53: Chapter 53 Turning Wind into Fire

After conceiving the idea of hiking to explore and scavenge for supplies, Jiang Lin began preparing for his trip.

So he built a carrying frame using the materials he had on hand.

Next was preparing dry rations: dried potatoes, Pumpkin cakes, and Soybeans that were boiled and dried in the shade...

On an early autumn morning, he shouldered the carrying frame packed with supplies and took his first steps on his long journey.

To the southwest of the Stone House, there was an extremely wide sunken landform.

Back when he entered the Wasteland for the second time, he had already conducted a short-distance survey nearby and confirmed that it was an ancient riverbed that had been completely dry for an unknown number of years.

In human engineering history, water has always been the convergence point of infrastructure and civilization.

No matter the era, wherever there is a river, there will be dams, bridge piers, hydrometeorological observation stations, and large pumping stations.

Following the hydrogeology rather than blindly trying his luck on the Gobi Desert was the most fundamental logic of engineering investigation.

The bottom of the riverbed was covered with off-white saline-alkali crystals and dry, cracked silt blocks, crunching crisply underfoot.

The wind formed a funnel effect in the river channel, kicking up saline-alkali powder from the ground and hitting Jiang Lin's goggles, quickly covering them with a thin, hazy off-white film.

After walking for an hour and a half, the direction of the riverbed began to change, and a noticeably narrowed section appeared ahead.

In fluid mechanics, this is called a choke zone. Because the water flow velocity is fastest and data characteristics are most prominent here, it is naturally excellent terrain for building a dam or a hydrological observation station.

Jiang Lin's breathing became slightly heavier.

When he rounded a massive piece of weathered red rock, the contour of the horizon suddenly ceased to be natural.

About five hundred meters ahead, on the gentle slope on the right side of the riverbed, several twisted rebar pillars covered in reddish-brown rust and large piles of collapsed concrete debris stood out abruptly.

Jiang Lin's pupils contracted instantly, and he quickened his pace toward it.

When he stood truly before those ruins, an overwhelming sense of historical weight washed over him.

It was a cluster of semi-collapsed, low-rise buildings.

The wall plaster had long been completely eroded away by storms, exposing the rough aggregate inside.

On the side of the building closer to the center of the riverbed, a thick steel pipe was driven deeply into the bedrock, its surface carved with a faded row of red and white markings.

"A staff gauge?"

Jiang Lin muttered to himself.

Without a doubt, this had once been a hydrometeorological observation station of a Wasteland civilization.

Humans had measured water levels, wind speeds, and fluid mechanics data here, until an unknown destruction descended and reset everything to zero.

Jiang Lin took off his heavy carrying frame and, carrying an entrenching shovel on his back, climbed up to the bank along the collapsed slope.

He began to systematically explore along the edge of the collapsed ruins.

The hydrological station was completely empty, filled mostly with construction debris.

He only scavenged four large industrial ceramic insulators, two meters of pure copper wire, three strong magnets, and several industrial-grade stainless steel springs.

After half an hour of busy work, Jiang Lin piled the scavenged supplies to one side.

He went back down to the riverbed to carry the frame back up.

Then, leaning against the ruins, he began eating, taking a sip of hot water with a bite of Pumpkin cake.

As the sugars and starches dissolved in his stomach, his stamina gradually recovered.

"This scrap metal might make my life a bit smoother, but it can't break through that 0.01-millimeter dead line. In machining, that is the limit of hand filing, the watershed between settling for 'good enough' and achieving precision. If I can't cross it, I'll be stuck hammering away on the Wasteland for the rest of my life as a mere tinkerer."

Jiang Lin swallowed the rough food, slapped the crumbs off his hands, and continued searching.

As the scheduled return time approached, he found three gray cast iron blanks of similar dimensions.

One came from a stilling well cover seat.

One came from the flat side wall of an old valve body.

One came from a cast iron shim at the base of a telemetry cabinet outside the equipment room.

Different origins, different shapes, different thicknesses.

Their carbon state, casting quality, and internal stress were all uncertain.

This was not ideal, but it was the best material he could get.

Jiang Lin assigned them labels.

