The entire steel transport factory descended into chaos. Workers ran in all directions, shouting and scrambling in panic.
Those who managed to keep a clear head immediately rushed toward the taller buildings. From higher ground, they reasoned, they would at least be able to see what was happening.
Qi Cheng, Chen Ergou, and the test vehicle driver all locked onto the tall tower standing at the center of the factory. The three of them hurried up, followed closely by a large crowd of ordinary workers wearing Yellow Hats.
Once they reached the top, their field of vision expanded dramatically. Looking out over the barren plains to the northeast of the steel transport factory, they immediately spotted the bandit army.
Five thousand men.
A dense, rolling mass advancing steadily from afar.
And their direction left no room for doubt.
Their target was the steel transport factory.
The Yellow Hats were instantly terrified. Many of them let out shrill screams.
After the initial panic, everyone's eyes instinctively turned to Qi Cheng and Chen Ergou.
"Engineer Qi! Engineer Chen! What do we do?"
"What can we do?"
"Should we open the west gate and run?"
"Hedong City is only twenty li west of here. Xing Honglang has five hundred militia stationed there. If we make it into the city, we'll be safe!"
"We can run fast, but the women and children won't. The bandits will catch them!"
"But—"
A dozen voices overlapped at once, the noise turning into a dizzying mess.
Suddenly, Qi Cheng let out a thunderous roar.
"SHUT UP! All of you—damn it, shut up!"
The shout crushed the noise instantly. The Yellow Hats stared at him with wide, startled eyes.
Qi Cheng shouted, "What the hell are you all afraid of? Don't forget who Ergou and I are! Look at the 'Test' character on my hat! We used to be bandits ourselves! What's there to fear? Are they scarier than us? They've got two eyes, one mouth, two ears, and two legs—same as us, don't they?!"
That outburst jolted everyone.
"Huh?"
"That's… that's true!"
For reasons no one could quite explain, the single character Test on Qi Cheng's hat suddenly gave people a strange sense of reassurance.
Qi Cheng quickly pulled out a megaphone—standard equipment for Blue Hats, absolutely essential when directing Yellow Hats at work.
Standing atop the tall tower, he raised the megaphone and shouted down, "Everyone, don't panic! Don't panic! We train regularly, and plenty of you have militia training. What are you all freaking out for? Now listen carefully—every damn man here, gather immediately at the security office entrance!"
His voice stabilized the workers at once. The chaos of headless scrambling faded rapidly.
Qi Cheng turned to Chen Ergou. "Ergou, hurry to the security office. Open the warehouse and distribute the militia weapons the higher-ups issued us. Go, go, go!"
Chen Ergou nodded, turned, and rushed down the tower toward the security office.
Qi Cheng then looked at the driver of Experimental Car No. 2. "Brother, I need you to drive to Hedong immediately and call for reinforcements from Xing Honglang."
The driver's spirits lifted instantly. "Ah? Yes, yes, yes! I can do that right now!"
He rushed down as well, jumped into Experimental Car No. 2—which had just been refueled with coal—and, with the Yellow Hats opening the west gate, sped straight toward Hedong City.
Meanwhile, the bandit army in the northeast continued to close the distance.
Fortunately, the factory sat amid open plains with excellent visibility. Sentries had already spotted the bandits two or three li away. Even so, it would still take time for them to reach the factory perimeter.
That precious window was seized immediately.
The security office warehouse was thrown open. Chen Ergou dragged out a massive wicker basket from the back, kicked it over, and smoothbore muskets spilled across the ground with a clatter.
The truth was that every Gao Family Village factory security office stored old, decommissioned smoothbore firearms—bird-guns and Three-Eyed Arquebuses. Aside from artillery, their armaments were essentially on par with the Ming dynasty's elite Divine Machine Battalion.
In fact, every steel transport factory worker was technically "militia." All of them had undergone basic military training—drills, target practice, grenade throwing, and more.
So they knew how to use bird-guns and Three-Eyed Arquebuses.
The only question was how well.
Workers crouched, grabbed muskets from the ground, scooped up two handfuls of bullets from another basket, and sprinted toward the northeast.
One basket of muskets vanished quickly. Chen Ergou dragged out a second.
He looked for a third.
There wasn't one.
The security office only had a hundred smoothbore firearms.
Left with no choice, Chen Ergou pulled out a basket of bows and arrows, followed by another filled with cold weapons—sabers, spears, halberds…
Even then, there still weren't enough weapons to go around.
In the end, workers and family members who hadn't been issued anything had to improvise. Some ran through the workshops and emerged gripping steel pipes.
Others found heavy iron chains.
One man hauled out an iron bar—an axle rod meant for a steam engine. He swung it once, then winced.
Too damn heavy.
If the steel transport factory lacked anything, it definitely wasn't improvised weapons.
Everyone who found something usable ran toward the northeast perimeter.
By then, Qi Cheng had already reached the northeastern corner of the wall.
The factory's perimeter wall was nothing like a city wall. It wasn't thick or wide enough for people to stand on—just a standard factory enclosure, only a few dozen centimeters thick.
There was no way to defend from atop it.
A handful of workers squeezed into the watchtower at the northeast corner, but it was tiny. After five or six people climbed up, it was already hard to even turn around.
With no other option, everyone climbed onto the rooftops of the factory buildings closest to the wall and took up defensive positions.
Qi Cheng and Chen Ergou climbed onto the rooftop nearest the perimeter.
The workers around them were still visibly nervous, but Qi Cheng and Chen Ergou had seen it all.
They had fought all kinds of battles.
And nearly every one of them had ended the same way.
Defeat.
They had lost to bandits, lost to government troops, and even lost to the Gao Family Village Militia. In the early years of their rebellion, they had barely won a single fight.
As a result, Qi Cheng and Chen Ergou were experts at swallowing humiliation.
Watching the five thousand bandit soldiers draw closer and closer outside the factory, Qi Cheng lifted his tin megaphone and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Who are you bandits, daring to trespass on my steel transport factory? Don't you know who protects this place?!"
He Zonghan, Liu Haoran, and Gao Jiaji burst out laughing.
They couldn't understand how a single man on the other side could have such a loud, booming voice—so loud that it carried clearly across the distance.
None of the three of them could shout like that.
Left with no choice, He Zonghan gathered dozens of his subordinates and had them shout together, "Whose factory is this up ahead? The grandfathers have arrived today! Hand over all your valuables obediently! If you dare say a single 'no,' we'll storm this miserable factory and slaughter every man, woman, and child inside!"
Qi Cheng immediately fired back, megaphone raised.
"Damn it! When I was saying things like that, you were still in diapers!"