Starting as a Wallfacer, his defection to the Three-Body Problem shocked the world.

Los Angeles, inside the underground city.

Forklift operator Lao Cheng dusted himself off, took down the camouflage uniform hanging on the steel frame, and put it on.

As a result, he accidentally got his clothes caught on a protruding steel nail on a nearby machine tool, and his already somewhat worn camouflage uniform was torn open again.

"Grass."

Old Cheng looked at his camouflage uniform with some heartache. It was his only piece of clothing that was still in relatively good condition, and now it was torn again after only a few years of wear.

"Dad."

Old Cheng turned around and saw a boy as thin as a stick standing behind him, smiling at him.

What brings you to the construction site?

Old Cheng held the tear in his clothes with his hand, deliberately preventing the boy from seeing it.

The family doesn't have many cloth coupons left this month, so he plans to save them up and get the child a new outfit next spring. Otherwise, it's not good for the child to always wear hand-me-down clothes.

"The supply and marketing cooperative distributed candy today. I kept two pieces for myself, so I brought them over for you to try."

As the boy spoke, he took two candies out of his pocket and handed them to Lao Cheng.

Old Cheng shook his head.

"Hey, I didn't care about this stuff back then. You can eat it, I'm not eating it. I was so tired of eating this stuff when I was a kid. Only kids of your generation would treat this stuff like a treasure."

The boy pursed his lips. Although he knew that Lao Cheng was deliberately making excuses, he still didn't quite believe the "golden age" that Lao Cheng described.

"Pshaw, is it as mysterious as you make it out to be? You're already tired of eating candy? Did you think you could just buy candy on the street back then?"

Upon hearing this, Lao Cheng nodded.

"You know what, more than ten years ago, when you were just born, you could really buy candy on the street. Back then, stores even had Coca-Cola."

What is cola?

"Tsk, so you've had a tough life, kid. You've never even had a Coke. Back then, it was 3 yuan a bottle. In the hot summer, a sip of it was so refreshing."

The boy was startled upon hearing this.

"Three yuan? That's so cheap? A bottle of purified water costs 30 yuan now. I can't believe you can buy a bottle of Coke for such a small amount of money."

"Oh, silly child, how can money back then compare to money now? Money now is just scraps of paper; nobody would even want it if it fell on the ground."

Upon hearing this, the boy suddenly felt a longing for the era that Old Cheng had described.

"Dad, if I took money from today and traveled back to your time, could I just buy lots and lots of food?"

"More than that, you could buy a house with that money."

"Buying a house...can houses be bought and sold?"

"Of course, back then the planned economy hadn't started yet. Houses and cars were things you could buy; anyone could buy them once they had the money."

"Don't we need tickets or anything?"

"No need."

"Oh my god, that's so wonderful! I can't believe that all of this happened more than ten years ago."

"Yes, back then, the PDC hadn't taken over all the countries yet. I originally thought that with global unification, everyone would live better lives, but... how come it's not as good as the Chinese era?"

A bitter smile appeared on Lao Cheng's face.

"Alright, this underground city should be completed next week. When it's finished, I'll take you here for a look around. Otherwise, you probably won't even have the chance to enter here again."

"Great! I wish my dad were still here. He would definitely be looking forward to this day too!"

Old Cheng, however, didn't take it to heart.

"What are you expecting? This place will be for rich people to live in in the future. We poor people will probably still only be able to live on the surface."

Of course, if Lao Cheng knew what was going to happen in the future, just like Lin Xuan, he would be very glad that he lived on the surface of the earth.

The child was not born to Lao Cheng; his wife died several years ago.

When she was pregnant, it happened to coincide with the fourth wave of inflation. Everyone's money depreciated rapidly within a week, causing Lao Cheng's savings of many years to become a pile of worthless paper. She couldn't afford to be hospitalized, so she had to give birth at home. In addition, she was not getting enough to eat, and ultimately neither she nor her child survived.

Another unfortunate figure was the blind man who had offered Lao Cheng a cigarette. The year after the child was born, the blind man was caught in a machine tool due to improper operation during construction. He was nearly dead when he was taken to the hospital.

Normally, the blind man's wife would have received a large sum of compensation for this kind of work injury, but the money that was taken from her by the authorities never actually reached her.

The project manager and his team came over to his house, took out the compensation money, took a picture to appease their superiors, and then left.

The only thing left was two boxes of walnut milk.

After Lao Cheng learned about this, he even went to take a look.

Six nuclear bombs.

"Damn it, these bastards, not only did they not give us the money, but the only thing they left behind was a fake."

Later, Lao Cheng reported the matter to his superiors, but no one paid any attention to him. He wanted to take his coworkers to demand an explanation, but he was beaten up by the project manager and spent a week in bed, almost losing his life.

After learning that she would not receive the compensation, the blind man's wife hanged herself at the entrance of the underground city in a fit of anger, which alerted the PDC specialists, who immediately launched a thorough investigation into the matter.

The compensation was finally received, but the person was dead. What use was the money then?

With no other option, Lao Cheng had to take the child in and raise him himself. In any case, given the state of the world, he didn't want to get married anyway, so this was a way for him to have an heir.

People like Lao Cheng are everywhere in this era.

The era of crisis is not a good one; no one is a winner in this era.

Even if one day the Trisolaran crisis is resolved, politicians will still be firmly in power, the rich will gain even more wealth, and only the poor will be searching for their children's graves.

"But Dad, haven't you noticed that there seem to be more and more workers at this construction site lately?"

Upon hearing this, Lao Cheng frowned slightly.

To be honest, he's had the same feeling these past few days; there seem to be several times more people working on the construction site than before.

And they were all unfamiliar faces.

Old Cheng has been working here for almost ten years. When the Mirror Project was first proposed, he was among the first people to work here. He knows everyone here very well.

But he always felt that some other people had infiltrated the construction team of this underground city.

"Forget it, why worry so much? Maybe it's because the city is nearing completion and the higher-ups want to speed up the construction?"

Old Cheng tried to comfort himself with this thought, but his intuition still made him somewhat wary.

The next day, he told the foreman that he wanted to resign. After having 15 percent of his wages deducted, he took all the money, bought a train ticket with his child, and decided to leave Los Angeles temporarily for the next few days.