From Emergency Landing to Earning Merit

Riptide tore open his clothes, which were covered in black mud, and spread his arms.

A fierce wind suddenly rose, whipping up a tornado that stretched from the ground to the sky in the blink of an eye.

The highly concentrated hydrogen sulfide gas spreading along the ground was sucked straight into the air.

"Nice! Now that's one powerful exhaust fan!"

Holding down his black felt hat in the gale, Sing Sing turned and shouted to the dumbstruck Lao Zhao, "Lao Zhao! See that? That's what we call a directional weather and wind control specialist! He specializes in solving illegal hazardous gas emissions at construction sites, and he's completely green!"

But the crisis wasn't over.

Black mud mixed with rock fragments shot into the sky like a black dragon bursting from underground.

One of the steel cables cracked against the sand, gouging a deep trench less than half a meter from a worker's calf.

Lorna stood facing the wind. As Zhao Hongqi and a dozen or so workers watched in horror, the drilling tower, which had tilted to a forty-five-degree angle, suddenly froze in midair!

"Up!"

A magnetic field enveloped the entire towering structure, bending its warped load-bearing columns straight again, bit by bit.

"Sizzle, sizzle—!"

The magnetic force caused high-frequency friction. The broken steel cables and supports melted under the intense heat, then were squeezed together and welded solid by the magnetic field.

The hardened-steel blowout valve, which had been jammed, caved inward under the immense magnetic pressure and was finally crushed into a solid lump of iron.

"Pff—"

After one last small spurt of black water, the blowout stopped, and the fierce wind weakened.

Zhao Hongqi rubbed his eyes. He looked at the drilling tower standing upright again, then at the blowout preventer crushed into a solid iron ball. His legs gave way, and he fell to his knees in the sand.

"Good Lord... did the damn Transformers come down to the countryside to fight poverty?!"

With the crisis over, a dozen or so workers collapsed onto the sand, gasping for breath.

Some, having survived the ordeal, hugged their hard hats and wiped away tears.

Others still hadn't recovered from the shock and kept muttering, "Alive, alive, we're really alive..."

A few workers who had been slow to run clutched their chests and retched, their faces ashen. They had clearly inhaled small amounts of hydrogen sulfide.

It wasn't fatal, but it made them terribly uncomfortable.

Amy stood awkwardly to one side, unable to understand what the workers were saying.

She didn't quite understand how serious the accident had been, either.

All she was thinking was that some people felt unwell, and she could do something about it.

Amy cautiously stepped forward.

A few seconds later, chilled mung bean and mint ice creams appeared in her hands, one after another, out of thin air.

"Um... have some of this. It'll make you feel better."

Amy spoke softly, a little timidly.

Zhao Hongqi didn't understand English, but he understood the gesture.

The blue-eyed foreign girl wanted him to eat something.

He looked down at the mung bean ice pop she had conjured out of thin air, a complicated look in his eyes.

Normally, having only just gotten past the misunderstanding about "foreign spies," suddenly being asked to eat a conjured ice pop was something of a challenge to Lao Zhao's simple materialist worldview.

But then he thought about how she had just saved everyone.

Gritting his teeth, Zhao Hongqi took it and bit right in.

"Ahh—"

A cool sensation shot from his mouth to the top of his head, and the icy coolness of mint spread through his body.

The tightness in Lao Zhao's chest vanished, and so did all his nausea.

His back and legs no longer ached, and he could even pour concrete for another ten nights straight.

"Miraculous!" Lao Zhao slapped his thigh and shouted.

"Hua Tuo-brand ice cream! Brothers, eat up! This is an immortal pill!"

The workers crowded around and each got one. After eating them, they were all bursting with energy.

There was no fear or disgust in the way they looked at Amy. Instead, their expressions were guileless.

"Thank you, miss!"

"Miss, your skills are incredible! Come run the cold drinks window in our cafeteria. You're guaranteed to make a fortune!"

Amy felt a little dazed. Even though she couldn't understand what they were saying, they were all smiling at her!

Sing Sing swaggered over to Zhao Hongqi.

