Winter solstice, early in the morning.

Dongcheng District, Lianhai City, Binhai Avenue.

It was morning commute time, and the number of vehicles gradually increased.

A pickup truck drives through the traffic.

The enclosed compartment of the truck is marked with a striking advertising slogan.

"Ant moving, your best choice for moving."

The truck passed through a pit section and the road was bumpy, the latches on the rear door of the car were shaken, and the two doors were wide open.

The carriage was piled with all kinds of items, the most of which were bottles and cans, and many yellow plastic bags wrapped in them.

The truck driver heard the sound and looked in the rearview mirror to see that the rear door of the car was turned upside down.

The driver chuckled in his heart, thinking that it would be better for the contents of the car not to be turned upside down, so he prepared to pull over the truck to the side of the road and come down to check.

There was a three-way intersection ahead, the green light began to count the seconds, and seeing the yellow light flashing, the truck driver stepped on the accelerator and decided to cross the three-way intersection first, and then pull over to the side of the road.

The yellow light was three seconds, and seeing that the last second was about to pass, the red light was about to turn on, and a red battery tricycle suddenly rushed out of the intersection on one side.

"Boom...... Bang......"

The truck driver braked sharply and the direction swerved.

Although it dodged the rushing tricycle, the truck rushed out of the curb, broke an arm-thick newly planted plane tree on the side of the road, rolled in a circle, broke into the green belt, and finally toppled over in a pile of bushes.

The trucks were all over the place, and the goods in the trucks were scattered in the green belt, and there were bottles and cans and yellow bags everywhere.

The truck driver collapsed, his body tightly squeezed into his seat with his seat belt, his head down, and blood dripping from his forehead.

There was a car accident, and the cars on the road were also out of order, and soon onlookers called 110 and 120.

The ambulance roared to the scene, and with the help of passers-by, the truck driver was lifted into the ambulance and whistled all the way to the nearby hospital.

Soon after the ambulance left, another identical truck and several workers in yellow overalls arrived to pack the items scattered in the green belt into the new truck bed and carry the goods away.

Soon again, consignments and cranes lifted the truck out of the green belt and took it to the workshop.

The broken plane trees, the turf that was lifted up in the green belt, the broken bush branches, and the remnants of the car accident were quickly collected by the sanitation workers and taken to the nearby garbage cans.

An old man in his 60s with tattered clothes passed by.

The whole car accident and the process of people cleaning up the scene of the car accident were watched by the old man who was scavenging.

When the crowd of onlookers dispersed, the old man entered the green belt and pulled a yellow bag out of the bushes.

The yellow bag was the first to be thrown out of the compartment at the time of the crash, and the farthest that was thrown was hidden deep in the bushes and was not noticed by the people who cleaned up the scene.

The old man opened the yellow bag and found that it was a transparent plastic bag sealed with two packs of adhesive strips, and there were some white crystals inside, like salt.

"It turned out to be salt, and I thought it was something valuable."

The old man muttered as he tossed the outer yellow plastic bag aside, putting only two packets of salt into the woven bag he was carrying.

Along the Binhai Avenue all the way to the west, the old scavenger carried his own woven bag, rummaged through the garbage cans along the highway one by one, and found many cardboard boxes to carry back to his temporary residence, the back alley of a commercial street near the Esplanade.

Most of the storefronts in the shopping street are restaurants, and occasionally a few clothing stores are mixed in.

Even in winter, the shopping street is still crowded and bustling, while the back alleys of the shopping street are sparsely populated and a little dirty.

Not far from the garbage dump in the back alley, the old scavenger built a makeshift shack-like shelter out of wood, cardboard and plastic sheeting.

Next to the shack was a broken rickshaw with a broken chain.

The tricycle was good before, but in the last move, because of the rush to people, the tricycle was damaged, and the money has not been scraped together to repair it.

After a busy day, the sky was getting dark, and the old man who was scavenging returned to his residence with the cardboard boxes he had picked up and dragged the drink bottles full of woven bags.

His stomach was rumbling, and he hadn't eaten a good meal after a busy day.

There is still half a steamed bun in the shack, which is the leftover steamed bun from yesterday, which is extremely hard, like a stone.

The old man took a bite of the steamed bun, and his stomach screamed even more, so he decided to go to the shopping street to find something to eat.

When it's almost time for dinner, the shopping street is full of people coming and going, all of whom are customers coming in and out of the restaurant.

The old man was close to the door of a restaurant, and immediately a waiter rushed out and shouted to the old man: "Go, go, it's time to be busy, don't scare the guests." ”

The old man retracted his feet and prepared to go to the next one.

After taking a turn in the shopping street, a kind guest gave him a hot fried cold skin.

Returning to the back alley from the shopping street, the old man was about to start eating, when suddenly, a waiter from a restaurant came running angrily.

The waiter was a young man in his 20s with dyed yellow hair.

"Hey, old fellow, are you taking our sausages again?" The young waiter angrily asked the old man who was scavenging.

"No, my cool skin was given by a guest." The old man replied in a low voice, he usually suffered too many white eyes, even if he was wronged, he didn't dare to argue for himself loudly.

"Lying again! I didn't admit it if I stole something, I found the sausage lost in our hotel last time in you, and this time there are two less sausages in our store, so you must have stolen it. The young waitress was aggressive, as if he wanted to vent all the anger he had just suffered in the store on the old man who was scavenging.

"No, I picked up the sausage on the road last time, and that day I saw a stray cat dragging a string of sausages through the alley, and the sausages were cut off in two by the stone in the corner, and I picked them up when I saw that no one wanted them."

The more the old man explained, the more angry the young waiter became, and without saying a word, he pushed the old man aside and went into the shack to rummage around.

The sausage was not found, but two bags of salt were found from one bag.

"Not only stealing sausages, but also stealing salt from our store!"

The young waiter pocketed two bags of salt, got out of the shack, kicked the old man, and walked away.

The old man wanted to explain, but the cool skin in his hand was kicked to the ground and scattered most of it, he opened his mouth, and finally didn't speak, just squatted down and put the cool skin on the ground back into the bowl.

The waiter returned to the back kitchen of the hotel and casually put two packets of salt from the old man scavenging next to the salt shaker in his restaurant.

——

A few days later.

The Dongcheng District Community Hospital, next to Binhai Avenue, is overcrowded.

There was a marked increase in the number of patients with nausea and vomiting.

Some patients reported to community doctors, "Recently, I always feel headaches and lack of energy, sometimes I have soreness, my hands and feet tremble, and I am not very steady when I walk." ”

Another person reflected, "In the past few days, my hands and feet have always been numb, and I am nauseous and do not want to eat." ”

The community doctor didn't take it seriously at first, thinking it was an ordinary bacterial food poisoning and hung up the needle on the patient.

The patients are not improving, the number of patients is increasing, and the infusion hall of the community hospital can no longer be placed.