Chapter 138 Flesh and Blood Quantization and Exhaustive Search

July, Modu. The rainy season.

Modu Machine Tool Factory, a top-tier machine tool manufacturer hailed as one of the "Eighteen Arhats" of the domestic industry, was currently shrouded in gloom.

The No. 3 conference room was filled with smoke, so thick it was hard to keep one's eyes open.

Ashtrays were piled high like small mountains, and the tea in the cups had long since gone cold.

Yet, no one had the heart to take a sip.

"Bang!"

An inspection report was slapped onto the table.

Vice President Qu Weimin of the Eighth Academy of Aerospace.

This technical leader, known for his elegance, now had eyes filled with bloodshot veins.

"5%?"

"Factory Director Chen, is this the answer you are giving me?"

Vice President Qu pointed at the report, his fingers trembling.

"Out of one hundred blanks, only five are usable?"

"Are you processing aerospace precision parts, or are you shredding potatoes?"

Across the conference table, Factory Director Chen looked bitter.

He took a deep drag of his cigarette, his voice raspy.

"Old Qu, stop slamming the table."

"Even if you tore my old bones apart and threw them into the steel furnace, I couldn't conjure up a better yield rate for you."

Factory Director Chen stubbed out his cigarette, his tone filled with a deep sense of powerlessness.

"If this were a few months ago, I might have dared to sign a military-style order for you."

"But now..."

"Our supply of high-precision spindle bearings has been cut off."

As soon as these words were spoken, the air in the conference room seemed to freeze.

Qu Weimin sat down dejectedly, rubbing his temples in pain.

Cause and effect, retribution.

A while back, that young man named Lin Xi in the Northwest.

Had orchestrated a "massive rare earth price hike," choking the Westerners and earning a large amount of foreign exchange for the country.

This matter had spread widely within the system, and everyone felt avenged.

Many even clapped and cheered, praising it as a boost to national prestige.

But who could have imagined that this butterfly flapping its wings in the Northwest would trigger a destructive storm in Modu?

The Western bloc had suffered a loss; they admitted defeat on the surface but played dirty behind the scenes.

Since they couldn't touch the rare earths, they targeted precision components.

Switzerland cut off the supply of high-grade SKF spindle bearings to China, citing "insufficient production capacity."

Without top-tier bearings, the spindle runout of domestic machine tools plummeted from the micron level.

For ordinary civilian products, this wouldn't matter.

But this was for a separation hook for "one rocket, three satellites"!

"Without that bearing, the dynamic balance of the spindle is a joke."

Factory Director Chen spread his hands, looking at his calloused palms.

"Our master craftsmen have already done their best."

"But those are the laws of physics; how can human power defy them?"

The technical director whispered, adding:

"Vice President Qu, if the inner wall roughness of the separation hook doesn't reach mirror level, if the friction coefficient is slightly off..."

"You can't see it on the ground."

"But in space, in a zero-gravity environment."

"This tiny deviation will cause the ejection speeds of the three satellites to be inconsistent..."

"And then they will rear-end in space."

"Three hundred million in national assets, the hard work of thousands of people."

"Will turn into a pile of space junk in seconds, right?"

Vice President Qu coldly took over the conversation.

No one dared to respond.

This was a gamble they could not afford to lose.

It represented the hard work of countless researchers over more than a decade.

It was an important appearance for the country on the international aerospace stage.

"Go to the workshop."

Vice President Qu stood up abruptly.

"I don't believe that living people can be stifled by something like this."

"Without foreign guns and cannons, can't our broadswords and spears still fight?"

...

The atmosphere in the workshop was oppressive.

There was no lively roar of machinery.

Only the teeth-gritting, extremely careful sound of metal cutting.

An old technician was hunched over a grinder that had been stripped of its casing.

He was the "pillar" of the factory, the top-tier Eighth-Grade Fitter, Master Chen.

At this moment, this master craftsman, revered throughout the industry.

Was like a doctor listening to a heartbeat, pressing his ear tightly against the cold cast-iron bed of the machine tool.

His right hand tightly gripped the feed handwheel, while his left hand pressed firmly against his own chest.

"Cough, cough..."

A violent fit of coughing broke out.

Master Chen did not stop.

Instead, he skillfully pulled a handkerchief of unrecognizable color from his pocket and covered his mouth to cough for a while.

Then, without even glancing at the blood on the handkerchief, he stuffed it back into his pocket.

"Master!" the apprentice nearby cried out, trying to support him.

"Don't move!"

Master Chen growled, his voice weak but stern.

"This cut is in precision grinding."

"If you touch me, the breathing frequency changes, and this batch of parts will be ruined!"

He was using his body to sense the vibrations.

Because the bearing precision was insufficient, the spindle would have irregular micro-tremors when rotating at high speed.

Master Chen was using his ears and hands, trained for thirty years, to capture the vibration pattern of that ten-thousandth of a second.

Then, the instant before the vibration was transmitted to the tool tip, he relied on muscle memory to perform micron-level reverse compensation.

This was true "Flesh-and-Blood CNC."

It was filling the gap in the industrial foundation with his own life.

Vice President Qu stood outside the glass curtain wall, watching this scene, his eyes turning red instantly.

He gritted his teeth so hard his lips bled.

"It's been six days," Factory Director Chen said, his voice choked.

"Old Chen hasn't been home for six days."

"He said that as long as he has a breath left, he will never let our satellites fail to launch because of parts."

"But... Old Qu, this isn't just a matter of risking one's life."

Factory Director Chen pointed to a pile of scrap.

"Humans aren't machines; people get tired, hands shake, and hearts get distracted."

"Old Chen can only grind one qualified product in seven days, and that's depending on luck."

"But we need thirty sets!"

"He is using his life to make up for the shortcomings of the machine tool."

"This is the yield rate we are talking about."

Chen Dayou pointed to the basket of scrap on the floor nearby.

"Human compensation can only grind out four qualified products a month."

"And even that is traded for with his life."

A deep sense of powerlessness flooded Qu Weimin like a tide.

This was the sorrow of China's industry in this era.

We have the most hard-working and desperate workers in the world.

We have craftsmen who dare to risk their lives for national tasks.

However, in the face of cold physical laws, in the face of absolute industrial precision.

Spiritual strength, while great, appeared so tragic and pale.

"Is there any other way?" Qu Weimin's voice sounded as if it were squeezed from his chest.

"Yes."

Chen Dayou led him to another corner of the workshop.

There, a dozen top engineers were squatting.

Like scavengers, they were rummaging through piles of scrap that looked like small hills.

"The brute-force method."

Chen Dayou smiled bitterly.

"We inspect every part we process, regardless of whether it's qualified or not."

"Then we record the actual dimensions of each part."

"If this shaft is 0.002 millimeters too thick, we go to that pile of scrap to find a sleeve with an aperture exactly 0.002 millimeters too large to match it."

"Among thousands of parts, maybe we can get lucky and piece together a perfect fit."

Qu Weimin looked at those usually arrogant engineers.

Squatting on the ground, hands covered in oil, doing this most primitive "arranged marriage" of parts, feeling a huge stone blocking his heart.

This was the current state of Modu Machine Tool Factory, the "big boss" of the domestic machine tool industry.

Driven to a dead end by a tiny bearing.

He looked at those bloody parts, an uncontrollable grief and indignation surging in his heart.

Have we really become useless without the foreigners' bearings?