Chapter 510 - 40: The Prodigal Son (Part 2)
Once, he only dared to target the Spanish raiding ships.
Now, Chen Zhou is already pondering how to get hold of the gold and silver jewelry hidden by the brown-haired guys on the archipelago.
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When living alone, feeding oneself means the whole family isn’t hungry, even if the living conditions aren’t great, with hunger pangs one day and a full stomach the next, just endure and it passes.
After more people came to the island, although Chen Zhou didn’t need to work the fields himself, the workload didn’t decrease at all.
From large-scale island planning, building defense facilities, constructing bridges and roads, farming and aquaculture, fishing and gathering, to holding cells for criminals, markets for trading with sailors, places for the domestication of new natives and detailed procedures...
To smaller tasks like educating the three boys, correcting Sunday’s teaching inadequacies, cultivating Sunday’s abilities, developing new dishes, and spending time with the cats and dogs at home.
Every day of his is extraordinarily fulfilling.
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Complementing this fulfilling life are the mysterious rewards delivered over the past few months.
The reward at the end of August was a set of high school science exam questions familiar to Chen Zhou, named "Five Years of Exams, Three Years of Mock Tests".
In the past, this set of practice papers could be said to be useless, only for doing some questions when bored or tormenting oneself, at most they could be used to start a fire.
But on the island today, this set of exercises can play an unusual role.
Hoping the natives would learn modern knowledge from this set is impossible—
If they can grasp sixth-grade quadratic equations, Chen Zhou would be grateful to the heavens, high school knowledge is far beyond the natives’ comprehension.
For Chen Zhou, however, this set of exercises is an unusual "knowledge base", especially the physics and chemistry knowledge within it, which can help him better study explosive compositions and recall correct and safe experimental procedures.
The reward that arrived in early September was a desk lamp, with not much power and adjustable lighting, solving the problem of indoor lighting.
Chen Zhou was indeed fed up with oil lamps.
Living in a cave before, he hadn’t minded; but since moving into this reinforced concrete factory and using electrical equipment, he found oil lamps increasingly inconvenient.
Besides emitting smoke, oil lamps also have that burning oil smell which is really unpleasant to suddenly appear in a clean and bright office.
By the end of September, it was the day to receive the four-year island anniversary gift box.
Having experienced the third-anniversary big gift box, Chen Zhou specially instructed the natives not to build stone-wood walls before the four-year gift box was given out.
Facts proved that his decision was extremely prescient.
Although the area occupied by this anniversary gift box was not as large as the third-anniversary big gift box, it was still not comparable to ordinary small items.
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Compared to the three-year gift box, the four-year gift box didn’t do much to promote industrial development on the island but mainly enhanced Chen Zhou’s living quality.
The gift box included eight larger photovoltaic panels, four brand-new energy storage batteries, a batch of wires, sockets, power strips, electric lamps, plastic pipes that could be installed in the factory.
And indoor furniture such as uPVC windows, wallpaper, wall paint, waterproof paint, porcelain-coated office desks, bookshelves, office chairs, and even ashtrays.
Lastly, there were some new seeds and a batch of fitness equipment.
Only three types of seeds: corn, ginger, and potatoes.
Among them, the corn seeds are modern, common hybrid corn.
This type of corn seed is very popular among modern farmers, with strong disease resistance, high yield, and significant hybrid advantage.
But for Chen Zhou, these corn seeds are the worst choice.
Because the high yield and other advantages of hybrid corn are most prominent in the first generation, and become noticeably weaker in the second generation, with the hybrid advantages disappearing completely in the third and fourth generations.
This means after planting two crops of corn, he could no longer grow high-yield corn unless he researched hybridization himself.
Not to mention he doesn’t understand agronomy; even if he had some agronomy knowledge, he has to manage other island affairs and couldn’t personally watch over the corn in the fields.
Furthermore, reduced corn yields wouldn’t have too much impact, as the island has barley, wheat, and rice as staple foods, and now with the addition of the high-yield potato crop, any reduced corn can still serve as coarse grain to improve taste or as livestock feed, which is also good.
