Chapter 71: The Prohibition Era

Just as Liang En took out the metal detector and began searching, the detector buzzed after only a few seconds. Bending down and searching for a moment, Liang En quickly felt a brass cartridge on the side of a wine barrel.

".45 ACP pistol cartridge, and it's a model from after World War I," Liang En confirmed the cartridge's model as he picked it up and examined it.

Because the early version of this handgun cartridge, which appeared in the early 20th century, had a groove around the cartridge case to prevent the bullet from getting stuck, this feature was eliminated with technological improvements during World War I.

Soon, Liang En found seven or eight more cartridges in various corners of the wine cellar. Cartridges themselves were of little value, but the presence of spent cartridges in a wine cellar was an interesting occurrence. Normally, there wouldn't be many people firing guns inside a wine cellar.

"It seems this wine cellar is not ordinary," Liang En remarked as he discovered the situation. His interest in the wine cellar grew, and his actions naturally quickened.

Half an hour later, he had gone through everything in the wine cellar. Apart from the cartridges, he also uncovered a dozen or so bottles of whisky, large and small.

The reason the loot wasn't substantial was primarily due to the unfavorable local environment for preserving various items. For instance, those large wine barrels he had seen at the entrance of the wine cellar were all empty due to long-term corrosion. The wood of the barrels had deteriorated, and the wine had long since vanished.

The same fate befell the glass-bottled whisky. Due to the corrosion of the stoppers and caps, most of the contents had disappeared, with only these dozen or so lucky bottles being preserved.

However, it was during this process that Liang En realized the wine cellar was not as simple as it seemed on the surface. There was likely a hidden space.

This assumption arose because when Liang En examined the depths of the wine cellar, he discovered a heap of various debris at the far end, which not only clashed with the surrounding environment but also defied logic.

After all, a wine cellar needed to be kept clean, and it was improbable to have a pile of trash inside. If the debris had been thrown in after the wine cellar was abandoned, anyone with common sense would not have placed it all the way inside; it would have been stacked near the entrance.

So, after moving the bottles that still appeared to contain whisky out of the wine cellar, Liang En waved a shovel to clear away the pile of debris on the ground. Soon, a black-painted iron plate appeared before him.

After lifting the iron plate and waiting for the air to clear for about half an hour, Liang En donned a gas mask and climbed down. At the bottom of the stairs, he discovered a space spanning several dozen square meters.

Oddly, although the area of this underground room wasn't large, apart from a room with a three-meter high ceiling, there was also a corridor just ten meters in length, allowing only one person to pass through at a time.

And at the other end of the room, there was a pile of objects covered with oilcloth.

"Let me see what this is..." Liang En murmured as he walked forward and lifted the oilcloth, raising a cloud of dust. When the dust settled and the oilcloth fell, a set of peculiar containers came into view before him.

"Is this a boiler?" Liang En looked curiously at the machine in front of him, comprised of sealed containers and a series of pipes. In his impression, machines like these, with containers, pipes, combustion chambers, and instruments, easily evoked thoughts of boilers.

However, he quickly abandoned this speculation after closer inspection. He realized that both the container and pipe walls were thin, and even the container could be dismantled with simple tools.

"In other words, this thing is a distiller. A distiller for making homemade whisky," Liang En concluded about the purpose of this apparatus as he recognized its lack of pressure resistance. He combined this with his earlier inference from the wine cellar. After all, Ireland was known for producing whisky, so he had seen similar equipment before. He suspected that these instruments might have been hidden due to the Prohibition era in the United States during the early 20th century.

From 1920 to 1933, the United States enacted the 18th Amendment to its Constitution, prohibiting the brewing, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. This period is known as the Prohibition era.

The reasons for this law were twofold. Firstly, the United States, being a country with a strong Puritan influence, believed that alcohol was morally corrupting and that prohibition would lead the country back to a morally pure secular society. Secondly, unlike the low-alcohol beer and cider that Americans had consumed earlier, the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw an increase in the production of high-alcohol-content whisky, which caused a series of social problems.

However, the effects of Prohibition were not as intended. From the first day of its implementation, various illegal alcoholic beverages, underground bars, and associated illicit activities proliferated.

Among these illegal beverages, apart from a few imported items, most were produced in devices like this distiller.

Therefore, the presence of such a distiller in this location wasn't strange. After all, there were numerous mining camps here, and most of the workers were affluent bachelors, leading to a high demand for alcoholic drinks.

Although this was a remote area and there were few inspections related to Prohibition, the channels for obtaining alcohol from the outside world were cut off, forcing the local owners to distill their own alcohol to supply their bars.

Given these circumstances, the distillers used for making alcohol didn't need to be as small and affordable as those in the East Coast cities. After Liang En carefully examined it, he realized that this distiller, apart from being easily dismantled, was nearly identical to a legitimate distillery apparatus. Both the primary copper structure and the instruments used for monitoring the distillation process looked similar to those in proper distilleries, just slightly smaller in scale.

This design actually helped Liang En. Once he understood the simple structure of the distiller, he quickly dismantled it using the tools he had brought with him.

It had to be said that the earlier Viking card was indeed incredibly useful. Without the strengthening it provided in this chapter, he would have struggled to carry each 50 kg piece of the dismantled distiller on his own to his vehicle.

"Hmm, what's this?" As Liang En disassembled the main container, he suddenly noticed that there was a tightly wrapped oilcloth package inside.

After moving the oilcloth package to the ground and opening it, he revealed a violin case and a small leather box. However, when Liang En reached out to open the violin case, he realized it was heavier than he had anticipated.

"As expected, this is a Chicago Typewriter." After opening the case, he found a disassembled Thompson submachine gun lying quietly inside. Due to being sealed in the container previously, there was no trace of rust on the entire gun.

Unlike the improved M1A1 version from World War II, this M1928 submachine gun featured a compensator at the muzzle, a barrel cooling fin, a small grip beneath the barrel, and a 50-round drum magazine. It was the finest version of the Thompson submachine gun.

Of course, due to its complex structure and high production costs, the production volume of this version of the submachine gun was disappointingly low. However, its current value was high.