"See that?"

"What do you call top-tier talent? Who was it that said we were foreign spies just now? Would spies fix your drilling tower? Would spies hand out ice cream? Are capitalist spies that conscientious?"

Zhao Hongqi immediately stood at attention and saluted Sing Sing.

Then he pulled his crumpled pack of Hongtashan cigarettes from his oil-stained pocket and respectfully offered it to him.

"Sir! I was blind! I mistook living bodhisattvas for oil thieves!" Zhao Hongqi's face was full of shame.

"These foreign guests are practically living Lei Fengs! May I ask which department of Lanxiang taught them those skills? Our engineering team is hiring next year. Could we come recruit at your school?"

Sing Sing casually took a cigarette, tucked it behind his ear, and seized the opportunity. "Even Lanxiang couldn't teach this. These are the trump cards of the Seventh Engineering Team, directly under our 749 Bureau. Lao Zhao, we dropped in and saved such a major national-level project. It wouldn't be too much to send us a commendation banner afterward, would it?"

"Not at all! Not at all! I'll go into town and have one made tomorrow! With big gold-stamped characters!"

Zhao Hongqi nodded repeatedly.

"One more thing." Sing Sing pointed to his ruined white suit. "We made an emergency landing in a mud pit just now. Sorry for the trouble, but could you get the general contractor to reimburse me for the dry cleaning, compensation for emotional distress, and Comrade Little Luo's high-temperature work allowance and electricity bill for welding the tower? Make the invoice out to 'the Seventh Engineering Team.'"

Lao Zhao froze. "Electricity bill? Where would you find an electric meter out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"Doesn't generating heat through friction require energy conversion? That's called human bioelectricity! We can't make a female employee sweat for nothing!"

"All right, all right! I'll ask the boss to sign off on it!"

Just then, Edith, whom Sing Sing had dragged to one side, finally threw up her last whiskey bubble.

She sat up groggily in the mud, her head covered in black muck, and stared blankly at the endless dunes and the towering structure around her.

"Burp..."

"Where are we? Is there a McDonald's?"

Sing Sing couldn't be bothered with the drunk driver. He pulled the battle-damaged satellite phone Slug had given him from his inner pocket, shook the muddy water off it, and dialed the direct line to Director Wang of the 749 Bureau.

The moment the call connected, Director Wang's roar came from the other end:

"Ling Ling Qi!"

"Who told you to call?!"

"As far as I know, you only set off two hours ago! Two hours! You should still be floating somewhere on the Pacific Ocean!"

"If you expose the route by making reckless satellite calls, watch out, or I'll crush your head with my deadly scissor kick!"

Sing Sing held the phone a little farther away and picked at his ear. "Director, calm down. I'm already back in the country!"

"Surprised? Was it unexpected?"

"Heh heh."

There was silence on the other end for three seconds, followed by an outraged shout: "Bullshit!"

"You were on a cargo ship! Not a Dongfeng Express missile!"

"You were in the United States two hours ago, and now you're telling me you're back in the country? Do you take me for a three-year-old, or do you think the Pacific Ocean is a bathtub?!"

"It's a little complicated to explain."

"Simply put, we brought in a transnational express-delivery specialist, but said specialist currently has a minor issue with drunk driving and veering off course."

"Where are you now?!"

Sing Sing glanced at Lao Zhao. "Uh... the Great Northwest, the Taklamakan Desert."

There was silence on the other end again.

This time, it lasted even longer.

Director Wang was trying to understand exactly how many steps incompatible with materialism lay between "a smuggling boat from the United States" and "the Taklamakan Desert."

Sing Sing didn't give him a chance to blow up and hurriedly cut in.

"Oh, and we just helped the country save a Deep Well project and dealt with a major blowout. No need to be too moved. It was all part of my duty."

After another silence on the other end, Director Wang's voice warmed. "Well, well! I knew you didn't go to the United States just to swindle us out of travel expenses! Ling Ling Qi, nicely done this time!"

"Director, since I've earned merit, we should talk about my compensation."