Volume One, Chapter 8: Truly Daring Not

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Pang Qingquan escorted Du Yuze to the mouth of the alley but stubbornly refused to take another step forward.

“Xiao Du, it’s not that I don’t want to help you, it’s that I really don’t dare,” he rubbed his hands nervously, his face a mixture of reverence and fear. “That old man’s name is Li Guodong, nickname ‘Ghost Hand Li.’ His nickname is even older than ‘King of Hell.’ You absolutely mustn’t call him the wrong name—he hates anyone bringing up factory matters.”

Lowering his voice as if afraid the man inside the wall could hear him from hundreds of meters away, Pang said, “To be honest, he didn’t retire normally. Back when the new factory director wanted to transfer his most prized apprentice to manage the warehouse, Li Guodong grabbed a large pipe wrench and, in front of the entire workshop, smashed a hole right through the solid wood door of the director’s office. The commotion was so big that the factory let him retire early—without a single penny of compensation. He’s been living off a meager pension ever since, very frugally.”

Du Yuze lifted the net bag in his hand, inside which were a few rare fruits for this era he had specially arranged to obtain.

“Which house does he live in?”

Pang Qingquan pointed toward the rundown courtyard gate at the deepest part of the alley. “That one. There’s a crooked locust tree in front of the door. You… you’d better pray for your own luck.” With that, he dashed away as if avoiding a plague.

Du Yuze walked alone into the narrow alley. The air was thick with a damp mixture of coal ash and old furniture scent. He stopped in front of the courtyard gate, its red paint long peeled away, revealing the gray-white wood grain beneath.

He raised his hand and knocked on the door knocker.

“Dong, dong-dong.”

No response from inside.

He knocked again, harder this time.

“Who is it? Mourning procession?!” A hoarse, irritable male voice exploded from behind the door.

The door creaked open a crack, a calloused, oil-stained hand gripping the frame, revealing a deeply lined face. The man’s hair was graying and disheveled, clinging to his scalp. His cloudy eyes scanned Du Yuze up and down with impatience and suspicion.

“Get lost! Has everyone in the factory died off? Sending a kid like you? I don’t take scrap here.” Li Guodong said as he tried to shut the door.

“Master Li.” Du Yuze pressed the door open with his toe, a subtle but firm action. “I’m not sent by the factory.”

“Not from the factory?” Li Guodong paused, eyeing him with suspicion. “Then what do you want? I don’t lend money.”

Du Yuze handed over the net bag. “I heard you haven’t tasted fresh fruits from the south in a long time.”

Li Guodong glanced at the contents and his throat moved, but his expression grew even more disdainful. “No good deed goes unpunished. Take your stuff and go—I’ve got nothing here worth your attention.”

“I came for one thing.” Du Yuze ignored the sarcasm, his tone calm as if stating a fact.

“What?”

“Your craftsmanship.”

Li Guodong laughed hoarsely, his gaunt chest heaving. “My craftsmanship? That’s long gone! Kid, don’t waste my time. Get lost or I won’t be polite!”

The door was pushed open forcefully.

Du Yuze remained unmoved, his toe firmly holding the doorframe. Facing Li Guodong’s fury, he spoke clearly, word by word: “Turbofan 7 Jia, last-stage compressor blades.”

Li Guodong’s pushing froze.

In his cloudy eyes, something churned violently. Turbofan 7 Jia, that model, that component—it was like a rusty key thrust into the deepest lock of his memory. It was the toughest challenge of his career—and his greatest regret.

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“Tolerance required is three thousandths of a millimeter. The blade’s curved surface is complex, made from high-temperature alloy with terrible machinability,” Du Yuze continued. Each word was like a pebble precisely thrown into Li Guodong’s heart lake. “With the factory’s current process, the scrap rate exceeds ninety percent. It can’t be done.”

“If you can’t do it, then get lost!” Li Guodong’s temper flared again but without the previous confidence. “What’s the point in telling me? Not even the king of heaven could do it!”

“Conventional milling and grinding won’t work,” Du Yuze took up the thread, as if they were not adversaries but technical colleagues discussing a problem. “The stress generated during processing causes tiny internal deformations. After cooling, the precision is all lost. Especially the final polishing—it’s manually controlled, impossible to guarantee every piece achieves the same smoothness and curvature.”

Li Guodong fell silent.

