Cannon fodder of the era strives to rewrite their lives - Part 3: Fire...
When the train arrived at the station, Chen Xia couldn't help but let out a long sigh of relief. Carrying her bags, she squeezed down the platform with the flow of people. As soon as she stepped off the platform, someone was waiting to pick them up with a sign.
A group of people climbed onto the truck that was picking them up, using both hands and feet. After a shaky two-hour walk, they finally arrived at their destination. These students were assigned to different units based on their majors.
Chen Xia was assigned to the state-owned Hongxing Instrument Factory, which mainly produced radio communication equipment. Because of her excellent academic performance in school, Chen Xia was assigned to the technical department.
The Red Star Instrument Factory was designed and built with the assistance of Soviet experts. The family compound consisted entirely of five-story red brick buildings, which was considered very good accommodation in the 1950s.
The instrument factory welcomed these vocational school students who volunteered to support the construction. After Chen Xia successfully completed her onboarding procedures, she was taken to the technical department.
The technical department office is large, and there are quite a few technicians. They all warmly welcomed the new colleagues, because there's a severe shortage of engineers and technicians here.
Not only were the workers busy, but the technical department was also working overtime every day under the leadership of the group leaders to conduct research. Although the family compound was not far from the factory, many of them did not even go home for work and ate and slept at the factory.
Although Chen Xia had not yet passed the assistant engineer exam, due to the shortage of technicians, she was assigned to work as an assistant to an engineer surnamed Li.
The head of the technical department also kindly encouraged her to work hard and strive to pass the assistant engineer exam as soon as possible.
Finally, she was told that the factory had assigned separate dormitories to all the technicians in her batch. She could go to the logistics department to pick up the keys, then go back and clean and tidy up the dormitory before starting work tomorrow.
Chen Xia did exactly what her superiors told her to do. She didn't have any grand ambitions; she just wanted to enjoy a simple life.
996 had repeatedly reminded her: "As a qualified transmigrator, your task is to complete the requests of those who make wishes, but also not to interfere too much with the development of each world. You have to be moderate in accumulating merit. A transmigrator who relies on his cheat ability to do whatever he wants will not last long."
Heeding the leader's advice and having enough to eat, she studied the mission instructions after being bound to the task force and realized that she and 996 were bound together by fate. If she perished, 996 would also be destroyed, but for the sake of its own mission, 996 would not harm her.
Chen Xia first went to the logistics department to collect her employee benefits, including work clothes, gloves, thermos, enamel mug, and enamel basin, and also picked up her dormitory key.
The factory allocated Chen Xia a small apartment of about 30 square meters. The apartment was on the second floor, and the previous owner had partitioned it, using the outer room as a kitchen and the inner room as a bedroom.
She has more than enough room to live alone. The only downside is that she has to go to the water room at the end of the corridor to get water, and the bathroom is communal. Although going to the bathroom at night is a bit inconvenient, with her external cheat, she can go into her space at night to take care of her bodily functions.
The kitchen has a wood-burning stove made of red bricks against the wall. Because the space is small, there is only one stove hole. The rectangular chimney made of red bricks extends along the wall to the outside.
The house had only been lightly cleaned. Although there was no trash in the room, the walls were mottled, the floor was covered with a thick layer of old grime, and the wooden bed and the wooden table were rickety. Without a thorough cleaning, the place was simply uninhabitable.
Chen Xia rolled up his sleeves, ready to get to work, when suddenly he remembered something. He quickly opened the system shop, scrolled through it a few times, and reluctantly swiped away the all-powerful nanny robot. After thinking it over, he finally spent twenty points to buy a talisman gift pack.
First, find the leftover fabric from making clothes in the storage room, cut it to the appropriate size, sew two strips of fabric at each end, stand on the table and hang the curtains on the wall, thanking the previous homeowner for leaving two nails.
She took out a cleaning talisman from the talisman gift pack, tore it open according to the instructions, and threw it on the ground. The whole room looked as if it had been cleaned, spotless. Even the old clothes she had changed into to clean the room, which had been stained by the wash, became clean and new.
Chen Xia threw an insect-repelling talisman into the corner of the wall. After a rustling sound, several mice and a bunch of random insects desperately squeezed out through the crack in the door, which gave Chen Xia goosebumps.
The wobbly old wooden bed was stored in the space warehouse. I spent points to buy a solid wood bed in the store that was similar in color and size. When I placed the order, I noted that it should be distressed. When I took it out of the system storage, it looked very similar to the original wooden bed.
After laying down a thick mattress, then a thin mattress, and finally a sheet, the thin quilt and pillow are taken out and placed on the bed. The small bedroom for sleeping is now ready.
Chen Xia's package was very large, and no one knew what was inside. She bought an iron pot from the system store and put it on the stove, and went to the logistics department to buy a honeycomb briquette stove and two hundred honeycomb briquettes.
This was considered a perk the factory gave to these new employees. After all, they had come all the way to the southwest and could bring their own pots, but they really couldn't bring their own coal stoves and honeycomb briquettes.
