Lin Qiaozhi ran fast.
Her fifteen-year-old body was light and agile, and even sprinting forward in long strides didn’t tire her in the slightest.
The colors around her gradually faded, and the movements of the passersby gradually began to repeat.
Lin Qiaozhi wasn’t surprised, even though it looked rather eerie.
She had already tested it before.
The girl in the dream was like the protagonist of an opera or a comic book. Everything around her was lively and vibrant, full of laughter, arguments, gossip, and amusing stories.
The farther away they were from her, the more wooden people became, like the machinery in their factory, mechanically following the production process.
Like mannequins.
But what was truly remarkable was that, while the real people in the dream were occasionally strange, and she couldn’t find any corresponding people or events in reality, the mannequins were very real.
A mannequin would bend over to scoop ashes out of a coal stove, moving with practiced ease in exactly the same way she did.
A mannequin would drive a tractor. Although the tractor was old, she recognized it at a glance. It was a tractor produced by their Hongqi Agricultural Machinery Factory!
Lin Qiaozhi happily ran to the entrance of the machinery factory.
After making a quick round, she discovered that the factory’s production task was actually a 60-ton heavy-duty mining dump truck!
The factory radio broadcast the dream girl’s voice. Her Mandarin was so standard it sounded as though it came straight from the Central Radio and Television Station. “The foundation of industry is steel, and the foundation of steelmaking is ore. The nation has put forward the policy of ‘waging a major battle for the mines,’ and our factory has undertaken the production of key equipment…”
No wonder there were Eight=Grade Workers here!!
Lin Qiaozhi’s eyes lit up.
She ran to the factory warehouse. The moment she saw that enormous machine made entirely of steel, she froze, then her whole body burned with excitement.
What a giant!!
Made by China itself!!
Lin Qiaozhi couldn’t suppress her quickened breathing. Brimming with excitement, she circled the truck that could haul sixty tons at a time, running around it over and over again.
In the future, China would actually be able to manufacture a dump truck capable of hauling sixty tons of ore in a single load! A machine this enormous!!
Fifteen-year-old Lin Qiaozhi tilted her head back to gaze at the steel giant.
Her heart overflowed with pride.
Just as the factory director had said, so what if they were poor and starting from nothing? So what if their industrial foundation was weak? So what if, when the nation was first founded, heavy industry had been almost nonexistent?
Just roll up your sleeves and get to work!
Lin Qiaozhi confidently rolled up her sleeves as well, cheering herself on. “Let’s get to work!”
She found a fitter who was using a hammer.
It wasn’t difficult.
It seemed to be a commonly used skill.
The mannequin kept repeating the same motions mechanically.
Lin Qiaozhi squatted beside him, watching without blinking.
Watching the same actions repeated over and over might have seemed dull and boring, but Lin Qiaozhi found it fascinating. She had loved tinkering with this sort of thing since childhood. She could spend hours polishing a metal whistle.
After watching for a while, she picked up a set of tools from nearby and began hammering as well.
As she brought the hammer down, she thought things through.
Dozens of strikes, hundreds of strikes… With each repeated blow, she gradually sensed something: where the hammer should land, how much force to use, the angle of the swing…
Whenever something didn’t feel right, she would press her palm against the mannequin’s arm and shoulder muscles, feeling exactly how they exerted their strength.
Whenever she couldn’t figure something out, she would try lowering or twisting the mannequin’s arm, repositioning its components, and observing how the mannequin adjusted its hammer strikes.
Then she would continue practicing.
Swinging a hammer for a few minutes was easy, but doing it continuously was difficult.
Before long, her arms and shoulders began to ache, yet she calmly raised the hammer and swung it again.
She thought to herself that perhaps this was why everyone believed she wouldn’t pass the entrance assessment.
It was a job that demanded extraordinary endurance, patience, and meticulousness.
Fortunately, Lin Qiaozhi was incredibly stubborn.
She neither rushed nor grew impatient, thinking things through little by little, making adjustments, and swinging the hand hammer over ten thousand times in that workshop.
She spent a full eight hours before finally waking from the dream.
