Flip the table and divide the family property! Take his wife and daughter into the mountains and eat

At eight o'clock in the morning, the dozen or so villages surrounding Kaoshantun were completely deserted.

The dense footprints on the road overlapped one after another, all pointing in the direction of the old forest.

The men sweeping snow at the village entrance threw down their shovels, the women chopping firewood put down their axes, and even the elderly with canes and the children dragging fertilizer bags all turned red and headed in groups into the deep mountains and forests.

……

Hongxing Machinery Factory in the county town.

This state-owned factory, which has been established for thirty years, now has a large portion of its red paint peeling off its gate, and its loudspeakers sound lifeless, like rusty mute speakers.

Inside the factory manager's office, 58-year-old Lao Liang sat behind his desk, his graying hair disheveled like a clump of withered grass.

On the table lay the old calipers he used when he was an apprentice, next to a thick stack of return slips and unpaid wage reports.

From entering the factory as an apprentice at the age of eighteen to working his way up to factory manager, Lao Liang poured all his hard work into the machine tools at Hongxing Factory for forty years.

For him, this place was no longer just a workplace where he received his salary; it was his home, a place more important than his old life.

But things have changed in the last two years. There are so many better products on the market now, and the old, bulky machines in the factory just aren't selling. Orders have been declining year after year, and now we can barely even pay the workers' basic wages.

Old Liang took a deep drag on the crumpled Yingchun brand cigarette and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.

For the past few months, he has been dragging the factory's key technical personnel into the office for late-night meetings every day, racking his brains to develop product iterations, but in the end, it's all been for nothing.

The reason is simple: there's no money in the account. The old machine tools that were whirring in the workshop were the ones provided by the Soviet Union when the factory was built. Even if he smashed them up and sold them, he still couldn't raise the huge sum of money to replace the equipment.

Frustrated, Lao Liang picked up the attendance sheet, flipped to a page, and heavily marked it with red and blue pencils.

The red crosses next to the names of Workshop 1 and Workshop 2 have now merged into one.

He stubbed out the remaining half of his cigarette in the ashtray, stood up abruptly, put on his faded woolen overcoat, and pushed open the door to walk into the snow-covered factory area.

The cold wind, carrying bits of ice and snow, blew straight into my collar.

Old Liang walked very slowly. The main road was deserted, and the dump trucks used for transporting materials were all parked in the garage like scrap metal.

He knew this place all too well. The row of poplar trees on both sides of the main road were planted by him and the workers when he was the workshop director. He knew exactly how many holes were in the rusty scrap iron barrels outside the boiler room.

Old Liang walked to the entrance of Workshop 2, reached out and touched the mottled, peeling red paint on the door. The rough texture felt like needles pricking his palm.

As long as Lao Liang is still alive, the Hongxing Factory must not collapse.

Just as he turned the corner, Lao Liang spotted Lao Chen sneaking out of the factory gate, hugging the red brick wall.

Old Chen was the only Grade 8 fitter at the Red Star Factory. He had trained more than 50 apprentices. He was responsible for manually grinding and calibrating the most difficult machine blueprints in the factory. He even wore an apron covered in machine oil while eating.

But today, Old Chen wasn't even wearing his work clothes. He was wrapped in a tattered cotton-padded coat and had a bulging canvas bag slung over his shoulder like a thief.

His apprentice, Zhu Zi, followed behind him, carrying two shovels in his hands.

Old Chen swayed his shoulder, and a series of clanging sounds came from the canvas bag—the sound of wire snares and mousetraps colliding.

"Master Chen." Old Liang strode over and blocked his way: "Perfect timing, let's go to the technical department to discuss the blueprints for product iteration."

Old Chen's face flushed red instantly. He lowered his head and stared intently at the snow water on the tips of his leather shoes, his hands gripping the straps of his canvas bag tightly, his knuckles turning white.

Seeing this, the apprentice Zhuzi quickly stepped forward to block Old Chen.

"Director Liang."

Zhu Zi deliberately raised his voice to cover up his guilt: "My master had a family emergency, so I went back with him. I'll go to the workshop right away to get you a leave slip."

Old Chen opened his mouth, his Adam's apple bobbing violently twice, but he couldn't say anything.

He grabbed Zhu Zi's arm, bypassed Lao Liang, and ran faster and faster as if fleeing for his life, until he ran straight out of the factory gate.

