Chapter 409: All-Nighter

Fu Mingxue was working when Li Zhao came looking for her.

Master Yang saw Li Zhao and asked, "What’s the matter?"

"I’m looking for Group Leader Fu."

Li Zhao’s gaze fell on Fu Mingxue.

He truly hadn’t expected it—Fu Mingxue could really operate a machine like this.

"Then you’ll have to wait a bit."

Master Yang didn’t let him disturb Fu Mingxue.

He waited until Fu Mingxue stopped before speaking. "Little Fu, someone’s here to see you."

Fu Mingxue turned and said to Li Zhao, "Come on over."

Li Zhao walked over and handed her the blueprints. "I’ve marked it all up. I think we could try swapping in a few different materials."

Fu Mingxue took them and examined them carefully.

Her brow furrowed. "You’re right, this won’t work. We’ll have to change the materials—"

She pulled a pen from her pocket and jotted down a few options.

After a moment of thought, she added a few reagents to the list.

Li Zhao’s eyes lit up when he saw her additions.

They were the exact same ones he had thought of.

"All right, I’ll give it another try with these."

Fu Mingxue handed the blueprints back to him.

"Sounds good. I’ll be waiting for good news."

"Okay." Li Zhao folded the blueprints, gave her one last look, and then left.

──

Fu Mingxue finished quite late this time.

She wanted to get it done in one go.

So she simply pulled an all-nighter.

In truth, she became so absorbed in her work that she lost all track of time.

Since she didn’t feel tired yet, she figured she might as well finish the job properly.

Master Yang had to go to the hospital to get his dressing changed. He’d also had a slight fever the night before, so a hospital visit was necessary.

He was worried his hand would get infected and inflamed. ’Why else would he be running a fever?’

A minor illness could be ignored, but his hands were his livelihood—his entire family’s hope. ’So, nothing can happen to this hand, absolutely nothing.’

Director Geng was preoccupied with the matter, so he headed straight for the workshop as soon as he arrived at the factory.

He was quite surprised to see Fu Mingxue already there so early.

"Group Leader Fu, what are you doing here so early today?"

He knew Fu Mingxue usually arrived at the factory around seven or seven-thirty.

’It’s only six-thirty today!’

Fu Mingxue didn’t answer his question. Instead, beaming, she held up the part she had just finished on the lathe. "Look at this. It meets the specifications. You can take it for testing now."

Now it was Director Geng’s turn to be shocked.

"It’s done? You finished it?"

"Yes." Fu Mingxue nodded. "The tolerance is within 0.01."

Director Geng immediately took the part, handling it with extreme care.

Staring at the exquisitely polished, perfect part, he was stunned. "How did you finish it so fast?"

He had been expecting it to take two or three days.

And that wasn’t even accounting for failures and rework.

"Don’t tell me you didn’t go home last night and stayed here in the workshop working on this?"

Fu Mingxue nodded. "Yeah. I saw that I could finish it in one go, so I stayed and put in some overtime."

Director Geng was stunned.

But his shock quickly turned to disapproval. "Don’t do this again. What if you’d gotten tired and injured your hand?"

’This is a lathe we’re talking about!’

Even a veteran like Master Yang, who has a perfect record—didn’t he just injure his hand yesterday?

"It won’t happen again. Anyway, I’m going to head home for a bit. You can get this measured and report back."

Hearing this, Director Geng quickly said, "Then hurry home and get some rest. Oh, and don’t bother coming back in today. I’ll let Old Chang from your group know."

Fu Mingxue had been about to say she could come back to the factory in the afternoon.

’But a little rest would be nice,’ she thought. ’Besides, the work isn’t something that can be finished in a day or two anyway.’