The nearby Yellow Hat worker saw Chen Ergou topple backward with an arrow planted squarely on his head, and his heart nearly leapt out of his throat. Pale-faced, he rushed forward in a panic, already bracing himself for the worst.
Yet before he could even kneel down, Chen Ergou groaned, rubbed his waist, and slowly sat up, blinking in confusion as he looked around him, his expression vacant and bewildered.
"Huh?" he muttered. "I'm… not dead?"
He reached up and took off the Blue Hat from his head. The arrow was still there, lodged firmly in the hat, wobbling slightly with each movement. The arrowhead had failed to pierce through.
For a moment, everyone stared.
Then realization dawned.
The hat was absurdly sturdy.
In an era that knew nothing of modern chemical engineering, Gao Family Village naturally could not produce the sort of safety helmets later generations would take for granted. But concern for worker safety had always been taken seriously, and Song Yingxing had applied the most advanced techniques available to them.
This hat was born from the Jiangnan method once used for the famed Rattan Armor Soldiers.
Double layers of tightly woven rattan formed the core, which was then wrapped in an outer layer of leather. Its defensive strength was effectively equivalent to a small leather shield. Against ordinary arrows, it was more than sufficient.
Chen Ergou stared at his hat, then cursed angrily. "They shot the 'test' character clean off my hat. Scared me half to death!"
Qi Cheng burst into laughter, slapping his thigh. "That's a good sign! It means your sentence reduction is almost finished. You're about to become a regular worker."
Chen Ergou's eyes lit up. His fear vanished in an instant, replaced by joy. "You're right! Auspicious, truly auspicious! Hahahaha!"
He clambered back onto the makeshift table and stool, stuck his head over the wall again, and shouted bravely, "What am I afraid of? I refuse to believe I'll get hit again!"
The words had barely left his mouth.
Thwack!
Another arrow slammed into his hat.
Chen Ergou let out a pitiful cry and tumbled backward once more, crashing off the stool in an undignified heap.
Qi Cheng let out a long sigh. "You have 'Er', meaning two, in your name. Of course you'd get hit twice."
Chen Ergou lay on the ground and wailed, "Brother Qi, what kind of metaphysical theory is that?"
By now, the fighting had fully escalated.
Once both sides were within bow range, injuries became unavoidable. Cries of pain rang out from time to time as arrows found flesh. Though none were fatal, the sight was enough to make hearts ache.
The workers' family members could no longer bear to hide. Seeing their husbands and sons wounded, they rushed into the workshops in a panic, rummaging frantically through piles of materials. Before long, they dragged out stacks of large, thick sheets of paperboard.
Of course, these were not ordinary paperboard at all.
They were gifts descended from the heavens, bestowed by Dao Xuan Tianzun himself. Standard A4 paper, printed with dense, colorful diagrams and text explaining steelmaking, iron refining, and the construction of all manner of small mechanisms, covering every conceivable subject.
The truly important documents were locked away in the factory manager's office, but less critical materials were scattered throughout the workshops. Some discarded sheets had even been tossed into trash piles, waiting to be collected, pulped, and recycled into new paper.
To the people of this era, these sheets looked astonishingly thick and sturdy, more like boards than paper.
They pulled the sheets from the trash, cut them into sizes large enough to cover a person's torso, folded them in half, and carved a hole along the fold.
Then they ran back to the front lines.
With a practiced urgency born of desperation, they slipped the folded paperboard over their men's heads. With arms through the sides and heads poking out from the holes, the paperboard instantly became crude yet effective Two-Plate Armor.
A4 paper armor.
When the bandits' bamboo-tipped arrows struck these improvised shields, they landed with dull, muffled thuds. The arrowheads barely penetrated the paperboard, stopping long before they could reach the cotton work clothes beneath.
The workers simply yanked the arrows out of their paper armor and fired them straight back.
"The bandits are climbing the walls!"
Qi Cheng shouted hoarsely, his voice cutting through the chaos. "Don't let them get over! Roll down logs! Throw stones!"
"We don't have logs!"
"No big stones either!"
"Then throw whatever you can find! Anything!"
Several family members came running with a basket full of iron balls, each one neither too large nor too small.
The worker on the wall froze for a heartbeat, then understood. These were the smaller cannonballs used by Dao Xuan Tianzun's two arms. Producing such iron projectiles was one of the steel transportation factory's tasks, and two large baskets of them had been stacked in a workshop.
For throwing at people, they were perfect.
A worker grabbed one and hurled it downward with all his strength.
Thud!
A bandit's head burst open, blood spraying as he collapsed without a sound.
The worker stared, stunned, then laughed wildly. "This works! Everyone, throw these!"
The defenders erupted into action. Iron projectiles flew from the walls in a relentless rain.
Seeing this, the workers' families brought everything they could get their hands on. Wrenches, screwdrivers, pry bars, chisels, claw hammers, all manner of strange tools came flying down.
The morale atop the walls surged like a rising tide.
Below, the bandits scrambling up the walls suffered miserably.
What kind of outrageously wealthy factory was this?
Iron chunks were being thrown away like worthless pebbles.
"Do you even know," a bandit shouted in disbelief, "that a single iron hammer is worth a tael of silver? You're throwing taels of silver at our heads! Are you mad? Don't you care about your wealth?"
Only now did the bandits truly understand what lavish extravagance meant. In just a short exchange, the things hurled at them were already worth thousands of taels of silver.
One bandit couldn't help but ask He Zonghan, "Brother, why don't we just grab the iron outside the walls and run? That alone is worth a fortune. Why risk our lives charging in?"
He Zonghan's eyes burned with greed. "If what they're throwing away is already worth thousands, what do you think is inside? Break in and we'll easily grab over a hundred thousand taels. Charge!"
The bandits roared and surged forward once more.
Outside the walls, iron tools and corpses piled up together, gradually raising the ground level. Ironically, this made it easier to climb.
Stepping on fallen bodies, one bandit leaped with all his strength, grabbed the wall, and hauled himself over. At last, a man broke through into the factory.
He landed inside, drew his saber in a flourish, and laughed loudly. "I'm in! You cowards are finished!"
The laughter died in his throat.
A worker charged at him, holding an iron pot in his left hand and a knife in his right.
The steel transportation factory even produced iron pots.
Gripping it, the worker felt a surprising sense of security. Solid, heavy, dependable.
The bandit slashed with his saber. The worker raised the pot to block.
Clang!
The harsh metallic crash rang out, setting both their ears ringing.
The worker slashed backhanded, but the bandit twisted aside, avoiding the blade with practiced ease. It was obvious that in terms of martial skill, the bandit held the advantage.
The worker realized this instantly. His knife was useless. He let it fall, grabbed the iron pot with both hands, and shoved it forward with all his might.
Martial legends often speak of breaking complex sword techniques with simple methods. Against a heavy shield or a solid door shoved straight at you, footwork and finesse have nowhere to go.
This was exactly that.
No matter how refined the bandit's techniques were, facing a massive iron pot driven straight into him left no room for cleverness. It became a raw contest of strength.
He braced himself and slammed his shoulder into the bottom of the pot.
Thud!
Their forces collided through cold iron.
In that instant, the bandit learned what "the might of us workers" truly meant.
He was hurled backward, flying several paces before crashing onto his backside and skidding helplessly across the ground.