Munitions Empire

As the days passed, Brunas increasingly entered the atmosphere of hosting a grand world fair.

The streets were filled with various exquisite advertising slogans, and factories and workshops from around the world, as well as renowned merchants and tycoons, were ready to make a splash in this city and earn a fortune.

Just as Nangong Hong and his Attendant Student were worrying about how to fill their stomachs, at the docks, sailors were carefully moving crates of supplies off a cargo ship from the southern part of the Endless Sea.

Those supplies were very delicate and expensive—the real employer renting this huge sailing ship turned out to be the Shireck Consortium.

This time, they came to Brunas not to cause trouble but to participate in the car race and promote their automobile technology.

In preparation for this race, Shireck had gone to great lengths, establishing an automobile factory in the Gobur Kingdom and naming it Gobur Automobile Company.

After almost completely copying the production of the T-model cars, Shireck spent a great deal of effort improving the engine and redesigning the car's exterior to come up with their latest product.

To be honest, they still had some foundation in this area—before the Great Tang Group emerged, Shireck's carriages were also very prestigious and fashionable items.

This time, they implemented many of their past technologies directly into the automobiles, which genuinely improved the performance of their cars significantly.

For one, Shireck used more aggressive weight reduction methods, supporting the rims with slender bars, making the car's wheels look like those of modern bicycles, effectively reducing wheel weight.

Secondly, they added more cylinders to the engine, enlarged the combustion chamber, and boosted their engine horsepower by two-thirds.

Frankly, it was the technicians from the Great Tang Group who had helped Shireck develop this area, and one of these technicians was still the chief technical advisor under Sofia.

With technical guidance from the Great Tang Group, Shireck's automobile technology naturally advanced rapidly. The cars they sent for competition this time were indeed very competitive.

Brunas still lacked proper steel ships, so Shireck still resorted to old-fashioned sailing ships to transport the race cars.

This time, however, the sailing ship arriving in Brunas was somewhat exaggerated in size—it was a gigantic transport vessel that was said to have been used by Shireck for transporting enormous defensive cannons.

In earlier times, those defensive cannons, massive wall-mounted artillery pieces, were incredibly heavy to achieve power and range. Thus, ships built to transport such artillery were specialized for that purpose.

With the development of field artillery, the market for defensive cannons was shrinking, and nations no longer wanted to purchase such expensive and somewhat obsolete weapons. Therefore, this giant ship was left idle and unused.

Now, it was just right for transporting race cars.

It had a large deck space, and the large deck openings ensured that the cars could enter the lower deck chambers for better preservation.

The sailors were handling with utmost care, for these three cars were not mass-produced models but specially designed for competition.

Their prices were incredibly high because every part had been hand-crafted by the master artisans at Shireck.

Even the screws used had been machined with equipment secretly purchased from the Great Tang Group because Shireck Corporation's own machining wasn't precise enough...

"Be careful! Do you realize how important this stuff is?" Standing on the dock, Sofia's cold-faced maid shouted a warning to the slaves moving the goods.

These slaves had arrived with the ship, and Shireck still felt that this "high technology" should not be exposed to the Great Tang Group for fear of leaks...

Shireck's steward, responsible for the transportation of the cars, instinctively kept his distance from the maid who was seething with resentment; he always felt there was something off about this woman.

As Shireck's nearly overt "special envoy" in Brunas, Sofia's maid had indeed been in a bad mood lately.

No wonder, for she was increasingly sure that she might be a woman who was attracted to both men and women...

Actually, it was nothing so surprising; she knew many women like that. Many women would spend a spring night in Flame Castle with the esteemed Sofia, then go home to tend to their wealthy, influential husbands—it wasn't unusual.

However, what annoyed her—or rather, caused her immense embarrassment—was that the man she liked, that guy named Harry, seemed not to consider her a woman at all.

The maid, who considered herself to be of at least nine points in beauty, hinted and even made overt suggestions to Harry on several occasions, yet never received the response she hoped for. How could she not be infuriated?

Once again, she invited Harry to dinner, and he gave her the courtesy of attending the banquet. However, after simply having a meal, the guy excused himself citing his busy work schedule!

