Silent Crown

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.

One of the recordings contained tens of water tanks attacking a gigantic monster but most recordings were of water tanks trudging through different terrains such as mud, hills, plains and even crossing a river. One of the recordings that Ye Qingxuan was viewing repeatedly was of 10 water tanks crushing and attacking a gigantic beehive, despite the swarms of bees around them. The musicians were seated in the water tanks and were shooting streams of flames at the bees. When all was said and done, four out of ten of the water tanks have been severely damaged as they were completely covered with huge bee stings and looked like metal porcupines…

After watching these recordings, Ye Qingxuan fell silent and quickly summoned a member of his entourage. After half an hour, this member of the entourage brought over two members of the Golden Hound. Most of these original organists of the Fifth Division had military backgrounds, and quite a number of them had experience in leading small squads into combats. They might not be as far-sighted as the military staff committee, but their advantage was that they possessed high-security classifications and would be able to handle top secret information.

Just like Ye Qingxuan, the hounds pondered deeply after watching the recordings. They briefly told Ye Qingxuan about their views, then they returned to prepare to rush out a report overnight. By the next day, their report, along with this aether ball, would be submitted to the Privy Council.

There was a complete change in how Ye Qingxuan viewed the water tanks now. At first, he was not too impressed with this new model of chariot. Although it could deal a lot of damage, this was not something that Anglo lacked at the moment as there were plenty of mass production musicians. However, this field test opened Ye Qingxuan’s eyes to the water tank’s new potential. Its potential included its impressive mobility across most terrains, a defense that was on par with small temporary fortresses, and the perfect coordination with musicians.

Although most of its powered armor could be further improved, the production and cost of a single water tank would only be less than one-third of a basic powered armor if Sterling internal combustion engine was used! With some slight modifications, the water tank would be able to contain at least seven people!

Other than the mandatory driver, the others could take on the role of mass production musicians in the net of aether. With the water tanks as mobile fortresses, the defensive abilities of the musicians would be increased and they could even install a mobile small-scale instrument of harmonious melody inside!

As long as the water tank stayed within the area of the large-scale instrument of the harmonious melody of the net of aether, the power of the net of aether would be extended to the water tank. They would no longer have to worry about the stability of the transmission of music theories.

This was the perfect repeater that would function between the large-scale instrument of the harmonious melody of the net of aether and the musicians. But even without this function, the water tank could still act as a powered armor for ordinary people!

It would be different from knights, where one could easily take more than a decade to groom and develop elite soldiers, and there would also be no need to modulate the knights! Modulating a knight would require the insertion of artificial nerves and catabolic organs, which could easily cost up to 80 pounds of black gold, and this was not even taking into account the cost of technology. Not only that, one would only have to go through three months of training for driving. No, in fact, in times of emergency during wartimes, an instruction manual and three hours of time should be sufficient for a literate person to drive the water tank.

Now, before Caucasian could use their ‘redemption,’ every country tried to catch up and follow the trend, ending up with plenty of molten lead weapons. Shortly after, the musicians realized that their defensive abilities would be greatly reduced when they were near the molten lead weapons. Many ordinary musicians died as a result.

In the past, when faced with six molten lead weapons, even musicians that could go against a shower of arrows would have to think twice about retreating. But with the water tank, the threat posed by molten lead weapons had reduced drastically. Unless the enemy decided to go berserk and start firing their large-scale weapons without a care, in which case it could only mean death… but at least one would still die in one piece, right?

After thinking for a long while, Ye Qingxuan had finally come up with a plan. He looked at Shi Dong. “In that case, what do you think are some of the flaws that have been surfaced from this field test?”

“Stability,” Shi Dong replied without hesitation. “The stability of the external combustion engine still needs to be improved. Even if the cost will be doubled, it is still acceptable as long as the stability can be improved by 30 percent. The external layer of armor can be removed and be used as accessories and we will need another ten of those! This object is a consumable and its armor will have to be changed after each battle. Another bigger problem is its track. The research institute did not have a clear understanding of the importance of tracks. The formula for the alloy to make these tracks needs to be upgraded at least once so that its abilities can be maximized.

“Later, ask your subordinates to write this down clearly and furnish them with more details. Bring these three broken things along and hand them over to the research institute. The institute will settle it.”

Ronald looked like he wanted to speak but stopped himself. He looked helpless.

“Don’t worry, I will not give all of you any additional pressure.” Ye Qingxuan patted his shoulder. “With regards to modes of transportation made from iron, the Chainsaw Fraternity is quite experienced. I will discuss with the Patriarch on the possibility of a collaboration. As for the hierarchy of production of the water tanks, bring it up to the second sequence from today onwards. The World of Dark is an excelling testing ground. We will go through three rounds of pressure testing there before we hand them over to Birmingham’s production line for production and assembly. The biggest reason for limiting the production capacity was to keep it a secret, but now that we are prepared to mass produce it, there is no point trying to hide it any longer.”

Ronald looked slightly more relieved. But even so, there was still tremendous pressure on the institute of research. He took his leave with a bow as he prepared to work overnight on the project report.

…

“Oh yes, there’s something else I need to tell you.” After half a night of debriefing in Ye Qingxuan’s office, Shi Dong was drinking a bowl of herb tea when he slapped his bald head as he finally remembered something. “Hua Sheng has leveled up to scepter.”