Chapter Eighteen: An Unexpected Gain (Please continue reading, kindly support with votes)

When dealing with small creatures like weasels, overly powerful firearms are useless; air guns are actually the most suitable.

One must understand that in his previous life, he was sent back because of making and modifying too many guns.

Thus, gun-making was his old trade, and he was even more professional at it.

As long as he could craft some handy tools, not to mention making an air gun, even a high-performance sniper rifle would be within his grasp!

Having obtained the startup capital—or rather, the startup tools—Qin Jun could not wait a moment longer.

How much money could be made from burning lime? Besides, it wasn’t even profitable yet!

Ignoring the deputy director of the commune, whose rank was too high to bother currying favor with, Qin Jun took the keys to the village warehouse and left immediately.

As for sharing lime-burning techniques with Yu Aiguo? How much trouble would that be to teach him?

The accountant Feng and his nephew had monopolized this craft, living comfortably for over a decade.

It seemed that the lime kiln masters in the surrounding communes had formed a united front!

Even if Qin Jun didn’t care, he couldn’t just ruin their livelihoods.

Of course, this was mainly because the benefits weren’t enough.

Freeloading was out of the question—Qin Jun wasn’t that kind of person.

What was the point? Offend every lime kiln master around for the sake of some public good?

And offend them deeply, no less. After all, cutting off someone’s income was like killing their parents!

“Xiaojun, don’t forget to come have dinner at my place tonight!” Qin Zhijiu called out loudly as Qin Jun was about to leave.

“Sure, not eager to eat means there’s something wrong with the brain!” Qin Jun shouted back. He had gotten used to eating regularly lately.

That was the rule in the Qin family, and he couldn’t break such a good tradition!

“Xiaojun, come to my place again tomorrow night!” Qin Han suddenly appeared out of nowhere, grabbing him just as he was about to dash off.

“What? You want to invite me twice?” Qin Jun chuckled.

“Exactly twice. The first time, my father invites you; the second time, it’s me, since you’re teaching me skills,” Qin Han said earnestly.

Qin Jun smiled. “We’re just helping each other; no need to formally invite. Come on, I still need your help!”

With that, Qin Jun pulled Qin Han along.

Back in the village, they arrived at the old team headquarters.

The new brigade headquarters was a brick-and-tile building, but the old one, though it had black tiles, was mostly made of mud bricks.

The old team headquarters was a three-room mud-brick building. Because it served as a warehouse, its thatched roof had been replaced with black tiles.

Overall, it was still a low and dark mud-brick house, cluttered with unused items accumulated over the years.

Opening the door revealed a layer of dust covering all sorts of junk.

The first thing visible was a curved-beam plow, then a seeder—an old farming tool requiring manual pulling for sowing.

Besides these, the village’s most important tool stood out: a diesel engine used to power the water pump.

The rest were genuine scraps: sickles, shovels, hoes, and so forth.

Piled up together, the largest space was taken by bundles of straw rope used for tying wheat.

It was hard to tell how many years these things had been around, but the wear and tear spoke of deep history, illustrating the village’s poverty.

After rummaging for a while, Qin Jun finally found the blacksmith’s anvil at the very back.

There were also iron tongs, shears, planes, drills, ladles, rulers, and a forge.

There should have been hammers too—large and small—but the hammer was clearly in use and certainly wouldn’t be left here to gather dust.

Qin Jun wasn’t lacking hammers anyway, as he could easily cast several himself.

The most important items here were the forge and the anvil; he could make the rest.

Next, he searched for tools used to pour molten iron. When found, Qin Jun realized the collection here was surprisingly complete—even sand for casting molds was present.

Crucibles, tongs, furnace, common molds, and files—these were all available.

With Qin Han’s help, Qin Jun spared no effort, collecting even the sand and transporting everything back home.

Having these materials, he could build a small blast furnace himself.

However, he still needed crucibles.

Because some special alloys required pure iron and pure carbon for easier smelting, especially since he lacked sophisticated experimental equipment.

In a small blast furnace, controlling impurities was difficult.

Using crucibles made alloy smelting much easier.

Back home, he placed everything on the west side of the courtyard.

