Chapter 498: The World's Most Expensive

On the twenty‑eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, the festive atmosphere hadn't yet driven the cold out of the Capital City, but Beijing railway station was already sealed.

The notice posted for the public read "Special‑grade Spring Festival travel material transport," and hundreds of armed police soldiers turned the platform into an iron barrel, so that not even a sparrow could fly in.

No red lanterns hung on the platform, but more than a dozen marching cauldrons were set up. The firewood beneath crackled, and when the lid was lifted, a genuine pork, cabbage and vermicelli stew steamed, with oil droplets swirling in the boiling broth; the aroma drifted with the north wind for up to two li.

Lu Qingshan wore an ordinary grey woolen coat, his hands tucked into the sleeves, while Chen Lao stood beside him.

The old man wasn't in his wheelchair today; he leaned on a cane, his back straight as a rod, and the veins bulged in the hands gripping the cane, betraying a barely contained excitement.

"Qing Shan," Chen Lao exhaled a puff of white breath, staring at the two tracks stretching to the horizon, "if this train arrives safely, our hundred‑year backbone will finally be completely upright."

"Straight enough," Lu Qingshan stamped his frozen feet, "it's just that this batch of 'New Year goods' is a bit pricey—two hundred freight cars of light industrial supplies, plus the foreign‑exchange reserves we've built up over the past six months."

"Expensive? It's worth it!" Chen Lao jabbed the icy shards on the ground with his cane, "These are people, these are breathing atomic bombs, these are fighter‑plane blueprints with legs. Not to mention two hundred freight cars—if they wanted to trade my very bones, I'd lie down immediately for them to weigh me."

Just then, a muffled train whistle sounded from afar.

A green‑painted train, like a beast emerging from Siberia's snowstorm, covered in frost, huffed and puffed as it entered the station.

None of the train windows had curtains drawn.

Lu Qingshan squinted. Behind the glass, there were no goods, only faces.

One after another, high‑nasaled, deep‑eyed faces pressed against the glass, their eyes filled with terror, bewilderment, and the blank stare of the famished. They stared at the fully armed soldiers outside; some instinctively recoiled, thinking they were back in some labor camp.

When the train came to a halt, the hiss of the pressure valve sounded like a long sigh.

The train doors swung open with a clank.

No one moved.

The carriage was deathly silent until the domineering aroma of pork stew with vermicelli barged in forcefully.

That scent, for these Soviet elites who had subsisted on black bread for half a year and even had to fight for potatoes, was more effective than a gospel from God.

The first to step down was a female engineer cradling a child. She was wrapped in a men's old military coat; her foot gave way, and she tumbled into a gap beneath the platform.

Lu Qingshan's eyes were sharp and his hands quick; he stepped forward and, with one hand, steadied her.

The woman was as light as a sheet of paper.

The child in her arms, about three or four years old, let out a wail as if to cry, but had no strength, only a hoarse howl.

Lu Qingshan pulled a large White Rabbit milk candy from his pocket, unwrapped one, and shoved it straight into the child's mouth.

The sweetness melted on the tongue, the child's cries stopped abruptly, and its eyes widened to the point of bulging.

"Eat," Lu Qingshan said softly in Russian, "when you get here, you'll be full."

The woman looked at Lu Qingshan, then at the distant big cauldron, and tears streamed down in an instant.

The scene was caught by a bald old man getting off the train behind them.

He was the deputy chief designer at the Sukhoi Design Bureau, Peterov. The old man had been stubborn all his life; when he boarded in Moscow, he muttered that this was treason.

But now, as he stared at the steaming cauldron, his Adam's apple bobbed, and his pride crumbled before the pork's aroma, leaving no residue.

"Everyone!" Lu Qingshan shouted, waving toward the rows of red‑flag limousines and military trucks behind him, "first drink the soup, warm yourselves, then board!"

Chen Lao held a list, the flashlight beam illuminating the paper.

"Yuri Alekseyev, fluid‑mechanics luminary…"

"Igor Kulchatov, nuclear‑physics expert…"

"Andrei Tupolev, chief of the design bureau's materials division…"

Each time he read a name, Chen Lao's hand trembled.

"We've become rich… this time we're truly rich…" the old man muttered to himself, a tear glistening at the corner of his eye, "those people were once guarded by the Soviet Union like precious jewels, now they're all ours."

The banquet hall of the State Guesthouse was temporarily turned into a large canteen.

There was no delicate plating, just practicality.

On the tables piled White Flour mantou like small mountains, and a basin held braised pork, its oil a bright scarlet, fatty yet not greasy.

These top minds, whose foot‑stomps in their fields could shake the West three times over, were now all buried in their bowls. No one spoke; only the sounds of chewing and swallowing—humanity's most primal instinct.

Peterov clutched two mantou in his hand, while his bowl in front was piled high with braised pork.

He took big bites, the fatty oil running down his mouth corners.

As he ate, the old man suddenly stopped.

He stared at the White Flour mantou as if at a priceless treasure, then with a sudden "Wow," he burst into a wailing sob.

That cry was like a floodgate opening.

Throughout the canteen, hundreds of people—some crying while chewing meat, others weeping while clutching mantou.

