Chapter 33: New Year's Eve Upheaval, Part 2

This was a filthy Harrier hound, missing half an ear from its time wandering the streets. Seeing Cao Chuan walk over, the dog crawled out from under a bus-stop bench and stared at him warily, as if ready to bolt the next moment.

Cao Chuan slowly crouched down, used the streetlight to open the plastic bag in his hand, and dumped the sausages inside onto the ground in front of him.

Man and dog faced off for two minutes before the dog finally couldn't resist the sweet, savory aroma. It slowly walked over, lowered its head, and began gnawing at the sausages.

"Eat up, eat up. Once you're full, I'll take you on the road."

Cao Chuan reached out and stroked the dog's filthy fur, murmuring to himself.

Once the meat on the ground had been completely devoured, the dog seemed to have accepted its new master, wagging its tail and following him as he climbed into the Land Rover.

Back at Minglai Pavilion, Cao Chuan turned on the shower and gave the dog a quick, rough bath, then took out a towel to dry it off. He let it happily scamper after him wherever he went, then fished out a quartz watch from the Ring, found a length of rope from downstairs, and brought the dog over to the refrigerator, whose door stood wide open.

By now, the refrigerator had long since returned to room temperature. Cao Chuan reached out, picked up the dog, and said to it: "Brother, you absolutely have to hang in there!" After speaking, he synchronized the quartz watch to the second with the watch on his own wrist, then stuffed both the dog and the quartz watch into the refrigerator. From the outside, he tied the refrigerator door shut with the rope, and with a wave of his hand, stored the refrigerator inside the Ring.

After this, he faced the myriad gods and Buddhas and muttered a few prayers. Faintly, one could even hear such nonsensical prayers as "starting out with one man and one dog." The next moment, he was already back in the rear garden of Tangzhuang.

The weed-choked garden under the moonlight was utterly deserted, with only the rustle of the wind through the old locust tree. Through the gate of the Back Residence, he could faintly hear the sounds of toasting and urging to drink coming from the front courtyard. At this moment, by the moonlight, Cao Chuan reached out with trembling hands, untied the rope, and pulled open the refrigerator door.

Before he could even reach inside to feel around, a dark shadow had already leapt out and burrowed into his arms.

Feeling the dog's warm body heat and its wet tongue, Cao Chuan then fished the quartz watch out of the refrigerator and looked at it. The watch had actually gained three extra minutes inside the refrigerator!

In that moment, he understood everything. A soft "Oh" escaped him, and then, as if all the bones had been pulled from his body, he slowly lay back onto the weed-covered ground.

"How could I be this stupid?" The man pounded his forehead, muttering to himself.

If he hadn't happened to see the astronauts on TV today and then made the connection to the problem of sealed breathing, who knew how much longer it would have taken him to figure it out.

Actually, on the very first day after crossing back, he had tested this problem. That dog back then had indeed kicked the bucket.

That was precisely the issue. Although he himself felt the teleportation was instantaneous, that moment was actually a full three minutes long. The space inside the Ring was a vacuum — no wonder that first dog hadn't survived. Suffocating for three minutes, how could it not croak?

But soon after, he let it go. He couldn't entirely blame himself. What had his state of mind been back then? Freshly returned from the Ming Dynasty, emotionally stirred, his head full of Currency, Bandits, and Salted Fish turning their fortunes around. To have even thought of finding a dog to test it was already pretty good. A person shouldn't be too hard on themselves.

Afterwards, perhaps it was a subconscious reverence for the Ring, or maybe his attention was later completely diverted by the endless stacks of Currency. In any case, he had never thought about it again from that angle, which had led to today's little episode.

Thinking this far, he finally noticed the ground was a bit cold. So he got up, stuffed the dog into the freezer, returned to Minglai Pavilion, put the freezer back in its original spot, and while cleaning up the drinks scattered all over the floor, began to mull things over in his mind.

Generally speaking, his long-standing and firmly executed guiding principle — to cultivate a powerful but hidden, small-scale Power Base to secure his trade between the two dimensions — would probably have to be revised starting tonight.

What the next step should be, he needed to carefully consider over the next couple of days. He was well aware that bringing even one person over from the modern world would herald earth-shattering changes for the world on the other side. Of course, the premise was that the Ring actually had this function.

But he still had confidence on this point. If a dog could be brought over, it stood to reason a person couldn't be worse off than a dog, right?

Early the next morning, Li Douzhan was woken up by a certain someone's Phone Call. In a fit of exasperation, he returned to Minglai Pavilion. As soon as he arrived, Cao Chuan left behind the dog, now named "Half Ear," and swaggered off amidst the man's cursing.

He took a cab back to Cuiyuan District, got into the Land Rover, and drove straight to the outskirts of the city. Before long, he saw his destination for this trip — Zhengxin Panel. This shop, which he had found online, specialized in all kinds of refrigerated truck compartments.

He went inside and took a look around. Seeing Stack after Stack of panels, he pointed at a sample vehicle and asked, "How's the seal on these box panels?"

It was the New Year holiday and the salesgirls were all on vacation, so the one accompanying him on the tour was the boss himself. Hearing the customer's question, he hurriedly introduced: "This box body, we modeled it after German Kogel technology. It's wet-process panel fabrication, the middle polyester layer is vacuum-extracted, and there aren't any metal parts in the box panels. The air-leakage and heat-dissipation standards easily surpass the national standard. Sealed, absolutely sealed."

Cao Chuan nodded repeatedly from the side. Once the Factory Manager had finished his foaming-at-the-mouth introduction, he laid out his own conditions: "Side Length 2.8 Meters, a cube-shaped box, needs one door. As for the rest — refrigeration unit interfaces and the like — none of that. Just a purely sealed box. Can you do it?"

The Factory Manager said: "That kind is actually the least difficult. It's just that we don't have this Specification, so it'll have to be custom-made. The price will be a bit higher."

Cao Chuan said: "Make it rush order. I need it now. Money is no object."

Dusk.

Standing in his own garage in Cuiyuan District, Cao Chuan circled the newly custom-made cargo compartment before him with Satisfaction.

After seeing the bright red Currency, the boss had personally taken charge, and before long, the finished product was ready.

Cao Chuan opened the compartment door, leaned against the Smooth box wall, and slowly sat down, beginning to mutter to himself: "The Space Station is ready. The problem is, where the hell am I supposed to find the astronauts?"

Last night, he had already thought everything through completely.

People — he absolutely had to bring some over.

Previously, the reason he left a primitive, backward world untouched and un-reformed was because he was just one person. It was impossible for him to be commanding the landscape in a board meeting in the morning and then cross over in the afternoon to Command the Natives in rebellion.

A person unwilling to invest time and energy shouldn't bother playing at some grand nation-building enterprise — it won't work. He was very clear on this point.

From today onward, the situation was completely different.

Bring over a bunch of frustrated, unappreciated modern people, and without him needing to incite them, these people would naturally kill officials, harm magistrates, raise the Banner in revolt, fist-fight so-and-so, kick Foot-binding, AK versus Natives — high difficulty, high Satisfaction, something everyone enjoys.

As for his own side, he wasn't worried in the slightest. No matter how much these people thrashed about, they could never be free of this Old Man's logistical support. In short, in the future, his status as a founding father was assured. Emperor would also be fine, the figurehead kind would do — he didn't mind.