Courtyard House: From Deputy Division Commander to Civilian, Progressing All the Way

Then, Lin Yang looked at another director: "Notify Lin Fan in the Southwest. Pack and airlift the special high-strength jacks, hydraulic shears, and heavy-duty steel cables produced by Factory 101! Immediately coordinate with the Air Force to send transport planes to the Southwest to pick up the goods!"

Finally, Lin Yang strode up to He Yuzhu.

"Pillar. You take the Special Operations Team from the Security Bureau as the advance party and come directly to the disaster area with me!"

"Commander, you can't go! The aftershocks are constant there, and your life is in danger at any moment!" He Yuzhu said anxiously.

"I am the Minister of Heavy Industry. Wherever my machinery goes, I will go! Enough talk, get the car ready!" Lin Yang grabbed his military uniform jacket draped over the back of his chair and strode out of the conference room.

More than ten hours later, in the disaster area of ​​Tangshan.

The rain poured down. The downpour mixed with dust from the ruins, turning into black mud that flowed through the streets and alleys.

Everywhere there were broken walls and ruins, and everywhere there were cries of despair.

Rescue teams had already arrived, but faced with those precast reinforced concrete slabs weighing several tons, the soldiers could only pry them apart with their bare hands and lift them with their own flesh and blood. Many soldiers' fingers were worn down to the bone, but the slabs remained unmoved.

"One, two, three! Go!"

A dozen soldiers shouted commands as they tried to lift a slab of stone that was pressing down on the rubble. Faint cries for help came from below.

But the stone slab was too heavy, and the soldiers slipped, causing the slab to fall heavily again.

It was at this moment of despair.

Rumble—!

A mechanical roar, like the howl of an ancient beast, pierced through the heavy rain.

A military train loaded with steel behemoths drove to the nearest temporary freight station to the disaster area.

The carriage door was suddenly pushed open.

Pei Yihong, dressed in soaking wet work clothes and covered in mud, stood on the tracks of the first heavy hydraulic excavator, holding a megaphone and shouting until his voice cracked:

"The heavy machinery factory rescue team has arrived! Troops ahead, make way!"

Accompanied by a breathtaking engine roar.

Thirty of the latest domestically produced large hydraulic excavators and fifty heavy-duty dump trucks, like an unstoppable steel army, marched into the ruins.

These massive machines are national treasures that Lin Yang painstakingly built from scratch over the past two years, despite facing immense political pressure. On ordinary days, they create wealth in mines and steel mills; at this moment, they are steel warriors saving lives.

In front of the ruins of a collapsed three-story family building.

A concrete slab weighing seven or eight tons was firmly pressing down on a mother and daughter. The surrounding rescue workers were helpless.

"Get out of the way!"

Pei Yihong personally drove a heavy excavator, which roared into view.

He skillfully operated the control lever. The huge metal bucket, like a nimble giant hand, precisely wedged itself into the gap in the concrete slab.

With a furious roar, the diesel engine spewed black smoke from its exhaust pipe.

The massive floor slab, which was impossible to move by manpower, was lifted by the powerful hydraulic arm of the excavator and moved steadily to the side.

The mother and daughter trapped underneath have been rescued!

The rescue soldiers and surviving civilians at the scene were moved to tears and burst into thunderous cheers.

Lin Yang stood on the muddy ruins, wearing a raincoat that was completely soaked by rain and mud.

He looked at the excavators that tirelessly swung their mechanical arms, and at the heavy trucks that kept hauling away construction waste, and a warm, moist light welled up in his eyes.

This is the industry he vowed to defend with his life.

When those rebels who spent their days studying routes in the office and shouting slogans through megaphones were helpless in the face of this devastation, it was Lin Yang's heavy industrial system that, with the purest and most violent mechanical power, was racing against death.

In the next two weeks.

Lin Yang did not return to Beijing. He lived and ate in a tent in the disaster area, personally directing the engineering machinery that had been allocated from all over the country.

He Yuzhu led his team to erect an impenetrable wall around the disaster area, strictly preventing any criminals from taking advantage of the chaos. Anyone who dared to steal disaster relief supplies was shot dead on the spot by He Yuzhu; his iron-fisted approach deterred all the scoundrels.

This devastating earthquake became a touchstone for testing the achievements of China's heavy industry construction.

As it turns out, Lin Yang won.

The tractors, excavators, and cranes roaring across the ruins shattered the empty slogans of "spiritualism." The people's eyes are discerning; they clearly see which force saved their lives and which force enabled them to rebuild their homes.

Time marches on with difficulty amidst suffering and reconstruction.

The autumn of 1976 arrived quietly, carrying a hint of bleakness.

Golden autumn October.

After more than a week of continuous overcast skies, the sky over Beijing suddenly cleared up without any warning.

The compound of the Ministry of Heavy Industry.

Lin Yang was sitting in his office, looking down at the steel allocation plan for disaster area reconstruction.

boom!

The office door was pushed open without anyone knocking.

Zhao Lichun practically rushed in. His usually meticulously combed hair was now somewhat disheveled, and his gold-rimmed glasses were askew on his nose.

But he paid no heed to any of that. His hands trembled violently, and his usually deep and unfathomable face was now filled with undisguised ecstasy and shock.

"Minister!" Zhao Lichun's voice was distorted with extreme excitement, even cracking slightly.

Lin Yang raised his head, his brows slightly furrowed. He rarely saw Zhao Lichun lose his composure to this extent.

"Has the sky fallen?" Lin Yang put down his pen, his tone still calm.

"It's not that the sky has fallen... it's that it's dawn!" Zhao Lichun rushed to his desk, gripping the surface tightly with both hands, panting heavily.

He lowered his voice, but it was like a thunderclap in Lin Yang's ears.

"Just received a top-secret report. Last night, the central government took swift and decisive action! Those ringleaders in the city who were most vocal... and the powerful figures behind them who have been stirring up trouble... have all been arrested! They're under investigation!"

Zhao Lichun suddenly sat up straight, his eyes red-rimmed, his voice trembling uncontrollably.

"Minister! The clouds have parted! That great storm that lasted for ten years... is over!"

Lin Yang sat in the large office chair, and his whole body froze instantly.

His eyes, deep as a still pool and having witnessed countless conspiracies and the ravages of war, contracted sharply at that moment.

It's been ten years.

It started with that horrifying big-character poster targeting him in 1966.

He sent his eldest brother to the far southwest, sent his son to Xinjiang to eat sand, and assigned his most loyal secretary to be an undercover agent.

He walked on thin ice in this bottomless political vortex, every step fraught with danger. He single-handedly protected the country's nuclear weapons and heavy industry by carving a bloody path through the land.

Now, this decade-long nightmare has finally come to an end.