Zhou Yi had just returned to Sunshine Residential Community when he received a report over the phone from Fu Zhigang, chief of the command center. The words "Changxing Coal Mine" instantly triggered a memory buried deep in his mind.
That memory had nothing to do with the cases in his little notebook. It came entirely from a popular post someone had made on Tianya Forum in his previous life, titled "On the Value of Life."
The author, whose username was "Being Me Isn't Hard," began by quoting Pavel Korchagin's famous words: "The most precious thing a person possesses is life. We are given life only once. A person should live so that, when looking back, they feel no regret for wasted years and no shame for having accomplished nothing!"
Then she continued: "The six miners who died in the Changxing Coal Mine disaster were indeed given life only once, but their lives were not precious.
Their bodies were buried on a desolate hillside, beneath hard-packed earth. A stack of banknotes stained with blood and tears represented the last remaining value of their lives, and the final inheritance they could leave their loved ones.
You could see their rough hands still trembling! You could hear their agonized groans still sounding! Yet the shovels raised high came down mercilessly, cruelly erasing the last traces of their existence in this world!
They had not wasted their years, nor had they accomplished nothing. Yet no one gave them a chance to look back on their lives!"
Zhou Yi had even left a comment beneath the post, supporting and praising the female author for daring to expose the Changxing Coal Mine disaster.
So there was no question: apart from a slight discrepancy in the death toll, the information in that emergency call could not