94: From Technological Warfare to Space Empire

When Lin Yu received the report, his hands were trembling with anger.

Over three days, the entire team explored all the villages surrounding Liujiazhuang.

Most of the samples collected had blood lead levels exceeding the standard.

The most serious case involved a porter who had worked at an oil refinery for three years; his blood lead level was twelve times the normal value.

But he was only the most serious, not the most terrible.

The most terrifying are those children who are less than a meter tall and grow up in large amounts of lead dust from a young age.

The report was shocking; Lin Yu barely dared to look at it. Even the data was blocked by the health inspection institute to protect these children from being leaked.

He already knew very well what lead poisoning would cause.

But when it comes to these children, they don't even realize they're becoming dumber.

They only feel that the homework is getting harder and harder, and they can't understand what the teacher is saying anymore.

Then they would be categorized as not being suited for studying and would drop out of school early to work in factories.

Lin Yu thought sadly that since they were born here, their first choice for working would definitely be a nearby factory.

Those whose fates were changed by oil refineries like Wu Xiangrong's eventually returned here.

After handing over the final work of all the reports to Zhang Guoqiang, Lin Yu took some money from the trunk of Zhang Guoqiang's car, put it in a kraft paper envelope, and immediately had Engineer Chen take him to the county hospital.

He wanted to see the child whose blood lead levels were severely elevated.

After making inquiries from various sources, they finally found the ward on the third floor of the county hospital's inpatient department.

When Lin Yu entered the room, he saw a young woman sitting by the bed, feeding the thin child on the bed spoonful by spoonful of porridge.

The child looks sickly and listless.

He ate the porridge very slowly, swallowing three mouthfuls for every bite, but he persevered and swallowed it down mouthful by mouthful.

Lin Yu stood at the door, feeling a tightness in his throat.

This matter itself has nothing to do with him.

He was just an ordinary student at Beihang University, working on rockets and satellites.

He has nothing to do with the cause of all this.

And he had nothing to do with the outcome of all this.

He is no one to this child, nor to any of the other contaminated people.

But he was really feeling unwell.

So he knocked on the door and came in.

The woman turned around and was stunned to see Lin Yu and Engineer Chen in a white coat behind him. She wondered what these two strangers were doing there.

"Who are you?"

As Lin Yu had instructed him beforehand, Engineer Chen said:

"I work at the health and epidemic prevention station."

"After hearing Grandpa Chen Youfu's introduction from Liujia Village, I wanted to come and learn about the child's current situation."

Upon hearing this, the young woman's eyes immediately welled up with tears.

Chen Youfu remembered that he was an old man who often squatted at the village entrance smoking a pipe.

If it's someone he introduced, then you can trust them.

As if a grievance from the bottom of her heart had suddenly been asked about, the young woman's voice suddenly became somewhat choked.

She touched the child's head on the bed.

Feed the child the last mouthful of porridge.

Then, he helped the child lie down on the hospital bed, covered him with a blanket, and carefully tucked the blanket into the corner of the bed before wiping away his tears and going to the corridor with Lin Yu to explain the situation.

"I don't know how I got lead poisoning."

"My son Xiaojun is only 6 years old. He never eats random things and has never touched lead."

"If we're talking about lead, then it's only pencils, but isn't pencils made of carbon? How could they possibly be lead?"

As she spoke, her throat became hoarse from tears and phlegm.

Lin Yu was at a loss for words.

After reading the report, he felt an urge to come and see the child, but he didn't know what he could do once he arrived.

He already knew the whole truth of the matter; it was Wu Xiangrongqian.

There's no need to poke at other people's sore spots to find out the truth.

What can he say now?

The woman continued talking while Lin Yu remained silent.

"Xiao Jun is usually very well-behaved. He just plays in front of the house. When other children ask him to go out, he won't."

"They're very easy to raise. I work in the fields, and his dad drives a car at the oil refinery."

"No one was watching him, yet he never left the house."

"How could he have suffered like this?"

"Inspector, do you think there might be a problem somewhere?"

The woman stared intently at Lin Yu.

Lin Yu could only ask in return.

"An oil refinery?"

The woman nodded.

"Yeah, his dad has been driving for seven or eight years, and he's always used that brand of fuel, saying it's good and makes the car run smoothly."

Lin Yu fell silent again.

For seven or eight years, I kept adding oil to Wu Xiangrong's tank.

The exhaust fumes from burning leaded gasoline seep into the air the children breathe, little by little.

It was buried in the dust at the entrance of his house.

Ultimately, it turned into lead in his blood that couldn't be excreted.

"Where is the child's father?"