As for the addition of ginger, it was something Chen Zhou had been thinking about for a long time.
There had long been scallions, garlic, and chili peppers, but ginger was missing as an ingredient in cooking; no matter what dish he fried, it felt somewhat lacking.
Now that ginger and potatoes have come together, not only does it broaden the range of cooking ingredients, but it also reminded Chen Zhou of a new dish—
Stir-fried shreds of ginger and potato.
Mixing ginger and potato shreds of similar thickness and stir-frying them together; when served, they both share a light yellow color, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s ginger or potato with one chopstick pinch. This dish, where everyone can have fun while eating finding the differences, is bound to be popular among the islanders.
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Among the four-year anniversary gift box, the fitness equipment occupied the largest space, even far exceeding the furniture and photovoltaic panels.
Chen Zhou wasn’t into fitness in the modern world and didn’t know much about gym equipment.
He didn’t even recognize all the equipment sent in this reward, some oddly-shaped machines were completely unfamiliar to him, let alone knowing how to use them.
Among the few pieces of equipment he could name were the treadmill, rowing machine, spinning bike, dumbbells, and barbells, but in the eyes of a mechanical engineering expert like Chen Zhou, they had an unusual use.
The island’s transportation tools had always been a tough problem to solve.
Wheels and axles forged from flexible wood yield moderate strength and require regular maintenance.
Previously, Chen Zhou personally addressed the issue of cart breakdowns for the natives.
Since he trained Sunday and the three boys, his workload had slightly eased, as some simple parts could be left for them to forge alone.
But that was ultimately addressing symptoms, not the root cause.
With the arrival of this fitness equipment, and thinking about their finely crafted, durable metal parts, a bold idea worthy of "reckless waste of natural resources" popped into Chen Zhou’s mind—
Take them apart!
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As the saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
After moving all the fitness equipment to the second floor of the factory, every time Chen Zhou passed by those brand-new pieces of equipment, his idea of "taking them apart" grew increasingly tempting.
No matter how firm Chen Zhou’s resolve was, he couldn’t resist this growing urge.
Moreover, he frequently moved around on the second floor of the factory daily, and each time he saw those pieces, the idea spurred him again.
Finally, in early October, on a sunny day, Chen Zhou pushed over the car repair tools, picked up the wrench and screwdriver, carrying out his "extravagant waste" idea.
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The fitness equipment all originated from the same brand, and although Chen Zhou wasn’t aware of their prices, he could tell from the craftsmanship of the disassembled parts that this batch of equipment was certainly expensive.
Valuables worth thousands or even tens of thousands were turned into a pile of scrap metal under his hands.
While unscrewing, Chen Zhou’s heart ached faintly.
However, after completing the disassembly and seeing the neatly arranged parts, he still felt it was quite worthwhile.
The various fitness equipment contained a range of Torx screws, hex bolts, locking nuts, which could aid in steam engine manufacturing.
There were also some top-quality springs and dampers, which could be used to help Chen Zhou create custom weapons or modify other equipment, such as those two machine tools.
Pulleys and steel cables could be used to manufacture lifting devices or build pulley systems; during the initial factory construction, if there had been a pulley assembly, Chen Zhou could’ve saved quite a bit of effort.
Bearings and rollers are indispensable parts for making more durable pushcarts, and also for conveyor belt manufacture.
Aside from these generic structural components, Chen Zhou also disassembled a batch of hydraulic and pneumatic resistors, conductive copper strips and interfaces, battery packs, battery management modules, heart rate monitoring modules, speed and slope adjustment components, steel frames and connectors, rubber pads, and more.
Though it seemed like the fitness equipment had disappeared from the second floor of the factory.
In reality, they represented "a whale falls and everything else thrives".
Instead of working out one or two people’s muscles, why not transform into the skeleton of the island’s industry and do something more valuable.
Chen Zhou believed, if the fitness equipment had any spiritual essence "in the heavens", they would be proud to see their "body" contributing to the island’s development.