Upon hearing this, Gao Xiaojie pinched Chen Xu in anger, thinking to herself, "I am a beautiful girl loved by everyone. You took advantage of me last night, and now you're trying to deny everything?"
Of course, he couldn't say this out loud. Chen Xu, who was being pinched and howling, turned around and looked at the girl strangely, but she just pouted like a toad and didn't say a word. He could only sigh in his heart, "Women are women, they're really inexplicable," just like the song lyric, "Boys, don't try to guess what's on a girl's mind."
Tang Bixuan was on the phone, her face flushed, whispering something. Chen Xu vaguely heard "thank you" and "I'm fine," and muttered to himself, "Why is our boss so incompetent? Why not just take him down directly?" Then Gao Xiaojie kicked him again.
The call didn't last long before Tang Bixuan, blushing, walked over with her phone and said, "Thank you, Wu Yuan has something to say to you." Then Chen Xu took the phone and said lewdly, "Boss, are you itching to sprout wings and fly over here now?"
Wu Yuan cursed on the other end of the phone, then paused before saying, "Third brother, where are you guys right now? What's that girl's name? How do you know her? And...and um...go away, don't be so loud. Don't let her hear you."
The words trailed off into a whisper. Chen Xu raised an eyebrow, chuckling lewdly to himself. "Just as I thought," he thought. "Our dorm mate, who's always been incredibly sultry and lewd, is now talking like a little kid. This is clearly a sign he's fallen in love." So Chen Xu grabbed his phone and ran outside the cake shop, grinning, "Hey bro, this little beauty's pretty good, super cute. Hehe. You don't even know her name?"
Wu Yuan, on the other end, was already somewhat embarrassed and angry. He said, "Damn it, stop talking nonsense! Answer my question!"
Hearing Wu Yuan's growing anxiety, Chen Xu quickly said, "Her name is Tang Bixuan. She works as a waitress at this Hua Die Xuan restaurant. Which Hua Die Xuan? Damn, isn't that the one in X City? It's about 100 meters outside the west gate of our school, yes, that one. Uh, hehe, I didn't go home for the New Year, my parents ran away, it's not my fault. I came here with Gao Xiaojie to work, and I just happened to help him out." Wu Yuan cursed, "You're so rich, why are you working? You must be bored out of your mind!" Then Wu Yuan said, "Hey, Third Brother, could you check this out for me first..."
"Look at what?"
"Ugh, it's about that. Never mind, I'm not talking to you anymore. We'll chat online when I get back tonight!" Wu Yuan slammed down the phone. Chen Xu chuckled. Sure enough, his brooding boss had found his spring. Hehehe, things are looking up, things are definitely looking up!
Besides, there's nothing wrong with Tang Bixuan. Chen Xu has never been the type to pry into someone's background. As long as a girl is a good person, that's enough. And Tang Bixuan is quite pretty, though a bit young. Would it be a bit too much to call her "sister-in-law" later?
When Chen Xu scurried back into the store, Gao Xiaojie nudged him and asked, "How was it?"
"What can happen? Spring is here." Chen Xu winked playfully, and Gao Xiaojie immediately understood, revealing a knowing smile. Tang Bixuan, however, was puzzled, as it was still winter!
After this little incident, Chen Xu and Gao Xiaojie's undercover life at Huadiexuan officially began.
The cake shop's employees were mostly women, with only Chen Xu as a man, aside from the head pastry chef and the manager. And he was the man standing at the front desk.
So all the girls wore special work uniforms, aprons, and hats, but Chen Xu just wandered around the cake shop like nothing was wrong. Anyone who didn't know better would think he was doing performance art.
Chain cake shops like Huadiexuan typically operate on a delivery basis. Cakes are made the night before, according to a set quota, and delivered before opening the next morning. They generally sell out their daily quota until it's gone; any unsold cakes are disposed of. Besides cakes, they also sell hot fruit custards, ready-made bread and jams, and custom-made birthday cakes.
If you order a large cake, the waitresses will receive a commission. So, they will try their best to promote larger and more expensive cakes to customers. The more cakes they sell, the more commission they will receive.
It has to be said that the items in Hua Die Xuan are ridiculously expensive, which left Chen Xu speechless... It's not that he doesn't have money, but Chen Xu has always felt that some things are worth spending money on without feeling bad, and it's stupid to spend a lot of money on things that are clearly not that valuable. Although buying cakes at Hua Die Xuan might not be considered stupid, Chen Xu still felt that the prices were a bit outrageous.
Look at the Golden Crown store next door. They have almost the same products, but the price is half. Is this what they call a big store bullying its customers?
