After returning to King & Co., Boss Young sat in his office like a schemer, contemplating his next move. Now that funds were more than sufficient, and with the proceeds from the auctioned watches, his wealth was approaching two million pounds sterling. In this era, that was truly an enormous fortune—if converted to gold, it would be over a dozen tons, and the amount was still increasing by tens of thousands of pounds each day. With the popularity of aluminum alloy jewelry and the mass sale of aluminum alloy carriages, this rate was multiplying. After all, his aluminum alloy carriages sold for tens of thousands of pounds each.

With such financial backing, opening any kind of factory would be a breeze for him.

The next facility to be built was a diesel engine plant, to be named Young Power Systems. But it couldn’t just manufacture diesel engines and small hand tractors—his real target was steam turbines, and then warships. After making a name for himself, he would sell steam turbines to various European countries. He wondered what it would be like if the entire German High Seas Fleet were equipped with Parsons steam turbines and then went head-to-head with the British Navy. This guy certainly felt a strong sense of mission to stir up global chaos.

However, in Britain, there was no way to bypass Parsons’ patents. Although Parsons was still obscure at this point, and his small steam turbine workshop was just getting by—barely, at that. It was just a small factory worth a few tens of thousands of pounds, surviving by producing steam turbines for small generators, and supporting his dabbling in new technologies. But it was still a long way from becoming a monopoly giant. Parsons himself probably hadn’t even dreamed of such success yet; his breakthrough would start with the HMS Turbinia of the Royal Navy, but that ship hadn’t even been built yet!

When the time came, he’d try to negotiate with Parsons—buying him out would be best, but if that didn’t work, he’d have to find another way. If all else failed, he’d just have to get rid of him. After all, in London’s smog, the death of a small factory owner wasn’t exactly something to make a fuss about.

But this also served as a reminder to Franklin Young: he needed a team of people to handle dirty work. There would likely be plenty of such matters in the future, since many new technologies had already been invented in Europe, but just hadn’t reached the stage of industrial production yet.

Take steam turbines, for example—besides Parsons, there were several others with different types of patents, some of which wouldn’t be ready for production for another decade or more. Laval, for instance, wasn’t as successful as Parsons mainly because his steam turbines had much higher production requirements.

But people willing to do dirty work were hard to find. He couldn’t trust the foreigners, and using Chinese people for dirty work in Europe would be a joke. In fact, he felt that foreigners might be more trustworthy than Chinese in this regard.

Where could he find someone truly reliable? He couldn’t help but sigh—ultimately, he just wasn’t powerful enough. If he had enough strength, this wouldn’t be a headache at all.

Besides lacking someone for dirty work, he also lacked an industrial base. His plans involved much more than just engines—he aimed to become an arms dealer, making guns and cannons and such. All of Europe was itching for war, and such a great opportunity couldn’t be missed.

There were so many things suitable for him to manufacture in this era. There weren’t even automatic pistols yet, let alone recoil-operated field guns for the army. Although the quality of steel was still rather poor, that was no problem for him. Not to mention his modern steelmaking knowledge—even just using the alloy steel from the shuttle would allow him to make plenty of things.

For example, pistols—the Parabellum pistol hadn’t even been invented yet, nor the Mauser C96, nor mortars, not even modern hand grenades. As for the legendary Schneider 75mm, that was out of the question. Even machine guns were limited to the Maxim and the Gatling; there was no sign of Hotchkiss, Browning, or Lewis guns. This was practically a treasure trove!

Just thinking about all the new weapons he would produce in the future, continuously supplying them to the European powers and letting them use these weapons to fight bloody wars, filled him with a strange excitement.

This military-industrial base would first have to be in a country that would always remain neutral, and it would also need enough skilled workers and steel resources. Uh, by that calculation, only Lucas Lynn's family fit the bill.

At this time, Sweden was not a great place. In fact, Sweden was still far behind the industrialized countries of Europe—frankly, it wasn’t even as advanced as Russia. In the eyes of Britain and France, it was a typical backwater. Otherwise, the Nobel family wouldn’t have had to go to Russia to develop.

Of course, it was around this time that the Swedes began their march toward industrialization, eventually, under the leadership of a group of revisionists, becoming the place that true communists loved to visit a century later.

Swedish steel was truly excellent—its quality was astonishing. The iron content of their ore was probably higher than the finished steel we produced during the Great Leap Forward. Bofors developed thanks to the quality of Swedish steel, didn’t it? He wondered if it had already been bought by that old playboy. If not, it was an opportunity not to be missed.