Munitions Empire

Chapter 115: 115 Secret Factory

"Mr. Roger!" Yulin pushed open Roger's door and called softly, "Your lunch is ready."

The young girl held a wooden platter, which bore another wooden dish, filled with some mushy food.

Potatoes and vegetable leaves were mixed together, along with some dried fish, which didn't look very appetizing, but it had the advantage of being nutritionally balanced.

Roger took the tray from the girl and casually asked, "Have you remembered everything they teach at school? I heard you've started learning equations."

Yulin showed a sweet smile and replied to Roger, "Mr. Roger, I am the class president, after all. If I don't get full marks in my courses, those little devils would laugh at me."

"Ha!" Roger nodded in satisfaction and then continued to inquire, "Is everything proceeding according to the work plans Tang Mo set out before he left, following the victory at Northern Ridge?"

The young girl immediately nodded, "Everything has already started. They are logging on a large scale in Vicious Forest, but winter is coming very soon and it looks like the work will have to stop."

In this era, that was the reality—the weather remained a major adversary to human activity; no one dared to launch large-scale operations with the onset of winter, a dictate of the natural order.

As for the current situation of Tang Mo or rather the Great Tang Group, if one were to describe it in a few words, they'd be: extremely wealthy, spending money like water.

This was almost a syndrome known as "sudden wealth," typically a spree of frenzied, retaliatory consumption triggered by an unexpected fortune.

The moment Tang Mo confirmed that Northern Ridge had secured victory in the war, he spent every last bit of his remaining assets lavishly.

Specific extravagance projects included his order to find a flat piece of land within Vicious Forest, clear the area through logging, and plan to establish a hidden secret factory.

The reason for choosing this location was that with his increasing number of technologies and the expansion of factory scale, it was indeed necessary to develop a new factory area to sustain growth.

Supporting this capricious decision to situate his own factory in such a forsaken place as Vicious Forest was another main reason: Tang Mo was preparing to construct the first railway in this world right here.

With tens or even hundreds of thousands of Gold Coins in hand, Tang Mo naturally planned to spend this wealth. Since he had to spend it, he must purchase a large number of items.

Steel was the strategic resource he could assure in the short term and procure in the most significant quantity. Brunas and Northern Ridge, fortunately, did not lack coal, making railway construction the obvious choice for Tang Mo.

Firstly, the cooperation with Count Fisheo was very pleasant, and it was clear that Fisheo was a good candidate for continued long-term cooperation—therefore, Tang Mo intended to deepen the ties between them to facilitate future trade.

Thus, the first railway in human history that would start from Brunas Port, pass through Vicious Forest, and finally connect to Northern Ridge Wolf City, was put on the construction agenda.

However, constructing a railway was not easy. It necessitated terrain surveying, geological structure verification, and choosing the most cost-effective routes... all of these required time.

After all, he was now a merchant with a fleet, and naturally, he also had to engage in maritime transport and trade.

Moreover, he did not want to be restricted by the narrow harbor size of Brunas in the future when purchasing overseas steel, oil, and other materials, so he decided to build a harbor in advance to facilitate expansion or integration later.

Consequently, a brand-new harbor began to be built, and this time the construction became quite different from that of previous harbors.

First of all, Tang Mo began to use cement on a large scale to build his new harbor to ensure its solidity.

One has to admit, Brunas is a natural good harbor, deep and free of ice, and not far away there are even highlands suitable for the construction of battery installations. The only thing that held back its development was a larger port to the south that had developed earlier.

The Leite Kingdom did not value maritime trade, so compared to others, the construction of the harbor at Brunas was not prioritized, and since local procurement never increased significantly, it naturally did not generate substantial trade. Since ships did not frequently come here, the harbor could not grow large in scale.

This was a vicious cycle, and in some sense, Tang Mo's arrival broke this trade cycle.

The quantity and total volume of items he needed were simply too great—steel, which a country might not consume much, Tang Mo was now ready to lay directly on the ground.

The purchase list of the Great Tang Group included pig bristles, leather, steel, brass, lime, gunpowder, and various chemicals.

The reason why they did not purchase grain was that Northern Ridge had stockpiled quite a bit of it last year, which could supply Brunas for the time being. But if Tang Mo's factories continued to develop, purchasing grain, meat, and horses was just a matter of time.

To facilitate future development, Tang Mo even requested merchants to bring soil samples and seeds from various places for him, and he also bought books from various countries at a high price, including novels, travel logs, and poetry anthologies.

In the territory that Tang Mo had bought, hardworking workers had also started to farm. Although it was doomed to yield little profit, it gave the place a lively appearance.

In short, Tang Mo had not yet returned to Brunas, and during the month he was away, the development of Brunas did not lag at all.

Mathews and Parker, the two men in charge of the factory, had expanded the entire factory area to an extent that was previously unimaginable.

Now, the Great Tang Group already had more than a dozen factory buildings, dozens of steam engines, and half the factory buildings were equipped with electric machines.

What's more interesting is that after the steam engines were put into production, another difficult problem that plagued the Great Tang Group was unexpectedly solved—heating!

Those factory buildings, which were constructed in a rush to push for completion, actually had very poor insulation. According to previous estimates, these factory buildings would have been unusable after the onset of winter.

But now, after Mathews, Roger, and others tackled the problem according to Tang Mo's blueprints and produced equipment for pipe processing, the cooling waste water from the steam engines found a good use.

Hot water flowed through these pipes, heating the entire factory like a giant furnace. After temporarily thickening some of the surrounding walls, the factory buildings were able to continue operating in winter without any issues.