However, the business at Hua Die Xuan was still quite good. Throughout the day, quite a few young people would come in, order a hot drink, and sit for a while... Of course, most of them were couples or girls. I didn't see any grown men sitting in this room, which was decorated like a tropical rainforest, enjoying a small cake and a hot drink on a swing.
Chen Xu asked Gao Xiaojie maliciously, "How do you women's bellies grow? You get full after eating so little?"
Gao Xiaojie kicked him. Chen Xu was just messing around because he had nothing better to do. She still had to study seriously!
Gao Xiaojie sold several cakes in one day, but when customers came to order large cakes, she noticed that the shop's staff would try their best to give the opportunity to Tang Bixuan, the young girl.
Chen Xu was naturally outgoing and friendly. Although he wasn't particularly handsome, he wasn't bad-looking either. Plus, he was the only guy who was active in the lobby, so he quickly became familiar with the other staff members.
According to them, although they didn't know Tang Bixuan's family background, she seemed to be a poor girl, all alone in another city. They heard she rented a very cheap single room in a faraway place, and it took her more than forty minutes to get here by bus every day. Sometimes, if she got off work late and there were no buses, she would sleep alone in the shop. In addition, she was very cute and had a good personality. She never lost her temper and seemed so gentle and weak that anyone could bully her, which made everyone feel sorry for her, so they often gave her opportunities.
Finally, the day came to an end, and strangely, Li Jiannan didn't reappear. The time when the cake shop closes is often the happiest, because the remaining unsold cakes have to be disposed of. They're supposed to be thrown into the trash, but Mr. Zhang, the kind-hearted chef in charge, always lets the girls have them.
Chen Xu and Gao Xiaojie were also fortunate enough to each receive a small piece of cream cake. They hadn't originally planned to keep it and intended it for Tang Bixuan, but after Tang Bixuan received her piece, she refused to take it anymore, leaving the two of them with no choice.
After seeing Tang Bixuan onto the bus, Chen Xu and Tang Bixuan walked back. Looking at the cake in their hands and thinking about the girl from earlier, they both felt a little uneasy. So they walked forward with their heads down and in silence, holding the cake in their hands, barely paying attention to where they were going.
Not watching where you're going will either result in being bumped into by someone or running into a lamppost. Gao Xiaojie was accidentally bumped by someone passing by, and then, losing her balance, bumped into Chen Xu. The piece of cake in her hand was also smeared directly onto Chen Xu's left wrist.
Chen Xu tapped her on the head and said, "Why are you walking like a pig? You can't even walk carefully!" Seeing that his watch was covered in cream, Chen Xu felt annoyed. He took a tissue and wiped it off, but then suddenly froze.
The watch displayed a line of text: "Melamine content exceeds the standard; consumption will be harmful to the human body..."
Chapter 99 Harm
melamine...
If this had happened after 2008, the name of this chemical product would have been a household name in China. But in early 2007, if you asked ten people, probably nine of them wouldn't know what it was.
Chen Xu was one of the few who didn't know what this thing was.
Following the principle of "when in doubt, consult Baidu," Chen Xu searched on Baidu and found the following entry in the encyclopedia: "Melting point 345℃ (decomposes), density 1.573 g/cm³ (16℃). Slightly soluble in water and hot ethanol. Industrially, melamine is produced by reacting dicyandiamide with ammonia at high temperature or directly from urea under high temperature and pressure. The latter is cheaper and more commonly used. Melamine can be condensed with formaldehyde to produce melamine-formaldehyde resin. In addition, melamine is also used as an intermediate in the synthesis of drugs."
This is equivalent to saying absolutely nothing!
So Chen Xu could only sneak into the bathroom to ask Xiao Min. Xiao Min's reply was only about the chemical composition of melamine and its industrial uses, such as decorative panels, paints, and paper.
This left Chen Xu even more confused. What was the purpose of this thing? Why would it be added to a cake?
Gao Xiaojie was exhausted after a long day. Unlike Chen Xu, who was just there for fun, she hadn't come at all, and the manager wasn't around in the afternoon. Chen Xu didn't have a uniform, so he basically worked while playing... of course, he spent most of his time playing, but Gao Xiaojie learned a lot and even went out to deliver food twice with Tang Bixuan. So she was quite tired, and after coming back, she took a shower and went to bed.
Of course, the phone rang today. To prevent a repeat of last night's incident, Gao Xiaojie said she'd rather sleep on the floor than sleep with Chen Xu this time. Chen Xu also felt a little apologetic about last night's events, although it wasn't her fault, so he let Gao Xiaojie continue sleeping in the bed. He slept on a makeshift bed on the floor with the air conditioning on, not worried about catching a cold again... because Chen Xu knew that the reason he almost caught a cold yesterday wasn't because of the makeshift bed, but because he foolishly took a cold shower...
