can keep it carefully. If you lose it, you will need to get a new key at your own expense."

Lin Shangzhou reminded Wang Zhaoming of this, and as he said this he couldn't help but recall the note Wolfgang left for him in Strasbourg a year ago, also asking him to keep the key well.

Wang Zhaoming took the key and nodded seriously.

"Well, I'll keep the key safe."

After that, she grasped the handle of the box with both hands, lifted it up with some effort, and prepared to carry it into the house. Seeing this, Lin Shangzhou hurriedly said to her: "Why don't I help you? You see, the box is so heavy..."

Wang Zhaoming shook his head and said forcefully: "That's not necessary... I can do it myself..."

She carried the box with great effort into the room, put it on the floor of the living room, turned around and said to Lin Shangzhou with a slightly raised corner of her mouth: "I can do it myself."

Lin Shangzhou shrugged and said, "Okay, is there anything else I can help you with?"

Wang Zhaoming reached out his hand, grasped the door handle and said to him, "That's not necessary. I can handle the rest myself. I want to take a shower first. If you don't have anything else important to do, please don't disturb me."

"okay."

Lin Shangzhou nodded, turned and walked downstairs. When Wang Zhaoming saw him leave, he closed the door.

Wang Zhaoming in the room closed the door tightly. After confirming it again and again, she turned around and looked at the suitcase on the ground with difficulty. However, she did not pick it up. Instead, she looked up and looked around the whole house. Then she walked around the rooms. After finding her bedroom, she walked into the living room, came to the suitcase, and picked it up with both hands.

She carried the suitcase to the bedroom with difficulty, then turned around and locked the bedroom door. After making sure it was locked, she went to the suitcase, put it on the ground and opened it.

The large space in the suitcase was filled with neatly arranged clothes, several jars of pear syrup... and a radio transmitter that took up a quarter of the size of the suitcase.

This machine confirmed Lin Shangzhou's guess that this Wang Niang was indeed a member of LKMT.

Wang Zhaoming took out all his clothes and other belongings and placed them on the bed. Then he closed the suitcase and placed it against the wall next to the wardrobe.

If any spies came here to search, they could easily find the transmitter. Wang Zhaoming was of course aware of the risks of doing so, but she knew that in addition to her and the man named Bode who lived on the first floor, the emperor's advisor, Lin Shangzhou, also lived here.

She didn't think the spies would risk offending the emperor by searching the apartment, and this was her own bedroom. She believed that Lin Shangzhou was not the kind of despicable person who would sneak into someone else's bedroom to peek into their privacy.

It was with this idea in mind that Wang Zhaoming placed the suitcase containing the transmitter next to the wardrobe.

She wiped the sweat from her forehead caused by carrying the luggage, then went to the bed and began to organize her clothes. After putting the clothes neatly into the closet, Wang Zhaoming went to the kitchen with the cans of pear syrup candies, left two cans, and put the rest in the cupboard.

One can was for her own consumption, and the other was for Lin Shangzhou. Wang Zhaoming walked out of the kitchen with the two cans, put them on the table, then went back to the bedroom, took her pajamas and went to the bathroom. What she said to Lin Shangzhou was not just to prevent him from disturbing her, she really wanted to take a shower.

In the evening, Lin Shangzhou, who was cutting vegetables for cooking at home, heard a knock on the door, so he put down the knife and walked out, wiping the water stains on his hands on his apron as he walked.

When he came to the door and opened it, Lin Shangzhou saw Wang Zhaoming standing outside with a glass jar filled with pear candy in his hand.

"Editor-in-Chief, this is the pear syrup candy I promised to give you. Please accept it."

"Thank you."

Lin Shangzhou reached out to take the can. He looked at the can in his hand and felt that he should reciprocate, so he said to Wang Zhaoming: "Miss Wang, don't leave yet. I will give you a box of cookies as well."

Wang Zhaoming hesitated for a moment and said, "That...is not necessary...forget it. You are my superior, how can I accept your gift?"

Lin Shangzhou chuckled and said, "What do you mean by boss or not? Don't worry about those rules and regulations in life. Just treat me as an ordinary friend."

After hearing what Lin Shangzhou said, Wang Zhaoming stopped refusing and nodded in agreement. Lin Shangzhou turned around and walked quickly into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. He put the pear paste candy in and took out a box of biscuits. This was one of the boxes of biscuits that Noya had sent to him two days ago. Because he hadn't been to Wuyou Palace for some time, Noya and Letitia wrote him a letter together.

The letter complained about him and told him that Cecilia was not that angry anymore and he could go to the Worry-Free Palace. Lin Shangzhou's plan was to go to Harvot first to see how the latest communicator was going and then go to the Worry-Free Palace to find Cecilia.

