134 Han Zitong’s “Red Bet”

"What are you doing?"
"Building a wind tunnel."
"The fuck? You know how to do that?"
Watching Li Jie debug a plasma pipe welding machine, Han Zitong was completely dumbfounded. He held a massive bowl in his left hand and stainless steel chopsticks in his right. After watching Li Jie neatly finish welding a section of pipe, he felt as though his own brain had just been welded shut as well.
Sluuuurp!!
The lunch delivery of "belt noodles" had been a hassle because the delivery guy couldn't figure out where "Little Star Agritainment" was located. In the end, Boss Li had to call him and tell him to leave it at the Daoist priest's doorstep next door, and then walk over to pick it up.
The Daoist priests of Huanghua Temple were already numb to the situation. You're the owner of an agritainment resort, so why do you keep having food deliveries left at our front door?
At first, the priests thought it was absurd, but after scouting over the mountain ridge later, they realized their own Daoist temple simply had a better-maintained path.
What a lunatic, running an agritainment resort out in the middle of nowhere.
Boss Li crossed mountains and ridges with extreme efficiency, walking as if on flat ground, so every time the priests stepped outside, they would see a hulking figure running away with a takeout bag.
The sense of guilty suspicion was off the charts.
It's your own takeout, benefactor.
"It's not like it's a hypersonic wind tunnel. It's just for blowing air at a car model."
"What's that over there?"
"A computer."
"Such a huge room, and that's just a computer?"
"Don't you need observation software to run a wind tunnel? Don't you need data models? It's completely normal for the computer to be a bit large."
"Are you an Earthling? I remember you saying you were."
"I am."
Boss Li replied to Han Zitong while continuing to work. With more and more work areas being set up inside, he had no choice but to install additional metal shielding panels on the outside. The original warehouse's steel structure was far too rudimentary, and since plasma welding and cutting are best done indoors, carving out a separate workshop was an absolute necessity.
Fortunately, with money came equipment. The industrial robot he had tested earlier was essentially a high-degree-of-freedom robotic arm. After re-establishing its positioning with a laser calibrator, a few rounds of debugging revealed no major issues.
Minor errors didn't matter much either; they could easily be compensated for by sheer physical strength.
Buzz!
After pressing the start switch, a large manned autogyro equipped with added counterweights lifted straight off the ground. With his left hand inputting data and his right hand manipulating a customized joystick—essentially a motorcycle throttle grip turned upright—he took control.
"Holy shit..."
Sluuuurp!
Han Zitong sucked down another mouthful of noodles, then bit into half a "lion's head" meatball. "What are those counterweights for?"
"Battery packs. The things on both sides are auxiliary endurance fuel tanks. I need to make sure that if I ride this thing down the highway, I can make a round trip straight to the capital."
"What about flying? That won't reach, will it?"
"That's why I need to test it. The electric motors can still be optimized further. If I can keep the fuel consumption during flight down to thirty liters, I can increase the range simply by attaching auxiliary fuel tanks."
"Solid-state battery packs would probably be even better. You could completely map out battery-swap stations on all high-standard highways, or set up your own 'safe houses' along the route with battery packs stored there long-term. That way, your operational radius could easily reach fifteen hundred kilometers."
"That actually makes sense."
"It's not like you don't have the money. The 'safe houses' don't need to be in urban or crowded areas. Just avoid zones with anti-air defense systems, and low-altitude flight will still be safe. Calculated out, a 'safe house' is at most just a long-term operational front—it could take the form of a 'recycling station', an 'RV campsite', or even an automated vending kiosk in a park."
Two heads are better than one. Han Zitong had already resigned himself to his fate. Not only was he prominent on the "Class-A Wanted List," but a bounty had also been placed on his head.
Eight million for him alive, three million even dead.
Li Jie had made a special trip to the Dongyuan District that Han Zitong had mentioned. This place was west of the western district of Luoyi, and even taking the high-speed rail took two hours.
However, after shooting a video of Han Zitong's son getting blocked while trying a layup during a basketball game, Li Jie showed it to him, and Han Zitong had broken down in tears upon watching it. Outside the basketball court where his son was playing, his mother was chatting and laughing with a young uncle.
Whether they kissed or not remained unknown because a mosaic blur had appeared over that part of the footage. Boss Li deemed the imagery "unsuitable for elders," as it was prone to inducing high blood pressure.
If he wanted his son to return to a wonderful, safe life, his only option was to gamble on Boss Li being a god.
Han Zitong hadn't believed it at first, but now all he wanted to say was that Boss Li was truly insanely awesome.
What kind of monster is this?!
You claim you're an Earthling, so why the hell can't I bring myself to believe it, Lao Han?
Although he still found Li Jie somewhat repulsive, he was willing to cooperate rather than give up and surrender to the police.
It was completely pointless.
"Later on, I'll hook you up with an 'iris camouflage' and 'simulated fingerprints.' By then, we'll just conjure up a brand new identity out of thin air, slap on a bit of makeup, and you'll be totally golden. Guaranteed no issues."
"You can pull that off too? Bypassing the police's 'Skynet Screening System' is no simple feat; it requires..."
"Look at you talking. I have people inside the police department."