Plate A, Plate B, and Plate C.

For these three pieces of old cast iron—dirty, rusty, and with chipped edges—he still needed to clean and roughly prepare them first.

Removing rust, trimming edges, and grinding off obvious bumps.

He used a file and abrasive stones to process the three pieces until they could sit stably on the workbench without wobbling.

Only then could he begin rough scraping.

By the time Jiang Lin began rough scraping these three gray cast iron blocks—each about twenty centimeters long and wide, and nearly ten centimeters thick—the grass outside the Stone House had turned yellow thirteen times.

Lacking off-the-shelf spotting ink, he burned collected pine wood into charcoal, ground it into an extremely fine powder, and mixed it into the diesel he had brought, creating a crude black spotting oil.

He coated A with the black spotting oil, placed it over B, and pushed and pulled gently.

When he lifted it off, there were only two or three black high points on B's surface.

Those were mountains on a macroscopic scale.

Jiang Lin gripped the scraper with both hands, pressed the blade against the high points, exerted force from his hips, and leaned forward.

*Sshhh—*

An extremely subtle yet sharp sound.

The tip of the scraper bit off a thin layer of mixed powder.

This was not the broad, sweeping cut of filing, but a precise roll call in the microscopic world.

In the first year, he spent several hours every day scraping.

His right pectoral muscle cramped like a rock every night from tens of thousands of short, forceful bursts.

Yet as he looked at those iron plates, his eyes grew brighter and brighter.

Because it lacked the sticky, dragging feel of Q235 mild steel, the brittleness of gray cast iron made every stroke crisp and perfectly free of burrs.

Summer of the fifteenth year.

The contact points multiplied.

From the initial few, they turned into seven or eight mottled black spots per square inch (25×25 mm).

A lap B, B lap C, C lap A.

This ancient craftsmanship relied on rigorous geometric logic.

If two plates were lapped together, they could indeed fit, but they might end up with a concave and convex spherical fit.

One convex and one concave, locking into each other, would also block light completely.

However, if three plates were lapped interchangeably, mathematical principles dictated that their only possible outcome to fit each other was to infinitely approach an absolute plane.

Thus, after lapping No. 1 and No. 2, No. 3 was brought in: No. 1 and No. 3 were lapped, No. 2 and No. 3 were lapped, and then No. 1 and No. 2 were rechecked, repeating the cycle continuously.

However, midsummer in the Wasteland was sweltering.

Jiang Lin noticed that as he scraped, the surfaces that had originally fitted together suddenly changed, with high points shifting erratically.

He paused and stared at the iron plate for a long time.

In the end, next to his solid-state Physics notes, he wrote down two words:

Body heat.

The heat transferred from his hands to the iron plate caused a thermal expansion warp of several micrometers.

From that day on, he only scraped for twenty minutes a day.

After scraping one surface, he had to let the iron plate sit in a cool spot for two hours, waiting for the temperature to completely equalize before doing a second pass.

Engineering forced him to use insane patience to combat the laws of thermodynamics.

Autumn of the twentieth year.

The polycarbonate sheets on the roof had been roughened by sandstorms, turning the light filtering through dim and yellowed.

The capacity of the backup battery had dropped to an appalling 30%, allowing him to turn on the light for only one hour each night.

Yet he didn't mind at all.

On the workbench, the surfaces of the three cast iron plates, A, B, and C, were covered in fine, frost-like micro-scratches.

When stamped with the black spotting oil, the contact points reached twenty per square inch.

This was the threshold for Grade 0 precision in mechanical manufacturing.

Now, every time he pushed the scraper forward, the metal layer it shaved off was down to 2 micrometers—or 0.002 millimeters.

At this thickness, the human eye couldn't even see distinct iron filings, only a black shadow finer than cigarette ash.

Yet this layer of black shadow was the step for him to cross that dead line and rebuild the baseline of civilization.

One evening, after pushing No. 3 back and forth on No. 1 a dozen times, he suddenly stopped and stared at his hands pressing against the plate for a long while.

His knuckles were deformed from years of continuous exertion, and the skin on the backs of his fingers was as rough as sandpaper.