Lin Shangzhou took the box back to the door and handed it to Wang Zhaoming. Wang Zhaoming took the box with a smile, thanked Lin Shangzhou and left.

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Chapter 209 Construction Plan

On Sunday, Lin Shangzhou came to the staff apartment on the same street. He wanted to find Havot to find out about the situation. After arriving at the apartment, he went straight to the fourth floor. The door of the room on the fourth floor was always open. Standing next to the door, Lin Shangzhou could see the Havot team conducting research inside.

Lin Shangzhou knocked on the door three times gently. The knocking attracted the attention of Havot's assistant Chu Ze and other people in the room, but not Havot's attention.

Chu Ze touched Harvot's shoulder, and he realized that someone was coming. He turned his head and saw that it was Lin Shangzhou. He put down the work at hand and turned to walk towards Lin Shangzhou.

Because there were other people doing research in the room, Lin Shangzhou took a step back and went to the stairwell, waiting for Harvot to come out.

Harvot walked out of the room and stood in front of Lin Shangzhou. He said to him expressionlessly, "The research on the M4 model is progressing steadily. According to our calculations, we can develop it within two months if we have better raw materials."

Lin Shangzhou was a little surprised when he heard this. He knew that Havot was a genius in this area, and he also knew that the research on communicators would make rapid progress after the principles were figured out. However, he did not expect that the M3 model was only developed last month, and there was news about the M4 model so soon.

"What is the specific communication distance of the M4 model?"

Lin Shangzhou asked, the communication distance is what he cares about most. The latest products have to be supplied to the military. For the military, every inch longer is better. The longer the communication distance, the happier they are.

The previous M2 communicator did not have much performance improvement compared to the previous generation because the quality of the raw materials provided by Cecilia did not improve much, and the communication distance was only increased by twenty to fifty kilometers.

After organizing his words in his head, Harvot replied:

"If we can get the titanium equipment that was iterated after the war as raw materials, then I can guarantee that the effective communication distance of the M4 communicator will reach 4 kilometers. If we can use the titanium equipment that was iterated five years ago as raw materials, then I can guarantee that the effective communication distance of the M communicator will reach kilometers."

"If we can use the titanium equipment currently in service... the highest quality titanium currently supplied to the military as raw material, then I can guarantee that the communication distance of the communicator can achieve cross-German communication, and it can be easily connected to the Alsace-Lorraine region from East Prussia."

At the end, Harvot became excited.

Lin Shangzhou nodded to him, indicating that he understood the matter. Then Harvot's expression changed from excitement to request. He said to Lin Shangzhou with hope in his eyes: "Fritts, if we can have a better research environment, then I believe our research speed will also be greatly improved."

Lin Shangzhou understood what he meant. Simply put, he wanted a larger research base, and this small house could no longer satisfy him.

He wanted to give them a better experimental environment. There was indeed such a good place in Germany - the Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, which could be said to be the top research base in Germany. He could also allow Havot and his team to join it.

As for the Emperor Wilhelm Society, although "Emperor Wilhelm" refers to William II, we can ignore "William" and only look at the "Emperor Society" at the end. With Alexandrine's relationship and Harvot's own abilities, it will be no problem for him and his team to enter the Emperor Wilhelm Society.

But Harvot rejected this suggestion at that time. The reason was very simple, and Lin Shangzhou could not find any reason to refute it: if they joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, there was a chance that the Ethernet communication technology would be learned by others, and then the situation would be unfavorable for them.

The communicator itself has an anti-disassembly safety feature to prevent reverse research. Chu Ze, who has become Havot's right-hand man, can be absolutely trusted. However, if Havot and his team are allowed to join the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, they will inevitably have to communicate with other scientists.

Without communication, it is impossible to achieve a technological breakthrough, but if technical theories are communicated, the production principle of the ether core will be known to others. If the military knows about this, Lin Shangzhou will lose his status as the "only supplier of ether communicators."

Lin Shangzhou was worried about this situation. In other words, he wanted to monopolize the ether research technology. People are selfish. Lin Shangzhou is not a scientist. He cannot reach the spiritual height of Madame Curie and cannot selflessly disclose his research results. Of course, he knows that ether communication technology is not his research result, but that of Harvot and his research team.

Although Harvot himself does not care whether the research results are made public or not, he knows that Lin Shangzhou cares. Lin Shangzhou is his benefactor, and Harvot is a grateful person. He knows that his technology will be of great use to Lin Shangzhou and will only be of great use if it is controlled and monopolized by him, so he chose not to apply for a patent and not to join the research association to avoid the leakage of core technology.

