1928: The Last Chief Engineer of the Baishan Arsenal

[Military, history, resistance against Japan, technology, national strength, Republic of China era, fervor, and comeback]

In 1928, Chen Mo has barely returned to China when the Japanese drive him into a dead end?

He strikes back by building artillery, blasting his way across all of Manchuria!

The Baishan Arsenal is crawling with spies. Japan’s Tokko is watching like a tiger poised to pounce, the Soviet Union is blocking access to its technology, and Nanjing is secretly putting obstacles in his way.

Everyone wants him dead. Everyone wants to seize his technology.

Yet with nothing but a wrench, he gets the production line running again in three minutes.

With a single forged blueprint, he makes the Japanese army’s new rifle blow up in their faces.

With a batch of alloy steel smelted from scratch, he builds the “Baishan Cannon,” whose range leaves Japanese artillery in the dust.

The Young Marshal gives him the rank of major general, but he melts down his Cloud and Banner Medal and casts it into machine-tool bearings. “Which saves the nation, a medal or a shell?”

Gu Bai stands by his side. Soviet representatives threaten and tempt him, while Nanjing’s envoys secretly try to recruit him. Yet he hides the anti-bacteriological warfare technology his parents died to obtain in an iron box bound for Yan’an.

“Chief Engineer, the Japanese have blown up the bridge! The Soviets are inspecting the factory! Nanjing wants you arrested!”

Chen Mo lights the furnace in the workshop. Behind him, three hundred workers raise their hammers:

“As long as we live, the flag stands. The factory stands.”

This molten steel will pour across the snows of Manchuria and burn through every conspiracy in this dark night.

For this gravely ill nation, he will forge one last fire of steel that will never die.