Major Heavy Industry: Starting with a Fake Marriage

He explained what he knew clearly. He admitted he didn't know what he didn't know. Chief Engineer Chen became increasingly serious, no longer looking at him with a scrutinizing gaze, but treating him as a colleague with whom he could discuss issues.

It was already dark when the meeting adjourned. Jiang Cheng walked out of the meeting room and stood in the corridor, leaning against the wall. His legs were trembling, and his palms were sweaty. When he was drawing on the blackboard, he almost wrote the wrong unit—micrometer instead of millimeter, a difference of a thousand times. Fortunately, he checked it and corrected it.

Huang Deqing came out of the conference room and stood next to him. He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and slowly exhaled.

"Chengzi, is what you just said true?"

"Master, what do you mean?"

"Those coatings... zirconium oxide, yttrium oxide, I've never even heard of them. Are you trying to fool people?"

Jiang Cheng looked at him and said seriously, "Master, I'm not lying. Those things are real. I've read about them in books and figured them out myself. I just haven't verified them, so I don't know if they work."

Huang Deqing stared at him for several seconds. Then he nodded. "Okay. Let's verify it then. I've never done such a high-level job in my entire life."

Sun Deming rushed out of the conference room, his face flushed red, his eyes shining like light bulbs. "Brother Jiang! You were amazing! That Chief Engineer Chen, the way she looked at you changed! At first, she looked down on you, but then she stood up and walked to the blackboard, and I saw her hands were shaking!"

"Don't talk nonsense. Chief Engineer Chen was just excited."

"She looks down on you, I can tell. But as soon as you finished speaking, she was convinced. Brother Jiang, when did you learn all this stuff? I didn't know about it!"

Jiang Cheng smiled. "I studied at night. I was reading while you were sleeping."

Sun Deming opened his mouth as if to say something, but said nothing. He scratched his head, turned around, and left.

Jiang Cheng stood in the corridor, looking out at the night sky. The night sky over Beijing was starless, with only a few distant lights twinkling. He touched the letter in his pocket—the letter that had never been mailed. The edges of the paper were damp with his sweaty hands, and the handwriting was blurred. He took it out, glanced at it, and then put it back.

"Jiang Cheng."

He turned around, and Chief Engineer Chen was standing at the other end of the corridor, holding a folder in his hand.

"Chief Engineer Chen."

"We'll start making test films tomorrow. Be at the lab at eight o'clock, and I'll have someone prepare the equipment." She paused. "Also, could I borrow your stack of literature reviews? I need to check a few data points."

Jiang Cheng nodded. "I'll bring it to you tomorrow."

Chief Engineer Chen glanced at him, then turned and walked away. After a few steps, he stopped but didn't look back. "Comrade Jiang Cheng, I don't easily submit to others. What you said today makes sense. But whether it will work depends on the experiments."

Her footsteps faded at the end of the corridor. Jiang Cheng stood by the window, watching her back—gray hair, a gray polyester shirt, walking quickly and steadily, just like her.

A night breeze blew in, carrying the sweet fragrance of locust blossoms. The locust tree in the courtyard cast a huge shadow under the lamplight, and petals fell to the ground, white and fluffy, like snow.

Sun Deming poked his head out from the stairwell. "Brother Jiang, are we coming or not? Old Zhou asked Chen Siyuan to take us back to the guesthouse."

"Walk."

The three of them went downstairs. The van was still parked under the locust tree, its body covered with petals. Chen Siyuan sat in the driver's seat, yawning. They got in the van, and it started up, sputtering away. They left the research institute and turned onto Chang'an Avenue. Chang'an Avenue was wide and straight, with streetlights shining one by one like a string of beads. Tiananmen Square flashed past the van window, appearing particularly solemn under the lights.

Sun Deming was leaning against the car window, already asleep. Huang Deqing had his eyes closed, but Jiang Cheng knew he wasn't asleep.

"master."

"Um."

"Do you think this project has a chance of succeeding?"

Huang Deqing opened his eyes and looked at him. "It can be done. It's up to you."

Jiang Cheng was taken aback. "I'm the one who decides?"

"Didn't you say that if we're heading in the right direction, all that's left is to take it one step at a time?" Huang Deqing closed his eyes again. "Take it one step at a time, and we'll eventually get there."

The bread cart wound its way through the night. There were few cars on Chang'an Avenue, and the streetlights cast flickering light into the cart, casting long shadows on everyone's faces. Jiang Cheng leaned against the window, gazing outside. The night in Beijing was quieter than he had imagined. There was no roar of machinery, no clamor of workers, only the sound of the wind and the soft patter of wheels on the pavement.

He touched the letter in his pocket. It was still there.

He didn't send it. Maybe he never will. Some things change once they're said. If you keep it in your pocket, it's yours. If you send it, it belongs to someone else.

He smiled, tucked the letter inside, leaned against the car window, and closed his eyes.

The nights in Beijing are much quieter than in Shenyang.

Jiang Cheng lay on the bed in the guesthouse, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep. The bed was hard, with a thin layer of palm fiber mattress on the wooden planks. When you lay down, you could feel the grain of the planks digging into your back.

The pillow was flat, not filled with buckwheat hulls, and collapsed into a pancake when you put your head on it.

For Jiang Cheng, who was used to sleeping on spring latex mattresses in later generations, this was also a rare life experience.

The sheets smelled of laundry detergent. The streetlights outside shone through the thin curtains, casting a dim, yellowish light on the ceiling, like a stain that hadn't been wiped clean. He stared at that light, his mind filled with images from the conference room earlier that day—Chief Engineer Chen standing in front of the blackboard, chalk in hand, saying, "I hadn't thought of this angle."

He hadn't thought about it. But she hadn't said "feasible" either. She had only said she hadn't thought about it. Those words were like a thorn stuck in Jiang Cheng's mind, impossible to remove. He rolled over, facing the wall. The wall was white, plastered with lime, with several fine cracks running from the ceiling to the baseboard, like a dried-up riverbed. He stared at those cracks, his mind racing with data—the coating thickness, the spraying temperature, the substrate preheating temperature, the powder feeding rate. Each parameter was like a bead, rolling around in his head, unable to form a coherent line. He tried writing the parameters down on paper, drawing tables, connecting them with arrows, but the arrows always crossed, like a tangled mess.

"Still not asleep?"

From the opposite bed, Huang Deqing's voice came from the darkness. It was hoarse, smelled of smoke, and sounded like he had a mouthful of sand.

"Master, did I wake you up?"

"I didn't sleep. This bed is too hard, it's uncomfortable. When I turn over, my bones crack like popping beans."

Jiang Cheng heard his master turn over, and the bed creaked as if someone had stepped on it. He turned to face his master. In the darkness, he couldn't see his face clearly, only a blurry outline—his master was lying on his side, one hand under his head, the other on the blanket. The blanket only covered his chest, revealing thin shoulders and prominent collarbones, like two withered branches.