Chapter 50: The Site of the Car Accident

Today was the day for the routine township mayor's meeting.

This meeting was instituted by Wang Yunfei and held at a fixed time every week. The township mayor, deputy mayors, and heads of various departments were required to attend, primarily to discuss work arrangements. Qin Feng felt that this system was quite good.

"All right, let's start the meeting. First of all, Deputy Mayor Xu officially completed his retirement procedures last week, so his position is now vacant. Everyone here has a chance, so I hope you all perform well and put in extra effort lately," Wang Yunfei said with a smile.

Everyone chuckled and began discussing among themselves. In reality, Deputy Mayor Xu had effectively retired long ago, but he only reached the official retirement age last week and finalized the paperwork.

"Let's go through the updates from each department and have everyone report," Wang Yunfei announced, commencing the meeting.

The department heads reported on their work in turn. Ordinarily, the Civil Affairs Office would present within the first two, but ever since Qin Feng became the director of the Civil Affairs Office, its report always came dead last.

In fact, it wasn't just the reporting order that changed; at every township meeting, no matter how well the Civil Affairs Office performed, Qin Feng would invariably be reprimanded by Wang Yunfei afterward. This had almost become a routine occurrence.

Qin Feng remained indifferent. It wasn't that he enjoyed being scolded, but he had no choice in the matter.

Wang Yunfei was the mayor, and official rank could crush a person. Since Wang wanted to lecture him, Qin Feng could only sit and listen.

Qin Feng could easily see that Wang Yunfei was intentionally suppressing him, but such petty tricks were useless aside from being deeply annoying.

After enduring his customary reprimand from Wang Yunfei, the latter finally changed the subject.

"All right, it's that time of the year for forest fire prevention again. The upcoming month will be the peak period for forest fires..."

***

In recent years, the central government has placed tremendous emphasis on forest fire prevention. Since Bishan was a traditional forestry region, its wildfire prevention work was exceptionally heavy every year.

Li Dejun was in charge of this sector and had always concurrently served as the director of the temporary Wildfire Prevention Office, meaning wildfire prevention was his responsibility year after year.

However, unlike previous years, Wang Yunfei specifically established a patrol team under this Wildfire Prevention Office this year and appointed Qin Feng as the team leader, making him responsible for fire prevention patrols.

Qin Feng knew in his heart that Wang Yunfei was deliberately making trouble for him again.

Forest fire prevention was a basic duty if done well, but if it wasn't done well, one had to bear the responsibility. In the event of a major safety accident, accountability would be pursued even more severely.

Falling victim to this typical "dirty and exhausting job" was almost inevitable for Qin Feng, as he had already been assigned several such temporary, grueling tasks recently.

When forming the patrol team, Wang Yunfei interfered once again.

Because the personnel were temporarily drawn from various departments, Wang Yunfei assigned all the troublemakers who were at odds with him or the department heads into the team, clearly intending to make things difficult for Qin Feng.

These people were merely idling their time away waiting for retirement; they usually refused to do their regular jobs, so expecting them to take this temporary, exhausting assignment seriously was practically impossible. Furthermore, there was no way they would listen to Qin Feng, a team leader in name only.

Despite this, Qin Feng did not dare to slack off and earnestly set about implementing the work.

Qin Feng divided the forestry region into sectors, assigning three people to each sector with a three-shift rotation, maintaining patrol duty twenty-four hours a day.

Although this was how Qin Feng arranged it, he also knew that it was virtually impossible for anyone to carry it out seriously, and there was nothing he could do about that.

***

According to regulations, forest fire prevention work would officially commence starting next Monday. Prior to this, Qin Feng accompanied Li Dejun through numerous fire prevention meetings, coordinating with various villages, departments, and the police station. It was truly exhausting work.

***

This Saturday, Qin Feng and Hu Jiayun boarded the morning minibus from Bishan to Shannan.

Given Hu Jiayun's rank and influence, she could easily have had Hong Haifeng arrange a car to drive her to Shannan, but she chose not to do so.

"Was this the exact spot where the car accident happened last time?" Hu Jiayun asked Qin Feng as the vehicle passed the location of the previous accident.

Qin Feng had long since forgotten about that incident, and only remembered it when Hu Jiayun brought it up.

"Yes, it was. To avoid a child who suddenly ran out onto the road, the female driver swerved off the road, plunged down the slope, crashed into a large boulder, rolled over, and finally got wedged against that large tree."

"The situation looked terrifying at the time. When I pulled the female driver out of the car, she was already unconscious. I was scared to death," Qin Feng recalled, describing the scene.

"I remember you telling me before that you didn't get out of the car to rescue anyone. How did it suddenly turn into you getting out to save her?" Hu Jiayun asked with a smile.