20: Chapter 20: Whispers in the Night
Darkness fell, and the desert grew bitterly cold.
Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo led his young subordinates to pitch tents beside the area marked by Jiang Ning.
After a whole afternoon of exhausting labor leveling the sand, everyone was worn out, gnawing on rock-hard compressed biscuits with a hollow, unsettled feeling in their hearts.
"Chief Engineer Wang, what exactly are we doing here?" a fresh graduate couldn't hold back anymore, leaning in to ask. "Drawing squares in the sand—won't we be laughed to death if word gets out?"
"Yeah, Chief Engineer Wang, over at Chief Engineer Wang Heshan's side, their drill has already gone down nearly a hundred meters, and we haven't even managed to dig a shovel mark." Another chimed in with a complaint.
Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo felt a tightness in his chest, but he couldn't say anything. He was the leader of this group; if he faltered, morale would collapse.
"Shut up, all of you!" he said, suppressing his anger. "Have you forgotten the skills of our Chief Consultant back in Donghai City? Do whatever she tells you, and stop the idle chatter!"
At his shout, the young men fell silent, but the look of disbelief and confusion on their faces remained unchanged.
Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo himself was unsure. He snuck a glance at Jiang Ning, who was not far away.
The young woman hadn't gone into her tent; she was sitting cross-legged on the sand, staring at the stars in the sky, motionless. As the night wind blew, her figure looked quite slight, yet it radiated an indescribable strength.
Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo couldn't understand her, but he trusted her. This trust defied logic, stemming from that event in Donghai City that had completely reshaped his understanding of the world.
He sighed, wrapped his coat tighter around himself, and sat down against the tire of an off-road vehicle, intending to keep watch just like that.
At the main camp on the other side, Dr. Li couldn't sleep.
The tent he stayed in was much better than the one Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo's team had—it was warm and even had heating.
He looked at the drilling plan on the table prepared by Chief Engineer Wang Heshan's team, with its terrifyingly detailed data, and then thought about Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo's group acting like primitive people with shovels in the afternoon, and couldn't help but sneer.
"A bunch of idiots," he muttered to himself.
In his view, Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo had gone senile, easily hoodwinked by a young girl named Jiang Ning, casting aside the science he had dedicated his whole life to.
That Jiang Ning was either a con artist or a lunatic. "Dragon Vein," "Opening the Skylight"—it was all nonsense.
It would be a miracle if this project succeeded.
The more Dr. Li thought about it, the more he felt he couldn't follow this group down a dead end. He considered himself the most outstanding among Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo's students and had a bright future; he couldn't let the Kuafu Project, which was destined to fail, leave a stain on his record.
Not only must he avoid a stain, but this might even... be an opportunity.
An opportunity that would allow him to trample Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo, and even Chief Engineer Wang Heshan, underfoot.
As he thought this, he pulled a matchbox-sized black box from his inner pocket. It wasn't something issued by the military; it was his own, a phone that could connect to a special satellite.
He slipped out of the tent, checked left and right to make sure no one was around, walked quickly behind a sand dune, and dialed a number.
The phone rang for a long time before it was answered. On the other end was a middle-aged man, his voice laced with a smile.
"Hello, Little Li. How does it taste, eating dirt in the desert?"
This man was Director Zhou from a physics research institute in the capital. He was of the same generation as Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo, but their paths never aligned. For this Pangu Project, Director Zhou's institute hadn't managed to squeeze into the core circle, and he had been harboring resentment ever since.
"Director Zhou, please don't tease me," Dr. Li said with a bitter smile. "Where I am, it's even worse than eating dirt."
"Oh? How so?" Director Zhou became interested.
Dr. Li embellished the events of the past two days, talking about how overbearing Chief Engineer Wang Heshan was, and how Jiang Ning was leading Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo into practicing "metaphysics."
He described Jiang Ning's "absurdity" and Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo's "senility" with vivid detail.
"...Director Zhou, you are the expert; you judge for yourself. Searching for water in the desert without using radar or analyzing hydrology, but instead letting a twenty-year-old girl pace it out with her feet and randomly point to a spot on the map, claiming there's a 'Dragon Vein'—is this reasonable? Isn't this making a joke out of a national project?"
The other end of the phone was silent for a moment, and the voice became somber.
"Little Li, is everything you said true?"
"Every word is true! I saw it with my own eyes!" Dr. Li said firmly. "Chief Engineer Wang is acting like he's possessed, obeying that Jiang Ning's every word. I can't even talk him out of it. They're currently on a solid slab of granite, bringing a few people to dig with shovels, claiming they want to set up some 'Water Diversion Array.' If this gets out, our entire engineering field will become an international joke!"
"Absurd!" Director Zhou snorted. "I said long ago that the project in Donghai City relied too much on luck and the technology wasn't mature at all; it shouldn't be used recklessly! Now look, it's gone and poked its way right into the Kuafu Project!"
Dr. Li realized that Director Zhou was on his side, and he felt a surge of joy, quickly adding fuel to the fire.
"Director Zhou, I am genuinely worried. The old methods used by Chief Engineer Wang Heshan might not work in a place like this. And Jiang Ning's side is even more outrageous. I'm afraid... I'm afraid that in the end, both sides will fail, and the entire Kuafu Project will be ruined. By then, not only will the money have been wasted, but we'll also be humiliated."
He said this as if he were deeply concerned about the country and the people.
"Little Li, it is good that you have this concern," Director Zhou said, sounding very pleased. "You are right; we cannot just watch as a key project is ruined by all this messy nonsense."
"Then... what should we do?" Dr. Li asked, feigning anxiety.
Director Zhou thought for a moment and said, "Chief Engineer Wang Heshan is there; we can't intervene. And don't go head-to-head with Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo; that man is stubborn. What you need to do now is 'collect evidence.'"
"Collect evidence?"
"Yes," Director Zhou's voice lowered. "Just stay by that Jiang Ning's side. Everything she does—those so-called 'arrays,' 'blueprints,' and all her abnormal words and actions—record them all for me. Photos and videos would be best. These will be the ironclad proof to expose the scam!"
"I understand!" Dr. Li's heart raced. He knew he had climbed up to a powerful branch.
"Don't worry," Director Zhou added. "I will also find a way to pass your concerns up the chain. As long as you have solid proof in your hands to prove their methods are wrong and are pseudoscience, the higher-ups will naturally reconsider. And you will be the hero who exposed the truth."
"Thank you, Director Zhou! I will definitely get it done!" Dr. Li replied excitedly.
Hanging up the phone, he deleted the call log and hid the special phone away.
He looked up toward the direction of Jiang Ning's camp, his eyes full of calculation.
Chief Engineer Wang Heshan was the past, Jiang Ning was the present, and he, Dr. Li, as long as he played this move right, was the future of this project.
He would personally prove that Jiang Ning was a con artist, and then, on the mess left by Chief Engineer Wang Heshan's failure, he would present his own more "scientific" plan and ascend to the top in one leap.
"Jiang Ning, Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo... just you wait." He sneered, turned around, and went back into the warm tent.
A storm was quietly gathering in the night.