That year, I went to Liuyang, to a fireworks factory project.

The person who received me directly led me into a storage room.
All around were thick concrete walls that looked terrifyingly solid, the door was like a bank vault’s explosion-proof door, pushed open with great effort to create a narrow gap.
But when I looked up, the ceiling was actually a thin layer of iron sheet, exactly like the roof of a vegetable market.
At the dining table, after a few glasses of local “Liuyang River” liquor, the boss scooped up some food, pointed at the ceiling with his chopsticks, and said: “That thing is a door specifically left for the heavens.”
I didn’t understand at the time.
He saw my puzzled face, put down his chopsticks, gestured with his hand to form a square box, then suddenly flipped his palm upward: “The walls are built so solid, and the door so thick, just in case something happens, all the force can only be directed upward.
Not letting it explode outward, not blowing up the whole village.”
At that moment, I stared at the steaming plate of spicy stir-fried pork on the table, but my mind was full of that thin as paper roof, and the mountain of gunpowder beneath it.
Surrounded by an impregnable fortress, yet above my head was a deliberately left gap, an exit ready to sacrifice itself at any moment.
I used to think that rules were just a series of constraints, meant to bind people.
That day, I finally understood that true rules are not about telling you “what not to do,” but about using concrete and iron sheets to tell you, when the sky falls, which direction to run in order to survive.