Chapter 113: The Sea of Wandering 6
Long hours of highly focused work had caused Zhuang Ningyu’s brain “CPU” to overheat a bit. The heavy curtains dutifully simulated a dark night within the suite. Overcome by drowsiness, he lay flat and lazy on the hotel’s cloud-soft bed, closing his eyes to try and zone out for a moment. However, line after line of program code still forcibly refreshed in his mind, lights flashing, and his ears seemed to still hear the static zzzt of the microphone in the conference room. Five minutes later, he opened his eyes listlessly, thinking that since he couldn’t sleep anyway, he might as well go to the restaurant for breakfast first. But just as he propped himself up, before he could climb out, he was heavily pressed back down by Yi Ke, who had just come out of the bathroom.
“Sleep, be good.”
He pressed down on Zhuang Ningyu just like that, like a large, heavy cotton quilt. The powerful sense of envelopment created a safe space completely isolated from the outside world. His tense nerves were soothed, and a calmness as gentle as warm water instantly spread from his limbs to his heart. His chaotic mind returned to peace. Click—the CPU power cord was unplugged, and Zhuang Ningyu fell asleep in almost a second.
The air was quiet, leaving only the steady sound of their breathing. Three hours later, just as the bedside digital clock jumped to 10:00:00, the alarm on Zhuang Ningyu’s phone rang beep-beep-beep. Yi Ke was faster, silencing it first, then hugging the yawning person back into his arms, whispering in his ear: “Be good, sleep for another half hour.”
So Zhuang Ningyu really slept for another half hour. The warm duvet, the slightly cool air conditioning, and the faint scent on Yi Ke’s body combined to construct an extremely safe and comfortable sleeping environment for him. Upon waking, he stretched vigorously, then reluctantly crawled back into Yi Ke’s arms.
“Want to have brunch at the hotel?” Yi Ke looked down and asked.
Just grab two buns from the unit cafeteria, Zhuang Ningyu thought. He currently had no demands for food and not much appetite. After lazily staying in bed for a symbolic moment, he sat up groggily, drank half a bottle of water, handed the remaining half to Yi Ke, and prepared to lift the quilt and get out of bed.
But he was hugged back by the waist. Yi Ke arched his back, pressing one bent knee onto him, biting his lip to lecture: “Morning kiss.”
His voice was mumbled, carrying a hint of sugary coquettishness. Zhuang Ningyu wrapped his arms around Yi Ke’s shoulders and very cooperatively completed the ritualistic sense of the honeymoon phase.
At the same time, he conducted a profound self-reflection on his major romantic error of “forgetting the morning kiss,” indicating that he would take this opportunity to deeply analyze the root cause, seriously learn the lesson, and resolutely prevent similar problems from happening again.
Yi Ke looked at the words typed on his phone, brushing out a mouth full of white foam: “That’s it?”
Otherwise? Should I bring two catties of Maotai and choose an auspicious day to visit and apologize? Zhuang Ningyu put the phone back in his pocket, reached out to pat his shoulder—at worst, I’ll treat you to something good for lunch.
The dining location was the unit cafeteria. Conditions were limited; no matter how good, it wouldn’t be Brittany blue lobster. Zhuang Ningyu circled around with his tray and finally picked a steamer basket of crab meat soup dumplings priced as high as 28 yuan for him.
Love-struck Little Yi thought: Wifey eats a 1.5 yuan mushroom and vegetable bun himself but buys me a 28 yuan crab meat bun. He loves me!
Zhuang Ningyu also brought over two bowls of duck blood vermicelli soup and some side dishes. Before they could take two bites, colleagues started trickling in to forage. A long queue quickly formed at the bun stall, all waiting for the crab meat soup dumplings. Zhuang Ningyu looked up and lamented, Didn’t expect this new dish to be so popular.
But actually—
Colleagues thought: How delicious must these buns be to make the wealthy Little Yi, who has eaten at top restaurants everywhere, unable to resist posting a passionate nine-grid photo series captioned “Super Delicious [Kiss][Kiss][Kiss]”? Let us taste them too!
Detailed property management information about Yuanbao Building had been retrieved and categorized. Zhuang Ningyu quickly scanned it on the computer before the meeting. The owner’s name was Ouyang Lei, while the property management was registered under his wife’s name—a husband and wife team. Because the tenant mix in Yuanbao Building was quite complex, Ouyang Lei and his wife’s social connections were correspondingly complex, commonly known as having “friends in both the underworld and the lawful world.” The elevators in Yuanbao Building were “Wenyouli” brand—not a big name, without its own production line. It was an assembly and rebranding operation in Jincheng years ago that went bankrupt within two years.
