Volume One, Chapter 16: You Take Responsibility

The air in the workshop grew thick and heavy.

Shen Qingyun paced back and forth around the J-5 like a wild beast trapped in a cage, his footsteps pounding against the concrete floor with sharp thuds. His fingers traced aimless patterns in the air as he muttered a string of technical terms incomprehensible to outsiders.

“No! None of this will do!” He abruptly stopped and turned to Du Yuze. “The hydraulic system needs to withstand instantaneous pressure beyond its design limits. The original seals are nothing but junk! Scrap metal!”

Pang Qingquan squatted nearby, smoking silently. “We gave you the best fluororubber seals the factory could find. What more do you want?”

“Fluororubber?” Shen Qingyun scoffed as if hearing the biggest joke in the world. “Ordinary fluororubber creeps under high pressure! What I need are specialty seals—high-pressure resistant, temperature-stable, infused with graphite and fiberglass! Do you have any of those?!”

He enunciated each word sharply, his bloodshot eyes locking onto Pang Qingquan.

Silence reigned in the workshop.

Li Guodong muttered quietly, “Those things… are all imported. Where are we supposed to get them?”

“I don’t care where you get them!” Shen Qingyun kicked a nearby toolbox with a harsh clang. “Without these, all modifications are worthless! The plane will be a flying coffin!”

After saying this, he flung himself into a chair, burying his hands in his disheveled hair, speechless. The atmosphere of despair hung over the workshop like damp cold fog.

Du Yuze had remained silent. He approached Pang Qingquan.

“Old Pang, you used to have some wild connections. Do you have a lead?”

Pang Qingquan looked up, smoke curling from his nostrils. “I do have one... but that guy is a merciless shark.”

“What’s his name?”

“Old Jin.” Pang Qingquan stubbed out his cigarette. “Deals in shady business. Eight out of ten things on the black market from him are fakes. And his prices and heart are both black as night.”

“We don’t have time,” Du Yuze said. “Contact him. Tonight.”

Pang Qingquan glanced at Du Yuze, then at the motionless, zombie-like Shen Qingyun in the corner, and finally grit his teeth.

“Alright. But if anything goes wrong, you take the blame.”

Late at night, on the outskirts of the city.

An abandoned concrete prefab warehouse lay like a beast collapsed in a wasteland overgrown with wild grass. The moonlight cast a ghostly silver sheen on the crumbling walls.

Pang Qingquan drove an old Liberation truck, parking several dozen meters from the warehouse. He turned off the engine and the truck’s cab plunged into darkness and silence.

“This is the place,” Pang Qingquan’s voice was tense. “Old Jin is paranoid; he never lets vehicles get close. We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”

Du Yuze opened the door, and a cold wind carrying the scent of earth and rust blew inside.

“Did you bring the money?” Pang Qingquan asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you bring the gear?”

“Yes.” Du Yuze patted the bulge at his waist.

Pang Qingquan didn’t ask further. The two of them walked single file, stepping on gravel and weeds toward the dark entrance of the warehouse. There was no door, only a huge black hole like the open mouth of a monster.

As they reached the entrance, a voice emerged from the darkness.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Old Pang.” Pang Qingquan stopped. “Old Jin, where’s the goods?”

A rustling sound came from the shadows, then a short, stout figure stepped out. He carried an oil lamp, its dim light casting flickering shadows across his fleshy, pockmarked face.

He was Old Jin.

Old Jin wore a merchant’s forced smile. He set the lamp down on a concrete block and patted a heavy wooden crate beside him.

“Old Pang, long time no see. What business are you bringing me this time?”

“Cut the crap,” Pang Qingquan snapped impatiently. “Show me the goods.”

Old Jin chuckled and pried open the crate with a crowbar. Inside, thick oilcloth covered rows of neatly stacked black sealing rings, each gleaming with an oily sheen.

“Look at these, genuine military-grade seals. Fluororubber base, mixed with fiberglass and molybdenum disulfide. They can withstand two hundred atmospheres, from minus fifty to two hundred fifty degrees Celsius. Performance is guaranteed.” Old Jin tossed one playfully in his hand.

Pang Qingquan picked one up, rubbed it between his fingers, then sniffed it. He couldn’t tell much.

“How much?”

Old Jin held up five thick, short fingers.

Pang Qingquan’s temper flared instantly. “Five thousand? Old Jin, are you out of your mind? Why don’t you just go rob a bank!”

“Now, now, Old Pang, don’t be rude,” Old Jin said slowly, replacing the seals. “Times are tight. I’m risking my neck to get these for you. That price isn’t negotiable. Take it or leave it.”