Lin Shangzhou understood this, so he had been doing his best to help Havot with his research. Now, after hearing that Havot hoped to have a larger research site, he also wanted to help him.

But scientific research requires professional sites and facilities, and other places do not have the conditions except those research institutes...

(I can’t build one myself…!)

Lin Shangzhou suddenly realized this. How could he have forgotten Speer?

If you can't find a suitable research institute, why not just build one yourself? It just so happens that Speer is still in the newspaper, so there is no need to ask anyone else for the design work of the institute, just go directly to Speer.

As soon as this idea came out, Lin Shangzhou agreed 100%. He immediately said to Havot, "Don't worry, Havot. I will meet your request, but it will take some time."

Upon hearing this, Harvot was delighted at first, but then he became confused. He asked, "Fritts, what do you mean..."

"I mean we build a new institute."

"Build one?!"

Howard looked at Lin Shangzhou in surprise. He knew that Lin Shangzhou was rich, but it was too exaggerated to just build one. Moreover, it was to build a research institute, which would cost a lot of money.

Lin Shangzhou could guess that Harvot was worried about the money, so he waved his hand and said arrogantly: "Don't worry about the money. If I run out of money, I'll ask Louis for it. He has a lot of money, and he won't refuse to give it to me."

Hearing Lin Shangzhou's shameless words, the corners of Harvot's mouth twitched, but he would not say anything about this matter, that was Lin Shangzhou's business.

Harvotte nodded and said, "Well, let's do as you say."

Lin Shangzhou thought for a moment and then said, "Hawter, please suspend your research on the new communicator for a while. I hope you can make more M2 communicators before the research institute is built, and improve the appearance of the communicator to make it look more attractive."

When Harvot heard the first sentence, he was stunned for a moment and didn't react to what Lin Shangzhou wanted to do. When he heard the rest of the sentence, he understood what Lin Shangzhou meant.

He is preparing to start selling communicators.

"Okay, I understand. As long as there is enough raw material, I can make as much as you want."

Havot said this with a solemn vow. Lin Shangzhou was very satisfied with this. He could see that Havot understood what he wanted to do, but he had another idea - to put some pressure on the military.

The research speed of the communicator was too fast before, so we had to slow down the pace to keep the military in suspense. If we didn't make the military more anxious, they would not give in on providing better titanium.

After things were settled, Lin Shangzhou entered the room and talked to the others, roughly saying that he would build a new research institute for them. The current research would be carried out in the new institute, and before the institute was built, he would work on improving the M1 and M2 communicators and developing more communicators.

On his way downstairs, he called Louis to tell him about this and hoped to get his investment. Louis agreed without hesitation and said that he would contact the construction team and ask them to prepare. Construction would begin after Speer completed the design of the institute as Lin Shangzhou said.

On the morning of March 23rd, the fourth Monday in March, Lin Shangzhou came to the newspaper office and told Speer, who was designing the layout for the newspaper, about this matter. Faced with such an invitation, Speer was very happy and readily agreed. Designing buildings interested him more than designing newspaper layouts.

Lin Shangzhou then spent three days touring Berlin with Speer. During this period, at Speer's request, Lin Shangzhou also took him to the Sanssouci Palace. After entering the Sanssouci Palace and obtaining Alexandrine's consent, Speer began to carefully study the structure of the Sanssouci Palace.

He stayed in Sanssouci Palace for an entire afternoon before reluctantly leaving this magnificent palace designed and built by Frederick the Great.

Finally, they decided to build the research institute on a vacant land on the outskirts of the city. After determining the construction location, Lin Shangzhou asked Havot and Speer to design the blueprints of the institute, while he himself was busy with matters such as procedures.

A few days later, on April 1931, 4, April Fool's Day, a scientific research base called the "Hawk Institute" began construction in the suburbs of northwest Berlin.

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Chapter 210 Early to Mid-April

On April 4, after the construction of the institute began, Lin Shangzhou's assets were instantly reduced by more than half. If Louis had not shared the cost of building the institute with him, he would probably have directly become a negative asset.

The construction of the entire institute cost millions of marks. After the construction started, Louis said to Lin Shangzhou in a joking tone that he hoped Havot would lower his requirements in the future, otherwise even he would be emptied of his pockets.

Louis said this to Lin Shangzhou with a smile, and Lin Shangzhou also knew his other meaning: the research institute is indeed very good, but don't let it happen again.