The elevator factory went bankrupt, but the elevators still needed maintenance, so the property management signed a new contract with a third-party company possessing relevant qualifications called “Wenhengda Elevator Services.”
“The maintenance person responsible for the elevators in Yuanbao Building is named Zhang Changgang, a senior employee at Wenhengda, over forty years old. Xiao Song went to Yuanbao Building this morning and confirmed that the emergency contact number posted in the elevator is his personal number.” In the conference room, the presenter opened the PPT, displaying an honest-looking middle-aged man on the screen. “His base salary is around four thousand yuan a month. Performance pay is calculated based on the number of elevators maintained. If he works diligently, his monthly income generally exceeds ten thousand, but Zhang Changgang’s workload isn’t saturated. According to national regulations, maintenance information for every elevator must be filed with the Market Supervision Bureau. We just checked; in the documents submitted by Wenhengda, Zhang Changgang is responsible for the fewest maintenance areas.”
But he was the richest among all his colleagues. His wife was a housewife, and both children were in school. Logically, such a family would struggle to be well-off relying solely on the husband’s monthly salary of four or five thousand yuan. The photos in the PPT kept changing: photos of Zhang Changgang’s wife and children traveling, various gold jewelry worn by his wife, expensive tutoring classes for the children… Almost without calculation, one could deduce that Zhang Changgang 100% had “extra income.”
“Also this.” The presenter continued pointing at the screen. “About six years ago, there was a period when the mayor’s mailbox received many complaint letters concentrated on Elevator No. 1 of Yuanbao Building, which is the odd-floor elevator currently in question. ‘Always broken, frequently black-screen strikes, buttons unresponsive.’ For a building with over thirty floors, many shops, many customers, and few elevators, daily vertical transit was already a problem. The elevator was also ‘shoddy goods of terrible quality.’ Tenants went to property management requesting replacement; property management ignored them, so they asked the government to intervene.”
Of course, the government had to intervene. After interviewing the property management of Yuanbao Building a few times, the problem was finally resolved satisfactorily—although not replaced with a new one, it was fixed and never went on strike again, muddling through till now.
Zhuang Ningyu shook his head gently. Yi Ke said, “A black screen doesn’t necessarily mean the elevator is broken. There’s a high probability it was ‘transporting goods’ from the 31st floor to Basement 4, so access for outsiders was temporarily disabled. Although this time is short, usually only a few minutes, there are people waiting for elevators at Yuanbao Building all the time. They probably also have a tenant group chat to share information. One person says something, another adds to it, and the impression that ‘the elevator is always broken’ easily solidifies.”
So, to solve this problem, the property management chose to “disable outsider access permissions but not the LCD screen, using the ‘Full’ sign to rationalize the elevator not opening its doors all the way down.” But if during this time, the LCD screen continued to change at the speed of 4 seconds per floor, then during the process of the elevator descending from B3 to B4—opening doors, loading/unloading, closing doors—and ascending from B4 back to B3, people waiting at B3 would find that after the elevator arrived at their floor, they had to wait for fully thirty-plus seconds before the doors opened.
Normal elevators obviously wouldn’t open doors like this. If tenants encountered this a few times, the supervision bureau would likely summon property management again to urge elevator replacement. So they ultimately chose to adjust the display speed of the LCD screen to 5 seconds per floor. A mere 1 second difference wouldn’t be noticed by people waiting for the elevator, but the actual users of the elevator could utilize the advantage of Yuanbao Building’s many floors to accumulate a total of 33 one-second intervals.
“That’s stealing time too efficiently.” Colleagues clicked their tongues. “No one discovered it for so many years.”
Zhuang Ningyu typed and asked: What is under Yuanbao Building?
“According to government blueprints, below Yuanbao Building are extremely old air raid shelter facilities, abandoned forty years ago. The entrances were sealed tight with cement. As for where these entrances are, the investigation team is currently searching through the archives,” the presenter said. “Furthermore, because Zhao Kai explicitly told the taxi driver he was going to Yuanbao Building, if we don’t investigate at all, it would seem suspicious. So this morning, Director Huo arranged for people to talk to tenants in the building. Additionally, District Head Sun will also interview the building’s property management, scheduled for 5 PM today.”
“How is Zhao Kai doing?” Yi Ke asked.
“Surprisingly, he might really be saved,” the presenter said. “Dean Pei of Andao Medical recommended a new drug developed by his senior fellow apprentice, said to have excellent effects on blood purification. Zhao Kai’s condition has stabilized somewhat.”