The woman lowered her head, wiping away tears helplessly.

"He's still driving at the factory. His child's hospitalization cost over three thousand yuan, so he'll have to make several more trips."

Lin Yu could no longer bear it.

He wants Wu Xiangrong dead right now.

Lin Yu briefly instructed Chen Gong to handle the follow-up matters, then handed the money to the young woman as if fleeing before running away, leaving the young woman behind who looked surprised yet somewhat overjoyed and tearful after opening the envelope.

Once the evidence was irrefutable, things progressed rapidly.

After Lin Yu submitted the report...

All departments began to work on this major case.

This time, no one said anything about the rules being incomplete or the time not being right.

The blood lead levels of more than 300 people in Liujia Village are displayed here.

When Lin Yu took this report to file a formal complaint, no one dared to stop him.

For his safety, in the end, Commander Hou sent someone to take him to the military compound.

When they arrived at the compound, Chief Hou sat at his desk, smoking a cigarette, and looked at him with a wry smile.

"Why did you have to do that?"

"Why did you personally step forward and file a formal complaint this time?"

Lin Yu still felt a lump in his throat, and replied in a muffled voice:

"I don't know what happened to me; my body acted before my brain did."

"But I don't regret it."

Seeing Lin Yu's stubborn expression, Chief Hou seemed to see his past self, and then found it somewhat amusing. He lit a cigarette, put it in Lin Yu's mouth, and when Lin Yu coughed violently from the smoke, he gently patted his shoulder.

"I know what's wrong with you."

Chief Hou stood up from his seat and sat down next to Lin Yu.

"I was like that during the Vietnam War."

"My body moved before my head did. Before I could even react, I was already out there. By the time I calmed down, there was no one left alive."

"I was also very confused at that time."

"Until finally, it was Xu Haoxiang's grandfather. My old superior patted me on the shoulder and told me:"

"This is because there's an old Chinese saying: 'If this can be tolerated, what cannot be tolerated?'"

"Although from a rational point of view, what you did this time was rather impulsive."

When Chief Hou saw Lin Yu smoking and about to say something, he waved his hand to interrupt him.

"But we're all like that, aren't we?"

"Passion is difficult to measure with reason."

"As long as we are willing to bear the consequences and have no regrets, then we are free to do whatever we want."

Commander Hou patted Lin Yu on the shoulder.

"Good lad!"

"Even if his methods are crude and his behavior is impulsive, he is still a promising talent."

Seeing that Chief Hou was so lenient with him, Lin Yu was taken aback, then nodded with some emotion.

"I acknowledge what I've done, I take responsibility for it, and I truly have no regrets!"

In his previous life, Lin Yu was 26 years old when he transmigrated, but after being reborn, he is now 21 years old.

The combined age of his two lifetimes hasn't brought him the maturity of a 47-year-old. Instead, having experienced two periods of adolescence, he finds it exceptionally difficult for his passion to cool.

Now that he is a big tree, he must provide shelter for the weak.

Even though his primary goal was to build his own space empire.

Even if stepping forward now would subject him to enormous risks and costs.

He will still stand up; he will not repeat the mistakes of the Soviet Union.

His space empire existed to protect the people beneath its ships.

If we turn a blind eye to the suffering happening now simply because the forces of evil are powerful, then they will only sacrifice more people who did not want to die in order to weigh the pros and cons later.

If that's the case, he might as well not build his space empire at all.

He was born late, and he never saw his teacher in person.

But he wanted to be able to meet his teacher openly and honestly on the day he passed away.

Lin Yu knew that without him, no one would expose this matter.

A single theoretical foundation is enough to shut down the vast majority of people.

Since he's the only one who knows how to do it, then he'll do it!

Lin Yu smoked the cigarette that Chief Hou had lit for him, coughing as he smoked, until the cigarette burned out, before finally putting down the butt.

After Lin Yu submitted his report.

In a secluded courtyard in Beijing, a man in a Zhongshan suit slowly put down the microphone, his face ashen.

The calligraphy and paintings that I bought on purpose to appear cultured have turned yellow from the smoke.

Ho Yau-kwong, who also owns a private oil refinery, slammed his hand on the coffee table.

"That idiot!"

"Something's happened to Wu Xiangrong!"

Across the sofa sat a bespectacled man in a suit. Upon hearing this, he sat up straight and looked at He Youguang with a hint of inquiry.

"I was wondering why his ethyl gasoline additive works so well, since everyone else is using it."

"He's taking advantage of being the supplier, adding more markups than us! Adding more is one thing, but he also gave us leverage against him! Giving us leverage would be one thing, we could just pay him off. But guess who's investigating him?"

