275: Chapter 275 Chief Engineer Su Goes Online

Beijing Suburbs.

An abandoned Hongxing Heavy Machinery factory.

The massive iron factory building was as large as four soccer fields.

The skylights on the roof had long been shattered, and the cold early winter wind whistled shrilly as it poured through the holes.

The ground was covered in layers of accumulated black oil, sticky underfoot.

At this moment.

Heavy trucks were lining up one by one to drive into this industrial ruin abandoned by time.

"Unload! Put them down gently! That crate contains high-precision micro-servo motors; if you break them, you couldn't afford to pay for them even if you sold yourself! Put the aluminum alloy frames on the left and the hydraulic push rods on the right!"

Liu Jie held a folder, standing amidst the swirling dust, coughing as she directed the workers.

Her heart was bleeding.

What had just been unloaded from the trucks was not the foam boards, wooden frames, or green screen sets commonly used by film crews.

They were solid, heavy, cold-gleaming metal components.

High-strength carbon fiber boards, aircraft-grade aluminum profiles, military-standard hydraulic lines, and crates of precision electronic components.

These items were piled up like a small mountain.

And the liquid capital in the studio's account, just earned from variety shows, was vanishing at a terrifying, visible speed.

"Su Zhe..."

Liu Jie looked at the man beside her, who was wearing a black hoodie and looking down at a hand-drawn blueprint, her voice trembling: "We've already burned through nearly half of our money. Why are you buying this scrap metal? Even if we don't use special effects, we could just find a prop factory to make some plastic shells, paint them with metallic paint, and it would fool the camera just fine!"

"Fool them?"

Su Zhe rolled up the blueprint in his hand and turned his head.

His eyes were as cold as ice.

"Hollywood sci-fi films, even their props, are designed according to strict industrial logic. The sense of weight, load-bearing support, wear and tear. If actors wear plastic toys, their center of gravity will be off when they walk. Can you fool the audience's eyes with that? What I want is not a prop."

Su Zhe pointed to the tons of heavy industrial materials in front of him: "I want it to run, jump, and punch through steel plates!"

Liu Jie opened her mouth, completely speechless.

The logic made sense.

But the problem was... as a film director, did he know how to build a mech?

Did he really think that if he bought a pile of parts and glued them together, he could become Iron Man?

...

It wasn't just Liu Jie who was in despair.

The entire crew was in a state of deep confusion at this moment.

Yin Hua, wearing a high-end suit, stood on the edge of an oil slick, tiptoeing for fear of dirtying his leather shoes.

He looked at the script for "the wandering earth" in his hand, which contained only lines and no visual descriptions.

Then he looked at the welding machines and cutting saws scattered all over the ground.

"Is this even filming?"

Yin Hua swallowed, whispering to Zhang Song beside him: "Brother Song, I feel like we didn't join a film crew; we joined an illegal car modification workshop."

Zhang Song pushed up his glasses, his brows furrowed: "We can't guess Director Su's intentions. But since he dared to bet his entire fortune on this, he must have a way."

Just as everyone was whispering and feeling bleak about the future.

Su Zhe walked to the very center of the factory.

He didn't pick up that signature megaphone.

Instead, he closed his eyes.

In his mind, the system's pale blue light screen slowly unfolded.

He looked at his remaining popularity points.

This was his last trump card.

To defeat Hollywood's arrogance, to tear off the mask of domestic special effects companies.

"System."

Su Zhe roared in his heart: "Redeem! [God-level Mechanical Engineering Manufacturing Specialty]!"

A crisp notification sound rang out.

The remaining popularity points were instantly cleared.

The next second.

A massive, skull-splitting torrent of information, like a burst dam, flooded into Su Zhe's brain.

It wasn't some ethereal artistic inspiration.

It was rigorous, uncompromising heavy industrial knowledge.

Material mechanics, fluid mechanics, micro-electronic control, bionic architecture for powered exoskeletons, high-precision machining...

Countless complex equations, gear engagement parameters, critical pressure points for hydraulic transmission.

They rapidly reorganized and were branded into his neural pathways.

Hoo...

A full five minutes passed.

Su Zhe finally opened his eyes slowly.

In that instant.

The world in his eyes changed.

The originally chaotic, discarded steel in his vision automatically displayed its yield strength and carbon equivalent.

