Munitions Empire

A month later, when the gigantic freewheeler arrived at Hotwind Port, it startled the workers who were building even larger cranes on the docks.

They had truly never seen such a huge ship, let alone such a massive iron vessel.

As the ship blew its whistle and docked beside the pier, like a giant beast, it made the beside massive sailing ship unloading its cargo look incredibly tiny by comparison.

Even though the sailing ship was already quite large, besides the tall masts, one could not see the deck of the freewheeler from its deck.

Leaning on the railing on the ship's side, a sailor overlooked the entire dock, where porters were coming and going busily, and not a single one was not curiously sizing up this steel behemoth.

A total of 100 trucks and the parts for two cranes for loading and unloading, with the rest of the cabins filled with bagged cement, just the transport capacity of this single freewheeler could almost rejuvenate Hotwind Port completely.

Just a few months ago, the place was nearly attacked by the Taren Kingdom's troops, but a few months later, it had already become the largest freight port in the south.

Near the port, the newly constructed coal yard was filled with black coal piled up like mountains, and a direct road for transporting coal to the port had just been completed and opened to traffic.

The railway of Hotwind Port leads to the Dorne King City. To be honest, its construction was not fast. From the start until now, it had been progressing at a steady pace of about five to six kilometers a day.

There was really no helping it, the place indeed needed development, but the Great Tang Group really couldn't spare the strength to develop it for the time being.

A massive number of railway workers were working on the railway between Jade City and Laines' capital city. The railway between Ice Crystal City and Jade City was also being furiously constructed.

Car production never ceased, and the Great Tang Group's car production lines were running at full capacity, even with overtime on holidays.

Over 100 cars were produced daily, about 60 of which were sedans, and the rest were trucks. At this rate, the Great Tang Group could produce nearly 40,000 cars a year, which was an astonishing figure.

With the frenzied construction of freewheelers to dominate the shipping trade of the entire Endless Sea, the capacity for steel production was really struggling to keep up.

Clearly, it wasn't that the technology or funding couldn't keep up, but the pre-industrial production capacity....

Car production capacity was already maxed, yet it still couldn't meet the demand, but expanding car production was impossible because producing more cars was futile without enough gasoline supply.

Similarly, building more oil refineries was useless, because the capacity of the oil fields was there, and more refineries wouldn't help without crude oil supply.

So they could only go about expanding oil fields honestly, to increase the total oil production—a lengthy process that couldn't be solved as quickly as starting from scratch.

For example, rail production capacity was maxed, but to continue building more rail production plants meant increasing the source steel production.

But steel production was also maxed, so they needed to mine more iron... Such matters restrained the development of the Great Tang Group, as well as the development of the entire world.

Reality was harsh; even if Tang Mo were to create powerful Tiger tanks now, there wouldn't be enough fuel to feed these gas guzzlers.

"I hear that Taren's King City has been renamed Winterless City..." A porter, moving goods transported from the southern regions of the Endless Sea, chatted with a colleague nearby.

"Yeah, I heard the King actually committed suicide, the entire royal family vanished without a trace... I heard they might be plotting to restore the kingdom in secret..." The porter beside him hoisted bags of cement on his shoulders and walked towards the trucks waiting to be loaded without turning back.

The talking porter also carried cement and followed, saying as he went, "Restore the kingdom? I heard those civilians in Winterless City hate him to death, does he have the face to restore the kingdom?"

"Couldn't agree more... Anyway, now, Taren and Xilun... seem to be completely finished." This porter, carrying two bags of cement on his shoulders, panted out a breath and then ended the conversation.

Lately, what everyone talked about the most was the occupation of Taren Kingdom and Xilun Kingdom. The King of Xilun Kingdom died heroically in the defense of the King City, marking the complete end of the country.

Meanwhile, the situation in Taren Kingdom was more complicated. Most of its territory was occupied by Dorne Kingdom, but the King City and nearby islands all became the property of the Great Tang Group.

These islands were well suited for rubber plantations, and the southern regions of Dorne Kingdom could also grow rubber. And it seems there were oil fields on these islands as well as the southern part of Dorne, all of significant scale.

Such resources could all be fed back to the Great Tang Group. One of Taren Kingdom's islands was even renowned as Iron Island for its rich iron ore, which eased the raw material shortage of the Great Tang Group immediately.

