A Gathering of Elites

"...What is this?" Beneath an overcast winter sky, chilling winds blew in gusts. Ji Jue stood before the desolate, decrepit factory grounds, still clinging to the faintest glimmer of hope as he plucked up the courage to ask. "The factory," the middle-aged man answered immediately. "What kind of grounds?" "Fac-to-ry." The middle-aged man gave a simple, honest smile, just like an assembly line foreman welcoming fresh cogs to the grind, telling them: Welcome to the factory. This is just how the factory is. A person always had to accept reality. Done accepting it? Once you're done, let's start happily turning screws! Ji Jue's expression instantly became like that of every other overworked laborer—utterly indescribable. Completely bereft of the will to live. "Come, come, please come in." Amid a piercing screech of metal on metal, the man hauled open the iron gate with all his might, enthusiastically welcoming Ji Jue inside: "Old Liu! Old Liu!! Where the hell did you go? Hurry up, someone's here! Get the water boiling..." "Di... Director Yan, there's no need for all this," Ji Jue coughed dryly. "I'm just here to take a look." "Nonsense, it's essential! It's not every day you grace us with a visit. Come, drink some tea, drink some tea. This way, please." The middle-aged man, Yan Jian, smiled so broadly his face bloomed like a withered chrysanthemum, every wrinkle brimming with joy and anticipation. "Now that Mr. Ji is here, the factory has a future! Now that Mr. Ji is here, we have a way forward!" Ten minutes later, the elite backbone of Haian Auto Works was assembled in a drafty office. Gathered around a coal stove, looking thoroughly bedraggled, they blew on the embers, lit the coal, and brought water to a boil. Then, clutching enamel mugs and disposable paper cups of hot tea, they held their very first restructuring meeting. They were: the newly appointed acting director, Ji Jue; Haian Auto Works' security guard cum gatekeeper cum caretaker cum farming peasant, Liu Jinzhu; HR cum finance cum boiler-heating manager, Wang Haichuan; and the most important among them, the head of technical, equipment, assembly, and production management at Haian Auto Works, Yan Jian. Beside them at a small table was the temporary hand, Liu Jinzhu's nephew Liu Xiaobao, who had his head buried in elementary school homework. Sitting on a 'luxury executive chair' whose cushion was peeling and crisscrossed with cracks, Ji Jue cradled his paper cup and looked at the crouching dragons and fledgling phoenixes before him, tears nearly welling in his eyes. He felt his life was over. Time to reroll. He had expected Haian Auto Works to be in bleak shape, but he had never imagined it would be this bleak. He would have been better off starting with just a begging bowl! Among this pack of crouching dragons and fledgling phoenixes, the old geezer gatekeeper Liu Jinzhu had heard that watching the gate paid four hundred yuan a month and came with free land inside to farm, so he had jumped at the side gig. A buy-one-get-one deal, he had brought his nephew along—one farmed by day, the other slept by night. His vital importance went without saying; he was practically indispensable. Wang Haichuan in finance and HR was over sixty, suffered from early-onset dementia, couldn't even work a calculator properly, knew nothing when asked, and couldn't explain a single thing. He was due to retire this month, just waiting to head home and collect his pension. The only one who seemed remotely reliable was the balding, middle-aged Yan Jian, who had run out to guide him in. He was actually a Rank 1 Mechanical Engineer! A goddamn Rank 1... How could a ghost of a place like this retain a Rank 1?! Ji Jue stared dumbfounded at the credential displayed on the middle-aged man's phone screen, struck speechless. "Why didn't you leave?" "..." Yan Jian offered a smile that looked hardly better than weeping. Did he think he didn't want to leave? When an auto plant fell into such pathetic ruins, anyone capable of real work had no shortage of opportunities elsewhere and had long since sought greener pastures. Those who should leave and could leave had basically all cleared out decades ago. Yan Jian damn well wanted to, but he couldn't run... Back then, he had celebrated too early. When the factory was founded, he had been seduced by the signing bonus and signed a fifty-year contract in one breath, effectively binding himself for life. In better years, he had led everyone in high spirits, building the whole enterprise up from nothing. Even if he couldn't be called its biological father, he was at least half an adoptive stepfather to Haian Auto Works. The only knockoff minivan bearing the Haian name still circulating on the market today was the very model whose 'development' he had overseen back then. Unfortunately, the good times didn't last. Life grew harder by the day, and the plant slumped further and further into decline until there weren't even screws left to turn. Yet, for various reasons, appearances had to be kept up to deceive themselves and others, preserving a certain headcount and official structure. Thus, Yan Jian accumulated more and more concurrent titles until he became the last workhorse left behind who could still turn a screw in this empty shell. Over the years, watching the winds rise and clouds scatter, towers built and towers crumble, he drew a dead salary devoid of performance bonuses. Even if he wanted to run, he couldn't. Aside from drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, when boredom struck, he could only open an online shop on the side. At least he got paid. It wasn't much, but it was steady, wasn't it? Or perhaps, deep down, there still lingered a faint sliver of hope. Maybe the hardship was only temporary? Maybe if he held out a little longer, he would see light at the end of the tunnel? Maybe the pie the leadership drew really could be eaten? And maybe the goddamned leaders and their whole families would drop dead tomorrow? Now, having wished upon the stars and moon, he had finally received a phone call announcing that operations would resume, followed by the arrival of Ji Jue, a savior dropped from the heavens. To say he wasn't excited would be a lie. "Come, come, Mr. Ji, follow me. Oh, careful there, it's pretty dusty over