However, even though Lin Shangzhou had lost more than half of his assets, he still had hundreds of thousands of marks, which was more than enough to fund the newspaper and branch. Two days after the construction of the institute started, Lin Shangzhou received the second telegram from Hamburg. Kevin said in the telegram that they were developing smoothly in Hamburg and had completely settled down. He suggested that Lin Shangzhou start the next plan.

After learning about the development of the Hamburg branch, Lin Shangzhou sent two teams to Leipzig and Dresden on April 6 and 8 respectively.

After sending out the second and third teams, Lin Shangzhou estimated that it would take about a month for the branch to stabilize based on Kevin's development in Hamburg.

By analogy, it will take at least three months to fully complete his plan. The time is not bad, as it will only be July in three months, and there is still more than half a year until the general election.

What gave him a headache was the problem of manpower. The newspaper did not have many employees, so the shortage of manpower caused by long-interval overseas assignments was not a problem. However, if too many people were sent out in a short period of time, it would cause problems with the operating system of the Berlin headquarters.

The recruitment standards of the Forward have always been relatively high, which has resulted in high overall employee quality but also a low hiring rate, with perhaps only two or three people hired out of ten.

Lin Shangzhou could lower the standards to increase the number of recruits to meet the problem of lack of manpower, but he personally does not want to do so. Of course, he knows that it is unrealistic to do both, so if it really doesn't work, Lin Shangzhou will choose to expand enrollment to solve the problem.

He contacted Louis with the communicator and told him about his troubles. Louis said he had a way to solve the problem.

Two days later, on April 10, Lin Shangzhou arrived at the newspaper office and found that Louis had brought some employees of the SPD newspaper and some former members of other left-wing organizations in Germany, who also had experience working in the newspaper office.

After some communication, Lin Shangzhou learned that they came to help voluntarily after knowing his difficulties, which made Lin Shangzhou very grateful to them and Louis.

With the help of such a large group of comrades, Lin Shangzhou recruited them on the same day and allocated funds on the 11th for them to go to Breslau and Cologne respectively.

Two days later, Louis brought a group of former members of the German left-wing organization and several employees of the Social Democratic Party’s newspaper to Lin Shangzhou, so Lin Shangzhou repeated what happened a few days ago: recruiting, allocating funds, and setting off.

This time, they went to Munich and Frankfurt.

On April 14, Lin Shangzhou completed his branch plan with the help of Louis...or should I say, the help of the Social Democratic Party. After this matter was resolved, he began to work on his other plan - contacting German aircraft manufacturers.

On April 15th, he visited Vorbeck and asked the veteran army general, who had fought mainly in Africa, about the flying unit.

When Lin Shangzhou asked him this question, Forbeck looked at him strangely, as if to say, "Are you damn sure you want to ask me this question?"

But in the end, he told Lin Shangzhou everything he knew.

During his conversation with Volbeck, Lin Shangzhou learned about the specific situation of the world's air force.

Take Germany as an example. The main role of aircraft in World War I was not like in World War I in OTL, where aircraft were used for reconnaissance and assistance in the early stage and then gradually gained importance. In this world, aircraft were entrusted with the important task of strategic and tactical bombing from the very beginning.

Therefore, at the beginning, the development of bombers was treated much better than other models, but later, after the special explosives and high-explosive grenades supplied to the magic forces were developed, bombers gradually withdrew.

The special explosives and high-explosive grenades used by the magic troops can achieve the destructive effect of some aerial bombs with the blessing of ether elements, and thus replace bombers.

After the bombers were replaced, the flying troops completely lost their use. After that, they only appeared to make up the numbers when the magic troops were short of manpower.

Although the "Red Baron" Manfred von Richthofen led the proud Iron Cross Eagle to successfully prevent the Allied magic forces from bombing Germany under such neglected circumstances, this victory of machines over humans failed to make the military pay attention to aircraft as a combat tool again.

Lin Shangzhou knew the reasons for this situation. There were many reasons, but he believed that the two most important ones were: first, the performance of the aircraft. Whether it was an aircraft or a tank, their development was inseparable from their performance in the war. The more outstanding the performance, the more attention they would receive from the military.

The performance of an aircraft limits its performance. If the aircraft wants to be developed and its performance improved, it needs to be taken seriously by the military. Only in this way can it get investment.

This is the case in Otl, where technologies such as airplanes and tanks have been further developed as the war deepens, but in this world this mode of development has fallen into a vicious cycle where the aircraft has poor performance and performs poorly → the aircraft does not receive attention from the military → how to increase the level of attention → the need to improve performance through funding investment in research and development to make the flying unit perform better → how to obtain funding → the aircraft needs to receive attention from the military → how to obtain attention → need excellent performance → the aircraft has poor performance and performs poorly.