For the motors scattered on the ground, he only needed to glance at them to recite their rated torque and maximum speed.

At this moment.

Standing in the center of the abandoned factory was no longer the genius director who held a megaphone behind the monitor shouting "Cut."

He was a top-tier mechanical chief engineer who had mastered mechanical civilization beyond this era and perfectly combined violent aesthetics with precise data.

"Start working!"

Su Zhe ripped off his casual jacket and threw it onto a scrap metal barrel.

He casually grabbed a dusty, dark blue work uniform and put it on.

He placed a yellow hard hat on his head.

He strode to the pile of materials, holding a vernier caliper he had pulled from somewhere.

His aura was fully unleashed.

"Tie Niu!"

"Here!"

Tie Niu stood straight as a reflex.

"Bring me that A-3 aluminum main chassis! Put it on operation table number two!"

Su Zhe pointed to a heavy metal plate weighing over two hundred pounds.

It was the core base for the miniature model of the planetary engine transport vehicle.

"Alright!"

Tie Niu rubbed his hands together.

He didn't even use the chain hoist.

He walked over directly and grabbed both ends of the metal plate with his arms.

"Hey!"

With a low roar.

His muscles bulged like the roots of an old tree, lifting the heavy chassis off the ground, and he walked to the operation table, setting it down steadily.

This terrifying brute strength made the nearby production assistant swallow hard.

Su Zhe didn't even look up, using the vernier caliper to quickly mark several precise lines on the chassis.

"Yin Hua!"

Hearing the boss call his name.

Yin Hua, who was hiding in a corner afraid of dirtying his leather shoes, shuddered.

"I'm... I'm here, Director."

Su Zhe turned around and pulled a heavy industrial angle grinder from a nearby toolbox.

He shoved it directly into Yin Hua's arms.

He also threw him a black welding mask.

"Put it on."

Yin Hua looked at the cutting saw in his hand, which was still emitting the smell of machine oil, and his face turned green: "Director Su. I'm an actor. I'm a method actor who just won the Golden Dragon Award for Best Supporting Actor. These hands are for playing the piano, not for this kind of manual labor!"

"Cut the crap!"

Su Zhe's eyes sharpened, like a tyrant descending: "In my crew, there are no actors right now! Only assemblers! This machine has a speed of 12,000 RPM; it cuts steel pipes like tofu. Do you see the white lines I drew on the chassis? Cut along the lines for me! If the tolerance is under two millimeters, you get a chicken leg for lunch. If you cut it crooked and ruin a piece of material..."

Su Zhe sneered: "I'll deduct 20,000 from your pay!"

Hearing the words "deduct pay."

All of Yin Hua's so-called idol baggage and pride as a supporting actor shattered into glass shards on the floor.

"I'll cut! I'll cut, okay!"

Yin Hua was on the verge of tears.

He hurriedly put on the sweat-smelling work uniform and clamped the black mask onto his head.

He plugged in the power.

Buzz...

The cutting machine emitted a harsh roar, the blade spinning at high speed.

Yin Hua gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and pressed the blade onto the aluminum chassis.

Szzzt...

A burst of dazzling sparks exploded instantly, spraying out like a golden waterfall.

The pungent smell of scorched metal filled the air.

"Open your eyes, watch the line, don't let your hands shake!"

Su Zhe roared from the side, his voice drowning out the harsh cutting sound.

...

From this moment on.

This abandoned factory completely transformed into a crazy, heavy-industrial military workshop.

Everyone was assigned a full load of tasks.

Zhang Song was responsible for polishing burrs off parts, and Gao Lan led the female staff in assembling the wiring harnesses for the small servo motors.

Tie Niu was the most ruthless human crane in the workshop; wherever heavy objects needed moving, he was there.

And Su Zhe.

He was the brain of the entire workshop.

He carried blueprints, weaving through various dangerous pieces of mechanical equipment.

"Here, the weld seam is uneven and has air holes, reweld it! The pressure value on the hydraulic push rod is wrong, turn the pressure relief valve up by 0.5 megapascals! The bearing tolerance on the skeletal joint is too large, measure it again with the caliper!"

His demands were extreme to the point of being abnormal.

He was strict about the assembly of every part and the torque of every screw.

At first.

Everyone was just mechanically carrying out orders under the pressure of his authority.

But as time went on.

The people in the crew slowly discovered that things were becoming somewhat eerie.