When she opened her eyes, there wasn’t the slightest soreness in her body. She felt wonderfully refreshed!
…
Completely immersing yourself in practice was a marvelous feeling.
Every day, she could sense her own changes and progress.
During the day, Lin Qiaozhi attended classes and reviewed her lessons. After returning home, she practiced her skills.
She trained like crazy in her dreams, then used her own body during the day to fully absorb what she had learned.
She paid no attention to the clamor of the outside world, focusing on the fundamentals of using the hand hammer over and over again.
Every night in her dreams, she maintained more than ten thousand quality hammer strikes.
Gradually, she became more and more proficient. The hammer seemed to become one with her arm.
But she still didn’t think it was enough.
She wanted to do better, to become the very best.
After snapping who knew how many steel rods, her use of force became increasingly refined. One part of strength became three, three became five.
Lin Qiaozhi’s body grew increasingly exhausted, but her mind became more and more energized.
Every day, she fell into a deep sleep. Her fulfilling routine completely erased the terror left behind by the nightmares that had plagued her day after day.
…
The weather grew hotter and hotter.
Short-sleeved shirts and sleeveless undershirts could be seen everywhere in Jiangcheng, and once it became even hotter, many workers would simply go shirtless.
Soon, the day of the assessment arrived.
Lin Qiaozhi took a day off from school.
After eating breakfast in the cafeteria, she headed alone to the factory’s technical school.
“Qiaozhi.”
“Come, come. Sign in here.” Grandpa Zhang, the gatekeeper, waved her over. As he watched her bend down to pick up the pen and sign her name, he couldn’t resist asking curiously, “Qiaozhi, how’s your practice been going?”
“Not bad.”
Although he didn’t get much out of her answer, Grandpa Zhang wasn’t disappointed. Chuckling, he pointed her toward a classroom. “Go on in and find any seat to wait. Someone will come call you when it’s your turn.”
Lin Qiaozhi smiled. “Okay. Thank you.”
After signing in, all that was left was to wait.
As time passed, more and more people filled the classroom.
They were all children of factory workers, all within a couple of years of each other’s age, so everyone knew one another.
Quite a few of the teenage boys had even been beaten up by Lin Qiaozhi before.
When they saw her sitting there, they exchanged glances and awkwardly chose seats farther away.
One by one, people were called out of the classroom, yet none of them returned. Unconsciously rubbing the calluses on her hands, Lin Qiaozhi watched the classroom gradually empty and couldn’t help growing increasingly nervous.
“Lin Qiaozhi.” Someone called from the doorway.
“Here!” she answered immediately. “Coming.”
Lin Qiaozhi quickly stood up and headed toward the classroom next door.
At the doorway, she tugged at the hem of her shirt, straightened her clothes, and tucked the loose strands of hair behind her ears.
For this entrance assessment, she had tried every kind of hand hammer she could find and broken over a hundred steel rods. She was thoroughly prepared. There wouldn’t be any problems!
She took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
It was a practical training classroom.
A workbench stood in the center. Several wooden stools were placed nearby, and a few crates of tools sat against the wall.
The teacher seated in the middle glanced at the roster in his hand, then looked up and gave Lin Qiaozhi another careful look before speaking. “Introduce yourself first, then go over there and choose a steel rod. You know the rules, right? Twelve strikes.”
Lin Qiaozhi nodded. “I know.”
She stood up straight and introduced herself in a clear, ringing voice. “Hello, Masters. Hello, Teacher. My name is Lin Qiaozhi. I’m fifteen years old, and I study at Jiangcheng Hongshan No. 1 Middle School…”
At the moment, four teachers were seated in the room.
Their postures were relaxed, but their expressions weren’t particularly good. It was obvious that a whole morning of assessments had drained much of their energy, leaving them mentally fatigued.
Lin Qiaozhi’s expression remained unchanged, her smile as steady as ever.
She had submitted her application form among the last batch, so this order was only natural. Their fatigue was understandable as well. The hammering techniques the students had worked so hard to practice might not even be worth mentioning in the eyes of these instructors.
She walked over to the pile of steel rods.