It was despair over a collapsed empire, sorrow for a half‑lifetime's blood and sweat wasted, and a venting of the dignity rediscovered in this foreign land.

Lu Qingshan stood on the platform, offering no counsel, quietly waiting for them to finish crying.

When the sobbing faded, he tapped the microphone.

"I know what you're afraid of."

Lu Qingshan spoke fluent Russian, his voice reaching every corner.

"You're afraid this is the last dinner, that after this meal you'll have to go mining coal, that the KGB is watching your every word and deed here."

The audience fell silent, hundreds of bloodshot eyes fixed on him.

"My name is Lu Qingshan, I'm a businessman."

Lu Qingshan unbuttoned his coat, revealing a Zhongshan suit underneath.

"Here, there is no KGB, no hunger. As long as what's in your minds remains, I'll give you the best labs, ample funding, and…"

He pointed at the braised pork on the table.

"Meat that never runs out."

"Here, you are not refugees, but teachers, honored guests."

As soon as he finished speaking, Lin Yueqiang hunched over and ran over, whispering into Lu Qingshan's ear: "Brother‑in‑law, there are rats outside. A reporter from America's Time Magazine somehow caught the scent, has set up long guns and short cannons near the West Gate, claiming they want to expose the truth of our 'sheltering Soviet refugees, stealing technology'."

Lu Qingshan gave a cold snort: "These foreign devils have noses sharper than a dog's."

"Drive them away?" Lin Yueqiang asked.

"What for? They came all this way; we need to let them take some pictures to bring back as proof."

Lu Qingshan took out a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and drew a deep breath.

"Go, find a few security brothers with similar builds, put on the ragged coats those experts took off, and loiter around the West Gate twice. Remember, act miserable, like fleeing beggars."

"What about the real experts?"

"Take the underground passage. The curtains of the Red Flag cars are drawn tight; send them straight to the West Mountain Base. Tell General Zhang, if even a single hair is missing from this group, I'll be furious with him."

"Understood!" Lin Yueqiang grinned, turned, and ran.

Half an hour later, several dozen Red Flag sedans with anti-peeping film quietly slipped out of the side gate of the State Guest House, merging into the night of the Capital City.

Meanwhile, at the West Gate, several foreign journalists, as if they'd found a treasure, snapped a few photos of "Soviet refugees in tattered clothes," happily returned to write their articles, with the headline likely being "Refugee Camp in the Ancient Eastern Nation."

In the car, Lu Qingshan's phone rang.

It was Saleman.

"Lu! My friend!" Saleman's voice sounded a bit painful but also excited, "Oil prices have already dropped below 8 US dollars. The Soviets can't hold out; I just got word they've begun secretly selling their gold reserves in London for foreign exchange."

"As expected." Lu Qingshan watched the streetlights flash by outside the window, "Without money to buy grain, they can only sell their ancestral property."

"So what about us…"

"Get ready with cash." Lu Qingshan said into the phone, his tone as if discussing buying cabbage at the market, "That's several hundred tons of gold, bars stamped with the Soviet emblem. If we don't take them over, are we going to let those Rothschild people pick up the bargain?"

"Tomorrow morning, I'll have someone wait at the London Exchange. No matter how much they dump, as long as the price is below market by twenty percent, we'll buy it all."

"Lu, you're trying to suck them dry of their last drop of blood." Saleman lamented.

"The blood's already flowing; better to catch it in a basin than let it spill on the ground and waste it." Lu Qingshan hung up the phone and tossed the handset aside.

Returning to Fuqiang Hutong, it was already deep night.

The hutong was quiet, only the yellowish glow of the streetlights.

Pushing open the courtyard gate, the courtyard was full of lit red lanterns, casting a red glow over the snow.

"Dad!"

Lu Xiaoxue, wearing a red little cotton jacket, came rushing out like a New Year's doll and flung herself into Lu Qingshan's arms.

"Why aren't you asleep yet?" Lu Qingshan scooped up his daughter, rubbing his stubble against her cheek.

"Waiting for Dad to put up the spring couplets!" Lu Xiaoxue giggled, still holding a piece of paper with the character for blessing.

Lin Yue'e stood at the doorway of the main hall, smiling as she watched the two of them frolic, holding a plate of dumplings fresh from the pot.

"Wash up and eat; I've saved you some pork and scallion dumplings."

Lu Qingshan looked at his daughter's rosy cheeks, then at this cozy little courtyard.

A few hours earlier, those scientists who had once stood at the pinnacle of the world were wailing loudly over two steamed buns made of white flour.

That is the taste of a country destroyed and a family ruined.

He tightened his hold on his daughter's arm.

This prosperous age was bought with money, seized by tactics, and forged with blades.

No matter how floodwaters rage outside, this home, this country, Lu Qingshan has sworn to guard.

"Come on, let's put up the spring couplets!" Lu Qingshan lifted his daughter over his head, "This year our family will put up the biggest blessing character!"

The laughter in the courtyard warmed the heart more than that plate of braised pork.

And at the distant West Mountain Base, the lights were blazing.

Those Soviet experts, having eaten their fill, could hardly wait to stand before the drafting boards.

Huaxia's industrial engine, in the freezing night of the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, was fed the highest-grade fuel, its roar about to echo through the heavens.