Top Welder [The 1980S]

[A career-focused, technically thrilling novel with a female lead] Wan Shanqing lay in her hospital bed. She watched a live broadcast of the July 1 Medal presentation ceremony at the Great Hall of the People. “He has led welding technology research and development for major national projects and engineering works on numerous occasions. He overcame more than 400 welding technology challenges across China’s metallurgy, military industry, mining, machinery, and power sectors, improved more than 120 processes, and was hailed by experts at home and abroad as…” As the words played, a scene from many years earlier resurfaced in her mind. Back then, she was young and full of ambition. After a family upheaval, she took over her father’s position and started working at the most famous state-owned factory in the area. It wasn’t long before Wang Xiuying, the factory’s top technical expert, singled her out. “Shanqing, you have a real talent. Would you like to learn welding from me?” “I would!” Her mentor taught her patiently, holding nothing back. She taught Wan Shanqing to the strictest standards and looked at her with the highest hopes. “She is my best student.” “If we can’t buy our way into becoming a manufacturing powerhouse, we’ll build one ourselves, generation by generation. Xiaoqing will take over from me.” But fate had other plans, and in the end, Wan Shanqing had let her teacher down. Wan Shanqing thought back over her life. It hadn’t been all bad. In fact, many people thought she had seized the opportunities of the times and made her fortune in the early 1990s. She was a rich woman many could only envy. But when she looked back, she was alone. She couldn’t bring herself to feel happy. She had never been good at putting on a false face, yet half her life had been spent trapped at dinner tables full of hypocrisy. She had once had loving parents and a sister who protected her, but fate had cruelly taken them both away. The career she had once loved, and her exceptional talent, could only fade with time before her eyes. If Heaven gave her another chance… she would clear her father’s name of the unjust accusations against him. She would protect her sister, so she wouldn’t die in a faraway place because of business rivalries. She would keep welding, and put her talent to use in a vast, open world. She wanted to see just how far her astonishing talent could take her. She wanted so badly… Under anesthesia, she lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes again, Wan Shanqing had returned to the year her family was struck by tragedy and her father was forced to retire due to injury. P.S. 1. The story begins in 1983, when the country issued the Decision on Accelerating the Development of Major Technical Equipment. The decades that followed were the most turbulent in the history of Chinese industry. 2. The main storyline focuses on her career, with steady growth, a strong plot, and plenty of satisfaction. The male lead appears relatively late. 3. The companion novel, The Female Welder [1960s], is complete. Visit the author’s page to read it! Coming soon: Fellow Daoist, Still Stuck at a Bottleneck? On the Xuanhuang Continent, the weak are prey to the strong, and strength is everything. Countless people seek the path to immortality, but those who fall short along the way are as numerous as the mud in a river. The protagonist has just transmigrated, and she’s at the very bottom of the social ladder: a destitute rogue cultivator with a damaged, good-for-nothing spiritual root. Fortunately, she has a golden finger: a character panel. She can clearly see each cultivator’s [Realm], [Techniques], [Status], and more. In her eyes, every cultivator’s progress is like a book she can read at a glance. To earn enough rare treasures to repair her spiritual root, the protagonist takes her character panel and sets out on a life of swindling… no, helping others. To a sword prodigy who has been stuck at the Golden Core bottleneck for thirty years: Protagonist: “Fellow Daoist, want to break through your bottleneck? Just one Purple Jade Dragon King Ginseng, please!” Half a month later, the sword prodigy breaks through with a vengeance and cuts a path through the Ridge of Bones. To the young master of an auction house, who has only middling cultivation talent: Protagonist: “Fellow Daoist, want to discover your true path? Just one Glazed Treasure of Yaoguang, please!” A year later, the cultivation world has one fewer mediocre spell cultivator and one more astonishingly talented body cultivator. To a sect heavyweight whose Dao foundation is damaged, leaving him unable to make further progress: Protagonist: “Fellow Daoist, want to repair your Dao foundation and break through to the next realm? Just one beast core from a ninth-tier spirit beast, please!” Half a year later, the sect’s guardian patriarch, whom everyone thought had no hope of a breakthrough, advances to a new realm, laughs as he drives back the enemy, and saves his sect from the brink of destruction. The entire cultivation world is shaken. After all, how many cultivators in the cultivation world are stuck at a bottleneck? Once trapped at one, they may never break through in their lifetime. Trying to force their way through could damage their Dao foundation and give rise to inner demons. And now, someone can help others break through without suffering any harm! Sect X: “Fellow Daoist! I have all sorts of treasures here!” Clan X: “Fellow Daoist, please join our household as an honored guest. Our family has a thousand-year legacy and countless rare treasures!” Sword cultivator X: “Fellow Daoist! Well… we may be poor, but just tell us what you want, and we’ll go steal it for you right away!” Theme: Always strive to move forward.