The opportunity to buy kitchenware without industrial coupons was rare, so Chen Xia bought an aluminum kettle and a double-layered aluminum pot from the logistics department. Later generations often said that aluminum pots were bad, and that long-term use of them could lead to anemia, calcium deficiency, decreased intelligence, memory loss, and so on.
If possible, she wouldn't want to use it, but given the current circumstances, she has no other choice. All she can do is drink more well water to improve her health.
After a long, busy day, Chen Xia finally finished tidying up her little apartment. She picked up a honeycomb briquette with tongs, grabbed a bag of snacks, and went to her neighbor's house next door.
The neighbor was very kind. After giving Chen Xia a new burning honeycomb briquette, she also gave him a bunch of vegetables she grew in her garden behind the building.
Chen Xia thanked him repeatedly, then carried the honeycomb briquettes back to his room and lit the coal stove. Cooking with a honeycomb briquette stove was fine during the day, but even with a chimney, Chen Xia still felt unsafe at night.
But given the current conditions, after much thought, Chen Xia decided to sleep in the space at night so she wouldn't have to worry about carbon dioxide poisoning.
He took the aluminum kettle to the water room to wash it clean, filled it with water and put it on the stove to warm it, locked the door, went into his space to inspect his territory, opened the system shop, and added the items he wanted to buy but couldn't afford to his favorites.
I bought a bag of feed with my points, poured it into the automatic feeder, rolled over on my space bed, yawned, and fell into a deep sleep.
After receiving Chen Xia's letter, Chen's mother in Beijing clutched her chest in anger: "This unfilial daughter... Old man, old man, it's all your fault. I told you long ago not to let her go to that damn vocational school."
What did you say back then? You said that since she passed the exam, we should let her go to school. But this wretched child, the family worked so hard to support her through vocational school, and she secretly enrolled in a program thousands of miles away in the southwest…”
Mr. Chen glared at her: "What are you yelling about? Aren't you embarrassed enough? If you cared about her more, would she have secretly run away thousands of miles away?"
You can say these things at home, but keep your mouth shut when you're out. If anyone asks, remember, supporting national development is a good thing, so stop talking nonsense.
Since she insists on making things difficult for herself, let her be. She's still young and doesn't think things through. Conditions in the southwest are far worse than in Beijing; she probably won't stay long before she regrets it. You can just wait and see.
After saying that, he picked up his grandson Chen Jiabao and went out for a walk. He thought to himself, "She's just a little girl; she'll get married sooner or later. Let her go wherever she wants."
It wasn't that he didn't care about San Yatou's salary, but he knew that with his wife's character, even if San Yatou handed over all her salary, he wouldn't get a single penny; most of it would end up benefiting Chen Yang.
I don't know if that old woman has been bewitched by that brat Chen Yang, she's completely devoted to her and listens to everything she says. The third son is really unlucky to have such a mother and sister.
Chen's mother was even angrier at her father's indifferent attitude. When Chen Yang came to see her with canned food, she couldn't help but cry and complain to her: "That old man, your father, is too lazy to care about anything that doesn't involve your brother."
"That ungrateful Chen Xia ran off to such a far-off place in the southwest right after graduation. If she dares to come back, I'll break her legs!"
Chen Yang hadn't expected that the third sister, that brat, would be so ruthless, running off to the southwest, thousands of miles away. This truly left her helpless. So far away, not only was there no address, but even if there were, who could possibly go to that remote, remote mountain valley to look for her?
That wretched third sister! She's already planned how to spend the extra thirty yuan every month. She boasted to her sister-in-law that she'd buy her the little leather shoes she liked once the third sister started working and got her salary.
Now that Haikou has already made that promise, she wants to take it back, but given her sister-in-law's personality, she won't agree. With her meager salary of just over ten yuan, what will she spend on herself after buying her those little leather shoes?
So Chen Yang shamelessly tricked her mother out of twenty yuan. Although Chen's mother was reluctant to part with the money, upon hearing her daughter's tearful complaints about the hardships she faced in her husband's family, she couldn't help but take out twenty yuan from the cupboard and give it to her. It wasn't that she didn't want to give more, but rather that Chen's father always kept a limit on the amount of money he gave her.
When Chen's mother gave Chen Yang the money, the bedroom door was not closed, and her daughter-in-law, Yu Lili, who had just returned home from get off work, saw it.
That afternoon, Yu Lili had a big fight with Chen Shan and took her son back to her parents' home. After learning the reason, Chen's father beat Chen's mother severely and then took all the money from her. It was at this time that he discovered that a lot of the money in the house had already been given to Chen Yang by Chen's mother.
Enraged, Chen's father decided to put his daughter-in-law in charge of the household, giving Chen's mother a fixed amount of money every month and requiring her to keep accounts. He also forbade her from giving Chen Yang any money, or he would divorce her.
The word "divorce" completely terrified Chen's mother. She didn't want to be kicked out of the house by Chen's father when she got old. As for relying on Chen Yang, her sweet little girl, for old age, she had never even considered it.
She knew her daughter-in-law's character all too well. Although she often complained about her daughter-in-law Yu Lili's shortcomings, she had to admit that Yu Lili was a more filial daughter-in-law than Chen Yang.
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