Old Liang didn't stop him, but gritted his teeth and kicked open the door to Workshop 2.

The factory, which was over 100 square meters in size, was as cold as an icebox. Dozens of lathes lay there lifelessly, their pulleys hanging motionless in mid-air, and the floor was covered with iron filings that hadn't been cleaned up for a long time.

Only one machine in the far corner of the workshop was still running idle, emitting a piercing buzzing sound.

The workshop director ran over from behind the control panel, sweating profusely, clutching a crumpled piece of paper tightly in his hand.

"Director Liang!"

The workshop foreman handed over the pile of slips of paper, his voice trembling with anxiety: "More than sixty people have run away! Some wrote sick leave or personal leave, and some didn't even leave a leave slip and just disappeared! Line 1 and Line 2 are completely shut down! Now only your cousin's Liu Shuan is left. I just saw him working on bed number three."

Old Liang didn't even take those leave slips; his face darkened, and he turned and headed straight for bed number three.

The spindle of the No. 3 lathe was humming and spinning idly. A pair of wire cutters used for cutting iron wire was casually tossed on the operating table, but there was no sign of Liu Shuan.

Old Liang's face turned ashen. He suddenly turned around and rushed out of the workshop, heading straight for the back wall of the factory area.

At the base of a red brick wall more than two meters high, Liu Shuan was standing on two scrap iron barrels, his hands gripping the top of the wall tightly, his right leg already straddling it.

Old Liang's eyes were bloodshot. He rushed over in two strides, grabbed Liu Shuan's left trouser leg tightly, and pulled it down hard in his anger!

"thump!"

Caught off guard, Liu Shuan fell heavily from the wall onto the snow.

The large bundle of wire sheaths he had just cut with a public vise scattered all over the floor with a clatter.

Old Liang stared at Liu Shuan, his voice as deep as cast iron: "Where are you going!"

Liu Shuan hurriedly scrambled out of the snowdrift, hastily brushing the snow off his tattered cotton trousers, his eyes darting away, not daring to look Lao Liang in the eye.

"Director Liang... there's an urgent matter at home, I need to go back."

"fart!"

Pointing to the scattered wire snares on the ground, Old Liang roared like an enraged old lion, "What urgent matter do you have that requires you to steal scrap from the factory!"

Backed into a corner by the red brick wall, Liu Shuan steeled himself, stiffened his neck, and roared back at the top of his lungs, "Director Liang, I really can't do this anymore! The factory hasn't paid our full wages for six months! Last month I worked myself to the bone and only earned twelve yuan and fifty cents. My elderly parents are running out of money for medicine, how are we going to buy it?!"

He suddenly stretched out his hand, pointing in the direction of Kaoshantun, his voice filled with the madness of someone driven to desperation: "There's a southern boss over there who buys gray squirrel pelts. He pays five yuan and fifty cents per pelt, all in cash! I can set a few traps and catch three gray squirrels in the mountains, which is equivalent to working day and night in the factory for a month and a half!"

Looking at his graying uncle, Liu Shuan wiped the snow from his face and said in a suppressed sob, "I'm sorry, I have to live."

After saying that, Liu Shuan suddenly turned around and stepped back onto the scrap metal barrel.

He gripped the brick seam tightly with both hands, exerted his strength, and without hesitation, climbed over the wall.

The sound of Liu Shuan's footsteps, crunching through the thick snow, could be heard outside the wall, growing fainter and fainter.

Old Liang stood alone at the foot of a two-meter-high red brick wall, the biting wind making the hem of his white woolen overcoat sway.

He stared intently at the few scrap wires on the snow, then suddenly turned around and strode back to the office building through the snow.

He pushed open the office door.

Old Liang walked straight to his desk, grabbed the black crank phone, and swung the crank around so hard it made a whooshing sound.

"Connect to the county light industry bureau," Lao Liang said into the microphone.

The call was connected.

Old Liang gripped the microphone tightly, his knuckles turning a ghastly white from the excessive force.

"I am Lao Liang from Hongxing Machinery Factory."

Old Liang's voice carried a ruthless edge, as if he had nothing to lose: "Someone in Kaoshantun is offering exorbitant prices for raw hides, five yuan and fifty cents a piece. The factory's production lines one and two have completely shut down, and all the workers have fled. I need to see the bureau chief and report this immediately."