Chapter 21 Li Cu’s Memory

Li Cu knew what it was because of his family background. He lived in a factory district in Beijing, and most of those factories were related to the military. Although not all of the products produced were for the military, a large portion of them were.

Li Cu saw this kind of thing in one of the factory’s warehouses when he was very young. One night, his father was working the night shift and took him through the warehouse area. Large warehouses as tall as five people were on both sides of the road, and at that time, one of the warehouses’ doors was open. The inside was lit with yellow light from the incandescent lamps, and since the road in front and behind him was dark, his eyes were naturally attracted by the lights.

Although the road wasn’t very far from the warehouse door, he still couldn’t see too much. He could only make out some parts that he had never seen before, stacked in piles in the warehouse one after the other. They were the size of wheelchair tires.

He was naturally curious as a child, and already felt uneasy when walking on such a dark road, so when he saw this strange thing, he couldn’t help asking his father, “Dad, what are those things?”

He clearly remembered that his father was a little distracted at that time, and was dazedly walking ahead of him. Hearing his question, he turned his head to the side and saw the warehouse. At that moment, he felt his father’s hand start shaking.

Then, those big hands loosened and his father rushed straight into the warehouse and started cursing at those inside.

Because it all happened so suddenly, Li Cu didn’t hear clearly what his father said when he was scolding them. He could only faintly hear some scattered words, which seemed to be about the administrator’s poor management in failing to close the warehouse door. Indeed, it was already night and the warehouse door shouldn’t have been open.

But there was no reason for his father to be so angry about such a small thing, so Li Cu was a little scared by his attitude. After that, his father came out and personally closed the warehouse doors before grabbing his hand and moving on.

He remembered that his father’s hand was trembling at that time, but he didn’t understand that some questions shouldn’t be asked on such occasions. He asked his father curiously: “Dad, what are those things?”

His father didn’t answer him, but picked him up and said, “Those are some very dangerous things. Little Pear, you must remember to never come play near this warehouse in the future. Don’t ever touch what you just saw, do you understand?”

“Dad, why?” Li Cu wanted to know more, but his father didn’t say anything else and just carried him the rest of way on the dark road.

Li Cu later felt that his father had made a mistake in this matter. At that time, intimidation was sometimes effective for kids his age, but that kind of thing had to be very concrete. You couldn’t just say that something was dangerous, because only descriptions like “broken hands” or “blinded eyes” would really scare children. However, when it came to the word “danger”, children at that age really didn’t understand what it was, and would be increasingly curious instead.

As a result, maybe a few days later, Li Cu was playing with his friends and had the opportunity to pass by the warehouse again. He remembered what his father had said the other day, and the curiosity made him completely unable to control himself.

So he found a tree and secretly climbed up it, crawling along a branch to the top of the warehouse. At that time, the roof of the warehouse was covered in asbestos shingles, so he moved several pieces aside and saw that there was no one below. He crept in and slid down the crossbeam of a pillar all the way to the ground.

When he went down, however, he found that all the things had been removed, and there was only moisture-proof cloth covering the whole warehouse.

He rummaged through the empty, gray warehouse, naively trying to find something left behind that might tell him what those things were. But he found nothing but a trampled bill of lading recording numerous transaction details in the corner.

He saw a sign that he had never seen before on the list, and it was only later when he read it in high school that he understood its meaning.

It meant “Danger: biochemical pollution”.

Later, he was looking through a lot of materials, and accidentally saw those strange objects in a book. He knew that they were a special type of equipment for sealing biochemical material, because the number of rivets on the outside represented the degree of sealing and also the degree of danger inside. The equipment pictured in the book had only four rivets on each side, while what he saw in the warehouse had nearly ten rivets.

After learning how dangerous those things were, he immediately understood why his father was so nervous at that time. Back then, there were at least five thousand people living in the factory area. If anything dangerous was put in one of the warehouses but not properly kept, then leaving the warehouse door wide open was really being irresponsible to those five thousand people.

As a result, this strange equipment left a deep impression on him, and now that he saw it again, he was reflexively afraid.

Wu Xie listened to him finish his story and stopped touching the object, instead bending down and very carefully examining it. Li Cu finally had a smug little thought: this arrogant little boss finally listened to me for once. Now I’ve regained some face. This small detail also made him feel that Wu Xie wasn’t the kind of person who wouldn’t listen to reason, which made him feel much more comfortable.

He walked up to Wu Xie and squatted down to look at the strange container. With one glance, he gasped—the number of rivets on this thing made him feel terrified. Compared with what he saw in the warehouse when he was a child and what he saw in textbooks later, the sealing measures of this container were not of a fundamental order of magnitude. What made him more concerned was that after however many years, the container’s rivets had a lot of rust. Such containers were generally made of stainless steel, but obviously in an environment like the desert haizi, even stainless steel would begin to rust. Even though it only appeared to be rusted on the surface, no one could guarantee whether the contents would leak out.

<Chapter 20> <Table of Contents><Chapter 22>

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TN Note: You all should be so proud! I almost stopped last chapter (cliffhanger ahaha), but had just enough time to squeeze this one out. I’m kind of surprised at how different this is from the drama. It feels like they’re two completely different stories at this point, but I’m not complaining. It’s kind of interesting to see what’s the same and what’s different. I’m rolling out tomorrow after work so this is it, no more chapters for a week (sorry, not sorry). I’m not lugging my laptop with me, but if you all have any comments or questions I’ll still be able to check/answer on my phone. Hope you lovely people had a good week so far, and that it continues into next week for you 🙂 Until next time….