Gao Xiaojie took a shower and went to sleep quickly. She didn't feel as embarrassed as she did yesterday. Chen Xu, on the other hand, was still full of energy. The melamine seemed like a thorn stuck in his throat, and having gotten no useful information from Xiao Min, he had no choice but to seek help online.
Chen Xu searched for the keyword "melamine" on Baidu and then scrolled through web pages one by one. After searching for more than twenty pages, he found nothing useful. So Chen Xu added the keyword "cake" after "melamine," and even less information appeared. After two or three pages of completely meaningless advertising websites, the keyword turned white.
The reader may be puzzled here, but it is actually due to Xiaomin's information.
The melamine contamination of milk powder became almost universally known after the latter half of 2008, but before that, few people, except for some professionals, could connect the two. Melamine gained notoriety because of the milk powder scandal, but before that, it was merely an academic term known only to some chemical engineers. Unfortunately, Xiaomin's records did not contain any information about the 2008 milk powder scandal, so even with just one person and a computer, she was at a loss.
Xiaomin only told Chen Xu that the melamine content would be an important indicator in food testing in the future, but she didn't say what the specific indicator was... Chen Xu didn't even know what the steps of food testing were, so he looked helpless.
When in doubt about domestic matters, consult Baidu; when in doubt about foreign matters, consult Gougou.
What if neither works?
Then there's only one way: go to Tianya (a Chinese online forum) and find an expert! Then take the ultimate step in using search engines... a manhunt!
Chen Xu happened to have a Tianya account... because Tianya Community, as the largest BBS platform in China, once adopted a paid system to prevent the proliferation of forum sockpuppet accounts, charging one yuan to register an account.
He made his way to the mutual aid section of Tianya Forum, where he posted a thread asking, "Seeking experts to come in and discuss the issue of melamine content in food testing," and then sat in front of his computer waiting for a reply.
Tianya has a huge amount of traffic and a very high refresh rate. Chen Xu went to the bathroom in the middle of the post, and when he came back, the post had been scrolled to the third page with no one paying attention to it. So Chen Xu bumped the post up himself, and kept bumping it up for the next half hour. After a few meaningless replies like "just passing by", the first serious comment finally appeared.
This commenter is quite knowledgeable; at least he knows that melamine might be produced from the decomposition of urea, but he's baffled as to why it appeared in food testing. In his words, current food testing shouldn't include a process for checking melamine levels, and he kindly tells the original poster… to just go to sleep!
Chen Xu rolled his eyes at the reply, but he didn't give up. According to his research, melamine had never been listed as a food additive before a certain period, but it wasn't explicitly prohibited by law either. However, after a certain period, the frequency of the term suddenly increased dramatically. This gave Chen Xu a vague sense of crisis.
Finally, after two boring hours of waiting... During those two hours, Chen Xu went to the Red Hacker Battlefield and racked up 400 points, making the bunch of noobs scream and cry in agony. In the end, a text document was left on their computer screens, with the same sentence: "Hahahaha, I won!"
After Chen Xu finished grinding in the battlefield... well, this was a different way to grind in the battlefield. When he came back, he checked the posts on Tianya. Finally, he found a crucial reply in one of the posts.
The reply stated that he didn't know what melamine was used for, but he did know that some people were adding urea to certain foods to increase the nitrogen content and, at a low cost, increase the protein content, thus deceiving consumers.
Upon seeing this message, Chen Xu suddenly realized that he had been looking in the wrong direction. The keywords he should have been looking for were not "melamine, cake", but "milk, urea"!
Chen Xu recalled that Xiao Min had detected the cream on the watch earlier. But when he searched "milk, urea" on Baidu, what he found was utterly shocking!
The practice of adding urea to milk to increase protein content has existed for a long time. Chen Xu clicked on a post from May 2004, in which the poster wrote that some dairy farmers added water to milk, causing the protein content to decrease. They then added urea to the milk to increase the protein content, and sold it to dairy factories after meeting the required standards.
Some people below have also argued that urea should be added, and whether the milk powder factory knew about it.
The answer is definitely yes! This is an open secret in the industry. Some unscrupulous dairy farmers, driven by greed, and some unethical milk collectors, driven by greed, dilute fresh milk with water and add additives. Yes. Those with a little conscience add protein powder. Those without conscience add melamine, also known as "protein concentrate," directly!
What are the harmful effects of melamine?
