Chapter 112: The Despicable Island Nation

The original double bed had been taken apart by the installers into a heap of separate pieces and stacked in the living room.

“Thank you so much,” Chang Yu said sincerely.

“Yangyang,” he called over his shoulder, “go get a few bottles of mineral water for the workers.”

“Oh, no, no. That’s far too kind of you,” the installers said hurriedly, looking a little embarrassed.

“It’s only right. You’ve all been working hard for half the day. Have some water and moisten your throats a bit.” Chang Yu’s tone was earnest.

After seeing the installers off, Chang Yu looked at the large pile of bed boards and parts on the living room floor and felt a little troubled.

This bed was Wang Fatty’s private property, the landlord’s, not Chang Yu’s personal belonging. He could neither throw it away nor sell it.

All Chang Yu could do was cover it with a cloth and prepare to stash it in whatever empty space he could find in the apartment.

“Where should I put it?” Chang Yu paced around his tiny home, feeling that it would be in the way no matter where he placed it, taking up far too much room.

“Why not put it on the balcony? Stand the boards upright, and it should fit there,” Yangyang suggested with a frown.

There was no way it could be laid flat; their little balcony was far too cramped. If it was to be stored there at all, it would have to be stood on end.

“That’s probably the only option. I’ll give it a try.” Chang Yu scooped up several stacks of bed boards in his arms and walked toward the balcony.

What would have taken several people to lift, he now carried hugged against his chest as lightly as if it were a pile of paper.

After all, all those bed boards together must have weighed nearly two hundred jin, heavier than a normally built adult; an ordinary person would never have been able to lift them.

But Chang Yu was no longer who he had been before.

Now he was agile and powerful, his muscles coiled with strength. A load of over a hundred jin was nothing to him.

Even Tyson’s heavy punches no longer seemed formidable in his eyes. If the two of them were to stand in a boxing ring together now, it would be impossible to say who would win.

At times, Chang Yu even wondered whether the strength of his body had already surpassed the limits of humanity.

“This bed is really nice.” By the time Chang Yu had finally propped the stack of boards upright inside the enclosed balcony, Yangyang was already rolling around on the newly bought bed.

From now on, he would no longer have to squeeze into the same blanket as Chang Yu, that old codger. Yangyang was delighted at the thought.

What Chang Yu might not have realized was that when he felt disgust toward Yangyang, Yangyang was, in truth, disgusted by him as well.

“It looks like you really like this bed,” Chang Yu said with a smile, watching Yangyang tumble about on it.

Seeing Yangyang so happy lifted Chang Yu’s own mood as well. A feeling called satisfaction and pride rose in his heart.

In this world, what could make a father more fulfilled than seeing his own little one live well?

No wonder so many people loved the simple bliss of a wife, children, and a warm bed. It was truly satisfying.

More than anything, that kind of life best revealed a man’s worth.

“I’m sleeping on the lower bunk from now on. It’s spacious, and rolling around feels good too,” Yangyang said, sprawled on the bottom bunk and refusing to get up.

“Then you can sleep on the top bunk,” Chang Yu said at once, displeased that Yangyang had set his sights on the lower bunk he had long had his eye on.

“You’re just a kid. What a waste to give you such a big space. A roomy lower bunk is meant for grown adults like us.”

“What’s wrong with being a kid? Can’t kids sleep in a big bed?” Yangyang argued for the sake of his future happiness.

“You know I toss and turn when I sleep. What if I fall out of the top bunk and smash into you?”

“Fine, fine,” Chang Yu said at last, looking Yangyang over with a suspicious eye.

For some reason, he had the feeling that given Yangyang’s character, the boy might well deliberately throw himself out of the top bunk and land on Chang Yu’s face.

Whether to give the bed to Yangyang and let the two of them live in peace, or to let Yangyang deliberately injure him a few times and then be forced to surrender the bed anyway, Chang Yu felt he already knew the answer in his heart.

“All right. You sleep on the lower bunk, then!” In the end, he yielded.

There was no help for it. Life was full of compromises.

If one did not learn to compromise, one could not grow up.

After the trouble of buying the bed, delivering it, and setting it up, evening had already arrived.

Rubbing his empty stomach, Chang Yu felt hunger stirring inside him.

“Let’s go to the cafeteria for dinner,” he asked Yangyang, not wanting to cook himself.

“Sure, sure. As long as I don’t have to eat anything you make, I can accept that.” Yangyang brightened at once, looking as if a downtrodden serf had suddenly risen to sing his own anthem.

The two of them put on their clothes and had barely stepped outside when they happened to run into Katerina standing at Chang Yu’s front door, looking dusty and worn from a long journey, her face dark with gloom.

