Munitions Empire

Chapter 384 378 menopausal women

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.

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...