Reconfiguration

The tricycle, puffing out black smoke, carried Huang Xiuyuan back to his doorstep.

"Xiaoyuan, here is the key."

Huang Sixiao handed over a key and lifted several suitcases off the cargo bed.

Taking the key, he familiarly opened the stainless steel gate, revealing an old television, the essential coffee table, and three rosewood chairs.

He moved his luggage to his room on the second floor; despite not having been back for a long time, the room remained clean and tidy, clearly having been cleaned regularly.

Before he knew it, an hour had passed, and it was nearly five o'clock in the evening.

The voice of Uncle Xiao rang out from downstairs.

"Xiaoyuan, come down for dinner."

He changed into slippers and a jacket before walking down to the living room on the first floor, where a slightly plump, fair-skinned middle-aged woman was taking some braised dishes out of a basket by the dining table.

"Aunt, Happy New Year." Huang Xiuyuan greeted her.

The middle-aged woman looked up, smiled as she set down the plate, and took a red envelope from her pocket: "Xiaoyuan, a New Year's gift."

"Haha, wishing you prosperity." Huang Xiuyuan did not refuse, as the custom in Shanmei allows those who are not yet married to receive red envelopes.

Of course, the red envelopes here were just a gesture, especially in the rural areas of Shanmei, usually amounting to five or ten yuan.

After delivering the dinner, the aunt left the basket and headed back, leaving only the uncle and nephew, Huang Xiuyuan and Huang Sixiao.

On the dining table sat a simple meal of three dishes and one soup.

They were all home-style Shanmei dishes: fried mackerel balls, braised pork trotters, stir-fried cucumber with shrimp, and bitter melon soup with mackerel skin.

"Come on, Xiaoyuan, don't be a stranger; you can't eat this in the United States."

"Uncle Xiao, I won't be."

The two picked up their chopsticks and deftly shoveled food into their mouths; the taste of home is something you find tiresome in daily life, yet miss immensely the moment you leave.

By the end of the meal, the sun had set behind the mountains outside, leaving only a sliver of sunset glow.

He pulled out a tissue and wiped his mouth: "Uncle Xiao, where did you put the things I ordered?"

Huang Sixiao, who had finished eating long ago, picked his teeth and replied: "Inside the plant, follow me."

The two bypassed a small dirt road and arrived at the back door of the recycling plant.

The plant was still brightly lit, with three workers sorting through waste or performing the next steps of processing on already sorted materials, such as baling paper, compressing aluminum products, and processing iron goods.

His family's recycling plant was called "Fuqiang Recycling Plant," a name derived from the name of Huang Xiuyuan's father.

The plant had a rectangular layout; the front was an open-air flat area for stacking newly collected waste and materials ready for shipment.

The middle section was a steel-structured tin building, which served as the rough processing area for equipment, displaying gantry shears, metal crushers, alligator shears, shredders, metal pulverizers, metal separators, briquetting machines, cake presses, copper wire granulators, motor dismantling machines, radiator dismantling machines, waste paper balers, and other equipment.

These assets were the accumulation of his father's hard work over more than a decade, making Fuqiang Recycling Plant one of the top recycling plants in the Shanmei region.

However, this business was also categorized; the ordinary recycling industry only earned a bit of hard-earned money, and it was quite difficult to make a fortune.

Some special recycling industries required not only connections but also the abandonment of one's conscience.

For example, Guiyu, located in the Hui City special zone of eastern Guangdong, was known as the "World Capital of Electronic Waste."

The entire town of Guiyu had 5,500 family workshops engaged in the electronic waste processing industry, employing over 60,000 people, with an annual output value of nearly 1 billion yuan, accounting for more than 90% of the town's total industrial output value and contributing tens of millions of yuan in taxes; electronic waste had become the pillar industry of Guiyu.

However, the development of things often involves gains and losses.

The recycling techniques of these small workshops could only be described with one word: simple and brutal. They extracted precious metals from circuit boards and dumped or piled up the rest at will.

This caused a large amount of hazardous substances to leak, including lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polyvinyl chloride plastics, and brominated flame retardants, which had seeped into the local soil and groundwater.

According to research reports, 81.8% of rural children under the age of 6 in Guiyu suffered from lead poisoning, and the source was likely the lead dust generated by the fragmentation of circuit boards, or the pollution brought about by melting lead solder to extract gold, copper, and other precious and semi-precious metals.

This is the primitive accumulation of capital; since it came into the world, every pore from head to toe has been dripping with blood and filth.

Sighing for a moment, Huang Xiuyuan shook his head in self-mockery and walked to the back of the recycling plant.

Here stood a row of three-story buildings, which housed his father's office, as well as employee lounges, a duty room, a kitchen, a dining room, and restrooms.

The first floor also had several rooms used for storing copper wires, copper materials, and some old electrical appliances.

The two climbed the stairs to a room on the third floor, where Huang Sixiao found the key to this room from a large ring of keys and opened the stainless steel door.

After turning on the lights, the room was very simple.

There were off-white walls, a cement floor, two storage cabinets, a refrigerator, two square wooden tables, and four plastic chairs.

"According to your instructions, two packages are in the refrigerator, and the other 19 packages are in the storage cabinet." After speaking, Huang Sixiao handed him the two keys to the room and the four keys to the storage cabinets.

"Thanks, Uncle Xiao." Huang Xiuyuan was very satisfied.

"Well, Xiaoyuan, take a look. If you need help, I'll be over at the material sorting area."

"No problem, Uncle, go ahead with your work."

The tactful Huang Sixiao, despite being curious about what these things were for, did not press for answers and went straight downstairs.

Left alone in the room, Huang Xiuyuan locked the door and opened the packages one by one. Inside were the chemical glassware and simple equipment he had ordered, followed by the chemical reagents.

He first washed the glassware, wiped it clean, and then used Oxytech spray to perform a thorough disinfection.

Following the previous mixing ratio, it took over two hours to re-prepare twenty vials of brain suppressant.

After labeling them with the date, he placed these brain suppressants into the refrigerator.

Looking at the crude laboratory and the brain suppressant that required an injection every day or two, he fell into deep thought.

This first-generation brain suppressant had too many complications; its short duration meant he could never be away from the medication for too long, which made traveling far from home difficult.

After all, carrying this kind of medicine on his person made it hard to explain when passing through security checkpoints.

If he didn't carry it with him, he couldn't exactly find a laboratory to prepare the brain suppressant every time he arrived at a new place.

This situation would increase the probability of the brain suppressant being leaked.

It seemed he needed to establish a proper chemical laboratory as soon as possible; only a semi-permanent brain suppressant could avoid these issues.

Until the new brain suppressant was developed, he could only try to limit his activities to the area around Lingnan to minimize unnecessary trouble.

At this moment, Huang Xiuyuan remembered that he should give his father a call.

He took out his phone and dialed the number, talking with his father for over ten minutes, mainly about his return to the country and his grandmother's condition.

As expected, things had gone exactly as anticipated: two days ago, his grandmother was out of danger, but after she was transferred from the ICU to a general ward, his uncle's family had thrown a fit the moment his parents mentioned transferring her to Huaxi Hospital.

In the end, it was his father who stepped in and took on the costs of the transfer to Huaxi Hospital, which finally convinced them to agree to let the old lady go there.