Chapter 367 - 159: Heavyweight Reward 2
What a pity that each day goes by so slowly, and the next festival is so far away.
Counting the days one by one, the two always look forward to when they can hold another grand feast and receive gifts.
...
After washing in the early morning, Chen Zhou carried his old backpack, took two long-handled axes, and led two long-waiting indigenous companions down the mountain.
Now not only can the two indigenous companions handle the work of tidying up the timber and stone walls, but they can also share a considerable part of the labor-intensive task of cutting trees.
The strength of the indigenous ones was not as great as his, but their endurance was not inferior at all.
With long-lasting chopping sessions, the amount of wood they cut in one morning was not much less than that of Chen Zhou.
However, the trees in the coastal woodland, having endured over two years and a total of more than forty rounds of logging, it has become challenging to find timber meeting cutting requirements near the beach.
Going further to chop wood requires more time for transportation.
In fact, after cutting so much timber, seeing the barren coastal forest, Chen Zhou has already developed the idea of reforestation.
Trees often take decades or even hundreds of years to mature, and in his 28 years on the island, he certainly wouldn’t deplete the vast primal forest.
But after he leaves, if the tribe continues to multiply on the island, and if they just keep taking from nature without maintaining ecological balance, this beautiful island might soon turn into a wasteland.
The importance of respecting and protecting nature.
This might be the last lesson Chen Zhou will leave for the indigenous people before he leaves.
If this world really is a complete space-time, with everything corresponding to the 17th century, his arrival might become the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, starting a storm from this small island.
...
Upon just arriving at the beach, the two indigenous companions started moving and tidying the toppled wood and stone walls of their own accord.
Leaving Chen Zhou alone to step into the reward center to claim his prize.
This time the reward was different from the previous two, just by looking at the packaging it was clear it wasn’t something ordinary—
Its outer packaging resembled that of the crate of TNT, using a kind of blue-gray hard plastic, the box was not wrapped in cardboard, just openly placed on the sand.
The entire box was about 1.5 meters long and 50 centimeters high.
There were no markings on the surface of the box, and it was impossible to judge from the outside what was inside.
Seeing this box, Chen Zhou vaguely felt that this reward was likely related to military equipment again.
"Could it be a gun?"
Hopeful, he unclasped the latch and lifted the lid of the box.
...
The items inside the box were not as high-end as Chen Zhou imagined, but they were also not ordinary goods.
They were rows of neatly arranged steel pipes in the slots.
All the steel pipes were the same length, with not the slightest deviation, and they were coated with a layer of black matte paint, maintaining a low-profile style even under the bright sun.
Upon seeing these steel pipes, a line of words suddenly appeared in Chen Zhou’s mind.
"Seamless steel pipes with rifling!"
He picked up one of the steel pipes to examine.
Sure enough, it was as he suspected.
This was an entire box of seamless steel pipes made of high-quality alloy, with evident rifling formed by cold forging on the inner wall of the pipes.
Such obvious military-grade materials, according to Chen Zhou, were mostly made from special steel at the beginning, then processed with a cold forging technique to form rifling.
The yield strength of this type of steel is generally not less than 550 MPa, with expansion strength between 800-1000 MPa, and has excellent uniformity, outstanding fatigue resistance, high-temperature resistance, and burn resistance.
Additionally, the steel pipes might have undergone chrome plating to enhance their corrosion resistance and wear resistance.
This military-grade seamless rifled steel pipe, as long as it passed high-pressure and fatigue tests, would certainly withstand thousands of kilograms of pressure per square centimeter.
It can also maintain shape stability after multiple firings to prevent a decrease in shooting accuracy due to rifling wear.
"Damn, this time they really sent a great gift box!"
Picking up the steel pipes one by one to scrutinize them, Chen Zhou’s hands trembled with excitement upon first encountering the kind of thing any gun enthusiast would dream of.
...
With the tools and technology currently available on the island, he could never make even half of such a steel pipe in his lifetime, let alone produce military-grade "gun barrels" even if he were back in the modern era.
Even though this box of steel pipes is only a part of all firearm components, it is undoubtedly the most crucial part among them.
To produce an accurate sniper rifle, having this box of steel pipes means more than half the job is done.
As for another important part of the firearm, the "bullet,"
Once the furnace is set up and forging skills are mature, Chen Zhou can entirely cast lead plates to manufacture inferior bullets by himself.
If the reliability of lead bullets is poor, he is even willing to replace the "Wang Lingguan bronze statue" with a wooden carving, and melt the entire statue to make brass bullets.
To possess a real firearm close to modern standards has always been Chen Zhou’s dream and the confidence for him to lead battles.
In dealing with those Spanish raiders twenty years later, if he had a dozen or so high-precision rifles, he wouldn’t worry about whether he could capture the mass of wealth aboard the ship.
He would only need to consider how to sell the precious metals after a successful challenge, and then the only problem left would be how to spend the money.
...
"Awesome, truly awesome!
I thought that box of TNT was the limit of the Space-Time Administration Bureau, but I didn’t expect there would be even greater tricks!"
Putting the seamless steel pipe, or rather gun barrel, back into the box, Chen Zhou completely failed to suppress the almost deranged smile on his face.