Every word hit the core of the problem. This kid wasn’t a clueless messenger; he clearly knew his stuff—and deeply so.

Seeing his reaction, Du Yuze knew he had the bait on the hook. He launched his final trump card, a concept he had rehearsed countless times in his mind.

“I have an idea. Conventional grinding relies on abrasives contacting the blades to cut, generating heat and stress that are hard to control.”

“What if…” Du Yuze slowed his pace, his tone carrying a strange allure, “what if we used high-frequency micro-vibrations to act directly on the abrasive particles, causing them to produce tens of thousands of tiny impacts? The final grinding and polishing could be done with almost no contact with the blades. Non-contact, cold processing, theoretically minimizing deformation.”

“Micro-vibration grinding?”

Li Guodong blurted out the phrase—one he had never heard before but instantly seemed to understand its essence. His cloudy eyes exploded with something, shooting out two terrifying beams of sharp light!

He stared at Du Yuze as if meeting him for the first time. Every word from this young man struck his long-frozen technical heart like a hammer. High-frequency vibration, non-contact, cold processing… These terms combined opened a door to a new world!

“Where… where the hell did you hear such nonsense?” His voice was dry, even trembling.

“I came up with it myself.”

Li Guodong’s chest heaved violently, a sickly flush creeping over his deadened face. He grabbed the net bag from Du Yuze, threw it inside the courtyard, then flung the door wide open.

“Where’s the blueprint?” he grunted.

“I didn’t bring it.”

“What good are you here without it!” Li Guodong was about to explode again.

“A blueprint and method alone aren’t enough,” Du Yuze replied calmly. “There’s one more thing missing.”

“What?”

“Material. Titanium alloy that meets the specifications.”

Li Guodong froze, then sneered, “Then why come to me? If the factory had such high-grade material, would you even be here? The head office would have hoarded it as a treasure.”

“The factory does have it.” Du Yuze’s answer surprised him again.

Before Li Guodong could ask more, Du Yuze turned and left.

“Kid, where are you going?”

“To find the material.” Du Yuze didn’t look back. “Once I get it, I’ll come back to ask for your help.”

Watching Du Yuze’s receding figure, Li Guodong stood rooted to the spot for a long time. He looked down at his calloused, scarred hands. For the first time in decades, he felt them warm.

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An hour later, Du Yuze stood before the iron door of Warehouse No. 3.

The huge iron lock was rusted, the door thick with dust. This place was even more dilapidated than Pang Qingquan had described. The air was heavy with the acrid smell of metal oxidation.

He didn’t look for someone to unlock it; instead, he circled the warehouse and found a hole worn by wind and rain in a corner of the south wall. He slipped in effortlessly.

Inside, the warehouse was dark and lightless, like a vast steel graveyard. Abandoned machine parts, twisted steel beams, piles of metal shavings—all covered in thick dust, crunching underfoot.

Du Yuze issued a command in his mind.

[Material scan.]

In an instant, a pale blue data stream appeared in his vision.

[Material scan initiated… range 50 meters… analyzing metal composition…]

[Detected: Q235 steel, 45%…]

[Detected: HT250 cast iron, 31%…]

[Detected: Brass H62, 8%…]

The data refreshed continuously. Du Yuze moved like a seasoned hunter through a mountain of junk, his target singular.

He skirted a heap of rusted gearboxes, stepped over several broken drive shafts, and finally stopped at an inconspicuous corner. A stack of discarded molds, with a few plain metal plates pressed beneath.

[Target found!]

[Composition: Titanium alloy TC4 (Ti6Al4V), purity 99.2%… meets Turbofan 7 Jia blade material standards.]

[Coordinates: directly ahead, depth 0.8 meters.]

This was it.

Du Yuze threw off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Without tools, he could only use his hands. Like a beast digging for food, he heaved heavy molds aside one by one. Dust choked him into coughing, rust and grease soon smeared his hands and face.

At last, he touched a cold, solid metal plate.

He pulled it from the depths of the scrap heap, wiping the thick dust away with his sleeve in the faint light filtering through the hole.

The metal plate revealed its original dark silver sheen, fine-grained and possessing a unique beauty.

This scrap, forgotten for who knows how many years, was about to become the sharpest tooth of that beast.

Du Yuze hoisted it onto his shoulder and turned toward the hole he had come through.