Mythical Three Kingdoms

Chen Xi stared dumbfounded at the thing in front of him that was about the size of a whole room, tugged at the corner of his mouth; this thing was way too big, completely different from what he’d imagined before.

"This is way too big!" Chen Xi looked at the thing, feeling awkward.

"Originally we wanted to make a small one, but the small one just couldn’t show its effect; only when it’s big does the power become very strong." Zheng Hun explained with some patient bitterness. It was obvious that if it weren’t Chen Xi, the guy who’d given the proposal, saying this, Zheng Hun would’ve already snapped back with a crowbar.

"Oh, that’s true. Steam Engines have this flaw; the efficiency is a bit low, but the power is insanely high. By the way, didn’t you say it could also use Heaven and Earth Essence?" Seeing that Zheng Hun and a group of Grand Craftsmen were looking at him with some displeasure, Chen Xi immediately changed the subject.

After all, Chen Xi wasn’t stupid. These people had clearly made something that could go down in history, and he was nitpicking on the side; of course they’d be in a bad mood.

"Fire it up!" Mentioning the part he was most proud of, Zheng Hun immediately shot a look at a Grand Craftsman beside him. That man rushed over, vigorously shoveled a few scoops of coal briquettes, then started pumping air into it with a blower; however, Chen Xi didn’t see any change.

"Uh, nothing’s happening." Chen Xi said, a bit embarrassed.

"The point of this design is to focus the fire on this mechanism, because we found that instead of using Heaven and Earth Essence to drive it, it’s better to use Heaven and Earth Essence to bind the flames." Zheng Hun said with a hint of pride. Chen Xi’s face stayed expressionless, but inside he was utterly shocked.

[It’s over, the Internal Combustion Engine has no future now. They actually managed to confine thermal energy, reducing heat loss. The Steam Engine is probably going to utterly crush the Internal Combustion Engine. I’m doomed.] Chen Xi’s mouth twitched; he really hadn’t expected it could be done like this.

The biggest problem with Steam Engines was always heat loss. If you were just talking about power output, a Steam Engine’s power could be built to break through the sky. And now they’d actually throttled the heat loss—once this was reduced, the advantages of the Internal Combustion Engine were gone...

What’s more, to put it bluntly, Steam Engines could burn crop stalks and wood as fuel; anything that could burn could be used as fuel. Its adaptability far surpassed that of the Internal Combustion Engine. The reason the industrial era had no choice but to bow was that the thermal efficiency was too low.

And now Zheng Hun and the others had innovatively come up with using Heaven and Earth Essence to constrain heat energy. Fine, the coffin lid of the laws of thermodynamics couldn’t be held down anymore.

"How much output does this have?" Chen Xi didn’t say "power," he went straight to "output force."

"Go, mount our Great Hammer on it." Zheng Hun said to a Grand Craftsman on the other side. That Grand Craftsman, along with a group of Escorts, mounted a huge wooden hammer that looked thicker than five people standing together.

"Looking at it like this, it doesn’t seem that obvious." Ma Jun watched the Great Hammer whipping through the air with a fierce whooshing sound, but felt it lacked a concrete comparison, so he was a bit embarrassed and started looking around.

"Third Brother, come help!" Chen Xi also looked around, then saw Zhang Fei and decided to have him stand under the Great Hammer to feel it. Anyway, Zhang Fei, with Inner Qi Manifestation and about to reach Three Boundary Breaks, didn’t care about this kind of thing at all.

"What’s up!" Zhang Fei saw a crowd gathering and was already very interested. Once Chen Xi called, he ran over in just a couple of strides.

"Stand under the Great Hammer. When the hammer comes down in a bit, help us feel how strong the power is. But it might be very powerful, so be careful!" Chen Xi reminded Zhang Fei.

At this time, the attached transmission was in Energy Accumulation mode, and Chen Xi hadn’t expected that Zheng Hun and the others had even made something like this.

Zhang Fei stood under the Great Hammer, staring up at it without the slightest fear. He was very confident in his own power; of course, Zheng Hun and the others were also extremely confident in their equipment.

"It’s starting, it’s starting!" A Grand Craftsman first had Zhang Fei get ready, then yanked down the switch hard, and the Great Hammer came smashing down with a roaring gale. At that moment, even if Zhang Fei had doubted it, he now knew this thing’s power was tremendous and immediately went all out!

"Ha!" Zhang Fei’s big arm bulged up at once, a pitch-black sheen erupting over his body. He viciously punched the Great Hammer, a dull crash sounding out, and the huge wooden hammer was directly smashed apart. But the remaining momentum crashed into Zhang Fei, whose old strength was exhausted as new strength was just rising, slamming him straight into the ground. The power was simply terrifying!

"Terrifying." Chen Xi rubbed his chin. This power was simply terrifying; it had actually gone head-to-head with someone like Zhang Fei and neither side came out on top.

"It’s this big—where are you going to use it?" Chen Xi didn’t bother with Zhang Fei, who’d been driven into the dirt. The Grand Craftsman had already flipped the trigger back. Everyone knew Zhang Fei would definitely be fine.

"Pah, pah, pah!" Zhang Fei jumped out of the soil. "What the hell is this thing? I feel its power is no weaker than that guy Zhongkang’s."