Not many people know about it yet, but Chen Xu does! Xiao Min's file doesn't contain any records of the 2008 milk powder scandal, but it does contain records of the period after melamine contamination.
Melamine can cause kidney stones!
However, this type of kidney stone differs from ordinary calcified stones, which are almost insoluble in water, so there are no other effective treatments besides surgical lithotripsy. The former, on the other hand, is slightly soluble in water, so the likelihood of it forming a stone is very small as long as it is not consumed in large quantities. Therefore, it's generally fine for adults to drink this milk, just don't make it their staple food.
But there's still one problem...
It doesn't matter for adults, but what about babies?
Babies without breast milk are fed this melamine-rich milk powder for a long time, and they have almost no other access to drinking water. Moreover, the tubules in a baby's kidneys are much thinner than those in an adult's kidneys... How can these newborn babies withstand this?
After verifying the origin of melamine, Chen Xu could no longer remain silent. If it were true, then this milk powder would be a killer of infants, and if he knew about this but did nothing, he would never forgive himself if any consequences arose in the future.
Although Chen Xu didn't consider himself a saint, he couldn't ignore such a situation. He glanced at the sleeping Gao Xiaojie, then rushed downstairs to a two-hour convenience store, buying every brand of baby formula he could find. The store clerk nearly fainted, wondering if this kid had lacked maternal love and never had milk as a child.
Chen Xu stormed home, carrying two large plastic bags filled with over a dozen brands of milk powder, from infant formula to senior citizen formula, in a fit of rage. Without a word, he opened each bag and had Xiao Min test them. The results showed that even the lowest concentrations contained over 0.09 milligrams of melamine per kilogram, while the highest, found in Sanlu high-iron and high-zinc formula… well, that's impressive! 6196.61 milligrams!
That means that one kilogram of milk powder contains more than 6 grams of melamine!
It would be strange if something didn't go wrong after drinking that!
Chen Xu really wanted to post about this on Tianya, but after typing just a few words, he realized an important problem: his voice carried little weight.
Why should anyone believe me? This is a challenge to almost the entire dairy industry in China! Just because I posted under a pseudonym? Let's not even talk about whether it will get censored... you have to understand that most of those large dairy factories are state-owned enterprises!
Who would notice these things? And how can I make people notice them?
Chen Xu thought about it and realized that he was indeed a nobody, because no one would believe a student.
However, his other identity must carry some weight.
Chapter 100: The Appearance of SMMH
The name Hao Aiguo immediately suggests that he was born into a revolutionary family, and a very prominent one at that.
Hao Aiguo's parents were both military personnel, and he followed in their footsteps onto the path of national defense. However, thanks to his high intelligence, he chose a civilian career. Now in his early forties, Hao Aiguo has already achieved the rank of colonel and is considered a prominent figure in the Ministry of National Defense Information. His computer skills are also top-notch. Hao Aiguo still looks down on Snake, the group that caused trouble last time, because hackers are most careful not to reveal their identities. Although the identities of Snake's members were unknown before, they were too conspicuous and would eventually be caught.
Hao Aiguo has always believed that the real masters are in the military, in every country, because the power of hackers is simply too great. Every hacker is a top-notch programmer, and such programmers can only realize their value under the control and support of the state. As for those self-proclaimed hacker organization rankings that swindle and boast outside, they are nothing but small fry, not worth mentioning.
Aside from Kevin Mitnick, who was once the world's number one hacker.
Of course, now we need to add one more person... SMMH!
Hao Aiguo merely admired Kevin Mitnick, not for his technical skills, but for his unwillingness to serve the US government and his decision to give up using computers for life. The former king of hackers had become insignificant after years of not touching computers, but in his place, another king of hackers emerged.
And he's Chinese...SMMH!
Hao Aiguo initially thought SMMH was exaggerating and making alarmist claims, but after seeing the firewall that Blue Baby brought, he was completely convinced.
The more capable a person is, the more likely they are to admire those who are even more capable than themselves, and these are the kind of people who are so high up that they can't even look up to them!
Looking at heaven from the perspective of hell!
This is how Hao Aiguo felt when he was researching this firewall.
Our own technology. How can a nation's top-tier technology lag behind that of an individual, or even an organization?
Hao Aiguo preferred to treat SMMH as an organization, because if it were just one person, that person's strength would be terrifying, terrifying to the point of being godlike!
Of course, he didn't know that Chen Xu had actually thrown this firewall at them as garbage, because software manufactured under the current computer hardware conditions was considered garbage and full of vulnerabilities by Chen Xu.
The SMMH firewall was handed over without a name, so the military simply named it "SMMH One" firewall, as they were looking forward to a second, or even more, opportunity for cooperation.