Her hand was still raised in midair, clearly about to knock.

“Well, isn’t this a coincidence?” Chang Yu said, instantly brightening the moment he saw Katerina, greeting her with unusual enthusiasm.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Katerina said, ignoring Yangyang, who kept shrinking behind Chang Yu.

“Have you eaten?” Chang Yu asked, answering a question with a question.

“Not yet.” Katerina effortlessly followed his train of thought.

“Then come with us to the cafeteria for a bite. Whatever it is, we can talk slowly on the way.” Chang Yu invited her to dinner.

“All right.” Katerina had no objection.

A little later, a black sedan sped through the glittering, traffic-choked streets under the night sky.

“What exactly happened?” Chang Yu asked, one hand on the steering wheel and the other steadying it, while addressing Katerina in the passenger seat.

He considered himself fairly well acquainted with her. Even though she was trying hard to remain calm, he still caught a trace of fatigue and dejection in her eyes.

Something had definitely gone wrong, Chang Yu thought.

“Did something happen with that calamity?” he asked after a moment’s thought.

By that calamity, he meant the giant fish he and Yangyang had hauled out of the Song River two days earlier.

“Yes. After the logistics team brought that giant salmon back to the bureau, the bureau’s scientists began studying and investigating it overnight,” Katerina said, taking a deep breath before continuing slowly.

“The moment the investigation results came out, my superiors called me into the bureau for a meeting. After the scientists’ research, they finally reached a result that was both shocking and unexpected.”

“That giant salmon... was not a calamity at all.”

Chang Yu perked up his ears and listened intently, doing his duty as a proper audience member.

“Not a calamity? Then what could it be? Don’t tell me it really was just a salmon?” he said in surprise.

“You actually hit the nail on the head. It really was a salmon,” Katerina said. “I thought it was strange from the beginning, why my blue flame had no effect on it at all. Looking at it now, my original guess was correct.”

“That’s impossible! What kind of salmon can grow to the size of a whale?” Chang Yu’s first reaction was disbelief.

Even if salmon were larger than ordinary fish, they could not possibly grow to such an absurd size.

Chang Yu might not have much worldly knowledge, but he was not about to make a mistake this basic.

“The investigation showed that the salmon’s body contained a large amount of radioactive material.”

“Its level of nuclear radiation had already reached several times the dose produced by an atomic bomb blast.”

“In other words, the reason that big fish grew so enormous was because of... mutation caused by nuclear contamination.”

“Nuclear contamination? How could a perfectly good fish be contaminated by nuclear radiation?” Chang Yu’s face showed shock, disbelief, and utter surprise.

“It was all done by those island nation bastards!” Katerina ground her teeth, each word forced out through clenched anger.

“They secretly dumped nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, causing the nuclear pollution in the surrounding waters to skyrocket far beyond the limit.”

“That salmon mutated into its present form only after accidentally swallowing huge amounts of nuclear waste.”

“In search of waters fit for survival, it swam all the way from the Pacific Ocean into the Black River, and from the Black River all the way into the Song River.”

“Salmon should not have been migrating at this time of year, yet out of season, one actually appeared in the Song River. That alone is enough to show just how badly the Pacific waters have been polluted!”

“What! How could this happen?” Chang Yu felt a chill rise up his spine. His whole body went icy cold, and he could not help shuddering.

Katerina’s words left him pale and disoriented, at a loss.

He forgot he was driving. His hands trembled unconsciously, and the steering wheel turned wildly.

On the street, the speeding black sedan immediately began to weave erratically.

“Aaaah!”

“I want out, I want out! This isn’t a ride to preschool!” Yangyang cried from the back seat, rolling about as the car lurched from side to side.

“Drive properly, Chang Yu! Drive properly!” Katerina clutched the passenger-side grab handle tightly, helping Chang Yu steady the wheel. The scene grew chaotic beyond measure.

And so the black sedan, which had been careening wildly down the street, was finally brought back into a straight line.

“You scared me half to death!” Yangyang collapsed in the now-stable car, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“Thank goodness no traffic accident was caused.” Katerina, too, quietly let out a breath of relief, feeling she had escaped by sheer luck.

“So a tiny island nation dares to be this arrogant, acting as though the whole world is beneath its notice?” Chang Yu roared in fury.

“Why should the whole world pay for their mistakes? Do they have no shame at all?”

“The bureau was furious when it learned of this as well, and the matter has already been reported upward,” Katerina said with worry.

“That’s all we can do. What comes next is a struggle between nations. As for diplomacy, people like us are powerless to interfere.”

“Events at that level are beyond our control. We’ve done everything we can. The rest can only be left to fate.”