Chapter 588: Destroying Equipment

In Xie Guafu's room, Xu Damao had just drifted off into a daze when he felt a shove on his shoulder.

He rolled over and mumbled, "Stop it," but was immediately pulled into an embrace by Xie Guafu, who held him as if he were a child.

Xu Damao woke up then, and just as he was about to speak, he felt a chill on his neck—her tears were dripping down.

"Damao, I really can't go on living..."

Xie Guafu's voice was low, and she sobbed with hiccups, her body trembling, "If you don't help me, I, I will have to marry Accountant Wang from the village... From now on, we won't be able to see each other anymore!"

Xu Damao gave a start and became fully awake: "Lao Wang? He's nearly fifty! You're only in your early twenties, and you'd marry him?"

"Then what can I do?" Xie Guafu wiped away her tears, "I have a child to raise, I earn three work points a day, and with the little grain distributed at the end of the year, are the two of us supposed to drink the Northwest wind?"

Xu Damao fell silent.

It wasn't that he couldn't help. But helping once or twice was fine, but supporting someone for a lifetime? He really didn't have the heart for that. Not to mention she was dragging a "bottleneck" along with her.

Just as he was pondering how to speak, Xie Guafu dropped to her knees with a "thump" before him.

"Damao, I know you have a kind heart! You were even willing to do things for Captain Ma; we've shared the same bed, and a day as husband and wife brings a hundred days of grace—do you have the heart to watch me starve to death?"

Xu Damao felt conflicted and sighed: "I look prosperous on the outside, but I'm actually just an empty shell. Thirty yuan a month, supporting a wife, supporting my old mother, and I have an underage younger sister... I'm having a hard time too."

Xie Guafu's tears were like beads with broken strings, hitting his back one by one: "I don't want much, just a bite to eat, and you won't even give me that?"

"It's not that I won't give it, it's that I really don't have it." Xu Damao felt aggrieved too, "Every time I come, you empty out all my pocket money; now I can't even afford to smoke."

Xie Guafu hugged him and cried for a while, then suddenly sat up, staring straight at him, and stopped crying.

Xu Damao's heart skipped a beat, but he kept his composure on his face.

He was the type of person who only ever manipulated others; how could he let himself be manipulated?

He patted Xie Guafu's shoulder: "Well... let's end it here then."

The room was terrifyingly quiet.

Xu Damao put on his clothes, bent over, and put on his shoes.

Xie Guafu suddenly stood up and blocked the doorway.

"Fine, you're heartless, don't blame me for being unrighteous. I'm going to your factory right now to say your wife is at home while you're messing around with a widow! That group that came to catch us in the act just now was aiming for you! You've offended quite a few people out there, haven't you?"

Xu Damao stood up and reached out to strike her.

"Go ahead and kill me!" Xie Guafu puffed out her chest, "I can't go on living anyway, come on!"

Xu Damao looked at her "all-in" stance, and the little spark of anger in his heart was extinguished with a "puff."

No matter how arrogant he was, he couldn't really cause a death over this bit of money.

A smile immediately appeared on his face as he went up to hug Xie Guafu: "Look at you, you're a few years older than me, yet you're still throwing a tantrum like a child! Fine, fine, fine, I've saved a bit over the years, just don't open your mouth like a lion."

"Two hundred yuan!" Xie Guafu demanded immediately, "Give me two hundred, and you can still see me in the future, and I won't cause you any trouble!"

"Two hundred? That's too much!" Xu Damao winced in pain, "You have to leave me some of the money I've saved, one hundred!"

"One hundred and eighty, not a cent less!"

Xu Damao's face wrinkled into a ball, and after a long while, he gritted his teeth: "Fine! I'm only doing this because I pity Abao for being so young. But I'll say this first—that dog hole under your courtyard wall isn't just for me to use, right? I don't care about the past, but from now on, you can only have me, or I'll come back to you for the money!"

"I promise you!" Xie Guafu nodded vigorously.

He Yuzhu was huddled over blueprints with Lv Hong and Man Yatou, discussing the base, when Deputy Director Xiao came running in, drenched in sweat.

"Executive He! Something terrible has happened!"

He Yuzhu didn't even look up: "Speak."

"Seven seeders are broken!" Xiao wiped his sweat, "The farming season is about to pass, what are we going to do?"

He Yuzhu finally looked up, his eyes narrowing.

Seven out of fifteen broken? This was too excessive!

He suppressed his anger and asked: "How did they break?"

"Well... the task is too heavy, working day and night, the people rest but the machines don't, even iron lumps can't take that..."

"How much land is left to be planted?" He Yuzhu asked.

"The base cleared sixty thousand mu, we've planted over twenty thousand, and there's still... less than forty thousand left."

He Yuzhu slapped the table with a "bang": "Forty thousand mu? You only planted twenty thousand mu in over ten days? Even if the machines didn't break, you wouldn't have finished planting!"

"We did our best..." Deputy Director Xiao shrank his neck.

He Yuzhu stared at him for three seconds, then suddenly waved his hand: "That's enough, bring all the broken machines back, and you don't need to stay over there anymore, come back and do your political work."

A hint of triumph flashed in Deputy Director Xiao's eyes, and he pressed: "Executive He, are you serious?"

"Serious."

Deputy Director Xiao ran off happily.

The moment he left, Lv Hong threw down her pen: "Seven out of fifteen machines broken. These people have some nerve!"

Man Yatou was so angry her face turned red: "They are too shameless!"

He Yuzhu laughed instead: "They've finally taken this step... sabotaging the equipment. That's good, pushing away the credit that was already in their hands."

Man Yatou was stunned and asked: "Brother Zhuzi, what do you mean?"

"Sixty thousand mu of land, using the old methods, could yield over six million catties. Using my new seeds, one mu can produce at least five hundred catties. If they hadn't made trouble, this credit would have been theirs..." He Yuzhu smiled, "Lv Hong, find me a cadre who knows how to farm and send them over to be in charge of land reclamation."

"County Magistrate Wu is already in charge of agriculture, let him go!" Lv Hong suggested tentatively.

"Fine!" He Yuzhu said, then grabbed the phone and dialed the Rolling Mill Farm.

It was Erkui who answered the phone, and upon hearing He Yuzhu's request, his voice was on the verge of tears: "Zhuzi, I'm exhausted over here! We're short ten machines, we can't finish even working around the clock!"

"No matter how you do it, you must transfer ten over to me." He Yuzhu gave a hard order.

"We really can't spare them!" Erkui was still bargaining.

"Even if you can't spare them, you have to! Even if we can't finish planting wheat this year, we'll plant soybeans in two months, these ten machines must be sent to me!" He Yuzhu was anxious.

"Zhuzi, you can't bully people like this!"

"I told you already, if you can't finish planting, switch to soybeans. Now, send them over immediately!" After hanging up the phone, He Yuzhu's expression remained somber.

Lv Hong asked, "Should I stop the infrastructure personnel and have them go support the planting?"

He Yuzhu shook his head: "I am not afraid of failing to finish planting. I am disheartened—these three people have truly gone down the path of sabotaging equipment."

Very quickly, Deputy Director Xiao hauled all seven Seeders back to the maintenance center.

He Yuzhu led the repair team to inspect them one by one and discovered that the person who committed the sabotage was indeed quite skilled.

The damage to each Seeder was different: one had a shattered transmission gear, another had a burst hydraulic hose, yet another had a worn-out bearing caused by substandard ball bearings, and another had a circuit malfunction... at a glance, it was clearly the work of an old hand.