His home was a traditional northern-style quadrangle courtyard, with five rooms facing front—three guest rooms and two bedrooms.

Currently, the three large rooms housed Qin Zhihes and his wife, while the two bedrooms were occupied by Qin Jun’s two elder sisters.

The east room was occupied by his eldest brother’s family of five, and the south room was a cramped space shared by him, his second brother, and youngest brother.

To the west, besides a pigpen, there was a chicken coop.

There used to be a sheep pen, but without sheep, it was now unused.

Now, it was just right to serve as Qin Jun’s workshop.

After tidying up a bit, Qin Jun realized he still lacked a water trough and a bellows.

The water trough was for quenching, and the bellows, needless to say, were for heating and increasing temperature.

He didn’t have a blower, but the village had bellows that could suffice.

The village had stonemasons who were half blacksmiths because manually working stone required daily heating and forging of iron chisels.

An iron chisel was essentially a crowbar cut into pieces, hammered into a pointed tip, used for stone carving.

Locally, these were called “qianzi,” not “zanzi.”

Stone was hard, and chisels’ tips wore down quickly with daily use.

Therefore, every day the chisels had to be heated and softened before being hammered back into shape.

In fact, stonemasons, blacksmiths, and carpenters shared many commonalities.

For instance, Qin Jun himself knew stonemasonry from following the elders in childhood.

Later, when he went out to work, he deeply learned mechanical processing.

If he could process iron parts, working with wood was naturally no problem.

Once Qin Jun had arranged everything in proper order, Qin Han returned with a cart.

On it were various useful iron scraps gathered after the kiln firing, along with steel slag found abandoned in the wilderness.

“Xiaojun, are you planning to smelt steel?” Qin Han asked curiously, wiping sweat.

“Yes,” Qin Jun did not hide it.

“How many crowbars can you make? The whole village is digging stone now, and we’re short of crowbars. We can’t all go scavenging at the mines, can we?”

Qin Jun was speechless. Although they lived off the mountain, they couldn’t just overexploit the mine’s “sheep.”

Many village resources came from the commune’s two coal mines, and he was surprised Qin Han could speak so justifiably about scavenging.

But then again, it was tradition.

Qin Jun recalled that there were many villages even more audacious than theirs.

For example, one village stole most of the pipeline used for oilfield transport.

Some even stole drilling rigs, rods, and bits from exploration teams from other regions.

Of course, these were collective actions; individuals would face severe consequences.

Thus, the institutions that lost equipment had no choice but to bear the losses silently.

These outsiders occupied local land, so clashes with locals were avoided.

For these reasons, public institutions seemed to always have to compromise with squatters.

For instance, every year the village received a certain amount of free coal allocated from the mines.

This was definitely a gift from the two coal mines—refusal wasn’t an option, or the coal-hauling trucks would face trouble.

At one point, things got so bad that someone bent shovels into wide hooks.

When coal trucks passed by, a slight scoop would grab hundreds of pounds of coal.

Back then, trucks had no concept of overloading.

Because of insufficient transport capacity, they loaded as much as possible.

The truck beds would pile into sharp peaks that collapsed with the slightest touch, causing massive loss.

After suffering repeated losses and unable to counter the local farmers, the mines had no choice but to compromise.

For instance, his family’s crowbars were pure steel hexagonal rods about two or three centimeters in diameter and over a meter long.

These were actually mining tools used to drill blast holes.

Such steel chisels were hard to discard as trash, so truly finding them was difficult.

But when asked, everyone claimed they were scavenged, leaving no recourse.

“All right, after lunch we’ll get started. Let’s make a few crowbars first,” Qin Jun agreed promptly.

Though burning lime wouldn’t make money now, having a little wine and some meat each day wasn’t bad.

After sending Qin Han off, Qin Jun looked puzzled at the main hall, where only his sister-in-law was busy.

“Sister-in-law? Where’s our father? He wouldn’t skip lunch just because he doesn’t want to steam buns, would he?”

Yang Yuanyuan smiled at her younger brother-in-law. “You really think so of our father?”

“What else can I think? He said he wouldn’t cook on the first day, but now it’s the fifth day—has he cooked yet?”

This subject made Qin Jun somewhat resentful.