“You…” Pang Qingquan was too angry to speak.

Du Yuze had stood silently beside them all along. He stepped forward, took a seal from the crate, and held it out in his palm.

[System scan initiated…]

[Target: Composite sealing ring.]

[Analyzing composition…]

[Warning: Main material detected as nitrile rubber, fiberglass content below 0.1%, no molybdenum disulfide detected. Surface coating is graphite powder, not an additive. Overall performance assessment: Inferior counterfeit. Pressure resistance below 40 atmospheres, rapidly ages and cracks at high temperatures.]

Du Yuze returned the seal to the crate.

He looked up at Old Jin.

“Old Jin, business requires honesty.”

Old Jin’s smile remained fixed. “Young man, when have I ever been dishonest in business?”

“This batch costs less than twenty cents each to produce,” Du Yuze said calmly. “You have some small workshop mold these, then roll them in graphite powder, and dare to sell them for five thousand as military-grade?”

The air froze instantly.

Pang Qingquan was stunned, looking at Du Yuze as if he spoke another language.

Old Jin’s smile stiffened.

“You’re… talking nonsense. Nitrile rubber? Never heard of it!”

“Is that so?” Du Yuze picked up another seal. “This fake, installed on a hydraulic piston, can’t even handle forty atmospheres, let alone two hundred. After fifty cycles of movement, it’s guaranteed to leak pressure. If installed on an aircraft’s landing gear…”

Du Yuze paused and stepped closer.

“Do you want all of us to die crashing on the runway?”

Sweat beaded on Old Jin’s forehead. The lamp light made his face paler than the moonlight. He tried to speak but his throat felt clogged. Every word the young man spoke was like a precise scalpel peeling away his false façade, exposing his rotten core.

“Who… who are you really?” Old Jin’s voice trembled.

“Five hundred,” Du Yuze said. “Show me the real goods. Or tomorrow morning, this crate and your name will be on the desk of the inspection squad.”

Old Jin staggered, looking at Du Yuze with a face as if he’d seen a ghost. He was utterly terrified.

He shakily retreated deeper into the warehouse’s darkness, fumbling about before dragging out a much smaller iron box.

“The goods… are here…”

Du Yuze opened the iron box. Inside lay only twenty sealing rings, resting quietly on velvet cloth, darker in color and entirely different in texture.

He tossed down a stack of money and closed the box.

“Let’s go.”

The Liberation truck roared to life and bounced along the rutted dirt road. Pang Qingquan gripped the steering wheel tightly, speechless. From the rearview mirror, he kept glancing at Du Yuze in the passenger seat as if seeing a stranger.

Everything that had just happened was beyond his understanding.

Just as the truck neared the highway turnoff, two blinding beams shot across from a distance, locking onto their vehicle.

A military-green jeep sped swiftly from the road’s far end.

“Damn!” Pang Qingquan cursed quietly. “It’s a patrol! Our truck has no license plate—we’re done if they stop us!”

He instinctively moved to brake.

“Don’t stop! Turn off the lights! Turn right immediately!” Du Yuze’s voice was chillingly calm.

“The right leads to the junkyard! It’s a dead end!” Pang Qingquan shouted.

“Trust me!”

Pang Qingquan’s mind went blank, but his hands jerked the wheel sharply. The truck plunged off the roadside embankment into the blackness of the junkyard.

Behind them, the jeep followed, its headlights like twin swords wildly sweeping through heaps of steel scrap.

“They’re catching up! We can’t lose them!” Pang Qingquan shouted in despair.

“Fifty meters ahead, turn left, through that gap between the steel plates!” Du Yuze commanded.

Trusting his instincts, Pang Qingquan swerved at the last moment, the truck barely scraping past the rusted steel sheets.

“Slow down! Drainage ditch ahead!”

“Right! Circle around the crane base!”

Following Du Yuze’s unyielding orders, Pang Qingquan moved the truck like a puppet on strings. What he had thought a death trap—the junkyard—was a vivid map in Du Yuze’s mind. Every turn, every obstacle, had been anticipated.

The jeep obviously lacked this “map.” After a while, a loud crash echoed as it struck something. The headlights flickered and then fell behind.

The truck emerged from the junkyard’s other side onto a forgotten country lane.

Pang Qingquan stopped the vehicle, drenched in cold sweat, breathing heavily with his head on the wheel.

Du Yuze opened the iron box and, by faint moonlight, examined the twenty small seals within.

He closed the box, his voice devoid of emotion.

“Let’s go. Engineer Shen is still waiting.”