Facts have proved that none of the guys who can get into this situation are not smart enough.

After arriving at the Central Asian Railway, Ekaterina felt a little puzzled. Logically speaking, there was no reason for Ming Dynasty to help Russia in this way.

If the Central Asian Railway is still a small favor, so many industrial projects and even power plants have been built with Russia's help.

This is a bit unreasonable!

Politicians are all creatures with very sensitive brains. In connection with the recent major events in Europe, Ekaterina made a bold guess!

Of course, this is just a conjecture. Further verification is needed!

"Go tell that Zhang Shoufu that if the Ming Dynasty treats its vassals like this, Russia will naturally remain loyal to the Ming Dynasty.

Since the Crimean War was supported by Ming Dynasty, Russia will restrain the Hebrews in the territory and prevent them from leaving the border and joining Israel in the fight against the Austro-Hungarian Empire."

With a smile on her face, Ekaterina guessed that her temptation would soon bear fruit.

At this time, Li Xiao took a train to the northeast.

After passing Shenyang, the train entered a branch road. This is a separate line with only one train running!

Instead of two parallel lines reciprocating, there is only one.

Along this railway line, the train traveled again for more than six hours. Outside the train were rolling mountains, and there was not a single house or man-made building as far as the eye could see.

Not to mention, sightings of people.

Finally, the train arrived at a station.

This place is said to be a station, but it looks more like a fortress.

The four corners of the station are all huge reinforced concrete forts. Each fort is fifty meters high.

On the top of the fort, there are two double 25 anti-aircraft guns. From the middle to the top, there are densely packed muzzles and machine gun muzzles!

The platform was full of soldiers with live ammunition. There were two fortifications more than two meters high on both sides of the platform. The soldiers held big wolfdogs in their hands, and machine guns were placed at the shooting holes.

Li Xiao stepped off the train wearing a green military coat and leather gloves.

Looking at the guards here, Li Xiao nodded.

"There is a battalion stationed here, mainly in the four turrets.

The boiler room is underground and can generate electricity for the garrison and provide heating in winter.

The sources of soldiers are all from Liaodong, and the three generations of ancestors have been checked and they have all lived in Liaodong for a long time. None of them have ancestral origins from other places or are foreigners."

Following Li Xiao down was Lvzhu. This elusive woman had disappeared for a while. Unexpectedly, she would tinker with this in the deep mountains and old forests.

"Have the nearby forests been cleaned up? I mean those Oroqen hunters, or others.

You know, things here need to be kept strictly confidential."

"When this secret base was first established, a large-scale mountain search was carried out. Several Oroqen villages were destroyed, and all the people in them migrated to Heilongjiang.

Now, as long as the weather permits, the two airships will search the sky every morning and afternoon until dark.

In the past three years, no one else has been found here except the army and workers."

"That's good!" Li Xiao was very satisfied with this secret project, which has been under construction for two years.

It cost more manpower, material and financial resources than the Western Region Railway. Now three years later, it can finally be put to use.

The canned carriages in the special train were opened, and the tall horses were pulled down from them by the coachmen.

"It's been a while since I rode a horse." Li Xiao saddled his horse and galloped along the asphalt road deep into the dense forest, surrounded by a group of guards.

After driving for more than half an hour, we could see a vaguely exposed bunker in the dense forest on the roadside.

Turning around a mountain col, Li Xiao saw two towers four to five meters high, guarding both sides of the mountain road like door gods.

Seeing Li Xiao and his party, the soldiers on both sides of the tower quickly moved away the roadblocks and saluted Li Xiao. A huge shadow was cast from the sky, and an airship was approaching from a distance and was slowly entering the base.

The cold wind of early winter blew the pine trees on both sides, and the branches kept colliding with each other, making bursts of "crackling" sounds.

Li Xiao galloped in, passing the watchtower for only a hundred meters. On the side of the mountain, a huge cave suddenly appeared.

The cave seems to grow on a mountain, with a height of more than ten meters and a width of more than thirty meters. With two winches working at full strength, the heavy door is creaking open.

Riding a horse, he galloped into the cave. Li Xiao felt as if he had been swallowed by a giant beast!

There is an electric light every one meter on the top and wall of the cave. It illuminates the inside of the cave brightly!

Deep in the cave, there were faint sounds of explosions. Listening to the sound, it was like the breathing of a giant dragon.

"This is the normal entrance and exit for people. There is a larger exit a little further inside.

Over the past three years, 60,000 people have been gradually employed, and finally it has reached the scale it is today. Some parts of it are still under construction!"