"Liu Jie..."

Yin Hua took off his mask, his face covered in grime, wiped away sweat, and pointed to the black skeleton being gradually assembled in the corner: "Don't you feel... that we aren't building movie props at all?"

Liu Jie looked at the two-meter-tall metal monster that was already taking shape.

She looked at the thick hydraulic cylinders, the complex transmission gears, and the cold-gleaming metal shell.

She swallowed a mouthful of dry saliva.

If this was a prop, then every arsenal in the world might as well go out of business.

"Su Zhe..."

Liu Jie looked at Su Zhe, who was lying under the vehicle, frantically tightening screws with a wrench, her voice trembling: "What exactly has he been hiding from us? This proficiency, these blueprints... this is building weapons!"

...

Days passed by.

For half a month straight.

The lights in the abandoned factory never went out, day or night.

The harsh sound of electric saws, the sparks from welding, and the dull thuds of hammers hitting metal wove together into a crazy heavy-metal symphony.

Su Zhe hadn't left the factory in half a month.

His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was like tangled grass, and his face and hands were covered in black machine oil that wouldn't wash off.

He was like a mad scientist immersed in creating life.

Tireless, he had fallen into a kind of crazy obsession.

It wasn't just him.

Everyone in the crew was infected by this frenzied atmosphere.

Yin Hua's hands were covered in blisters from burns, but his movements cutting steel became increasingly proficient, and he could even cut perfect chamfers.

Tie Niu's clothes had long been worn through, but his pace while carrying steel plates became increasingly steady.

Everyone looked at the steel giant taking shape bit by bit in the corner.

An indescribable romance belonging to men and the thrill of creation surged in everyone's chest.

...

The fifteenth day.

Late at night.

Two in the morning.

The abandoned factory, which had been noisy for half a month, suddenly fell into an eerie, dead silence.

No sound of saws.

No sound of hammering.

All the staff and actors held their breath, surrounding the workbench in the deepest part of the factory.

A dim industrial pendant lamp shone on that area.

"Click."

A crisp sound of metal engaging echoed.

Su Zhe held a massive, oil-stained wrench in his hand.

He tightened a black hydraulic line as thick as a wrist onto the main control valve.

This was the final part.

It was also the final blood vessel transmitting power.

Hoo...

Su Zhe put down the wrench and exhaled a long, turbid breath.

He straightened his back.

With the back of his gloved, dirty hand, he wiped the machine oil and sweat from his face.

In those bloodshot, red eyes, a fanatical light, almost tangible, erupted at this moment.

"Step back."

Su Zhe's voice was hoarse, yet it carried a trembling sense of majesty.

Yin Hua, Tie Niu, Liu Jie, and the others gathered around subconsciously retreated three meters away.

Their eyes were fixed on the "colossus" in the corner that had always been covered by a dust cloth.

Su Zhe walked to the dust cloth.

He grabbed the corner of the cloth.

And pulled it off with a jerk!

Whoosh...

The dust cloth slid down like a gray waterfall.

Under the dim light.

A single-soldier exoskeleton auxiliary armor, standing two point two meters tall, entirely matte black, and full of extreme violent aesthetics and heavy industrial oppression.

Stood right before everyone's eyes.

Thick hydraulic push rods, complex gear engagement structures, and composite armor plates covering the critical areas.

This was not the flashy spandex suit seen in movies.

This was a steel monster born to tear through the limits of strength.

"Gulp..."

In the vast factory, the sound of people swallowing saliva echoed one after another.

It was too cool!

It was too shocking!

Just standing here silently, this thing already made people feel an overwhelming pressure that made it hard to breathe!

Su Zhe walked to the side of the armor and opened a hidden control panel.

He took a deep breath.

His fingers pressed steadily onto the red power-on button.

"Click."

The crisp sound of the button echoed in the silent factory.

One second.

Two seconds.

No reaction.

Just as Yin Hua was about to open his mouth to ask if the wiring was wrong.

Buzz!

A roar of micro-servo motors, as if coming from the depths of the earth, suddenly erupted!

Following that.

Accompanied by a hair-raising sound of metallic hydraulics.

That silent black armor.

At the location of the head's main control unit.

With a "swish."

Two cold, sharp, deep-blue mechanical eyes, like those of a demon from the abyss.

Slowly, in the darkness, opened!