Xu Qing thought for a long time, but still could not understand the meaning of Master Cheng's signature phrase, but he thought it was very artistic.
He sent two more pictures of his watches to Cheng Xu, who agreed without even looking at them carefully.
After some thought, Cheng Xu was certain that there were no mechanical watches on the market that he could not repair.
He gave Xu Qing the address of the village council hall, which was not far from the scrapyard, and asked him to mail the watches to that address. The man agreed without hesitation.
'What a joke. The value of these two watches would be about the same as the one the master gave me.' He was, naturally, unworried about whether Cheng Xu would badmouth his watches.
After they were done chatting, Cheng Xu, who had found himself a job to earn money, happily went to make dinner.
"Something's not right? I'm using a gas stove, so why am I smelling plastic and wood?"
As Cheng Xu was cooking, he felt that the smells he detected was not right.
Turning off the fire and putting down his spatula, Cheng Xu intended to go out and see what was happening.
As soon as he reached the courtyard, Cheng Xu caught the strong smell of smoke. He looked to the side and saw that it was actually Grandma Wang's house.
"Oh no, don't tell me the house is on fire?!"
Cheng Xu hurriedly rushed out. At this time, the other residents had also noticed the abnormality.
Everyone came to the door of Grandma Wang's house to take a look and realized that her door was open. There was a fire flickering inside, and thick smoke was coming out from there.
For a moment, the few people beside him did not dare to go in and save her.
"Oh no, she told me that she was going home to cook. She must still be inside," Grandma Liu stomped her feet anxiously as she said this, and looked around the house.
"Have you called the fire brigade?"
"I'm calling, I'm calling!"
"Let's go back and get some buckets of water to put out the fire!"
"I'll go back and get the water pipe!"
"Wang Yumei! Are you in there?! Come outside!"
The people outside the house shouted, but there was no response from inside the house.
Cheng Xu looked at the fire and was afraid that the firetruck would not arrive in time. He made up his mind and rushed into the house.
Uncle Li saw him rush in and was about to stop him, but Cheng Xu had already dashed a few meters away.
"Child, come back quickly! You can't go in there!"
The anxious shouts of the people around him did not slow Cheng Xu down.
"That child, sigh..."
"Hurry up and get some water."
Grandma Wang had been good to him since he was very young. Whenever she had good food, she would save it for him. She treated him as though he were her own grandson. Cheng Xu really could not just stand outside and watch.
Moreover, with the system, it was not like he was completely helpless in the fire.
As soon as he rushed into the house, Cheng Xu's eyes were closed from the smoke, and tears flowed from his eyes along with a burning pain.
Cheng Xu hurriedly used his dimensional pocket to store all the smoke in front of him so that he could somewhat open his eyes to see the situation in the room.
Feeling the high temperature in front of him, Cheng Xu doused himself with the emergency water he had stored in his dimensional pocket, and felt better after doing that.
Walking into the living room, Cheng Xu indeed found the source of the fire in the kitchen, where it raged on.
"Please, please, please, please don't be in the kitchen."
He held his breath and used his mind to remove all the oxygen in the kitchen and kept it in his dimensional pocket.
The fire that had reached the ceiling suddenly died down because of the loss of oxygen.
After using the water in the dimensional pocket to put out the two—now smaller—sources of fire, Cheng Xu was finally able to enter the bedroom.
The door to the room was left ajar. When he kicked it open, he saw Grandma Wang lying unconscious on the ground.
"Good, good..." Cheng Xu's anxious heart was finally at ease.
If she had been in the kitchen, there would have been no way of saving her.
He did not have time to hesitate. He carried Grandma Wang, narrowed his eyes, closed his mouth, and ran out of the house.
With the circulation of air returned, the fire slowly grew bigger, and thick smoke was everywhere again.
The distance from the room to the outside was only a few dozen meters, but Cheng Xu felt like he had been running for half a century.
Finally, when he heard the faint sound of the firetruck's siren, he felt that the air was finally fresher and his breaths were not so hot anymore. Cheng Xu's tensed nerves finally relaxed a little.
In the end, the high-speed sprint with a person on his back, the billowing smoke, and the overexertion of his ability caused Cheng Xu to trip on a ridge in the open space outside the door. He fell to the ground and lost consciousness.
When he woke up, Cheng Xu was lying on a hospital bed. When he opened his eyes, he found himself surrounded by a large group of people.
There were people from the village council, Grandma Wang's family, Huang Junjie and his mother Aunt Yang, and Li Mengqing.
"He's awake! The child is finally awake!"
The once quiet ward suddenly became a little noisy.
Huang Junjie looked at Cheng Xu and said excitedly, "F*ck, Brother Xu, you're too awesome. You're my idol from now on."
"Keep your voice down, don't disturb him." Aunt Yang patted Huang Junjie's shoulder.
"You almost scared me to death. Does your body still hurt?" The one who spoke was Li Mengqing, her eyes still red and swollen.
Before Cheng Xu could say anything, Huang Junjie gave him a knowing look. He wanted Cheng Xu to recount everything to him in detail later.
"I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you for your concern." Cheng Xu opened his dry lips and expressed his gratitude to everyone.
"What's there to thank us for? Xu, you're too nice."
"That's right, we should be thanking you."
"Thank you so much. If it were not for you, I don't know what would have happened to my mother." The last person to speak with a sobbing voice was Grandma Wang's daughter. She seemed to have been quite frightened.
"Child, it's good that you're fine. I'm already so old, it's not worth the risk."
Cheng Xu turned his head and was pleasantly surprised to see Grandma Wang, who was leaning on the bed next to him and looking at him.
"Grandma Wang, I'm glad that you're fine. I'm a young man, so it's fine if I get slightly injured. I'll be fine in two or three days."
"Cheng Xu, we all know that you saved a person from the fire. We have unanimously decided to give you 1,000 yuan as a cash reward."
The village committee member handed Cheng Xu an envelope as he spoke.
"At the same time, we've already reported your heroic act to the county. The county media will also promote and praise you for this later on."
The secretary of the village committee looked at Cheng Xu and said with a smile.
"You're overpraising me. I was only doing what I had to."
Cheng Xu did not know what to say, he could only parrot what he had heard other heroes said in the news.
Seeing that Grandma Wang and Cheng Xu had both woken up, the residents slowly dispersed.
Cheng Xu had more or less figured out the cause of the fire from the residents' banter.