That was only the obvious upside; in the long-term plan, the southernmost Winterless City, formerly Taren King City, was an important port in the southern region of the Endless Sea.

Linked to it was Hotwind Port, followed by Brunas to the north, and then even further north were Osa and Eternal Winter City, whose ports the Dwarves were ready to cede...

Great Tang Group had nearly assembled half the grand ports of the Endless Sea, like a gaping maw, devouring the entire Endless Sea.

And soon, the vessels linking these ports would be the famed Liberty ships. Cheap and easy to produce, Great Tang Group could churn out a hundred or a thousand at a time, using them to completely crush the fragile system of sail-powered maritime transport.

…

In Brunas, a sailboat docked at the port's pier, and its wooden gangway was lowered. A man wearing a sun hat with a gloomy expression descended from the deck.

To put it bluntly, his journey had not been particularly wretched, but compared to his previously whimsical life, he now had practically nothing.

The king who had lost his kingdom, Taren the Tenth, squinted at the massive city in front of him, suddenly feeling bewildered.

He didn't know that the king of Germelin had almost the same reaction, having been struck with awe upon seeing all this.

"It's really too big..." Taren the Tenth's youngest daughter seemed to have forgotten that her father had just lost everything, her eyes wide as she scampered down the gangway, gazing at the port's cranes, surprisingly giant in size.

At her own home port, she had never seen such tall structures, and of course, had never witnessed such a noisy yet orderly scene.

Each crane was working non-stop, with only their passenger dock devoid of mountainous piles of cargo.

The sound of car engines, the noise of the waves, the clamor of the working cranes, the shouts of the workers, and the clanging from the shipyards being built all interwove, making the place somewhat noisy.

But this kind of noise truly conveyed a sense of booming prosperity, an impact that instantly conquered the children who disembarked, and also astonished the members of the Taren royal family who had accompanied Taren the Tenth to Brunas.

Taren the Tenth had seven princesses and over a dozen children, the eldest being fifteen years old this year, and the youngest still needed to be held.

They all came to Brunas because, at the very last moment, Taren the Tenth had chosen dignity. He dignifiedly gave up his kingdom, dignifiedly chose a manner of death, and then dignifiedly announced to the world that he had committed suicide.

Now renamed Tark, he and his family arrived in Brunas by ship, where he would receive a significant sum of money and a luxurious residence of considerable value.

This was the dignity promised to him by Tang Mo, although an officer Housen of the Taren had killed a captain of the Great Tang Group's patrol team, avenging that captain by eradicating Taren could definitely be said as revenge.

A life for a kingdom... it seemed fair. At least Tang Mo thought that such equivalent recompense for debts was fair.

"Quiet!" The girl's mother looked very dignified as she scolded, then realized her husband showed no displeasure over their daughter's exclamation.

The former Taren the Tenth, or rather, Mr. Tark as he was now known, had his attention captured by the luxury car parked in front of him.

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"Mr. Tark?" The driver politely opened the car door for Taren the Tenth, making a welcoming gesture: "I am your driver, sir. The cars behind are all prepared for you and your family."

With that, Taren the Tenth followed his pointing finger towards the other side and then noticed that there were already seven or eight cars waiting there.

Besides his luxury car, the rest of the vehicles seemed pretty nice. Taren the Tenth really hadn't expected that Mr. Tang, whom he'd never met, would truly fulfill his promise.

He had promised to give him a million Gold Coins, allowing him to live a life of affluence in the days to come, and also promised that he could live incognito, undisturbed by anyone.

What Taren the Tenth hadn't anticipated was that he would also encounter modern life in Brunas, something he had never experienced before.

His residence had electric lights, flush toilets, soft Simmons beds, and he could even retain his original butlers and servants.

Even more, he could keep his own bodyguards if he could afford them; he was allowed to maintain a bodyguard unit of up to ten men.

This was certainly much better than surrendering to the King of Dorne. Because of wary considerations, a dethroned monarch would unlikely enjoy such good treatment.

"Sigh..." Exhaling, Taren the Tenth bent down, entered the small car, and sat on the soft rear seat of the automobile, comfortably closing his eyes.