Chapter 111: Upgrade!
Translated by me, edited by drpetro.
This was really all completed in one go.
Wu Yu and everyone else had an “Am I seeing this right?” kind of expression.
Before they arrived, they were all talking about how the owner was dishonest, how could he use only one day to crudely fix their chase boat.
Standardized ship building steel all came flat and leveled. If he wanted to fix the hull of the chase boat, then he needed to cut out the necessary size, and use a folding machine to get the correct angle and bends.
The process was very easy, as there weren’t any technical challenges, but it was very time consuming.
Besides, this dazzling silvery metal style hull, no matter how you looked at it, it didn’t look like regular ship building steel at all.
And that beautifully carved police emblem. Only a laser engraver could do that right?
How does this factory do it?
“What kind of steel is this?” Wu Yu tapped his subordinates, hoping that he could have an answer so that he didn’t look bad.
“Can it be stainless steel……” The officers all looked at each other, and they all had an ‘we’ve hit the jackpot’ kind of feeling.
“No way. I heard stainless steel was super difficult to process, if they were to be used for ship hulls then just think of the price.”
Let’s not talk about what kind of steel this was made from, just by that beautiful looking hull, that embodying emblem carving, and that knife like ram head alone was enough to hook onto their wants and desires.
Being in possession of great stuff was a hobby for all humans, no matter the age, gender, or race.
“This is a new product from our company, the nickel-titanium memory alloy. Not only is it anti corrosive and rust free, it can also ‘heal’ back from any kind of impact.” Ye Qing with a master artisan in tow, appeared behind them and explained to these dumbstruck people.
“Nickel-titanium memory alloy?” Wu Yu still found it somewhat incomprehensible: “Last month my son kept on bugging me to get him a bike online. Yet, he wasn’t satisfied with the cheap ones at all, rather he wanted the 5000 kind made from titanium alloy.”
“You said this ship hull is also made from titanium alloy?”
“It’s nickel-titanium memory alloy, possessing great anti corrosive and rust free properties, and can alleviate all your repair costs.”
“It can return back to it’s original form after an impact?” Wu Yu caught on to the main point, if this hull could really turn back after an impact, then……
Their Anti Smuggling Unit’s chase boats needed to hit the shipyard an average of five times each year for hull repairs.
Not counting dents and scratch, just the paint needed each time was already costly enough.
If this expense could be saved, then Wu Yu was naturally happy. However he wouldn’t straight out believe what Ye Qing said, rather he needed to see it happen.
A 6’2” muscular officer borrowed a sledgehammer from Ye Qing, spat on his hands, then mustering his strength, smashed the hammer onto the silvery white ship hull.
*Bang~*
The echos of the heavy hit sounded off endlessly, yet the officer was thrown to the ground by the humongous rebounding shock, and when he actually got up, he was jumping around while cradling onto his hands.
“Xiao Zhou, you alright?” Wu Yu caringly asked.
The officer jumped around for ages before finally opening his hands, to display the redness of it caused by the rebounding shock for all to see.
“Siiii ~” A burst of hissing, which wasn’t for the wellness of this superficial injury, rather it was for the hull which didn’t seem to have been damaged at all.
That hit just then, actually didn’t even leave a dent.
With no dents, then how were they going to examine whether or not this hull could actually repair itself?
That was actually very simple. Ye Qing called a peon over and had him try hammering it.
The peon, who looked like a complete muscle head, had Wu Yu looking forward to the results.
*Bang ~*
*Crack ~*
The thunderous echoes had everyone cover their ears. As for the sledgehammer, its wooden handle actually split down the middle.
The force of this hit way exceeded a thousand pounds, yet the hull of the chase boat still remained unblemished.
Without boasting, if this hit was performed on the original boat hull, then there would definitely be a hole right now.
Experimenting to that point, there was no need to continue. Although they hadn’t seen its self healing abilities, but the silver white ship hull in front of them had the top tier materials they had been dreaming of possessing.
But the price……
A titanium alloy made bike cost 5000, then how much was this ship hull in front of them?
Wu Yu suddenly felt like leaving the boat here for repairs was the worst decision he had made in a long time.
“2,000,000.” Ye displayed two fingers, and named the eye popping price.
“Plus 10 year warranty. That’s right, free repairs for the ship of any kind within the next 10 years.” Ye Qing shrugged, and in an ‘I don’t really care’ tone continued: “Of course, if you think this price is too expensive, I can always replace it with regular steel for a market price of 100,000.”
