Si Lu poured a glass of wine for Master Lu, and also poured one for Jiang Chuanjun, and raised his glass to him, "Old man, I toast to you."
Master Lu still didn't say anything, but his facial lines softened noticeably. He picked up his wine glass and clinked it lightly with the two of them.
After a glass of wine, the atmosphere finally eased a little, and the awkwardness of the first meeting also dissipated a lot.
"Old man, you eat food, but I don't know what you like to eat. We have a rule here at Dashao that diners who come here cannot order food. We have to eat whatever he wants to cook."
Fan Dashao was laughing in the kitchen. After knowing that Master Lu was a hero fighting against the Americans, Fan Dashao planned to make two more dishes for them.
"Xiao Si and Xiao Wu, they love the lion's head dumplings I make the most." They were born in South Korea. This brother looks quite old and should have been one of the same batches that entered North Korea.
Maybe he even had his meal in a trench.
Now, let him try the food that Xiao Si and Xiao Wu like best.
Lao Fan started chopping the meat with a knife. A sign indicating that the business was temporarily suspended was hung outside the courtyard. Inside the courtyard, the three of them ate and chatted, and the topic soon revolved around the steel plant.
"Old man, can you tell us about the steel mill?"
Master Lu put down his wine cup, pointed at Jiang Weijun and said, "Xiao Jiang and I have similar temperaments. Since I'm here with him, I will tell him everything I know. Just ask whatever you want to ask!"
"When was our steel mill established?"
"Oh, this is a long story. If we trace it back, it was still the Republic of China, sixty years ago. At the beginning, it was an iron ore refinery jointly run by the government and businessmen. At that time, it was named after the place name, that is, Shijingshan Iron and Steel Plant. At the end of 1948, this steel plant was liberated. It was the first state-owned steel plant in our capital."
You can tell at first glance that Master Lu is a cultured man. He speaks slowly and logically.
"Ten years ago, the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry approved the name change of our factory."
Si Lu poured him another glass of wine. "Has there ever been an accident in our factory? Is an accident of this magnitude common?"
"Common?" Master Lu was immediately displeased. "Do you think this is a vegetable market? Are there always fights? If something like this happens once a year, it's a major accident. The industry will at least criticize it for three years."
He changed the subject and said, "But accidents have happened a few times."
Master Lu was very familiar with the steel plant and was well aware of several major accidents, so he told Si Lu everything he knew.
"More than 20 years ago, enemy agents sabotaged the steel mill. At that time, the output was not high. The damage was very extensive. We lost two technical backbones and six or seven workers. The loss was huge. It took four months to resume production. We were seriously injured."
"Another time, there was a blast furnace accident. Although the blast furnace is outdoors and the transmission furnace is indoors, and the blast furnace is relatively easy to explode, once the blast furnace explodes, the power is much greater than that of the transmission furnace..."
Master Lu talked for half an hour before he finished telling the story.
"This accident ranks among the top five in the entire history of the steel plant." Master Lu sighed. Sometimes he thought that those young people were the pillars of the country. If possible, he would like to die for them with his old bones. Anyway, he was a cripple and there was no point in living.
"Master Lu, based on your many years of experience in the steel mill, is this accident more likely to be man-made or..."
"It's hard to say. From experience, transmission furnaces are more prone to accidents and explosions than blast furnaces. But our factory just underwent maintenance two months ago, so it shouldn't have happened this big."
Small things are normal. With so many machines in the factory, even with regular maintenance, there will definitely be many emergencies and accidents.
This is all normal!
But the explosions in two workshops in succession, and at such a coincidence in timing, would have made anyone think too much.
Si Lu understood the hidden meaning of Master Lu's words and agreed with him.
Yesterday, Yanyan used a test kit to test the suspicious powders, and found that they did contain gunpowder. It is impossible for a steel plant to have these things, so they must have been brought in manually.
Both of them felt that there must be a traitor, but it was definitely not an easy task to find the traitor among thousands of people.
There were too few clues to use, so they could only start with the list of the dead.
"Master Lu, do you know all the thirty-one people who died in this accident?"
Master Lu frowned, "The person is dead, why are you asking this?"
At this time, the lion head and steamed pork with rice flour were also ready. Fan Dashao served the dishes directly, causing the three people to temporarily stop talking.
“Eat it while it’s hot.”
Si Lu felt that the sun was rising from the west, "Uncle Fan, why did you cook two more dishes today?" "The sun is rising from the west?
"I made it and you just eat it, why are you talking so much nonsense?"
Master Lu thought to himself, I was stubborn enough, but I never expected that there were people even more stubborn than me!
Fan Dashao wiped his hands with a towel and went into the house to rest. He made himself a pot of tea and sat in the rocking chair, closing his eyes to rest.
What a wonderful life, what wonderful days, but some people don't know how to cherish them...
Si Lu whispered, "Uncle Fan's seven children all died on the battlefield."
After hearing this, Master Lu's cloudy eyes flashed with a sparkling color. It is the most painful thing in the world to see the young die before the old. He sent away seven children at once...
"The organization wanted to provide him with retirement care, but he said he would never agree! Logically, at his age, he should be a grandfather and enjoy his retirement. But... he said he couldn't sit still and just wanted to find a place to continue cooking. But he is almost seventy years old and can't stand going to a cafeteria, so he opened a small restaurant like this."
No wonder the old man was able to open this small restaurant. It turns out there is such a story behind it.
Master Lu picked up a piece of lion's head and put it in his mouth, nodding his head. "Delicious, delicious. Life now is like a fairyland! We have everything we want, unlike our time when we had so much hardship!"
He was injured and unconscious, lying among a pile of dead bodies. When he woke up, his intestines were out of place and his ten fingers were deformed and shrunken by the incendiary bombs, like the claws of a damn monster.
He stuffed his intestines back in and tied them up with a cloth strip. He found his unit by eating frozen radishes and was sent directly to the rear area and returned home.
"If I hadn't been injured, I might have stayed there."
Si Lu and Jiang Chuanjun are both soldiers and can best understand his feelings at this moment.
I definitely have some regrets for not being able to hold on to the end. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t save two of my comrades, or take away a few enemies…
What they always think about is to protect the motherland and the people from storms and crises, even if it means their death...
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