Quick Transmigration: The Pregnant Little Fairy is Pampered by the Heirless Boss

Chapter 316 Era: XCMG's Simple-minded Wife 20

The conference room of the steel plant's technical department was filled with smoke.

Xu Weidong stared intently at the data on the blackboard when the chalk in his hand snapped in two with a "crack".

"The tensile strength is still 87% lower."

Old Li, the head of the technical department, took off his glasses and rubbed his temples wearily. "We can't even get close to the latest parameters released by the United States."

In the corner, the newly transferred technician, Xiao Wang, suddenly slammed his laptop on the table: "We don't have any of the vacuum electric arc furnaces they're using! Even that industrial powerhouse won't sell them to us! How are we supposed to catch up?!"

"Then let's make it ourselves."

Xu Weidong's voice wasn't loud, but it instantly silenced the entire conference room.

He walked to the window and pointed to the old blast furnace belching black smoke in the distance. "During the Great Leap Forward more than ten years ago, we even used shovels to make steel. Now, at least some of our efforts can still keep up."

The old factory manager tapped his pipe: "Young Xu, it's not that we lack ambition. But this special steel..."

"Director!"

Workshop foreman Liu Dazhu suddenly stood up, his work clothes still covered in steel slag. "Can we use a makeshift method? Like the old days when we did 'ants gnawing at bones'?"

"What kind of rudimentary method can produce special steel?" someone scoffed.

Just then, Ji Xiaosong came in carrying mung bean soup. Hearing this, she blinked and said, "My dad said that if you don't have a big stove, you can stir-fry it several times in a small pot."

The meeting room erupted in laughter.

Xu Weidong suddenly turned around: "What did you say?"

"It's...it's..."

Ji Xiaosong lowered her head timidly, "I noticed that when Chef Wang cooks in the cafeteria, it's hard to control the heat in a big wok, but he can make really good soup in a small clay pot..."

Xu Weidong's eyes were frighteningly bright.

He grabbed a piece of chalk and drew a new flowchart on the blackboard: "Segmented smelting! We'll use small crucibles to process the vacuum environment that a large furnace can't achieve!"

Old Li jumped up: "How many more steps will this add?!"

"Then increase it."

Xu Weidong stated firmly, "If it can't be finished in one day, then it will take ten days; if it can't be finished in ten days, then it will take half a year. As long as the parameters meet the standards..."

"But the higher-ups only gave us three months!"

The finance director shouted, "Importing chromium ore requires foreign exchange, increased electricity consumption requires quotas, and so on..."

"Chromium ore from P City!"

Xu Weidong produced a geological report: "The sample that was just sent last week, although the content is low at 2%, actually has the effect of enhancing..."

The conference room door was suddenly kicked open.

The messenger rushed in, newspaper in hand: "Country M is mocking us in the newspapers again! They say our steel isn't even as good as theirs in the 1930s!"

The newspaper slammed onto the table. The front-page photo showed an American engineer standing beside gleaming steel coils, accompanied by the glaring headline: "When Will a Steel-Weak Nation Awaken from its Dream?"

"Damn his ancestors!"

Liu Dazhu slammed his fist against the wall, blood trickling down between his fingers. "I refuse to believe this!"

The old factory director's hands were trembling, and the fire in his pipe had long since gone out.

He suddenly took off his hat: "From today onwards, I will live in the workshop. The canteen will bring me meals."

"Factory manager! Your heart..."

"I won't die!" the old man exclaimed, his eyes wide. "Back when we were fighting the Japanese devils, I survived even with my guts spilling out!"

Late at night, at the Xu family home.

Ji Xiaosong, heavily pregnant, was mending her work clothes under the lamp.

Xu Weidong squatted on the ground, fiddling with several tin cans filled with mineral powder of different colors.

"Are we really going to make a small stove?" She bit off the end of the wire.

"Ah."

Xu Weidong poured a pinch of reddish-brown powder into an enamel mug. "The vanadium content of the P City ore is indeed high, but its melting point..."

"I don't understand these things."

Ji Xiaosong suddenly handed over a cloth bag, "But I asked the purchasing agents from the mining area, and they said that using dolomite to line the bottom of the furnace can prevent sticking."

Xu Weidong was stunned.

Dolomite is a commonly used auxiliary material in steelmaking, but specifically in this process...

He suddenly grabbed the notebook and started calculating.

"besides."