Wu Yu immediately called everyone over for an emergency meeting.
The content of the meeting was very simple, should we buy this?
They first looked up the price of titanium on the internet, and found that a ton of titanium alloy would cost them about 150,000.
2,000,000 could buy them 13 tons of titanium alloy ingots and the ship hull in front them weighed in at around 10 tons. Titanium from the rumors was also difficult to work with, thus the most costly part of buying the alloy were the labour fees, then again, this alloy also had self healing abilities.
An offering price of 2,000,000 wasn’t too expensive. In comparison, the average annual repair fees spent on a single chase boat already exceeded 400,000.
Sadly they didn’t know that Ye Qing filled in 30% of the alloy with regular steel, hence weakening the material’s integrate by a bunch. However, this did also lower the amount of capital invested in making it.
If the free repairs deal was upheld, then they could make back the total cost of the hulls in 5 years. More importantly, with this specialized ship hull, they could actually go head to head with those smugglers.
Yesterday that yacht had them truly understand how important having a thick hull was.
This factory owner, through watching the chase, definitely noticed their interest in possessing ships with stronger and more reliable hulls.
Analysing the pros and cons, Wu Yu, with firm determination, decided to buy one for a trial.
They really couldn’t afford to always be so far behind those smugglers in terms of utilizing new technologies.
If they could bring out a completely new and more advanced equipment to face the smugglers, then wasn’t that just paving the way for his political career?
Of course, he still needed to have them test out everything about the hull before he could report this and get an estimate on his available budget.
Ye Qing naturally didn’t have anything against it, because all they had to do was sign a purchasing contract.
Half an hour later, this new hulled flashy chase boat once again entered the waters, turned on its engines, and the officers hated not being able to speed back to their unit’s harbour.
However, the Dragon Creek Beach was filled with submerged reefs. Even if they were give 10 more lives, they still wouldn’t risk it.
Wu Yu also sat in the chase boat and was actually looking forward to the boat’s testing results. If this specialized hull was actually like how Ye Qing described it, then they’ve basically had themselves a brand new ‘weapon’ to use against those smugglers.
When that times came, every smuggler they met would become their unit’s achievement.
The chase boat, just like a nimble swordfish, cut across the shadow filled Dragon Creek Beach.
Only when they finally weren’t able to see any more reef shadows did the officer in charge of piloting dare to raise the speed.
Only after having increased the cruise speed to 20 knots, and having left the reef filled stretch of the Dragon Creek Beach, did everyone relax and start chatting.
*Boom ~*
Yet the chase boat, without increasing speed for half a minute, was back to flying across the air.
Everyone was stunned by the sudden series of events, but also clearly heard the giant screeching sound coming from the bottom of the boat as it scrapped past some rocks.
“Xiao Liu, you blind?” A somewhat old officer hurriedly supported the Chief, and exploded on the pilot: “Don’t you see the Chief on the ship? What are you so anxious about?”
“I I…… I’m sorry Chief……” The young officer embarrassingly apologized: “I was just too anxious to get back to harbour, so I didn’t pay close attention to the sea.”
“Quick, see if the bottom’s broken or not.” Wu Yu waved his hand to indicate that he was fine.
Opening the hatch to the storage space below the deck, several people dove in to examine the damages, yet they were all shocked beyond belief.
Under their careful examination they found a slightly dented area on the V shaped boat bottom inside the storage room.
The dent wasn’t big, just a couple of centimeters.
The sound of the reef breaking from the hit was quite clear, yet the dent resulting from that was only this big.
So what was this outrageous structural strength?
Yet this wasn’t the reason for their completely shocked expressions, because this obvious dent actually slowly retracted……
Just like memory foam, the dent slowly disappeared, and no traces of it could be found again.
Wu Yu stared at the location of the disappeared dent and was completely speechless.
10 long seconds later, he spoke: “When we get back I’ll immediately report this, and get the customs office to pay for having all our ships swapped out.”
The eyes of the other officers were just like they were glued there, as they just kept on staring at that spot.
Their thoughts had already gone out to the wide open seas, as they day dreamed about going head to head with those smugglers in ships made from nickel-titanium memory alloy.
And let those smugglers truly understand what the iron fist of the Anti Smuggling Unit truly meant.