Rebirth 04: Starting from Taking an Unconventional Approach

"Huh," Zhang Ruiyi walked into the office, looking around with disdain, waving her hand to disperse the smoke, "Are you smoking cured meat in the office?"

"How can cured meat be worthy of this flavor?" Han Fei said, glancing over the top of the manuscript.

"I've heard that smokers' lungs are black," Zhang Ruiyi said, sitting down in the chair opposite the desk. The desk was piled high with manuscripts, several overflowing ashtrays, and paper cups. A photograph sat on the computer tower, showing a young Han Baohua and a young Han Fei; this photograph seemed to be the only logical center in the chaos.

"That's just propaganda to encourage people to quit smoking. I only have plain water here, so you'll have to make do with this."

Han Fei stood up, took a few long strides, and walked to the filing cabinet. A stack of documents was piled high on top of the cabinet, barely maintaining its balance. A water dispenser next to him gurgled as it dispensed hot water.

"Are you a heavy smoker?" Zhang Ruiyi asked, taking the steaming paper cup.

Please define smoking addiction.

"Do you have to smoke?"

"It's not necessary, but when you need to use your brain, smoking can make your brain work faster."

Why?

"Uh... I can't really explain it, but there must be some scientific basis for it."

Zhang Ruiyi's overjoyed, high-pitched voice pierced Han Fei's eardrums: "Haha, can't say it now! I caught you! This is your smoking addiction! Still trying to deny it!"

With a helpless expression, Han Fei returned to the swivel armchair and sat down, picking up his manuscript again.

"I'm going to get busy now," he said. "Keep quiet, don't make a sound, and don't talk to me."

Zhang Ruiyi made a face, put down the paper cup, stood up, walked to the bookshelf, took down a thick book, and started flipping through it.

Han Fei stared at a piece of paper, trying to understand the words on it. After a while, he spun around in his chair, facing the bare wall. Five minutes later, he finally decided to give up, threw the paper on the table, and stood up to stretch.

"Are you done with your work?" Zhang Ruiyi turned around and said, "Come on over and tell me what this is?"

Han Fei squinted at the object Zhang Ruiyi was pointing to. It was a wooden box placed in the corner of the top shelf of the bookcase, sandwiched between the Cihai dictionary and the Hanyu Da Cidian (Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters).

He walked over and took the box down.

The box was rectangular, and the wood was a dark color; Han Fei thought it was sandalwood. The surface of the box was undecorated, showing only the natural grain of the wood.

"It doesn't look like it's for holding books," Zhang Ruiyi said.

Han Fei placed the box on the chair and nodded. "It should be my dad's thing. I don't remember what it is." As he spoke, he opened the brass clasp on the box lid.

Inside the box were no treasures or documents, only a dark blue rectangular stone, a strangely shaped small hammer, and several steel chisels of varying thicknesses. The stone's surface was polished extremely smooth, and at first glance, it resembled a heavy inkstone, only with a more regular shape.

Han Fei immediately remembered what it was for.

"This looks like something used for carving inscriptions, doesn't it?" Zhang Ruiyi said, reaching out her finger to touch the stone.

"Hmm, what you said is pretty much true. This is used for lead type printing," Han Fei said, picking up a hammer no bigger than his palm. The handle was smooth and warm to the touch. "This is a retouching hammer, and next to it are a type weight and a retouching knife. The retouching knife is used to carve type molds or repair blurred strokes in characters. Once enough type molds have been carved to form a type library, the corresponding lead type can be selected from the type library according to the text to be printed. The type is then arranged on this stone, and then gently tapped and trimmed with the hammer to ensure that each character is flat before it can be printed."

Zhang Ruiyi nodded: "I see. I thought it was a tool for pressing down incense ash. I saw a similar sandalwood box in a Buddhist temple when I was a child. It contained a flat copper plate and a small incense shovel, used to sort the incense ash and flatten the incense seal."

"A Buddhist temple?" Han Fei looked at her in surprise. "You believe in Buddhism?"

"I don't believe it. My aunt does. Because I have an eye problem, my aunt once took me to a Buddhist temple to ask a monk to look at my eyes."

"Is there something wrong with your eyes?"

"Didn't you notice?"

"What did you find?"

"Come here, let me show you," Zhang Ruiyi beckoned, "Can you see my pupils?"

Han Fei leaned forward, feeling her breath on his face, and then saw an extremely fine crack at the edge of her pupil within her dark brown iris, like a thin thread suddenly drawn from a drop of ink in clear water, or like a tiny tentacle growing from the pupil and probing into the iris.

"This is congenital," Zhang Ruiyi said, "but it won't affect your vision. In medicine it's called pupillary spurs, and in Buddhism it's called leakage."

"leak?"

"The gist of it is... that there are gaps that shouldn't exist, which might let something slip through, and at the same time, they might let something in. The monk looked at it for a long time, and finally just said, 'Let nature take its course.'"

"Interesting." Their faces were very close, and Han Fei could smell the fragrance of her skin and hair. He took a breath and felt a trembling sensation, like sliding into a hot bathtub.

Something is vibrating.

At first, Han Fei thought it was the ground, the city, or the foundation that was shaking. After a moment, he realized that it was his cell phone vibrating in his pocket.

Han Fei took out his phone, and the screen displayed Wen Jie's phone number.

"It's the programmer who helped me build the website," Han Fei said, pressing the answer button.

"Brother Fei, how are your preparations going?"

"Almost done," Han Fei said. "What's wrong?"

"I'm almost done here."

"So fast?"

"Everything went more smoothly than I expected. The integration testing of the SP billing interface was the most troublesome part, and I was prepared for a long period of debugging. But after simulating it 1000 times, the success rate actually reached 99.8%."

"Okay, I understand."

Han Fei hung up the phone, bit his lower lip, and looked at Zhang Ruiyi: "I have to go out for a bit now, I don't know when I'll be back. Why don't you go home first? Or..."

"I'll go with you; I happened to drive here."

Han Fei thought for a moment: "Then do you know how to get to the Innovation and Intelligence Building?"

"Of course," Zhang Ruiyi said with a smile, "I can get there in ten minutes by car, you believe me? Let's bet on one... no, on a month's worth of meals!"

"Ten minutes?"

Han Fei mentally calculated that the distance from the publishing house to the Innovation Building was about twenty kilometers. If you add in traffic jams and red lights... Before he could make a decision, Zhang Ruiyi grabbed his arm.

"What are you waiting for? Let's go!"