God knows how long she had prepared for that evening banquet. She donned a luxurious gown she would not normally wear, custom-made in the latest fashion from Great Tang.

That day, she applied makeup, used perfume, and even chose a very sexy set of lingerie, all for the sake of capturing Harry, the man who excelled in every aspect, at one go.

But he was not a man at all! He scarcely glanced at her and showed not even the slightest hint of desire before hurriedly leaving.

She had seen plenty of straight women before, but such a straight man was a first for her! The number of glasses she smashed that night could almost make a complete set...

A woman in a bad mood is probably a bit more dangerous than seven kilograms of uranium-235. Hence, the workers and slaves on the dock suffered terribly.

"Be gentle! If you want to die, I'll grant your wish!" The ill-tempered maid glared at several clumsy workers moving a wooden box labeled "Engine" off the ship, warning them loudly once again.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"I say… my lord… has she been jilted?" A small Shireck leader who had arrived in Brunas with the sailboat asked the steward standing there in a hushed voice.

"Shh! Do you have a death wish? If she hears you, I can't save you either!" The steward from Shireck, who was in charge of this race, cast a glance at the maid in the distance and warned his subordinate with palpitations.

First off, those crazy women were already troublesome enough in Flame Castle; who would want to risk their life playing with a group of women who liked women?

And now, this maid had taken on an additional layer of impenetrable mystery—she was a fearsome entity even in Brunas, one that everyone cautiously gave a wide berth to.

Be it men or women, all of Shireck's spies and secret agents lurking in Brunas had been without exception found and thoroughly eradicated by Silver Fox.

Only this woman had somehow managed to survive here and was doing quite well—who knew what heaven-reaching methods she possessed?

There were rumors suggesting that this woman might have slept with a high-ranking official from the Great Tang Group, becoming his mistress, which was why she had climbed to her current position.

Others gossiped that the high-ranking official from the Great Tang Group was a woman, who also fancied women, and that's why the maid had stumbled into good fortune.

An even more exaggerated version claimed that the owner of the Great Tang Group, the mysterious Mr. Tang, was a pervert who swung both ways and was versatile at that...

With all these rumors and speculations, it was not surprising that the maid was able to thrive in Brunas. On the contrary, people's focus shifted to Tang Mo's preferences.

In comparison, the Great Tang Group's racing team was much more professional. They not only had the advantage of racing on their home ground but also possessed a genuine technological edge.

The engine technology of the Great Tang Group was undeniably ahead of the times—even by just utilizing the average Rolls-Royce car engine, the performance parameters already crushed the new engines modified by the Shireck Corporation.

After all, Rolls-Royce had been using 6-cylinder engines since before the 1920s. And 80 years later, 6-cylinder technology wasn't something the average family car could afford...

Of course, this still brought up considerations like fuel economy and engine displacement, not implying that six cylinders were definitively more advanced than four. But even with a broad comparison, one could discern some differences.

The mass-produced latest engines installed by the Great Tang Group in their Rolls-Royce cars already performed better than the custom racing engines Shireck brought out, clearly highlighting the gap.

However, before the competition began, no one knew just how large this gap was; everyone still harbored hopes of victory in the race.

In comparison, the racing team from Laines was much more pragmatic; they set a goal of maintaining a top-five position, aiming for the top three.

From the beginning to the end, they never entertained the fantasy of contesting for the first place, as every member of the Laines car factory was aware that all their technology originated from the Great Tang Group.

If they were to win despite this, it would not be because of their extraordinary performance but rather because the Great Tang Group deliberately threw the race.

Expecting Great Tang to throw the race was utterly unrealistic, as it was clear to everyone that this was a major advertising event meant for promotion, so the Great Tang Group would definitely want to secure first place to advertise themselves.

As for second, third, and even the following fourth and fifth positions, it was down to the skill and efforts of the competing teams. The stage was set by the Great Tang Group; how much they could benefit depended on how much real skill the participants brought.

On the dock, the maid was still unaware that in the eyes of others, she had already become a woman going through an early midlife crisis, still voicing her grievances with a thunderous temper.

The people around her were silent as cicadas in winter, forced to display an overly cautious demeanor, busily and fearfully going about their tasks...

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I've been holding it in all day, no inspiration... no inspiration...