Chapter Thirty-Eight: Your Sister's Engineer

  "What's going on?" Yue Guoyang became serious, he sat firmly in his seat and pointed to the stool beside him, saying: "Xiao Ge, sit down and talk."

  Ge Dongyan sat down and gave a detailed report to Yue Guoyang about his interactions with Qin Hai. Yue Guoyang listened very attentively, asking questions and verifying some points repeatedly. As the platoon leader of the provincial military district's special operations company, Ge Dongyan had exceptional observational skills, able to mimic Qin Hai's expressions, tone of voice, and other details almost perfectly.

  "Is it just a young worker?" Yue Guoyang asked in disbelief after hearing this.

  "Yes, that's also what I don't understand," said Ge Dongyan. "His depth is too great...I even feel that I'm not as good as him."

  "Has anyone investigated his background?" asked Yue Guoyang.

  "No," replied Ge Dongyan, "I only returned from Pingyuan last night and came to report to you first thing this morning."

  "Alright, I'll arrange for someone to look into it," said Yue Guoyang, making a phone call to the Political Department in front of Ge Dongyan, asking them to send someone to investigate Qin Hai's situation at the Provincial Agricultural Machinery Technical School as soon as possible, requiring as much detail as possible.

  "Commander, look... Qin Hai has proposed to cooperate with us. How should we handle this matter?" Ge Dongyan asked hesitantly after hanging up the phone with Yue Guoyang.

  Yue Guoyang said, "This Qin Hai is really extravagant, one word from his mouth is 10,000 yuan. Does he think our army's money falls from the sky? The country's military expenditure has a quota, and this engineer shovel he's promoting is an off-budget equipment, we can't procure it on our own initiative."

  Ge Dongyan smiled and said, "Commander, ordinary troops can't be equipped with such good things. Our emergency response team should have one for each person, shouldn't we? Didn't you say that the emergency response team is the spearhead of the entire provincial military region, to choose the best soldiers and use the best equipment..."

  Ge Dongyan's emergency response team is a special forces unit being established by the Anhui Provincial Military Region, just with a relatively low-key name. Ge Dongyan has already been appointed as the commander of one of the battalions in the Emergency Response Team and he strongly recommended Qin Haifeng's invention, the engineer shovel, to Yue Guoyang, hoping that this engineer shovel will become standard equipment for soldiers in the Emergency Response Team in the future.

  "This kind of engineer shovel, can't we let the repair department make it themselves?" asked Yue Guoyang. Qin Hai's engineer shovel involved many functions and had a lot of innovative designs in terms of structure. However, innovations in shape and structure are not secrets that can be kept confidential, others have already seen this design and it is not difficult to imitate. People back then didn't have much awareness of intellectual property rights, even if they did, Yue Guoyang wouldn't care, contributing to the national defense industry, what kind of intellectual property rights would you dare to mention?

  Ge Dongyan didn't think about the intellectual property rights, he thought more about the material. He shook his head and said: "The design of this trenching shovel is not complicated, but the steel used is something that the repair workshop can't solve. The dagger I made before was also made by the repair workshop, at that time, we used a piece of the best scrap steel, but compared to the steel of this dagger, it's simply rubbish."

  "Didn't you say that this steel was smelted by Qin Hai and his people themselves? Can't our repair workshop learn to smelt it too?" asked Yue Guoyang.

  "This is only afraid of having difficulty, one is how to refine the problem, and the other is that our repair shop doesn't have steel refining equipment."

  "How did they have steel smelting equipment..." Yue Guoyang subconsciously raised a sentence, and after finishing it himself felt uninteresting. The original function of the Provincial Military Region's repair factory was to do some repairs and maintenance work, unlike the agricultural machinery factory which focused on manufacturing. When the repair factory needed to use some castings, they would ask local enterprises to assist in production, and indeed did not have steel smelting electric furnaces themselves.

  At this point, neither of them could think of a good solution. Yue Guoyang waved his hand at Ge Dongyan and said, "You go back first, I'll consider this matter."

  Ge Dongyan originally thought that Yue Guoyang's "consideration" was just an excuse, but unexpectedly, in the evening, Zhu Chongwu, the director of the combat department, suddenly found Ge Dongyan and informed him to go to Pingyuan County early the next morning to pick up Qin Hai and bring him back to the provincial military district, saying that Yue Guoyang wanted to meet Qin Hai personally. Ge Dongyan was overjoyed and so this morning he drove a jeep with Zhu Chongwu to Pingyuan and "borrowed" Qin Hai from Qingfeng Factory.

  All these things, Ge Dongyan certainly couldn't tell Qin Hai everything, he simply said that the military pickaxe designed by Qin Hai had received praise from the provincial military district leaders, and the leader wanted to talk to him in person about cooperation. As for what form this cooperation would take, it was not something that a small soldier like him could know.