"..."
"Besides, my 'Red Star' doesn't have much else, but we sure have plenty of orphans. Some disappeared without a word years ago, and others died without their household registration being canceled—we can just slot right into those. Tweak things a little bit, and when you go out in the future, just play someone with an intellectual disability or something. It's foolproof."
"..."
"From now on, you, Han Zitong, are the strategist of my 'Red Star'. We're going to grow this syndicate, make it powerful, and create new glories!"
Zzzzt-zzzt-zzzt-zzzt...
Although the motor noise had already been mitigated, the best way to handle mechanical noise was still to slap a cover over it.
Just when Han Zitong thought things couldn't get any more absurd, he watched as this piece of junk adjusted its rotor attitude while simultaneously extending wings out from both sides, then slowly lowered its flight altitude...
"Does this thing even use 'ground effect' applications?"
"Saves fuel."
Boss Li wore an expression of absolute certainty. "Mine is a hybrid, so it's already fuel-efficient. On top of a baseline consumption of thirty liters per hundred kilometers, if I switch to 'ground-effect vehicle' mode, I can shut down two motors and zip rapidly across the water surface."
"Same goes for the ground."
"I haven't nailed down the LiDAR algorithms yet. Ground obstacles outnumber water obstacles, which isn't great for autonomous cruising and obstacle avoidance."
"Damn it, this contraption is making even me tempted."
"With your old bones and joints, your reaction time won't keep up without popping pills. I'm only nineteen; my motor nerves are still developing, so everything is fully under control."
Chatting while logging parameters, Li Jie had multiple heavy machinery units operating inside the warehouse. While any regional key manufacturing enterprise would consider this standard operating procedure, the fact that Li Jie had put all these gadgets together entirely by himself—and in a very short span of time—was insane.
It was deeply, profoundly abnormal.
"Are you really an Earthling?"
"You've asked me dozens of times every time you come over. I am a thousand percent an Earthling. Male, likes females, no different from any normal human being, except for having slightly greater physical strength."
"Innately divine strength."
"Correct."
"..."
Boss Li was in exceptionally high spirits. Not only had there been no drone explosions today, but the data had fully met all specifications. Sensor feedback indicated it had reached international leading standards, filling a historical void for the "Red Star Orphanage."
Red Star was destined to become the largest syndicate in Jiangdong.
And the scumbags of Jiangdong were undoubtedly about to face a much more efficient wave of severe crackdowns.
Xiao Yuanyin, the director of the Canglong Precinct of the Jianye City Police Department... promotion guaranteed.
In the corner of the warehouse sat another "mecha" that Li Jie had cobbled together himself, though it used treads rather than bipedal walking.
The robotic arm, however, utilized bionics; the movement of the mechanical fingers matched that of a human hand, though it wasn't as precise as medical applications utilizing brainwaves.
It was a miniature, low-end, beggar-edition "Crimson Typhoon," because it genuinely possessed three arms, one of which was a multi-functional robotic arm used for swapping tools.
The reason for needing this contraption was that buying a shield-tunneling machine was simply too expensive and troublesome. Drilling into the mountain face beside "Little Star Agritainment" every day still required some formidable tools.
An excavator was definitely necessary, but an excavator could only shift dirt. In areas where soil and rock mixed, should they encounter a massive boulder, they would have no choice but to drill away relentlessly with a jackhammer if blasting wasn't an option.
That was a job Boss Li could do for three days and three nights straight without stopping.
Ever since Han Zitong had "chosen the path of the Red Star," taking a smoke break now meant chipping away a hundred or eighty pounds of rock.
Overall, it was turning out pretty well. At the very least, they had hollowed out a one-bedroom apartment from the mountain. Spraying mortar every day wasn't an easy task either, and though Han Zitong had no prior experience in civil engineering, it didn't matter—the civil engineering robot helped out.
Once Boss Li laid down guide rails in the workspace, he modified an electric mortar pump truck for fully automated, all-weather operation. There wasn't even any need for rebar workers because the warehouse contained an automatic wire-tying machine.
In short, if a problem could be solved with money, it wasn't a problem at all.
At the inland port terminal to the north, Boss Li had rented another relatively remote freight yard. Late at night when pitch black, he used his homemade autogyro to transport cement and sand, which conveniently served as a test for the flight control system.
As for the freight yard itself, no nighttime manual labor was required; everything was packaged up securely during the day.
Currently, Boss Li had acquired all flight data. It was looking fantastic, bringing him one step closer to a "Stark Industries"-style "Big Crab Industries."
"All right, I've got just about enough done for today. Tomorrow I can test the weapons systems."
"Are you seriously an Earthling?"
"Authentic and true."
Boss Li patiently answered the question he had already lost count of, then put on his helmet, straddled the "Jianyuan Dark Knight Co-branded Edition," and rode straight away from "Little Star Agritainment."
Of course he was an Earthling, and a relatively healthy one at that, both physically and mentally.
For instance, tonight he had to help "Wang Tianxian" drop her psychological baggage so that she could concentrate fully on singing "Recollection."
Which raised the question: how does one get "Wang Tianxian" to shift her focus back toward her career development?
Very simple!
Press F to enter the tank!!