He suddenly wondered if Old Yu saw these three plates, he would probably stay silent for a long time before tapping the edge with his old file and asking how many years it had taken.

Early spring of the twenty-fifth year.

Jiang Lin no longer relied on checking against light; instead, he switched to self-made red lead powder.

Iron oxide powder scraped from a weathered iron-bearing ore in the ruins was mixed with distilled Moss water into a slurry and applied thinly onto Plate No. 1.

Plate No. 3 was placed on top and gently dragged and lapped once, then Plate No. 1 was lifted to inspect the red lead spot distribution.

The spots were dense and even; from center to edges, there were no areas of noticeably concentrated high or low points.

The red lead residue on Plate No. 3 was equally even.

On a morning without sandstorms.

Jiang Lin laid out the three plates on the workbench beside the vise.

In truth, they were just three pieces of rusty iron turned into gray metal plates—unpretentious, silent, with a matte texture on the surface unique to mutual lapping.

Holding Plate A with both hands, he pressed it smoothly onto Plate B and pushed it gently forward.

There was no resistance from metal friction.

Plate A slid smoothly for a distance as if floating on water.

That was an extremely thin air cushion trapped and compressed between two exceedingly flat metal surfaces.

Jiang Lin took a deep breath, pinched the edge of Plate A, and slid it outward, thoroughly expelling the excess air.

The two plates instantly locked tightly together.

Gripping the smoothed edges of Plate A with both hands, he firmly engaged his core and pulled upward sharply.

*Wumm—*

A very low-frequency vibration resonated through the air.

Plate B underneath did not fall.

It seemed welded to Plate A by an invisible clamp, lifted off the table by sheer force.

The 35-jin iron block hung strangely inverted in midair without any glue or bolts.

Its thick body, shrunk a bit in size from fifteen years of grinding, emitted a subtle cold glint under the dim light, as if mocking the laws of gravity on the Wasteland.

Jiang Lin's arm muscles trembled slightly as he fought against the heavy suction.

[part:gemini-3.5-flash-lite]

He could feel that this was not relying on any tricks, but rather a Physics miracle jointly forged by atmospheric pressure and van der Waals forces between metal molecules when the fit between two planes reached the micron level.

The gauge block adsorption effect.

"Fifteen years!"

Jiang Lin carefully put the iron plate back on the table.

When he wanted to separate them, vertical pulling was completely useless; he could only use all his strength to shove them horizontally and fiercely before hearing a snap, as the two iron plates once again became independent entities.

At that moment, Jiang Lin felt that the pent-up frustration accumulated in his chest for over a decade finally dissipated with that crisp snap.

Finally, on this Wasteland representing chaos and entropy increase, relying on a mortal flesh and blood body and twenty-five years of time, he had stubbornly ground out a benchmark plane of civilization.

Jiang Lin did not celebrate; instead, he lay down and went straight to sleep, sleeping for a day and a night, and feeling that his whole person had recovered, before he began to brutally tackle the yaw bearing.

This thing was a complex category in previous mechanical manuals, involving cross rollers, seals, gear drives, and dedicated drive motors.

But Jiang Lin had no way to mess with those fancy things.

On the Wasteland, a more complex structure meant a higher failure rate and harder-to-find replacement parts.

Starting from the tenth year, he collected junk, drew over a dozen versions of plans in his notebook, and finally settled on a low-compensation, maintainable, self-restraining sliding bearing system.

To put it bluntly, it used three flat friction pairs to forcefully resist the axial force, two shaft sleeves to handle the radial force, plus a self-locking worm as a yaw brake.

This plan was a bit rough, but it was sturdy.

The only and most critical prerequisite was that there must be an absolute flat baseplate capable of bearing the axial benchmark.

Over the past five years, he had tripped three times over this.

Forcing steel plates together, hammering aluminum plates, and even digging up old flanges from the ruins had all failed without exception.

As soon as the wind picked up, the yaw would inevitably jam; taking it apart revealed that there were local abrasions everywhere between the baseplate and the turntable.

It was not a lack of lubrication, nor was the material too soft; it was simply not flat enough.

