For the first few days, the five foreigners had a very hard time living in the town as they couldn't communicate with anyone.
Only a few people who actually remember English from their English lessons were able to communicate with them.
Fortunately, the language barrier wasn't that big of a problem, as using hand gestures and a dictionary that Kate carried around was enough.
The industrial zone also had its first factory built much faster than anyone had imagined, as it only took a week rather than a whole month.
It was big enough to house just over a hundred people to work at.
Although Xiaoyun called it a factory, it was more of a big concrete warehouse that happened to have the machine tools and raw materials there to create firearms.
When the three Russians visited the factory, they were more than happy with the tools and materials to create the gun they wanted to make.
Meanwhile, Anna had a smaller room to fill with her 'workshop' inside the factory, a separate area with her own assembly line workers.
Just as the third week of December rolled by after the factory had opened, both Xiaoyun and Yiming were invited to check out the weapons they had made.
----
"Are these the AK-47 in the movies?" Xiaoyun curiously asked as he pointed at the three similar-looking guns on the left.
"This is definitely an AKM... All three feel a little weird to touch because of the lack of coating thought. But it's fine."
Yiming quickly put the AKM down as he walked over to check the next rifle himself, pulling the bolt before unclipping the mag.
"This one is an AK-47... and this one is AK-74." Yiming clarified as he went through all three rifles by himself.
"This AK-74 is not going to work well. The rifling and the magazine feel like they're going to fall off by accident. Can you translate that to them?" Yiming asked.
Xiaoyun quickly translated it into English for Kate, and Kate translated it back to the three men in Russian.
After a short back and forth, Kate finally answered Xiaoyun in English.
"Kate told me that they can only work with the material they have in hand... Well, this might be partially my fault...
But this is the best raw material I can find and make. There's really not much I can do to find better quality steel." Xiaoyun argued.
"Well then, we can disregard making this one."
As Yiming put the AK-74 aside, it was clear there were only two deciding guns on the table for the Russian-made gun.
"Only the AK-47 and AKM looked closer to their original design and more usable.... The two are almost the same gun, except with a few modifications."
"What modification?" Xiaoyun curiously asked, as all three guns looked practically the same to his eyes.
"Here, this is the AK-47's receiver, which has its sling swivel, while the AKM has sling mounts to the heel of the stock.
Just imagine it as a different way of manufacturing and a slightly different feel when using it to fire." Yiming replied.
"Then which one is better?"
"The AKM is definitely a lot better, at least that's what a foreign friend told me when I was in a military drill with another country."
Yiming paused for a second, then continued.
"However, we already have the M16. I don't see the need to transition right now... But I can see AKM becoming more useful against stronger mutants."
Hearing the advice, it soon became clear to Xiaoyun that the AKM is the winner in the three gun designs.
"Okay, then we use this one."
As Xiaoyun pointed his finger towards the AKM, Kate didn't even need to translate it, as the second Russian in the middle looked to be overjoyed.
"They told me that they can produce six rifles a day with enough material. Also, they can produce more if you can get more machining tables and people."
Kate translated as the second Russian spoke up to her.
"Sure, I will ask Yuqi to direct some of the workforce here... Is there anything else the three of them want to show me?"
Seeing them shaking their head after Kate translated it to them, both Xiaoyun and Yiming continued walking down the factory.
As they arrived at Anna's table, there was only a singular gun on the table, one that looked extremely familiar for some reason.
"This is... hm, I feel like I've seen this before... Oh, it's the 98K!"
"It's called K98K, not 98K." Yiming clarified as he picked it up before giving it a little routine check.
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Man, I always wanted to hold one when I saw Penli and Chengyi playing these rifles in games."
As Yiming finished checking the rifle, Xiaoyun quickly picked it up before running his hand all over its polished wood designs.
At the same time, the three men suddenly burst into shouts towards Anna as if they were hurling some sort of insults in Russian.
In response, Anna raised her voice and fired back at them in a completely different language that was completely incomprehensible to them.
Xiaoyun could tell that the two groups couldn't even understand each other, but they just kept yelling at each other as if the one who backs down loses.
"Kate, what are they saying?" Xiaoyun curiously asked as he put down the gun, looking toward the four of them with curiosity.
"Um, the three are saying something about Mosin being better and that Germany lost, while Anna is saying something about AKM being unoriginal and lame."
Kate translated in English as she facepalmed herself, her face looking a little irritated as if this had happened multiple times in the past.
As Xiaoyun translated it to Yiming, he started letting out a small sigh as if he could understand the feud between them.
"Why are you sighing?" Xiaoyun asked in confusion.