  "Xiao Qin, I can tell you in advance that our Commander Yue is a straightforward and decisive person who dislikes beating around the bush or haggling. If you have any ideas, just say them directly to Commander Yue. Our troops are reasonable and won't let you suffer losses. But if you plan on making a fortune from the troops, I advise you to dispel this notion as soon as possible." Zhu Chongwu sat in the back of the jeep, warning Qin Hai.

  Qin Hai smiled and said: "Director Zhu, don't worry, I also know that the troops are short of money now. I'll try to come up with a win-win plan for everyone."

  The jeep did not enter the urban area of Hongze, but instead passed through the edge of the city and drove straight into a hilly area in the northern suburbs of Hongze. After passing through a mountainous forest path, a large courtyard with armed guards standing guard appeared in front. The guard looked at the sign on the windshield of the jeep and waved his hand to let Ge Dongyan drive the car into the courtyard.

  "Isn't the provincial military district supposed to be in a more secluded place?" Qin Hai couldn't help but ask. In his previous life, he wasn't very familiar with Anhui Province, but in this life, he had spent three years studying at a technical school in Hongze and knew that the provincial military compound was located in a large courtyard in the center of Hongze City.

  "This is the barracks of the garrison troops. Commander Yue was fishing here today." Zhu Chongwu said calmly.

  "Fishing?" Qin Hai was a bit confused, what kind of rhythm is this?

  Zhu Chongwu and Ge Dongyan did not give Qin Hai any further explanation, as soldiers they had the quality of keeping their mouths shut. Today's play, the protagonist is the commander, they only have the obligation to cooperate with the running dragon suit.

  The barracks area is nestled in the mountains and by the water, covering a not-so-small area with a very pleasant environment. Ge Dongyan drove the Jeep all the way to a small lake behind the barracks area, where Qin Hai saw several large umbrellas set up along the lake shore, with a few people dressed in military uniforms and casual clothes sitting on the shore fishing.

  Ge Dongyan stopped the car and got out with Zhu Chongwu and Qin Hai, walking over to the fishermen. He ran a few steps ahead, coming to a halt in front of a man in military uniform, standing at attention as he reported: "Reporting to Commander, Qin Hai has arrived, please give instructions."

  This was indeed Yue Guoyang. He turned his head and looked in Qin Hai's direction, saying: "Please ask him to come over."

  Zhu Chongwu gave Qin Hai a push, indicating that he should go forward. Qin Hai did as he was told and went forward to stand in front of Yue Guoyang, saying: "Commander Yue, I am Qin Hai, I have been ordered to come here, please give me instructions."

  "Are you Qin Hai?" Yue Guoyang looked at Qin Hai up and down three times, asking.

  "Yes, I am Qin Hai." Qin Hai replied calmly.

  "Hmm, interesting." Yue Guoyang inexplicably praised and then said to Ge Dongyan: "Little Ge, get a stool for Xiao Qin, let him sit down and talk."

  Ge Dongyan brought over a stool and placed it beside Qin Hai. Qin Hai thanked both Ge Dongyan and Yue Guoyang before sitting down properly. He didn't know what Yue Guoyang wanted to talk about, so he wasn't in a hurry to speak up. Instead, he waited for the other party to make a move, and then he would think of how to respond accordingly.

  "I've seen the engineer's shovel you made, and its design is very unique, very suitable for our troops to use. Tell me, what were you thinking when you designed it?" asked Yue Guoyang.

  For this question, Qin Hai was prepared. He made up an explanation that he had liked military affairs since childhood, watched many war movies and read some foreign materials from newspapers and magazines, so based on these understandings, he designed such a combat spade, hoping it would be beneficial to national defense. His words were half true and half false, but they sounded believable to outsiders.

  Yue Guoyang was actually not interested in the design of the engineer's shovel. The difficult part was just the idea, and once the idea was there, it was easy to implement it into a specific structure. He asked this question only to confuse Qin Hai, so as to cover up the intention behind his subsequent questions.

  "Your design of this engineer's shovel is very ingenious, and the steel used is particularly special. Can you tell me how this steel was smelted?" Yue Guoyang threw out another question.

  "It's not that difficult, I just threw a few different alloy steels into a furnace and melted them together, and this is what came out." Qin Hai replied with a smile. He didn't expect such an answer to make Yue Guoyang believe him, he just wanted to show Yue Guoyang an attitude, that the formula for an alloy steel wasn't something you could ask about casually.

  "Is it really that simple?" A middle-aged man sitting next to Yue Guoyang, who had been pretending to fish all along, suddenly interjected. He was wearing casual clothes and had a pair of reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, giving off an intellectual air.

  "He is Engineer Chen from our military region's equipment repair depot, he has done a lot of research on metal smelting." Yue Guoyang introduced casually to Qin Hai.

  Qin Hai had been focusing his attention on Yue Guoyang all along, and hadn't paid any attention to the others around him. It wasn't until he heard Engineer Chen's words that he shifted his gaze over. With just one glance, Qin Hai almost couldn't help but burst out laughing:

  Your sister's engineer! If this gentleman is an engineer at your repair shop, then your repair shop is also too unbelievable!

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