The bespectacled man's heart skipped a beat:

"Who?"

"Lin Yu!"

The man in the Zhongshan suit gritted his teeth and spat out those two words, then kicked over the thermos flask at his feet.

With a loud bang, hot water spilled all over the floor.

"Lin Yu, the guy from Hongxing No. 2 Factory who extracts titanium from steel slag!"

The man in the Zhongshan suit was breathing heavily, unbuttoning his collar, his facial muscles twitching.

"That blind bastard Wu Xiangrong, who does he think he is? A few thugs and a few barrels of carbon tetrachloride, and he thinks he can bankrupt someone's factory?"

"Yes, we're the ones smearing Lin Yu, but aren't we the ones who know best whether that kid has the skills or not?"

"How many years has this steel slag been sitting on the ground? If there were anyone who could turn this trash into something valuable, Lin Yu wouldn't have a chance to get a piece of this pie!"

"Isn't that exactly what no one else can do? Lin Yu is the true master of technology!"

"Who gave Wu Xiangrong the audacity to try and show off his skills before an expert?"

"They quickly discovered that his gasoline was tainted! If they hadn't exposed him, even we, his business partners, wouldn't have known!"

"But we can't just make him confess like that. If he's guilty, we're all doomed."

......

In a detached building in Haidian District, the telephone rang shrilly.

After listening to a few words on the phone, Yang Jia's expression changed drastically.

"What did you say? Liujiazhuang? Lead poisoning?"

The voice on the other end of the phone was urgent and low:

"The health and epidemic prevention station staff investigated the village for three days and collected over a hundred blood samples. The child at the county hospital was diagnosed with severe lead poisoning, and the epidemic prevention station has now reported the case to the municipal bureau."

"Lin Yu even took the documents directly to file a formal complaint, and the matter was thoroughly exposed by the joint action of the three departments."

Hearing this, Yang Jia was so angry that the veins on her hand gripping the microphone bulged. Three days? How come it took them three days to find out? What were these people doing?

"Where is that idiot Wu Xiangrong?"

"He doesn't know yet; he's still at the factory waiting for our next batch of ethyl gasoline."

"He'll probably be arrested soon."

Yang Jia took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

After hanging up the phone, she paced back and forth in the room a few times, feeling anxious. Only after calming down did she pick up the receiver and dial another number.

After the call connected, her tone became extremely respectful.

"Teacher, something's happened."

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone, followed by an elderly male voice speaking Japanese.

"explain."

Yang Jia recounted the whole story in Japanese.

From Wu Xiangrong sending people to target Lin Yu, to Lin Yu sending people to check gasoline, to the discovery of children with lead poisoning in Liujiazhuang, until the epidemic prevention station reported it.

She spoke faster and faster, her tone filled with barely suppressed panic.

"That idiot Wu Xiangrong added excessive amounts of gasoline just to gain a reputation for high-quality fuel!"

"As a result, when he tried to sabotage Lin Yu, Lin Yu noticed and immediately traced the trail back to him."

After Yang Jia finished speaking, there was a full ten seconds of silence on the other end of the phone.

Then the elderly male voice burst into a tirade of angry curses:

"Baka!!!"

"Who gave him the audacity to provoke Lin Yu?! Who gave him the guts?!"

Yang Jia shrank back after being scolded, not daring to utter a sound, because it was she who gave him the courage.

Wu Xiangrong was instigated by her. She was also thinking of finding more people to scold Lin Yu, and after Lin Yu became disappointed in his own people, she would slowly win him over.

But I never expected Wu Xiangrong to handle things so carelessly.

"Is that guy's brain filled with shit?! Who is Lin Yu? He's a target we went to great lengths to get in touch with!"

"The entire national research institute is captivated by Lin Yu's technology!"

"He doesn't even dare to mess with Lin Yu about chemicals! He's been throwing feces and poisoning people, and now he's even exposed the lead poisoning!"

"Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!"

Three idiots slapped Yang Jia across the face, making her feel so stupid that she was ashamed to face anyone.

"Teacher, what should we do now?"

"Sever all ties with Wu Xiangrong! Destroy all evidence! We must completely absolve ourselves of any connection to the source of that batch of tetraethyl lead; we absolutely cannot be implicated!"

"But what about Afton..."

"Afton is an American company, what does it have to do with us?"

The voice on the other end of the phone turned cold:

"Tell them that Wu Xiangrong's goods were transshipped from Hong Kong, passing through three intermediaries, and that we had no direct dealings with them!"

"Get it done right away!"