Chapter 31
The crowd laughed and joked as they left the door, turning a corner to head in the direction of the munitions factory. Chen Xiaoqi had spent the past year buying up all the surrounding land, several thousand mu in total. The center of this area was a small hill about 40-50 meters high, with a winding path leading up to it. Next to the hill was a narrow river, only a few zhang wide. The ground was rocky and couldn't be used for farming, but there were some pine and cypress trees growing there, which were protected by law and couldn't be cut down casually. As a result, Chen Xiaoqi hadn't spent too much money on this land. Of course, if he had done this in his home country, it would have been even cheaper - just a few tens of thousands of yuan would have been enough.
Chen Xiaoqi has enclosed the entire area, dividing it into several large blocks. The rectangular plot closest to the small hill is the munitions factory, while the research and development center is located in a separate corner of several composite houses. A new R&D building complex is now being designed. The reception area is at the front end closest to the highway, about one mile from the munitions factory. The shooting range is at the very top, facing a slope dozens of meters high, with an additional two-meter-thick reinforced concrete wall to prevent stray bullets from flying into residential areas during testing.
When they went out to the front hall, there were already tailors waiting for them to take their measurements and make clothes. Chen Xiaoqi's company had its own jeans processing factory, with skilled tailors and equipment readily available. Due to increased production capacity, the first factory in Chicago was no longer sufficient, so after expansion, the original small equipment was moved to this design center, where they also made work uniforms for internal staff. At that time, people from various industries did not have their own specially designed uniforms. Chen Xiaoqi took the lead in this regard - all his employees, whether they were core R&D team members or janitors, had their own uniform name tags, distinguished by color according to their level of authority, making management and identification very easy. This was a major innovation.
The skilled workers worked quickly, and in just a few minutes, they measured the dimensions of several people. Then, the tailor went back to work overtime to cut and sew their clothes. Chen Xiaoqi had already thought about the style of military uniforms for this department. He directly adopted the jacket-style training uniform used in later generations. Since there was no nylon blended fabric at that time, he could only use black canvas to make it first. Anyway, it was thick and durable, and wearing it made people look spirited and neat, completely different from those awkward and ugly clothes of that era.
After finishing his clothes, someone else was waiting to take Wu Sheng to his own workplace. Wu Sheng himself had learned old-fashioned accounting methods at home, which were far behind the current Western financial system, so he had no choice but to start as an apprentice first. Chen Xiaoqi also didn't plan to treat him as a regular accountant, he needed someone who knew the ins and outs of his financial operations to supervise, not to be manipulated by those foreigners in charge of each department's finances. Now Chen Xiaoqi's ambitions were too big, so he had to establish a financial processing center to deal with increasingly complex work, and in the future, he also planned to set up a banking settlement center, all of which required a large number of reliable professionals. Wu Sheng was now being pushed to take on responsibilities quickly, whether he could handle it or not depended on himself.
Due to inadequate planning, Chen Xiaoqi is also busy and flustered now. Basically, he's just trying to put out fires as they arise, fully revealing the immaturity and inexperience of young people. If it weren't for Stern helping him out, he would have been overwhelmed long ago. Speaking of which, one really has to thank the capitalist countries' professional manager system for providing a large number of useful talents for these new-type enterprises that urgently need them. The basically complete legal system also effectively constrains the occupational morals of these people. It can be said that apart from the financial industry, the development environment for industrial enterprises is still quite good. At least you won't have warlords and tax departments harassing you randomly like in China. Western laws are all about protecting the rights and interests of taxpayers, especially big taxpayers.
Chen Xiaoqi temporarily assigned a native-born Chinese American as Wu Sheng's assistant to help him translate and teach some basic common sense for living in the United States. In addition, Chen Xiaoqi only now thought of searching everywhere for various Chinese versions of science and technology textbooks and publications. If they really couldn't be found, he would hurry up and spend money to have them translated. Anyway, he now had a steady stream of cash on hand and didn't care about these small expenses. However, these things were the necessary foundation for training in the future big business empire! How could they be lacking? He finally knew that one person couldn't do much, only a sufficiently large and effective work team could get started, what a lack of experience!
Wu Sheng followed the person who looked like his compatriot but acted and spoke in a completely different way, with a tragic heart. There would be countless difficulties waiting for him in the future for quite a long time.