"Well, K98K is a German rifle during WW2, what do you think they are insulting each other for?" Yiming explained.
"Oh, right, I forgot about that... Kate, can you please tell the two not to feud about the past that's hundreds of years ago?
It doesn't matter what kind of weapon it is; humanity is facing a massive threat, and we have to unite against the zombies."
Kate turned around and told the three Russians and Anna in their own language. After a few moments, they seemed to have calmed down.
"Yiming, what's good about this rifle?" Xiaoyun asked, shifting the conversation back onto the main topic.
"It can shoot very far, and has very strong piercing. But it's a bolt-action rifle, so it's only single-shot at a time.
But of course, with training, it can shoot very fast. And with the accuracy it can provide compared to the AKM," Yiming explained.
"I see... Then we should definitely keep some in use for sharpshooters, is what you're saying?"
Seeing Yiming nodding his head, Xiaoyun quickly turned to Kate to translate his English into German.
"Kate, how much can Anna produce this?"
"One per day," Kate answered after translating Anna's words.
"Only one a day? No other way to make it faster? How about all the workers that we can provide for them in the future?" Xiaoyun asked.
"She told me that she can teach others how to make it, but it will cost extra. She wants payment for teaching them."
"Sure, I can afford that... How about five food stamps for every ten students you taught on how to make the gun?"
"Okay, she had agreed to it," Kate answered.
"Great. Then we are good here... The Russians produce the AKM, and the Germans produce the K98K."
Just as Xiaoyun looked a little relieved to have everything sorted out, Yiming suddenly raised a question that set everything back to the beginning.
"Wait, Xiaoyun, have you thought of the bullets?"
"Shit. I completely forgot about that... Kate, can you ask them why there is no bullet in the guns here?" Xiaoyun asked.
After a short back and forth between the four foreigners, Kate turned back around to Xiaoyun before speaking in English.
"They both tell me that there is no resource here at all. They need a lot of copper, steel, Charcoal, sulfur, potassium nitrate, and nitrocellulose."
"Nitrocellulose? What? How do you make that?" Xiaoyun asked in confusion, his mind only able to create a few of the basic materials.
"It's nitric acid with a cellulose-like... It's just cotton and acid mix together," Kate explained without even needing to turn around.
"Okay... I think I remember that from chemistry classes. I'll ask Yezi to look for this material, but it's going to take quite some time."
Kate explained to the four as they nodded, not expecting Xiaoyun to get that many raw materials all at once.
"I'll send some people here to help with the production. The material is probably going to be here by tomorrow or the end of the week. See you guys later."
As Xiaoyun waved goodbye and left with Yiming, Kate turned around before translating it one last time to the four of them.
---
When the next day went by, Xiaoyun hand-delivered all the material to the factory as promised.
He also asked Yuqi to allocate people who could speak English to the factory to work there, allowing Kate to translate between the workers and the four gun engineers.
As Xiaoyun created more and more solid blocks of copper and steel to be used in the factory, he noticed something a little off.
It was much easier than creating individual gun parts, even though a whole block was much bigger than a small gun part, like an M16 rifle frame.
Other than the weird thing Xiaoyun found about his ability, none of the foreigners asked any questions, even though all the material looked the same.
The factory was in full effect as it started producing guns and bullets, stockpiling them in the storage room next to the factory.
"Finally, I don't have to worry about ammo or guns. It's so tiring producing it every day." Xiaoyun murmured as he leaned down onto the sofa.
"Well, we are not out of the woods yet. They can only produce a few guns and a few magazines a day, and you still have to create the raw material for them."
Yuqi paused for a second as she pulled out a record detailing the factory production, signaling Yueyue to hand it over to Xiaoyun.
"We really need Yezi to find an entire factory somehow and move it here rather than having the workers handcraft everything with machining tables..."
"Well, we aren't going to find it here. Most factories here are either textile or electronics. We will have to go north to find some heavy industry." Xiaoyun pointed out.
"Yeah, kind of sucks that it's almost across the whole country... Maybe we can build it ourselves at some point."
"Yeah...."
Xiaoyun's face didn't look optimistic as he could imagine the difficulty. A real assembly line made by machine felt so out of reach.
As the room fell into silence, Yueyue suddenly raised a question of her own to brighten up the mood.
"Hey Yuqi, Xiaoyun, are we going to do an end-of-the-year celebration? It's almost the end of December now."
"Hmm... Maybe we should do a celebration, we haven't celebrated anything for so long now."
With Xiaoyun agreeing to the idea, Yuqi didn't hesitate as she quickly took out a big piece of paper to work with.
"Let's start planning for it then."