Ji Xiaosong then pulled out a handwritten booklet from under the kang mat. "I had Xiao Zhang from the library copy this for me. It's from that journal, *The Journal of Metallurgy*, about an industrial powerhouse..."

"You can read their writing?" Xu Weidong looked up in shock.

"I don't understand."

Ji Xiaosong pointed to the hand-drawn diagram of the furnace structure, "But it looks like the steamer basket we use to steam buns at home, with layers upon layers."

Xu Weidong hugged her tightly, his stubble scratching her face: "Genius! They solved it using the superposition method..."

"Oh no, you've crushed the baby!"

Ji Xiaosong pushed him away, but smiled, "Tomorrow I'll go ask Aunt Zhang for help; her son-in-law works at the refractory materials factory..."

"No!" Xu Weidong's expression changed drastically. "You're about to give birth!"

"Then why don't you go and beg?" Ji Xiaosong raised an eyebrow. "With your devilish face, you could scare a child to tears."

Xu Weidong was speechless.

He lowered his head and continued fiddling with the mineral powder, then suddenly said, "Today... a reporter from Country M said we are a sick and weak country."

The sewing needle suddenly pierced the fingertip.

Ji Xiaosong put her bleeding finger in her mouth and said indistinctly, "Then let's show them how hard a sick man's bones are."

Three months later, the steel plant was engulfed in flames.

The first batch of "Great Wall No. 2" special steel is about to be produced.

Xu Weidong stood at the front, his work clothes brittle from the high temperature.

"Old Xu!"

Old Li, his face covered in coal dust, squeezed through the crowd. "The M country delegation suddenly arrived! They say they want to 'observe'..."

The control room erupted in chaos.

Everyone knows they're here to see a joke.

"Let them see."

Xu Weidong adjusted his appearance and said calmly, "We need a witness."

The moment the molten steel poured out, the entire workshop was bathed in a golden-red light.

Smith, the chief engineer of Country M, stared wide-eyed as the flowing metal shimmered with a rare bluish-purple luster!

"This is impossible......"

He muttered to himself, "How could this be possible without a vacuum furnace..."

"Take samples for testing!" the old factory director roared, his voice cracking.

When the lab technician rushed in with the report in hand, everyone held their breath.

"tensile strength......"

The lab technician's voice trembled, "It exceeds our previous standard by 7%!"

The workshop was silent for a second, then erupted in deafening cheers.

Liu Dazhu hugged the thermometer and burst into tears, while Old Li laughed so hard his dentures fell out.

Smith approached with a livid face: "Mr. Xu, could you please tell me...?"

“A traditional earthen stove in a farmhouse,” Xu Weidong pointed to his head, “and here.”

In the family compound, Ji Xiaosong was hanging diapers to dry, supporting her back.

Suddenly, a stirring march blared over the loudspeaker, followed by the announcer's trembling voice:

"...The performance of the new type of special steel independently developed in my country surpasses the latest domestic standards..."

She gazed at the plume of smoke rising from the steel mill and gently touched her belly: "My little one, your father is really amazing."

A train whistle sounded in the distance.

On the clothesline, three small sets of baby clothes swayed gently in the wind, while patched-up work clothes exuded a metallic aura in the sunlight.

The light bulbs in the steel plant's auditorium crackled, and the latest data on special steel from Country M was written in chalk on the blackboard.

Xu Weidong stood at the front of the stage, the cuffs of his military green work uniform already frayed.

"Comrades, this is where the gap lies."

His pointer pointed at the tensile strength data: "980 MPa, which is equivalent to 10 tons of pressure per square centimeter."

Gasps of surprise rose and fell from the audience.

Old fitter Zhang Desheng's pipe clattered loudly on the cement floor: "Damn it, our best steelworker..."

“Ours is far from good enough,” said Lin Xiaomei, a young lab technician, her ponytail swaying gently as she shook her head. “It’s less than a tenth of what they do.”

Suddenly, a man with a pockmarked face stood up in the back row of the conference room. He was Wang Dachui from the steel rolling workshop: "Engineer Xu, our old 550 rolling mill is not even as good as the models that others have phased out!"

He pulled a crumpled newspaper from his pocket and said, "Look what they're using! A fully automatic vacuum refining furnace!"

The newspaper was passed around among the workers, and the gleaming imported equipment in the photos stung everyone's eyes.

Someone muttered, "Maybe... we should just forget about it?"