704 Water Tank (1/2)

The testing of the water tank was complete. Ye Qingxuan felt assured by Shi Dong's words but when the elevator stopped and the doors opened, he was stunned by what he saw.

On the gigantic underground plaza and under the beams of light from the searchlights hanging on the ceiling, countless iron structures on the walls were reflecting light. The commander ensured that the cantilever and hoist cable was pushed to the sides. There was a deep and soft hum with the machine in operation, while the cables dragged the Mountain of Nomadism into the port at the side of the plaza.

Of course, this was not the most important thing. The most important thing was that as the deck of the Mountain of Nomadism opened, three pitch-black objects slowly trudged towards the center of the plaza, all the while spouting thick black smoke and making an ear-piercing sound. Ye Qingxuan was taken aback.

”What is this?”

Shi Dong became awkward all of a sudden and pretended to cough a couple of times before replying, ”Water tanks.”

In what way did they look like iron chariots? They simply looked like a pile of scrap metal! As Ye Qingxuan continued staring at them silently, he felt like he had just been screwed over.

”You're telling me that these are 'water tanks'?” He asked Shi Dong, ”When they left, they looked nothing like this!”

The Royal Institute of Research had spent so much effort creating this new generation of chariots, only to turn out like this after Shi Dong had brought them out for a trip. In what way did they resemble any top-notch war weapon now? They clearly looked like some scrap metal that a beggar would have picked out from a pile of rubbish!

”And, why are there only three left?” Ye Qingxuan asked, ”Didn't you leave with 80?”

”There's a long story behind this.” The old man seemed to have expected the devastating look on Ye Qingxuan's face. He took another inhalation through the oxygen tube and waved his hands calmly. ”Please allow me to explain. You see, this was a weapons test after all, and what's more, it's rare to do it in a place like the World of Dark, where there can be many trials and tribulations. It's expected that problems will crop up.”

Although they had traveled on sea, the naval route was actually a longer path. They managed to save two-thirds of traveling time through bypassing the dangerous areas on ship, but when they came to the end of the naval route, they had to travel the remaining one-third of the journey on land. In any case, from the very beginning, they had already decided to treat this journey as a holiday to fulfill the wishes of the bunch of old fellows. But there was no way they would have allowed those old fellows to travel on foot.

Therefore, Ye Qingxuan was generous enough to deploy 80 of the newly created water tanks and a maintenance team from the Royal Institute of Research along for the journey.

”As you know, in the World of Darkness, even rabbits can grow up to weigh two tons. There are all sorts of strange demons and even the teeth of wild dogs are harder than alloys. It's only expected to sustain damages, right? Besides, the water tanks are new weapons that have only been put through a simple test. It's very normal for problems to crop up when their resilience and hardiness are tested over a long period of time. They may break down, leak air, explode, suffer from wear and tear…”

Shi Dong shrugged. ”In fact, before we reopened the White Rock Stronghold, all 80 water tanks have already been damaged. The engineers retrieved the mechanical components that were still usable and put them together with the back-up resources that they have brought along so that they could reproduce 16 water tanks. In the end, when we reopened the White Rock Stronghold, we used up eight of them. But to be fair, they are actually quite useful! We brought back three of them this time around so that the researchers in the research institute will be able to study them carefully. When the problems are solved, send another 80 water tanks over.”

Ye Qingxuan did not say a word. He could see that Ronald, who was the person in charge of the power department in the research institute, was already feeling very upset.

80? My foot! Do you think all these are going to come by so easily?

Right now, there were so many things to do in Anglo. Ronald was taking up multiple responsibilities as he had been assigned many projects by Newton. Back then, he had almost gone crazy in order to carry out Ye Qingxuan's order of squeezing out resources to build those 80 water tanks. Quite a number of mechanical components were manually crafted by him and his men on very short notice…

”Impossible!” He feared that Ye Qingxuan would be persuaded by Shi Dong once again. ”We don't have enough manpower in the research institute to spare. You can have any number of engineers you want for maintenance but in order to develop a new batch of researchers, we will need at least three years! Besides, we don't have enough manpower for the production line as well!”

Ye Qingxuan felt helpless when he saw how anxious Ronald was. He looked at Shi Dong. ”This is only the first field test. According to our timeline, there's still at least another two years before assembly. Is there a need to be in such a hurry?”

”Take a look at this first.” Shi Dong threw over an aether ball. It contained the records of the water tank in combat. They were sources of information that had been recorded by the purification musicians and have been brought back along with the three water tanks. Many more of them have been kept in the instruments of harmonious melody on the Mountain of Nomadism. This one has been specially selected by Shi Dong for Ye Qingxuan's viewing.