that way." After the brief meeting, Yan Jian took the initiative to lead the way, inviting Ji Jue to inspect his loyal production departments. Flattery and praise flowed without pause along the path as he probed Ji Jue's background and situation with questions he thought were subtle, but were actually glaringly obvious. He wanted to understand what had actually happened. Until Ji Jue let out a helpless sigh. "Director Yan, please don't. We're brothers in misfortune here. If things go south, we'll probably be taking the blame together." Yan Jian froze, then waved his hand dismissively, his enthusiasm redoubling. "Mr. Ji, what are you saying? What our auto works lacks is precisely someone like you, bringing advanced management and working experience!" "Sorry to disappoint, but I've never managed anything in my life. This is my first time ever setting foot in an auto plant," Ji Jue confessed frankly. "I don't have investments from other automakers backing me, let alone the support of any financial conglomerate. Even this directorship was thrust upon me like driving a duck onto a perch, and I'm only an acting director at that." Yan Jian's smile stiffened slightly, and he gave a dry cough. "Then before this..." "Never done it, never seen it, zero experience," Ji Jue stated flatly. "If I really had to stretch it, does working in an auto repair shop count? I actually used to fix that model of yours all the time. Its stability is honestly better than the original; it's just that the engine loves leaking oil." "..." Yan Jian's face twitched, but he still clung to a shred of hope. "Then your..." "Parents died early, went to school on loans." Ji Jue ruthlessly snuffed out his last glimmer of wishful thinking. "As for myself, I haven't even finished college—I'm a master's student. Having connections in high places has nothing to do with me, and billions in family wealth only exist in my dreams. Here, if you don't believe me, this is my student ID." Yan Jian stared blankly. "Then why did you..." "My teacher arranged it. An internship." Ji Jue gave a blunt reply, then raised a hand and pointed at a dust-covered, gigantic stamping press inside the opened workshop. "Could you explain what that's used for? I've never seen this model before. How many tons is it?" "..." Silence. In the prolonged silence, Yan Jian stared at him blankly, as if the sound of something shattering rang out in the air. Whether it was wishful thinking or hope that had dissolved into disillusionment, no one could tell. Color gradually flooded his face, his expression twitching in waves as though he were beside himself with fury, yet had no idea whom to direct it toward. In the end, when he parted his lips, only silence spilled out. Followed by a helpless, numb sigh. "Follow me." He hung his head, trudging listlessly ahead. The spine he had just straightened slowly hunched over once more. First came the raw materials storage, then the production workshop, and after that, the empty warehouse for finished goods. A lone, dust-laden roll of rusted steel coil, a dozen or so tangled bundles of cabling, seven or eight boxes of screws, two hardened tires—this was a reserve of raw materials that would move even a mouse to tears. The silent press buried under grime, the conveyor belts long since brought to a halt, the dismantled equipment that couldn't be pieced back together, and the immobile overhead cranes and assembly fixtures were enough to make anyone with a shred of modern industrial common sense shed a few pearls of tears. It was practically like visiting a morgue to view a corpse. And the kind of corpse that had been smashed to pieces at a crash site, only pieced back together because the family insisted on an open-casket viewing. Every part seemed to be accounted for, yet every part seemed to be missing something; nothing was quite right. The only thing they shared in common was that they were just about dead. Dead as a doornail! Vaguely, one could still discern that the founders back then had harbored grand ambitions and ideals, and every stage of the manufacturing process had once been fully intact. From chassis production and assembly, frame and subframe machining, body stamping, welding, painting, electrophoresis, to final assembly... All of it bore witness to the fact that before its demise, this corpse had once been fairly handsome. Moreover, many critical pieces of equipment were still here. Although some were damaged and others scrapped, with some repairs they could at least be made to work. At the very least, they hadn't handed Ji Jue an empty plot of wasteland and expected him to rub a car together out of thin air... They could function, could be used, could be brought back to life. Though long obsolete and worthless, at least they existed—just like Yan Jian, who had been abandoned here, ignored and unremembered by all. Yan Jian was reliable and dutiful after all. Even with his hopes snuffed out, he didn't throw in the towel. After all, having bottled it up for so many years, if he were going to lose his mind, he would have done so long ago; he had long since grown numb. This was merely one more disappointment. Having stayed here from the founding of the plant until now, no one understood Haian's grim state better than he did. Expecting an overnight turnaround was nothing short of pure delusion. Over the years, if he hadn't occasionally maintained things, even this last batch of machinery and equipment would have been scrapped or sold off on the sly long ago, without a single bolt left behind. Abandon hope, accept reality. He would just treat this as giving a tour to the newcomer who had tumbled into the pit. Along the way, Ji Jue touched this and inspected that right before his eyes, clambering up and down from time to time, finding novelty in everything. Now and then, he would chime in to discuss parameters and technical details. Had Yan Jian not seen his student ID, he would almost have thought an industry peer had come to play a prank on him. Yet that half-baked manner of his didn't seem staged at all. He genuinely had never seen any of this before. And yet, his smile was just like his own back then. While stroking the machinery and discussing the particulars, a spark shone in his eyes. Yan Jian gave a silent sigh and looked away. He watched no longer.