Monster Factory

Having divided the task amongst themselves, everyone in the Purchasing Department happily took their business trip funds and headed for the long distance bus stations.

Ye Qing also didn’t stop there. Although right now it was the scorching summer, he still called Xue Xiaohu to go with him to a regular cleaning center for a sauna.

Having washed off all the dirt and traces of tiredness, he then called for four masseuses to give both him and Xue Xiaohu a full body treatment.

Ye Qing, while enjoying the full body treatment of two masseuses, opened up his contact list and gave calls to the two steel plants he had purchased from previously to ask the price for steel grade pig iron ingots.

The shopping list that was handed out before totaled around 200 million.

In it, there was no mention of the most important material needed for construction — the steel.

Ever since the Metal Smelting Center came online, Ye Qing basically no longer needed to buy all those completed steel materials anymore.

Rather, he directly bought large quantities of steel grade pig iron ingots and smelted the steel inhouse.

This way not only was the cost margin low, but with the Metal Smelting Center making all the steel its quality was leaps and bounds ahead of those available on the open market.

The entire Dragon Creek Beach was more than 40,000 hectares, so even with Ye Qing’s plan of phase one construction, there was still the need for a sky load of steel.

Steel had always been brought by Ye Qing personally. After connecting the call with the first steel factory and some greeting, Ye Qing straight up asked the owner how much steel grade pig iron they had stockpiled.

“20,000 tons!” The steel factory owner, ever since getting in contact with the never satisfied steel gorger that was Ye Qing, abruptly turned all his losses into gains and became the target of much jealousy by every other steel maker.

“Price?” 20,000 tons to the current Ye Qing was really not a lot. Raw iron cost around 1500 a ton, so 20,000 tons was only 30,000,000.

“I’m going to have to raise the price a bit this time President Ye.” Weifeng Steel’s owner, Mr.Pan, said: “The raw iron this time was all imported from the Carajas iron mine in Brazil. The quality is guaranteed to be better than last time.”

“I offer 1650 a ton.”

The Carajas mine in Brazil was the largest iron ore exporter in the world, and was also well known for their quality ores. Although the price set by Mr.Pan was a bit on the high side, but seeing how he was much closer, Ye Qing agreed to the price and immediately had him send all 20,000 tons over by truck.

After he finished with Weifeng Steel, Ye Qing then called up Hongtai Steel. They had around ten thousand tons of raw iron in stock, so Ye Qing bought them all after agreeing on the price.

“Uncle, why don’t we buy an iron mine and mine it ourselves.” When Ye Qing was done calling, Xue Xiaohu was somewhat embarrassed to be Ye Qing’s wingman. He was only 18 and he was already being taken to places like this by Ye Qing.

“Ordering all the materials from other people means they’re earning all the money.”

“You really know how to daydream.” Ye Qing smiled: “There aren’t any big iron mines near Zhongyun. Rather, they’re all scattered, low quality deposits. The amount within these deposits are also too miniscule for any mining operation.”

“Which was why some steel factories import raw iron and smelt it themselves.”

“Brazil and Australia are world famous for their raw ore mines. At most we can imitate those steel factories and buy raw iron to smelt them ourselves.”

Xue Xiaohu nodded in understanding.

..............................

6 PM. The first of the 50 18 wheelers from the two steel factories rumbled into the Dragon Creek Beach.

Good thing that the four newly hired Metal Specialists were super knowledgeable about metals, which was why Ye Qing sent them to examine the quality of the ingots after they had all arrived and were unloaded.

This unloading step was both long and slow. The truck train lined up all the way to Huanhai Avenue. This slow unload and tight train of trucks immediately had Ye Qing decide on building an unloading dock that was capable of servicing 200 18 wheelers at the same time in Phase One of development.

Taking advantage of the indefinite unloading, Ye Qing went into his office, and with a whiteboard marker, neatly mapped out the plot of land belonging to this new unloading dock on the Dragon Creek Beach sandbox.

Next was the rough drawing, which really had no real technical difficulty to it.

A level ground, connected to all the wires and pipelines, and a full steel structure.

As for the dockers, Ye Qing ignored the traditional forklift and conveyor belts because he was about to make the bold move of switching to fully automated mechanical arms within the entire building.

This was an inspiration that came from creating the collapsible arm from Xue Ninggong’s film crew.

Just think about it. What kind of high tech bombardment will it be to see 200 large scale mechanical arms synchronously moving to load and unload stuff within this giant warehouse?

And most, most, most importantly, the mechanical arms belong in the category of high tech products, so it was very advantageous to use it to earn Monster Factory some industrial index along the way.