Even the slightest undulation invisible to the naked eye would, when subjected to an eccentric moment, become a pressure point amplified dozens of times, directly biting pits into the sliding surface.

The wind on the Wasteland did not coddle you; gusts, turbulence, and sandstorms came as they pleased, and the direction of force was always going crazy.

If the baseplate was not flat, this set of sliding bearings would be a joke.

But now, he had a surface plate.

Jiang Lin set the thinnest surface plate C on the workbench as a benchmark.

Serving as the benchmark for the yaw bearing baseplate was an old steel plate.

But this old steel plate had to be scraped on surface plate C until it was compliant enough before it qualified to become the yaw baseplate.

He pinched a scriber, found the center circle on the surface, and positioned the bolt holes.

No dividing plate?

He didn't fuss over formalities.

He pulled out a calculator with a scratched-up screen and tapped his fingers rapidly.

Without a dividing plate, he could only use the calculator to break down the positions of the six holes into coordinates, and then use calipers to carve them onto the steel plate one by one.

After drilling the holes, he didn't rush to assemble them, but instead disassembled, tested, and modified them again.

Until all six bolts could slide into the hole positions by fingers alone without hammering.

After finishing the six holes, he used calipers to measure the diagonal.

Two ends differed by a fraction of a millimeter, so he grabbed a round file and rubbed it twice against the hole wall.

Try again.

The six M6 bolts could slide smoothly into the holes just by holding them with his fingers, without any hammering.

The novice twenty-five years ago who couldn't even recognize wrench sizes could now complete indexing, positioning, and go/no-go inspection perfectly inside a Stone House with just a pair of vernier calipers and a calculator.

The turntable used that strip-shaped number-one plate.

He scribed lines to find the center and applied a center punch mark.

Around the center hole, a circle of weight-reducing grooves also had to be milled.

Dropping two drops of degraded diesel for cooling, the cutter head pressed down.

The feed was very slow, with each cut being only a fraction of a millimeter.

The two bushing seats were modified from scrapped bearing outer rings; the rust was sanded off with sandpaper, and they were taken to surface plate B to check for roundness.

Light shone through the gap, and after rotating six angles, there was no obvious sudden change in the width of the transmitted light.

The most exhausting part was that self-locking worm.

The lead screw was a trapezoidal thread dug out from the ruins, and the yaw locking seat had to be entirely filed by hand.

Rough filing, medium filing, and fine-tuning with a needle file.

A piece of scrap steel plate was stubbornly filed by him for a day and a half.

Upon completion, Jiang Lin stroked all the edges with his calloused thumb.

The chamfers were rounded, the transitions were smooth, and it didn't cut the hands at all.

Baseplate, turntable, bushing seat, locking seat, worm, handwheel...

Twelve parts were laid out on the workbench.

Jiang Lin took a deep breath, grabbed an oil-stained rag to wipe his hands, and began final assembly.

Four-point bolts diagonal pre-tightening, adding torque, and screwing tight.

Slipping in the turntable and flicking it with a finger, the turntable slid across the baseplate with a steady and even feel.

Installing the locking seat and measuring the worm centering.

All combinations were completed.

The turntable rotated three hundred and sixty degrees without a trace of obstruction; after locking, pushing it hard with a hand made it motionless, and releasing the lock allowed a single pinky finger to make it spin again.

Fifteen days later, an open space outside the Stone House gained a foundation compacted with cement gravel.

Jiang Lin first inserted the yaw vertical shaft into the bushing sleeve, and then pressed the nacelle crossbeam onto the turntable.

At the front end of the crossbeam was the impeller main shaft modified from an old car half-shaft.

At the rear end was that ugly sheet metal tail rudder.

The main shaft was a rusted old car half-shaft, and the blades were welded using three layers of coated canvas and steel bars.

This pieced-together machine was ugly without a shred of dignity, resembling a wind-dried, deformed skeleton.

The wind was rising.

A layer of grayish-yellow sand curtain rolled up on the horizon.

Jiang Lin alone pulled the steel cable of the pulley block, his muscles taut all over, gritting his teeth as he pulled backward.