Six others could only watch Wu Sheng leave with a helpless heart, then gathered their emotions and followed Chen Xiaoqi to the shooting range. In this year or so, Chen Xiaoqi's weapons laboratory had collected a large number of light weapons from Western countries as research references, including classic handguns such as Colt M1903, M1911, Mauser C96, Ruger P08, and others. There were also famous submachine guns like the "Chicago Typewriter" M1921, Browning M1918 automatic rifles, and Browning M1917 heavy machine guns. Rifles included the famous M1903 Springfield rifle, German Mauser K98, Soviet Mosin-Nagant 1891 rifle, Lee-Enfield rifle, and Japan's Type 38 Arisaka rifle. It can be said that almost all the best guns of this era were collected here, but only for research purposes, not for sale or imitation. Chen Xiaoqi now wanted to understand these classic firearms in preparation for future use. He didn't have time to wait for these guns to improve on their own, and he had the conditions to study them himself. For example, he had two German engineers from Zeiss work specifically on telescopic sights. Four-fold and six-fold magnification was a given, but if conditions permitted, he even wanted to develop 10-fold magnification scopes like those used by snipers in later eras, as well as infrared scopes. However, this was an era where optical glass production was too difficult and expensive, and the manufacturing cost was too high. Even in 21st-century China, it seemed that they didn't have the ability to mass-produce firearms with fixed telescopic sights. Optical glass wasn't something that could be used with low-quality binocular lenses.
Incidentally, Chen Xiaoqi also had to organize people to study various gun sights. After all, before radar could be widely used, gun sights were the primary aiming device, especially for large-caliber guns and giant warships, which he would need a lot of snipers for in the future.
Of course, this is just a plan, and it's not easy to implement without talent or funding. Moreover, there are also technical issues that can be stolen, the key is still to improve industrial production capacity. Chen Xiaoqi now basically sees something and thinks of a big team, then takes out a small notebook from his pocket and writes it down. When he accumulates to a certain extent, he adds some superficial information he knows, and establishes a research department for development. These are all necessary things for the future!
Making small talk, Chen Xiaoqi quickly brought six people to the munitions factory. After passing through security checks and registration, someone went to retrieve guns and ammunition according to Chen Xiaoqi's request, while they waited on the other side of the shooting range. This was also a rule set by Chen Xiaoqi: all personnel entering and exiting key departments must be cleared, and unauthorized individuals with insufficient clearance were not allowed to enter the research center and production workshop freely. Now that Chen Xiaoqi had no one around him, he would have liked to establish a modernized guard team immediately to protect his family business from any harm. He was increasingly feeling some malicious eyes watching him because he and his laboratory had been too prominent recently, and it would be strange if people with ideas didn't target him. If he hadn't taken preventive measures earlier, placing the entire team in a remote area over ten miles away from the city without any buildings or villages nearby, making it almost impossible for anyone to hide, some secrets might have already leaked out. Ah, his own guard force was urgently needed!
A large group of people opened fire on the shooting range, under the guidance of some specially recruited retired military personnel testing consultants. Seven people happily consumed those boxes of bullets. Chen Xiaoqi, with his rich experience, pressed the four people who had never held a gun to the ground and made them shoot while lying down. Otherwise, they would get excited, put their fingers on the trigger and make random gestures, which could easily lead to accidental discharge and loss of life. He had seen such things online and was particularly taken care of during military training, so he was very clear about it. Moreover, those assisting people were all veterans who returned from the battlefield, so they understood the behavior of new recruits very well, and therefore there were no problems.
So many types of firearms were present, and everyone had never played with them all at once, so they were particularly excited. Men are indeed bloodthirsty to the bone, even Huang Zhen Shan, a veteran oil man, was holding a heavy machine gun and sweeping it towards the distant paper target, exaggeratedly grinning from ear to ear, eyes gleaming with ferocity, shouting loudly, his whole body shaking violently from the recoil of the machine gun, yet he couldn't bear to let go.
It's really amazing that these six people have such strong physical strength! Normally, if someone hasn't held a gun before, they wouldn't be able to fire more than ten shots without their shoulders getting sore and their fingers aching. But this group of people played for two whole hours without showing any signs of fatigue. Chen Xiaoqi couldn't help but feel admiration in his heart, and he secretly made up his mind to increase the training intensity by twofold starting tomorrow! Because even someone like Zhou Yunpeng, who looks like a weakling, was playing with such energy and vitality, where was there any sign of weakness?
He left them here to indulge in their pleasure, Chen Xiaoqi's time was extremely tight, he handed over the guard and rushed to the laboratory area, hurrying to make up for his delayed work today. Now it doesn't need to be asked, on his office desk, the files that needed his signature had piled up into a small mountain again, that temperamental secretary Lisa would probably have started complaining already, alas, what's the point of this, why learn something so troublesome, learning from others to fight for dominance is the most uninteresting game?