The steel rods were all standard size. She casually picked one up and secured it on the workbench.
A hand hammer for the assessment rested on the workbench. Lin Qiaozhi picked it up, weighed it in her hand to get a feel for it, then tightened her grip.
Wang Baiqiang was the first to notice the way she handled the hammer, as well as the stance she took in front of the workbench.
She had clearly trained seriously. The furrow between his brows eased slightly.
Whether she could pass the assessment or not was another matter, but her attitude alone was commendable. It was obvious at a glance that she had spent plenty of time swinging a hammer properly.
Unlike some people who tried to cut corners. Just watching the way they held a hammer made his hands ache in sympathy.
He had no idea who had taught them. Did they really think he couldn’t tell? Forget skilled trades. Even if his wife, who had spent over a decade chopping vegetables at home, watched a beginner pick up a kitchen knife and set it on the cutting board, she could immediately tell whether they were clumsy and inexperienced.
“The young lady’s attitude is pretty good,” Wang Baiqiang said quietly, exchanging glances with the other instructors.
“This girl’s got quite a bit of strength too. I heard that when she was little, she’d beat up all the boys older than her. Fierce temperament.”
That wasn’t meant as criticism. If someone’s temperament was too soft, they couldn’t handle this kind of highly skilled work.
Wang Baiqiang straightened slightly in his seat so he could better observe her movements.
Lin Qiaozhi had been a little nervous at first, but the moment she picked up the chisel and hammer, her heart abruptly settled.
Thanks to having swung a hammer tens of thousands of times, she looked at the steel rod before her and, with completely natural, practiced ease, swung the hammer three times in succession.
The hammer came crashing down, producing three sharp, ringing clangs.
It took only three blows for the steel rod to snap.
The moment Wang Baiqiang looked at Lin Qiaozhi, his eyes filled with satisfaction.
He made a mark on the evaluation sheet.
Then he looked up.
“Not bad.”
He beckoned Lin Qiaozhi over.
“Come here. Let me see your hands.”
Lin Qiaozhi froze for a moment. She hadn’t heard about this part.
She set down the hammer and walked over, her eyes quickly sweeping across the evaluation sheet. She spotted her own name, but unfortunately the column behind it was blocked by someone’s arm.
She quickly withdrew her gaze.
Still puzzled, she held out both hands.
Wang Baiqiang, who had barely reacted when he saw her snap the steel rod in three blows, raised his eyebrows in surprise when he saw her hands.
“When did you start practicing?”
“After I submitted my application form,” Lin Qiaozhi answered.
Quite a few people in the residential compound knew about it. The constant clang, clang, clang of hammering couldn’t be hidden, nor could it be faked.
That was what Wang Baiqiang thought as well, but hearing Lin Qiaozhi say it herself still left him somewhat incredulous.
It wasn’t because she had broken the steel rod in three blows. Everyone sitting here had that level of skill.
The main thing was, “You reached this level in such a short time, and your left hand hasn’t been injured even once?”
Other than the calluses, there were hardly any obvious injuries?
Back when they first started training, or rather, when anyone first learned, no matter how carefully they swung the hammer, the web between the thumb and index finger of the left hand holding the chisel would inevitably get struck.
During those first few weeks, the web of the hand would swell up. In serious cases, it would even split open.
Lin Qiaozhi had certainly been injured too, but only in her dreams. After about one night, the coordination and reflexes between her eyes and hands had become almost completely familiar.
After waking up, that sense of how her left and right hands should work together remained, allowing her to adapt very smoothly.
Lin Qiaozhi withdrew her hands.
She reacted quickly.
“I really haven’t been injured much. Maybe I just pick things up quickly.”
She needed to lay the groundwork for graduating early and entering the factory ahead of schedule.
From the very beginning, she wanted people to believe that she was someone intelligent who could learn and master new skills quickly.
Wang Baiqiang clicked his tongue softly and nodded at her.
“All right. You can go out now.”
Lin Qiaozhi gave a slight bow.
After stepping outside, she closed the door behind her.
Click.
Lin Qiaozhi finally relaxed, letting out a long sigh of relief.