Volume 1 Chapter 18 - Birth of the screw bolt
Volume 1 Chapter 18 Birth of the screw bolt
After sending off the last person who had been cheated, Xu Yi let out a long sigh and stretched out his body.
“Hu, it’s finally over. I’m so tired.”
Heinz came over right in time to hand Xu Yi a cup of warm tea. He said with a smile, “Actually, since you already expected that this would happen today, you should have called those students over. If you rely on just one person, naturally you’ll be tired.”
Xu Yi shook his head, “That won’t do, the things they learn in school are very important to them, I can’t cause them to fall behind. Then again, it already stated on the contract they signed before that it can’t interfere with their class time. They are also closely related to the production of Magic Fans, so if they are tired, it wouldn’t be good since it would affect our production.”
Heinz rolled his eyes at Xu Yi, “It’s not bad if you’re tired?”
“Hei, this bit isn’t much. In the past…..” Xu Yi suddenly stopped.
He wanted to say that when he used to work in the research center, he went three days straight with only four hours of sleep. Compared to that time, this was basically nothing.
But he reacted before he spoke. He was no longer in that world anymore, he couldn’t return to that wild research environment.
Thinking of this, Xu Yi couldn’t help feeling a trace of sadness in his heart.
Seeing Xu Yi suddenly become silent and his expression became vacant, Heinz was a bit confused. However, he knew that it was not a good time to ask questions, so he also became silent.
There was only the sound of Alex putting things away in this room.
After a while, Xu Yi shook his head and looked at Heinz with a smile.
“Sorry, I was distracted. That’s right, what were we talking about just now?”
“You said that you couldn’t tire those students and affect production.”
“Oh, right. Speaking of this, Heinz, find some time to go to the Baron Rickto Magic Academy and try your best to recruit more students. You can also have those students we already hired to advertise for you, it would be more effective. I’ve almost finished researching the second generation Magic Fan, so perhaps we’ll be able to begin producing them at the end of the month. We’ll need a large amount of manpower at that time.”
“Un, I know.” Heinz casually wrote what Xu Yi said into the little book he carried with him.
Seeing his movement, Xu Yi couldn’t help smiling because Heinz’s actions were simply the same as an experienced secretary.
Heinz was a bit confused by Xu Yi’s smile, but he opened the book and remembered something else.
“That’s right, Xu Yi, I already asked around and there really isn’t anything like the newspaper you mentioned before in Banta City. The closest is the City Lord Manor’s government report sent once in a while. But that thing is only sent to the old masters of the noble families, normal people can’t see it at all.”
“It’s like this, then forget it. I’ll think of another method of advertising.” Xu Yi waved his hand, signaling to forget this matter for now, “Speaking of manpower, Heinz, I think we should hire a group of blacksmiths.”
“Ah?” Heinz was stunned by Xu Yi’s sudden thoughts, “Hire blacksmiths? Why? If it’s to make fans, can’t we just use a blacksmith shop in the city?”
“Other people have too much control like this. If something happens to the blacksmith shop, it’ll be very hard for us to take care of this.” Xu Yi shook his head, “Of course, the main thing is that we need specialized people. I’ve always been dissatisfied with the outer casing made from those blacksmith shops, their quality can’t match my requirements. Because we haven’t been able to find a suitable substitute, we’ve been using them the entire time. After what happened today, haven’t you noticed yet that we were able to easily convince those people that the Magic Fans they bought wasn’t from our place because of the quality of our Magic Fans are much better? So, if we want to maintain the value of our brand, we need to maintain the quality.”
Heinz thought about what happened today and found that Xu Yi was right.
If it wasn’t for a clear difference in quality, making those people have to admit that the Magic Fans they bought and the Frestech Brand Magic Fans were completely different things, this matter wouldn’t have ended so easily.
“But where are we going to find a large amount of suitable blacksmiths?” Heinz knit his brows.
“Actually, we don’t need very skilled people, we just need specialized blacksmiths for this. Do you understand what I mean?” Xu Yi asked.
“You’re saying…..we just need to hire some blacksmiths that know how to forge and have them specially make the fan outer casing for us?”
“That’s right, that’s exactly what I mean. Even later……” Xu Yi revealed a faint smile and a strange look flashed in his eyes, “When we’ve developed to a certain extent, we won’t even need that many of these specialized blacksmiths.”
It was already afternoon when he left Heinz’s General Store. Xu Yi looked up at the sky and thought that he would take another day off. He had already taken three days off during this week, he hadn’t gone to work at the Magic Tower for close to half the time.
“The coworkers in the lab should already be able to guess that I don’t want to do it anymore? Perhaps they’ll think that I’m too dumb, giving up the chance to study magic with Great Magician Camilla.” Xu Yi revealed a smile of self ridicule, “But speaking of this, Great Magician Camilla has never revealed a stance on this. If it was anyone else, perhaps he would have already driven them out of the Magic Tower.”