The pulleys emitted a dry metal friction sound, and the tower body gradually left the ground, slowly straightening up toward the sky.

Just as the tower rose to a forty-five-degree angle, an accident happened.

A side-cutting turbulence common on the Wasteland struck without warning from the northwest, like an invisible wall, smashing fiercely into the canvas blades hanging halfway in the air.

"Creeak——"

The tower body in mid-air abruptly tilted, and the huge eccentric torque was directly transmitted along the main shaft to the yaw bearing at the bottom.

Jiang Lin, pulling the steel cable, was yanked forward a step by this strange force, and his canvas gloves rubbed a scorched smell out against the cable.

Most people at this moment would definitely panic and desperately pull the ropes, trying to stabilize the tower with brute force.

But Jiang Lin knew the strength of this turbulence far too well.

Pulling it hard would immediately cause irreversible bending of the main shaft, and even the freshly poured concrete foundation below would be uprooted.

Therefore, not only did he not apply extra force with both hands, but instead smoothly fed out a section of the steel cable.

Relaxing the lock by half a turn gave the yaw mechanism a little margin for concession.

The nacelle was forcibly dragged off by over a dozen degrees by the tail rudder.

But these dozen or so degrees relieved the most dangerous lateral force, saving the shaft that was about to bend.

The tower swayed violently in mid-air.

Without the constraints of the locking mechanism, the huge sheet metal tail rudder immediately caught the wind direction, pushing the heavy nacelle to rotate stubbornly under the heavy pressure of the gale.

If it were those uneven baseplates from before, under such extreme eccentric stress, the sliding surface would instantly jam and lock up.

But this time, nothing happened.

Supported by the hand-rubbed absolute plane, the yaw bearing emitted a muffled but extremely continuous sliding sound.

Within half a second, the nacelle smoothly completed a ninety-degree deflection, making the blades face the turbulence head-on.

The side-cutting force was instantly neutralized.

"Whoosh——"

The wind direction straightened out.

The blades sliced through the air, emitting a deafening low-frequency roar.

Spinning faster and faster, it finally turned into a gray phantom.

The main shaft began to spin with increasing speed.

Jiang Lin exhaled a breath of stale air, and all the hair on his body stood on end at that instant.

He steadied his stance, retightened the steel cable, straightened the tower in one go, drove in the anchor bolts, and tightened them completely.

The wind gradually grew stronger.

A uniform rustling sound came from between the lower end of the main shaft and the bearing bush.

Jiang Lin stood under the tower and raised his head.

The twilight Wasteland darkened quickly, and the wind and sand whipping against his face stung a little.

The wind gradually grew stronger.

As the blade rotation speed increased, the impeller main shaft modified from the old car half-shaft began to emit a low hum.

That small permanent-magnet DC generator was driven by the coupling, and the output wires hung all the way down the tower into the Stone House.

Jiang Lin did not connect the battery.

He was not crazy enough to plug a newly erected wind turbine directly into that set of lithium iron phosphate batteries that had been over-discharged many times and had a terrible single-cell voltage difference.

What he connected first were a rectifier bridge, a fuse, a crude voltage stabilization module, and a section of resistance wire dismantled from an abandoned electric stove.

Another gust of wind pressed down.

The voltmeter's pointer shuddered.

It wasn't soaring.

It was struggling.

It swayed back and forth in the low-voltage range, like a person who had just crawled out of the Wasteland with sand still in their lungs, yet had already begun to breathe.

After the second gust of wind passed, the small green light on the rectification module lit up for a fraction of a second and then went out.

Jiang Lin didn't move.

When the third gust of wind came, the blades finally caught the wind.

The yaw bearing slid heavily half an inch at the top of the tower, and the tail rudder dragged the nacelle back toward the wind direction bit by bit.

The small green light lit up for the second time.

The LED of the old flashlight connected nearby also glowed with a red light accordingly.

Fifteen years.

He spent fifteen years turning the wind into fire.

The romance of Physics lies right here; it never looks at how hard you try, it only looks at whether you meet its standards.

Once you achieve it, it will hand the power of the entire world into your hands.