Munitions Empire

"Indeed, there was a madman who came here to display his own weapon, but that was just a madman," Baron Stela answered nonchalantly while dressing, responding to the question posed by the Shireck messenger standing before him.

Behind him, a woman lay naked on the bed, her body still bearing the frenzied marks of the previous night.

The pure white bedding was wrinkled and half-covered, accentuating the woman's skin which was as smooth as satin. Yet, both the dressing Baron Stela and the Shireck messenger Beiji standing there seemed uninterested in this beautiful scene.

As for the fact that another man had seen the woman he had spent half the night with in her entirety, it seemed the Baron paid it no mind at all.

He was only concerned with describing the event that he could barely remember: "His weapon was nothing special and not as useful as the Shireck Flintlock Gun. So I sent him away and fined him a Gold Coin," he said.

He had some recollection of the new weapon, but the young man who had sold it was completely forgotten in his appearance. For him, these things were far less important than his business in King City and the women.

As the person involved, his first reaction was to deflect and deny responsibility before recounting some details in order to dismiss the envoy sent by the Shireck Consortium.

"What was his name?" Beiji asked, standing there.

Baron Stela, knowing all too well, recalled, and finally remembered a distant and unfamiliar name: "Tang Mo..."

"Where is the sample he brought?" Beiji continued to inquire.

"I've already sent someone to fetch it. I didn't keep the original sample but did retain something else," he said, and just as he spoke, he saw his butler come in holding a wooden box.

He pointed to the box held by the butler and introduced it to Beiji: "This is the box that man brought. I only kept this... If Lord Gis is interested, you can take it directly."

Beiji reached out and touched the simple box, polished to a smooth finish, aesthetically pleasing in a unique way, his brows furrowing in contemplation.

The box looked quite nice, which meant that the other party must really care about the contents inside to craft such a carefully fashioned container.

It seemed the situation was turning out to be rather interesting—this fellow named Tang Mo might indeed possess an improved weapon.

With this thought, he turned to look at Baron Stela, who was now sitting on the bed, almost fully dressed, and asked the question that concerned him: "Where is he?"

"I've forgotten... I didn't ask where he was from..." Baron Stela tried to recall the conversation of that day but found he couldn't remember where Tang Mo was from.

"Did he leave a name card? Was it not he who sought an audience with you?" Beiji asked somewhat irritably.

"My lord, I have already inquired, and the name card left by the visitor has been lost," the butler spoke up, coming to his Baron's defense.

"Lost?" Beiji was very dissatisfied but knew that he, in his position, could only be so imposing in front of the Baron because of the weight of the Shireck Consortium.

Therefore, he had to leave Baron Stela's room without another word, casting a glance back at the Baron before departing.

"What a pest," Baron Stela muttered under his breath when the door closed firmly behind him, expressing his discontent. A Baron himself, he had been inconvenienced by a mere mercenary civilian in his own bedroom, interrogated like a criminal.

"My lord, please calm down, after all, it was a person from the Shireck Consortium..." The butler, a smile plastered on his face, began to appease him: "We should not bother about such trivial characters. As long as Lord Gis knows of our undivided loyalty, that is enough."

"How did he know... that the one named Tang Mo had been here?" Baron Stela took his waistcoat from the butler, draped it over his body, and while he rarely did, he began to fasten the fancy buttons himself, murmuring softly.

...

"My lord! We've lost our lead, what else can we do?" A follower glanced at the closed door behind and asked with some dissatisfaction.

"Our lead actually hasn't been lost; I was merely confirming with that dandy," Beiji said, standing before Baron Stela's door, speaking coldly.

He sneered and pointed towards the east: "The beggar said he'd seen that kind of weapon in the Vicious Forest... Now Baron Stela has also confirmed someone had indeed presented a new weapon to him... Isn't that matching up?"

"But, my lord, these two weapons are clearly not the same," a subordinate said, puzzled. "The person presenting weapons to the Baron offered a rifle, whereas the uncertain news from the Vicious Forest spoke of a pistol..."