When Ye Qing completed the first drawing, the sun was already beginning to set.

Ye Qing once again hired another ten Master Artisans and ten peons from the Monster Factory.

With only 20 monsters and the help of the Mechanical Colossus, Ye Qing had all the confidence in completing work speed with all those large scale construction groups.

The newly hired Master Artisan appeared wearing the disguise uniform and went off to complete the drawings with laser guided ranger finders. The peons, while hugging a barrel of chalk, followed the Artisans by plotting down accurate and precise lines.

A Mechanical Colossus X was driven out from the underground base by Ye Qing.

The original entrance to the underground base, after getting enlarged, was redoored with camouflaged steel bunker-like doors. The area here that was next to the sea had a layer of level gravel, thanks to the Raging Miners, spread all the way to the factories.

The entire row of searchlights on top of the cockpit was turned on by Ye Qing.

Accompanying the explosion of the heavy sounds of the engine, the Mechanical Colossus X, just like a fullmetal titan, slowly traveled out of the factory.

This was the first time that the X series had appeared in public, but sadly this here was remote to begin with, and with the fact that it was evening, there was no one who would come here to see what was going on.

*Ka Bang ~* *Ka Bang ~*

Just as the M.C. X got off of the gravel road, Ye Qing, from the security cameras, witnessed the giant impressions made by the Colossus on the cement that connected the gravel to the barren earth.

......

Ah screw it. This cement road was already in terrible shape and filled with potholes to begin with. When the concrete arrived later, might as well as rip it apart and repave it.

Not long after Ye Qing arrived on the bare earth, the second Mechanical Colossus X also left the base.

Then a third and a fourth!

A series of lined up big bright halogen searchlights lit up the entire barren surroundings as bright as day.

“Hey Hulk One, Hulk Two, Hulk Three, single file horizontally with me.” Ye Qing, in his cockpit, called out to the three other drivers with walkie talkies.

No reply, but the other three Mechanical Colossuses all moved together, roaring and shaking, and came to a single file with Ye Qing’s ride.

Ye Qing stared out from the cockpit and after seeing all of randomly scattered boulders, flashes of eagerness could be seen in his eyes.

“On my command!” Ye Qing shook the lightweight control skeleton and slammed the start button: “Hulk One, Two, Three, swap out to dozer blades, lower to negative 0.2 meters, and with me, charge!”

As soon as he finished, all four Colossus simultaneously began to move their pair of two meter long mechanical arms.

After a round of rolling thunder like mechanical sounds, the two ton dozer blades that had their edges made entirely out of titanium alloy, lined up to form a metal blockade that no one was willing to or could pass.

*Boom ~ * *Boom ~ * *Boom ~ *

The blades broke the surface of the earth and sank deep down.

Quickly after, these four mechanical monsters, with black smoke rising, roared as they began their advance.

Under the incomparable power of the Mechanical Colossus X, no matter if it was boulders or soil, they were all rolled up and shoved aside like a tidal wave.

The marks left behind by the four giant monsters was only a perfectly level surface.

“Hahaha ~” Ye Qing had his blood boiling as he undauntingly charged forward.

This was the charm of industrialization. This was also a display of its power.

In under a short 20 minute window, the originally ‘even if gifted, no one will want to develop’ Dragon Creek Beach, had a clear and level surface of 36 meters by 1800 meters cleared out by four steel monsters. By this rate, it would only take them a day or two to level and clear out the entire Dragon Creek Beach.

On the leveled surface that was more than 1500 meters away from the factory, the originally boulder dotted surface revealed scattered spots of brown.

Further away, the brown color on the surface was even more visible as it turned to orange brown, and even flashed signs of metallic glow on those flat cuts.

A completely black, horned, red eyed, armoured shadow flashed out from the main gates of the factory.

He chased on the leveled ground and continued to head after the in operations Mechanical Colossuses.

Ye Qing was in the middle of having his fun, yet glimpsed a dark steel like human shadow catch up. This sudden appearance frightened him to the point that he nearly turned around and smashed the shadow down with the dozer blades.

Signaling for the other Colossuses to stop, Ye Qing then asked the shadow what was going on, and why he was chasing so urgently?

“Boss ~ The iron ingots you had us examine are complete, and I’m here to give you the report.” The Metal Specialists’ voice was a bit hoarse: “The ingots were roughly 8% off of the standard they set on their product certificates.”

“Well that’s basically close enough.” Ye Qing wasn’t surprised by this common white lie. Slightly exaggerating their products was basically an unspoken rule of all steel factories.

“Boss, we can actually smelt better steel ourselves.” The Metal Specialist commented as he pointed to the glowing brown metal patches on the ground.