Hearing this, everyone present breathed a sigh of relief.
Zhuang Ningyu planned to drop by and see Zhao Kai later. These past few days, he had to go to the Medical Center daily to check his “high-voltage sequelae.” Even though these “sequelae” were actually positive, Director Wang ignored that—positive or negative, you had to come.
The two made do with dinner in the car again. Zhuang Ningyu stuffed a small round biscuit into Yi Ke’s mouth. Yi Ke chewed twice, feeling the taste wasn’t familiar, so he immediately emphasized: “It’s okay, wifey, I can help you eat the filling. You don’t have to force yourself to eat jam for me. Hubby can resolve everything you don’t like. Come, come, feed me another one, ah—”
After waiting for a long time with nothing landing in his mouth, he glanced suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. Oh, none of them have filling.
Zhuang Ningyu hugged his small biscuits and silently scooted to the right in disdain.
Yi Ke’s maiden heart shattered on the spot, screaming in protest: “Wifey, wifey, come sit over here quickly!”
Zhuang Ningyu remained unmoved.
Yi Ke: “Wifey, wifey, wifey—”
Between pulling out the noise-canceling earplugs he bought for a huge sum and “just scooting left a bit,” Zhuang Ningyu chose to lift his butt symbolically. Yi Ke, overjoyed, grabbed his hand and placed them together on the steering wheel.
Zhuang Ningyu pointed to the camera on the traffic light: Captured by Skynet, your 200 yuan and 3 points are gone.
Yi Ke: “Doesn’t matter!”
Stopped at a red light, Zhuang Ningyu thrust his phone in front of his face—the screen showed the traffic police brigade, headline “Our City’s Traffic Police Enable ‘Skynet’ to Publicly Expose Traffic Violations, Ultra-HD Images Capture Violation Moments Directly”!
It had to be said, Shudao Group’s cameras were indeed quite high-definition. Through the front windshield, the face of every unlucky violating driver looked exceptionally clear and identifiable. After seeing it, Yi Ke indeed let go and began to focus intently on driving when the light turned green. Zhuang Ningyu patted him with satisfaction and continued eating biscuits. He had many acquaintances in the traffic police team; he couldn’t afford to lose face like that.
But at the next red light intersection, Yi Ke pulled the handbrake, opened the center console box, fished out a bottle of hair spray, pulled down the vanity mirror above the driver’s seat, and immediately began grooming himself against the clock, determined to look earth-shatteringly handsome when captured by Skynet!
Zhuang Ningyu watched, dumbfounded.
Ninety seconds later, the red light ended. Yi Ke tossed the spray back dashingly, adjusted his seatbelt, grabbed his wife’s hand again, and pressed it back onto the steering wheel with satisfaction. Shoot away! Shoot it according to wedding photo specifications!
This operation exceeded Zhuang Ningyu’s cognitive range. He couldn’t squeeze out a word for a long time. Although he truly couldn’t speak right now, unable to speak and not knowing what to say were two completely different matters. It was just too speechless. He even forgot to chew his delicious egg yolk-flavored biscuit. After a long while, he finally dug out a thought from his messy mind—Need to remind him when we get back that spray cans can’t be left in the car in summer; they’ll explode.
Half an hour later, the vehicle stopped steadily at the Medical Center. Getting out, they happened to run into Pei Yuan. Pei Yuan had been abroad recently and just returned a few days ago, not having had time to gather with friends yet. Seeing their joined hands, he raised an eyebrow slightly and smiled: “Haven’t said congratulations in person yet.”
“It’s fine, just double the red packet when we get married later,” Yi Ke said easily. “And sponsor eight thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight beautiful, pure lilies for our wedding while you’re at it.”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, pointing to his throat. Pei Yuan understood: “I just saw the examination report at Director Wang’s. Nothing serious. Your recovery ability is strong. As long as you cooperate with treatment and practice scientifically, your voice will recover quickly. As for the issue of hypervigilance, it mainly stems from a lack of security, and the side effects of sedatives have reinforced this point. Find time to come see me another day; we can sit down and talk slowly.”
Zhuang Ningyu nodded. Pei Yuan had an international conference to attend, so the three didn’t chat much. While waiting for the elevator, Zhuang Ningyu habitually squeezed Yi Ke’s fingers. before he could squeeze twice, the other suddenly pulled back. His palm was empty, so he immediately turned to look.
Yi Ke instantly stuffed his hand back into place. Not leaving, not leaving. You squeeze, you squeeze.