"A kind of mechanical power. I’m thinking right now about what to mount this thing on. Originally I said we’d put it on the Lul Family’s Seventh Generation warship, but now, it feels a bit too fierce."

Chen Xi looked at this thing the size of a room and spoke, very satisfied.

"By the way, how long does it take you to make one of these now?" Chen Xi thought for a bit and asked.

"If all of us are here, making two in a year is already the limit." Zheng Hun said with considerable helplessness. This thing was just too hard to make—if the precision is off in many places, once it starts turning it’ll malfunction, and then all the other parts will have problems too.

"Uh..." Chen Xi glanced at Zheng Hun’s side: over thirty Grand Craftsmen. How could he possibly drag so many Grand Craftsmen over just to build this one thing? "So what you’re saying is, with ten people, it’d take over two years to make one?"

"Ten people can’t make it, because everyone works on different parts. Some parts are interchangeable, some are assigned according to individual ability." Zheng Hun said helplessly. This thing could already be considered their supreme masterpiece.

Chen Xi was helpless. After a moment of silence he opened his mouth and said, "Then, what’s the minimum number of people needed to make this thing, and how long would it take?"

"At least fourteen of us, and we can produce one in a year and a half." Zheng Hun pointed at the people around him as he spoke.

Chen Xi was speechless. When he saw this thing, his first reaction had been to build a railway. Well, then he thought about it again: the iron wasted on building a railway seemed a bit much. Actually this thing would be best mounted on a Seventh Generation ship, or even on troop transports—on large troop transports! One ship carrying eight thousand people!

A normal ship can’t maintain such a high speed all the time, but this one can. The power is strong. It could run from the Han Dynasty to Africa in a month. His initial idea was completely correct after all; it really should go on troop transports.

"I’ll see if I can find some more craftsmen and build a few more. This thing is great; using it as a propulsion device for ships is extremely suitable." Chen Xi had already discovered the biggest advantage of this thing: it was fast, and unlike people it didn’t need rest—its speed was extremely stable.

And this thing could even tow ships—ships towing ships—so there’d be no waste of horsepower and such. The horsepower of this thing looked downright heaven-defying. It really was good stuff.

"No, no, no. This thing is not only usable as a ship’s power source; it can also be used for mining, for crushing rocks, and for building roads." Zheng Hun looked as if he’d already developed a lot of supporting applications for this thing.

But thinking about it, speaking logically, shouldn’t the chassis come first and then the power? How did it become building the power unit first and then researching the supporting equipment? Truly, this was an unscientific era.

"Fine. Looks like you’ve already thought of a lot of uses, but you only have this one thing, which is totally not enough for all that." Chen Xi waved his hand, signaling for Zheng Hun to hurry up and go make other Steam Engines. Just this one unit was absolutely not enough for the stuff he’d talked about.

"No, Marquis Chen, you’ve got it wrong. This is the ultimate machine we created by pouring in all our blood and sweat. How could it be that just because there’s only one, we can’t do other work!" Ma Jun spoke with the same fanaticism. They’d mounted many things on it.

"What you just saw was only the rock-crushing and mining setup. Come, mount the polishing, casting, moving, and other equipment!" Ma Jun, slightly feverish, directed that group of people.

Very quickly, the group of Grand Craftsmen assembled the already-prepared mechanical parts onto it, and then demonstrated them to Chen Xi one by one. Chen Xi indicated that he finally understood why these bastards had wasted so much time. What he wanted was a power device, not all these contraptions they’d developed.

"Although I deeply admire your pioneering work, I can’t use any of this stuff you’ve rigged up. What I want is just the power unit!" Though Chen Xi was displeased, he still decided not to dampen their enthusiasm. He had originally worried about how to transport this thing, and then after they mounted the parts, it actually turned out this thing could move on its own.

"Ha, but something this amazing feels wrong if we don’t equip it with all sorts of auxiliary facilities. Look, this thing can also be used to suck up water..." Ma Jun continued showing off his inventions.

"All right, without all these external auxiliary facilities, how long would it take you to make one?" Chen Xi asked.

"Of course it’d still take the same amount of time. These auxiliary facilities just use this to replace parts that previously needed hydraulic power, wind power, manpower, or animal power." Ma Jun said casually. "I’m planning to name it the Ma Clan Machine..."

Before Ma Jun could finish, Zheng Hun’s people had already dragged him aside with a hand over his mouth. Zheng Hun coughed twice and said, "I’ve already carved all our names on it. As for Ma Deheng, well, he’s Lord Cao’s man. I’m planning to give him one hundred million coins as a thank-you fee."

"Bastard, Duke Zheng Wen, I despise you!" Ma Jun struggled and cursed.

It was obvious these two were about to come to blows over the naming rights for this thing. Zheng Hun, like a rich bumpkin, declared, I’ll give you one hundred million coins as hush money, just don’t talk. While Ma Jun clearly indicated, this is an insult.

"When you came, I’d already finished more than half of this thing!" Zheng Hun shouted angrily at Ma Jun. Neither of them was an idiot. Whoever invented this thing could be like Luban; their incense offerings would never cease. Having your name go down in history was nothing—I want into the temple!"