While trying to guess what Great Magician Camilla was really thinking, Xu Yi passed several corners and arrived in front of the Volcano Blacksmith again.
Like usual, when he entered the blacksmith shop, he was welcomed with a wave of heat.
“Hey, Master Lanus, here.” Xu Yi didn’t even look as he threw the bottle of wine in his hand into the blacksmith.
A thick hand came out of the heat wave and firmly grabbed the wine bottle.
“Brat, can’t you see that I’m working? What if…..Yi? Good wine!”
Master Lanus was about to curse out when he was attracted from the powerful wine fragrance from the bottle of wine. Without saying a single thing, he put it to his mouth and took a large swig.
“Hu…..It really is good wine!” Master Lanus let out a breath filled with alcohol smell before giving a burp. Only then did he look at Xu Yi, “Hey, kid, this should be the Sachi Manor’s thirty year aged wine, right? This costs at least five gold coins per bottle. A kid like you wouldn’t have any good intentions, so what requests do you have now?”
“What do you mean by strange requests?” Xu Yi said in an aggrieved voice, “Master Lanus, have you been dissatisfied with the requests I’ve made the entire time? Don’t forget that you’re the one who agreed to them. As for me changing this request in the end, wouldn’t it improve the two machines much more?”
“Humph! I did say this, but kid, you keep throwing requests after requests at me.”
Xu Yi gave two laughs. He looked to the side and his eyes fell onto the two strange machines in the corner of the blacksmith shop.
“Wa! Master Lanus, I’ve only been away for two days and you’ve already finished it?”
Xu Yi excitedly charged over. He went around the two machines a few times like he was looking at a treasure.
“Humph! What kind of person am I, Lanus? It’s just two machines, how hard can they be?” Master Lanus gave a snort before taking another swig of the wine.
Xu Yi was already beginning to look over these two machines from head to toe.
One of them was the Magic Thread Rolling Machine which he had Master Lanus make the other day. The other one was a Magic Capping Machine he added later.
These two machines were important machines for making the screw bolts. As long as both of them worked properly, the mass production of screw bolts that Xu Yi envisioned would be possible.
Don’t look down on the screw bolt. This thing seemed normal, but it could be found in every part of the industrial system, it was an essential material.
Whether it was big or small, complicated on simple, almost every machine and industrial product on earth had a screw bolt in it.
Being able to mass produce screw bolts, it meant that Xu Yi had already taken the first step on the path of industrialism on the Sines Continent!
“Master Lanus, can these two machines be used right now?” Xu Yi turned his head to ask this.
“Nonsense, I’ve already told you it’s finished, could it be it still can’t be used?”
“Very good.” Xu Yi took a small iron rod from the store and placed it in the mold of the capping machine before pressing the on switch.
There was no movement at all.
“Idiot! You didn’t even put in a Magic Crystal, how could it move!” Master Lanus’ angry roar came from behind him.
Xu Yi slapped his head. He realized that he had been too excited, actually forgetting the most important thing.
Xu Yi quickly took out the High Grade Magic Crystal he had already prepared and put it into the capping machine as the power source before pressing the switch again.
There was suddenly a “peng” sound from the capping machine, as it sent a high speed hit, hitting the top of the rod inside the mold.
“Keng——”
With a clear strange sound from the capping machine, the machine itself trembled intensely. The entire blacksmith shop trembled several times from the giant sound, which was truly terrifying.
Xu Yi couldn’t help being stunned.
Wasn’t it just hitting a screw bolt head, why did it create such a heaven shaking sound?
He finally came back to his senses after a bit. He pressed the switch again and the stamp head came back to the peak.
Xu Yi took the iron rod from the mold. He was pleased to find that under the power of the stamp head, the head of the rod had actually been turned into a circle. There was also a cross hole on the head, which was normal for a screw bolt.
“It’s not bad.” Xu Yi nodded in satisfaction, “Let’s try the thread rolling machine.”
Compared to the simple and crude capping machine, the thread rolling machine was much more complicated.
Even though Xu Yi simplified it quite a bit, this thread rolling machine actually had over four Magic Arrays. Just drawing the Magic Array had used quite a bit of concentration from Xu Yi, not to mention having to perfectly combine the Magic Array with the structure of the machine.
But seeing the cutting tool quickly engraving lines on the screw bolt, Xu Yi completely forgot the difficulty in studying this machine and was just filled with a sense of accomplishment.
This was the Sines Continent! This was a world without any industrial systems at all!
To be able to create a screw bolt in this world, this was already a great accomplishment!
As one of the most important participants in this great project, Xu Yi completely had the right to feel proud!
To the side, Lanus saw these two machines turn this iron rod into this finely made screw bolt and his heart was filled with shock.
At first he thought this kid’s two machines were very strange, that was why Lanus took the challenge to make it for him.
But now that he had seen how amazing these two machines were, Lanus suddenly felt that these two machines were more important than anything he had made before.
“How did this kid think of these two machines?” Lanus looked at Xu Yi with eyes filled with curiosity.