"There's no difference; when rumors about new weapons keep popping up around here, we need to investigate seriously!" Beiji took another glance at the gate of Baron Stela's mansion and signaled his subordinates, "Let's go! We're off to Brunas!"

"Brunas?" His follower mounted his horse, asking with some confusion.

"Brunas! It's the closest to the Vicious Forest! We'll start there, and if we don't find anything out, then we'll take a trip through the forest!" Beiji also mounted his horse, squeezed his legs into its flanks, and galloped ahead toward the distant horizon.

In Brunas, next to Tang Mo's weapons workshop on what used to be an empty piece of land, a group of people were toiling away.

They were compacting the poor soil, leveling the ground to make it as suitable as possible for construction. Behind them, a group of children were having their physical education class, and there were more of them than when the school had just started.

A short distance away from the uneven playground where the children were taking their class, construction workers were adding roofs to four large factory buildings, right next to the original workshop's courtyard wall.

The foundations of these four large factory buildings had been laid for quite some time, and workers from the Northern Ridge were making concerted efforts to markedly speed up the entire project.

"From today onwards, we shall officially rename ourselves the Great Tang Weapons Group!

Within these four factory buildings, one will be a chemical workshop, one a gunpowder workshop, one dedicated to railway production, and the final one will be a brand-new industrial manufacturing workshop!" Tang Mo stood in front of a stone, addressing the core members of the current workshop: "We are no longer a workshop, for our scale exceeds that of a mere workshop.

Those old words used to measure industrial scale are clearly outdated! From this point forward! This world will gradually have to abide by the standards we set for ourselves!"

"For now! We have the scale of just two workshops, so I think we can certainly call ourselves a factory! In the future! Great Tang Group will own more factories, employ more workers, and become... the largest group in the world!" Tang Mo clenched his fist and announced loudly.

"Clap clap!" Dwarf Mathews and the old factory's manager Parker were the first to start applauding, their faces brimming with excitement, for this was the result they had been busily working towards recently!

They had strived to expand the factory, finally transforming Tang's Weapon Workshop into today's Great Tang Weapons Group.

Now, this group included two workshops that produced gunpowder, a large workshop that smelted metal, along with a chemical plant and the corresponding steam engine workshop.

Together with the surrounding small leather factory and the agricultural production teams, the industries under the Great Tang Weapons Group could definitely be described as diverse and comprehensive.

What satisfied Tang Mo even more was that the old industrial production workshop within the compound had already produced most of the equipment needed to be installed in these four factory buildings.

Once these new factory buildings were completed, Tang Mo could immediately start production. And the products manufactured therein would become the main products with which Tang Mo would make money in the next phase.

On the one hand, there was the steam engine equipment that Tang Mo had just designed to increase mine productivity, including the corresponding railway tracks for the mines.

On the other hand, the technology for these mine steam engines was actually also a technical reserve for Tang Mo's own train technology. As soon as the Northern Ridge mines began to purchase Tang Mo's steam engines on a large scale, he could quickly build his own steam locomotive.

With this steam locomotive, Tang Mo would be able to accelerate the exchange of materials between his mines and their sources. The Vicious Forest between Northern Ridge and Brunas was an ideal place for testing railway tracks.

As long as the bandits in the area were eradicated, there would be no need to worry about residents along the railway stealing the tracks and causing accidents or transport delays.

As the factory grew in size, workers from Northern Ridge and local workers from Brunas all wore happy smiles.

They had never met an employer as generous as this, willing to provide them with decent meals, pay them a good salary, and give their descendants the opportunity to go to school.

What made them equally happy was that within the factory area, they could purchase many things, including ironware, grains and vegetables, leather goods, and cloth clothing...

In short, the small shop in the factory had a fairly complete range of goods, and after receiving their salaries, many workers spent a good portion of them here.

"Where on earth did Luff and the others go? They've been missing for several days," Tagg clapped while asking Wes beside him.

Wes glanced at Tagg, a mischievous smile on his face: "Who knows? Maybe they're off killing people..."

"You never tell the truth," Tagg glanced at Wes with disbelief and retorted.

"Hmm, you're right," Wes didn't deny it, nodded in agreement, and said no more.