Chapter 1317

Su Xinghui looked at him deeply and said, "Your uncle is the boss here, right? You can try. If I get removed, I won't care about the matters here anymore."

Manager Shen clamored, "You just wait for me, I'm going to make a phone call right now."

Manager Shen walked toward an office building, cursing as he went to make his call. Su Xinghui glanced at him and then said to Lu Sancheng, "Manager Lu, before my position as Secretary is removed, please stop production immediately!"

There was an undeniable authority in Su Xinghui's voice. Helpless, Manager Lu could only have someone shut down the production line.

Once the production line was shut down, the piercing noise vanished, making things feel much more comfortable. It seemed as if one could even hear the faint chirping of birds and insects in the woods clearly. However, the all-encompassing dust could not disappear completely all at once; it danced in the air, clearly visible in the sunlight.

With the movement of the air, this dust danced up and down. Although the general trend was for it to settle, it would take at least half an hour for it to truly settle on the ground.

Manager Lu asked, "Secretary Su, how do you need us to rectify this?"

With the noise gone, Manager Lu didn't need to shout to speak, which made things much more pleasant. Su Xinghui didn't answer his question but instead asked, "Do you have safety helmets?"

Manager Lu nodded and said, "Yes."

Su Xinghui said, "Get us two."

Manager Lu had someone go get the helmets. Yin Hualong's Third Uncle volunteered and ran to the weigh station, quickly returning with two helmets. Su Xinghui and Yin Hualong each put one on. Su Xinghui handed his bicycle to the Third Uncle and said, "Third Uncle, please keep an eye on our bicycles for us."

The Third Uncle said, "Secretary Su, I can't do that. You can just call me Old San."

Su Xinghui smiled and nodded at him, then said to Manager Lu, "Manager Lu, accompany us to your mining site to take a look."

Manager Lu led the two around the production line toward the back mountain. Su Xinghui examined the production line; it was no different from the ones he had seen in his past life, consisting of feed inlets, crushers, belt conveyors, and vibrating screens. Under each belt conveyor lay a high pile of crushed stone, the only difference being the size of the stone particles.

Of course, the scale of this quarry's production line was not large, and it couldn't compare to the large-scale production lines with investments of tens of millions that he had seen in his past life.

The group bypassed the production line and circled around a hill piled high with a mixture of yellow soil and crushed stone. Su Xinghui knew that this mixture was called "pond slag"—waste that had to be removed before mining the stone. Piling this waste here was very dangerous because the vegetation on the hill had been completely destroyed. If the waste pile grew too high, there was a risk of landslides during heavy rain.

After circling the hill, Su Xinghui became even more furious. Beneath a mountain wall as flat as a mirror, an excavator was digging at the loose stones at the base, transferring them to the other side. Several small trucks were waiting there for the excavator to load the stones into their beds.

Su Xinghui knew this was a mining method called "single-wall mining," and the way the excavator dug at the bottom was called "bottom-out collapse." As the name suggests, once the excavator dug out the stones at the bottom, gravity would cause the stones above to collapse automatically.

This method certainly saved costs, but the risk factor was quite high. If a large stone collapsed from above and hit a worker below, it would result in death or injury, and broken bones were not uncommon.

Even if the excavator itself were hit by a stone, the operator would be in great danger.

Su Xinghui said with a stern face, "Manager Lu, order the excavator to stop operating immediately."

Lu Sancheng dared not disobey. He walked near the excavator, waved for it to stop mining, and had the trucks move to the parking area to rest.

Su Xinghui asked Lu Sancheng, "Have you always mined this way?"

Lu Sancheng nodded and said, "Yes."

Su Xinghui said, "Has there never been an accident?"

Lu Sancheng hesitated noticeably. Yin Hualong said, "Of course there have been accidents. At the end of last year, someone in our village had his leg crushed by a stone."

Su Xinghui said, "How much did the quarry pay in compensation?"

Yin Hualong said, "It seems it was a thousand yuan."

Su Xinghui's body began to tremble again. A leg, and they only paid a thousand yuan in compensation. Such a boss was truly damnable!

Su Xinghui asked Lu Sancheng, "If someone is crushed to death, how much is the compensation?"

Lu Sancheng mumbled, "Usually three thousand to five thousand."

Su Xinghui's heart was filled with sorrow. Human life was truly as thin as paper; a life was worth so little. What was even more tragic was that these people seemed to have become numb, showing no reverence for human life, as if the death of a person meant nothing.

Su Xinghui suppressed the anger in his heart and said, "Manager Lu, what blasting method do you use for mining?"

Lu Sancheng said, "We just drill a small hole in the mountain wall, put in a little explosive, blast a larger hole, stuff in more explosives, and blast again. After doing this a few times, we can loosen the stones on this section of the wall."

Su Xinghui knew that the blasting method Lu Sancheng described was called "pot-hole blasting," which was also a strictly prohibited method because it was too dangerous.

This blasting method made it difficult to control the amount of explosives, and during the process, crushed stone would fly everywhere. Some stones could fly very far, and with their immense power, they were like bullets. If one hit a house, it could even pierce the roof and strike the people inside.

In his past life, Su Xinghui had heard of a family living near a quarry. A person was sitting at home when disaster struck from the sky: a fist-sized stone from a quarry blast landed on their roof, pierced the tiles, and struck the person's thigh, breaking it and leaving them permanently disabled.