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

Lin Yang turned around, his gaze revealing a profound understanding of the times.

"Westerners believe that they can squeeze our blood and sweat dry with a few outdated civilian assembly lines."

They will never understand what the profound foundation of a major power's heavy industry truly means.

Lin Yang walked to the desk.

He didn't look at the already annotated plan again.

He extended his large right hand, which was covered with hidden old scars.

At that moment, he grabbed the red, secure telephone line on the table, a symbol of supreme power.

My fingers moved steadily and quickly across the dial pad.

Accompanied by a series of short, sharp metallic dial sounds,

At that moment, Lin Yang pressed the red receiver tightly against his ear.

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In late autumn, the wind already carried a biting chill that could penetrate even cotton-padded clothes.

Several years have quietly passed since that mega-purchase that shocked Europe.

In recent years, with the implementation of a series of powerful and effective policies from the National Development and Reform Commission, the economic development of China has been like a primordial beast breaking free of its shackles, roaring and surging wildly across all regions.

In the special economic zones along the southern coast, skyscrapers have sprung up and countless foreign-invested production lines are roaring day and night; in the Central Plains, the heavy industry corridor has undergone a brutal yet phoenix-like transformation of equipment and production capacity under Pei Yihong's ruthless and swift approach.

The overall situation is irreversibly surging forward along the magnificent trajectory that Lin Yang drew on the map back then.

However, in this magnificent picture of the national economy, one piece of the puzzle, which was once highly anticipated, has fallen into a suffocating stagnation and eerie silence.

Handong District.

Deep in a secluded alley in Xicheng District.

This is an old office of the National Local History Compilation Committee. The mottled red brick walls are covered with withered yellow ivy, and the old elm trees in the courtyard have lost all their leaves, exuding a sense of deathly desolation and decay as if they have been completely forgotten by the times.

The large office at the far end of the first floor was dimly lit.

The air was filled with a strong smell of musty old paper and the pungent odor of cheap tobacco.

Zhao Lichun was wearing an old gray Zhongshan suit that had been washed until it was faded and had several holes in the cuffs. He was wearing a pair of heavy reading glasses and sitting hunched over at the wooden table with peeling paint.

He held a broken fountain pen with a forked nib in his hand, and was copying word by word a hydrological record of a drought in a certain county during the Qing Dynasty onto a yellowed manuscript paper.

His temples were completely white.

That face, once so arrogant and calculating in the Handong region, was now covered with deep wrinkles. He was emaciated, his eyes cloudy and numb, like a soulless walking corpse.

"Old Zhao, stop copying! Hurry up and go to the water room and get two kettles of hot water. This room is freezing cold, and the radiator is broken!"

A young clerk in his early twenties, dressed in a fashionable polyester shirt, kicked Zhao Lichun's desk leg while eating sunflower seeds, his tone revealing an undisguised contempt and bossiness.

Zhao Lichun's hand holding the pen stiffened slightly.

The pen nib paused for half a second on the fragile manuscript paper, then blew out a blob of glaring black ink.

If it were a few years ago, in that luxurious office in Jingzhou with its Persian carpets, who would have dared to speak to him in such a tone?

With just a glance, Zhao Lichun could terrify the senior managers in those regions, making their legs go weak and their sweat pour down their backs.

But now, he is just a deputy researcher who was sent here, retaining a nominal title but not even as good as a menial servant.

In this city where power is everything, without the protection of the supreme strategist, Zhao Lichun is less than a stray dog ​​on the street.

In the past few years, in this musty office, he has endured the coldness of human nature, tasted the scorn and humiliation. Every long and cold night, he has spent in endless regret and fear, recalling how he lost his way in the abyss of power, and was ultimately kicked off his pedestal by that ruthless chairman.

"Did you hear me, Lao Zhao? Are you deaf?" The young clerk raised his voice impatiently and slammed two empty thermos flasks heavily onto Zhao Lichun's desk.

Zhao Lichun slowly put down the broken fountain pen in his hand.

He neither got angry nor argued back. Those eyes, which once gleamed with the sharp light of a tyrant, now held only a deathly obedience.

"Yes, Xiao Wang. I'll go fetch water right away."

Zhao Lichun took off his reading glasses, stood up shakily, and reached for the two thermos flasks.

The instant his fingers touched the handle of the thermos.

boom!

The office's wooden door, which was always loose and on the verge of collapse, was suddenly pushed open from the outside.

A gust of cold draft suddenly rushed into the room, making the old manuscript papers on the table rustle.

Young clerk Xiao Wang turned around angrily, about to burst into a tirade about who was so blind as to not even knock on the door.

But when he saw the people standing at the door, it was as if a block of ice had blocked his throat, and he couldn't utter a single word.

At the entrance stood four burly men dressed in black casual clothes, their eyes sharp as blades.

The terrifying aura emanating from them, forged from countless corpses and seas of blood, instantly filled the cramped office with a suffocating sense of oppression.

And in the middle of those four men.

A man dressed in a well-tailored dark suit and wearing black-rimmed glasses was silently observing everything in the room with a cold, deep gaze.

This is none other than Shen Yan, who now holds immense power in the national macroeconomic field and is the head of the General Office of the China Association for Modern Reform and Development.

Although Xiao Wang was of low rank, he still had basic discernment in the city.

He immediately recognized the special badge on Shen Yan's chest that represented absolute core power.

Xiao Wang was so frightened that his legs went weak, he dropped sunflower seed shells all over the ground, his face turned pale instantly, and he stammered as he backed away.

Zhao Lichun's hand, holding the thermos, hung suspended in mid-air.

The moment he saw Shen Yan, his heart, which had been as still as stagnant water, suddenly began to pound uncontrollably and wildly against his chest.

Thump, thump, thump!

It was a mixture of extreme fear, disbelief, and a desperate ecstasy, like seeing a ray of blinding sunlight in a bottomless abyss!

Shen Yan is Lin Yang's shadow.

Shen Yan's presence here signifies only one thing.

The man who had cast him into the deepest abyss like a god finally remembered him again, this pawn that had been discarded for many years!