When Lu Zhu arrived here, he immediately found a short guy. This guy was only about 1.5 meters tall. He was not only short but also thin.

Standing in front of Li Xiao's horse, he introduced to Li Xiao.

"Qiu Dayou, you were already the deputy commander of the regiment of a lieutenant colonel six years ago. How come you have become a colonel now!" Li Xiao recognized this guy. He was already the deputy commander of the fourth division six years ago. How come you have become a colonel now?

school.

"In order to conceal it from the outside world, the highest military rank here can only be regimental colonel. But in fact, he is in charge of seven or eight thousand people here. I feel a little guilty for bringing him here."

Qiu Dayou blushed and said nothing, while Lu Zhu beside him quickly helped explain.

"Oh! That's it, Qiu Dayou. I promise you, when you retire, you will definitely have two gold stars on your shoulders. This is my promise to you.

There’s more!

You also know the nature of this place. Since you are in charge here, you must plan to remain anonymous for the rest of your life.

But I promise you, your son will definitely be successful in the future. Ming Dynasty will never forget those who have contributed to Ming Dynasty."

"Commander!" After hearing Li Xiao's words, Qiu Dayou immediately knelt down and kowtowed.

"I, Dayou Qiu, am a rough old man. When I first joined the army, I couldn't read a lot of Chinese characters. After becoming a soldier, I learned some culture, and I can barely understand all the Chinese characters.

I have nothing else to think about in my life, except that my son will be able to make a difference in the family in the future, and he will be better than his father.

Ever since I made up my mind to come here, I asked someone to tell my family that I was dead. Don't worry, Qiu Dayou will live here in this life, and he will be buried here after death.

I will never let a word of the secrets here leak out."

"You old guy, come and show me what you've been working on for three years." Li Xiao got off his horse and Qiu Dayou led him inside.

"Three years! The manpower we used has almost hollowed out the entire mountain. Look, this is the general layout. This is the boiler room, here is the production workshop, and here is the living area."

Qiu Dayou held a stick and pointed at a huge layout plan.

It is indeed huge here, with a single floor area exceeding 20,000 square meters. Only two floors have been excavated so far, and the third floor is still being excavated.

This is the aircraft manufacturing base of Ming Dynasty, and it will also be the flight test base of Ming Dynasty in the future. After the technology matures, a wind tunnel laboratory will even be built here.

Of course, this is just a plan on paper.

Long before the downsizing of diesel engines, Li Xiao had already started to select the location for the future aircraft manufacturing plant.

This thing must be kept absolutely secret. Not even a screw is allowed to be leaked before the plane appears in public.

Therefore, such a base was built deep in Changbai Mountain.

Now that the diesel engine has been miniaturized, the last obstacle to building an airplane has disappeared. The top talents of Ming Dynasty are working here day and night to get the airplane into the sky as soon as possible.

Of course, Li Xiao's design plan must be based on the drawings drawn by Li Xiao.

"There are so many parts for an airplane that we can only make the body and assemble it here. This is the first prototype. It was tested ten days ago and flew for an hour without any malfunction."

Xu Erjue stood in front of the huge glass curtain and pointed at the aircraft undergoing maintenance below.

Li Xiao came to the glass curtain. In the huge assembly workshop below, there was only a solitary aircraft.

This aircraft has two layers of wings, upper and lower, with a piston engine in the middle. Below it is a fixed triangular landing gear!

"Can this thing fly for an hour?" Li Xiao was a little skeptical.

"The biggest problem with aircraft now is the piston engine, because it has just been built and the quality is very unstable.

It can be said that the biggest obstacle to aircraft flying is this unstable piston engine.

Due to engine problems, we have lost four outstanding test pilots in the past three months." Xu Erjue said helplessly beside him.

"What can be done on the ground, don't wait until the sky. Test pilots are not chopping firewood for you to cause trouble like this.

They are all the elites of the Ming Dynasty and will do great things in the future."

Hearing Li Xiao's serious tone, no one dared to speak anymore.

Only Luzhu said: "There are some things that can't be helped. It's obviously good to test them on the ground.

But when you get to heaven, problems will arise."

"Then do destructive tests on the ground to see where the problem lies. We can't use test pilots as firewood.

In addition, we need to develop special parachutes for pilots to ensure that they can land alive. These people are our precious talents."

Li Xiao certainly knows the value of pilots. To a certain extent, the value of test pilots is even higher than that of pilots.

Because, this is a group of people who test the ultimate performance of fighter aircraft.
To be continued...