Chapter 7: Tang Xue Gets Bullied

By the time Li Yi returned to Nianzishan Village, it was already past three in the afternoon.

Instead of going straight home, he drove his mule cart to the educated youth settlement in the village committee compound.

Since a large number of educated youth were returning to the cities and those with connections had already left, the once bustling compound now seemed deserted.

In his previous life, Li Yi had once accompanied his third older sister here to deliver something to Tang Xue, so he vaguely remembered that Tang Xue lived in a side room on the west side of the courtyard.

After tying the mule’s reins to a massive poplar tree that took two people to encircle, Li Yi took the twisted bread and headed toward Tang Xue’s quarters.

Just as he reached the doorway, he heard stifled sobs coming from inside, along with the soothing voice of his third older sister, Li Na.

Fearing something had happened to Tang Xue, Li Yi pushed the wooden door open with all his might!

What met his eyes was a room in utter disarray: the table had been overturned, its contents scattered across the floor. Li Yi even spotted a thermos on the ground, with shards of glass strewn everywhere—the inner liner had clearly shattered.

Tang Xue was slumped on the cold floor, sobbing uncontrollably, her shoulders trembling slightly, her expression heartbroken and despairing.

Her older sister, Li Na, was holding her close, offering constant comfort.

The sound of Li Yi pushing open the door startled the two. When they saw it was him, they both froze.

Although Li Yi didn’t know what had happened, he could tell that Tang Xue had clearly been wronged.

He immediately strode over. Under the stunned gazes of the two women, he scooped Tang Xue up from the cold floor and laid her on the wooden bed nearby.

Then, Li Yi looked at his third sister and asked, “Sis, what happened?”

Li Na was about to speak when she saw Tang Xue frantically shaking her head at her.

Li Na snapped out of it instantly. She’d really lost her mind—she knew exactly what kind of person this kid was.

If he found out what had happened, he’d cause an absolute uproar, and the resulting chaos would be impossible to contain.

With that in mind, she immediately tried to come up with an excuse to brush it off!

However, Li Yi was no ordinary person—he was a billionaire tycoon from decades in the future. How could he not see through the two women’s little schemes?

So, before Li Na could say a word, he cut in: “Sis, no matter what happened, we’ll face it together. Running away won’t do any good!”

“Besides, the village is this small—you can’t hide anything here. Even if you don’t tell me, I can find out just by asking around. Don’t even think about trying to fool me!”

Li Na opened her mouth, then finally shot Li Yi a withering glare and snapped, “It’s all because of the trouble you little bastard caused—and you still have the nerve to ask!”

Li Yi knew this must be related to what happened yesterday, so he said awkwardly, “Sis, let’s talk about the issue at hand. No need for personal attacks!”

“Hmph. You know Xu Hong, right? He’s the one who trashed this place!”

“Xu Hong? Who’s that?” Li Yi asked, furrowing his brow.

Li Na clearly hadn’t expected Li Yi to have no idea who Xu Hong was, so she quickly explained, “Xu Hong is just like Xiao Xue—they’re both educated youths from Qin Province, so they’re practically hometown friends.”

An image of a guy with a sharp nose and sunken cheeks instantly popped into Li Yi’s mind. Such a character had occasionally appeared around Tang Xue in the past, often claiming to be her fellow villager—it must be that guy.

“Why would he smash up Xiao Xue’s dorm room?”

“It’s all for that spot to return to the city!”

“A spot to return to the city?”

“Exactly! Xiao Xue has already secured a spot to return to the city, but with this incident, if she marries you, she’ll no longer meet the requirements to return, and she’ll have to give up that spot!”

Li Na continued, “Xu Hong knows about this too, so he came looking for her today, trying to get Xiao Xue to give him that spot. But Xiao Xue is torn about it right now—she hasn’t decided whether to give up her return-to-city spot, so naturally she couldn’t agree to anything!”

“I never expected that guy to lose his temper so suddenly. Not only did he say a lot of nasty things, but he also flipped the table over!”

Upon hearing this, Li Yi immediately frowned and asked again, “The spot belongs to Xiao Xue. How she chooses to handle it is her own business. Giving it to him would be a favor; not giving it to him is her right. What gives him the right to flip the table?”

Li Na glanced at Tang Xue, then at Li Yi, and said, “He… he used to be after Xiao Xue, but she turned him down! And you, you’ve spread the word about Xiao Xue’s… that whole thing all over the brigade. Maybe that bastard found out and got jealous, so he came in spewing nothing but filth!”

“What exactly did he say?”

“Well…”

Seeing that Third Sister was hesitant to speak, Li Yi pressed her immediately, “Sis, at a time like this, what’s there to be shy about?”

Just then, Tang Xue suddenly looked up and shouted in a hoarse voice, “You wanted to know what he said, didn’t you? Fine, I’ll tell you! He said I’m promiscuous and immoral, that a young woman like me crawls into other men’s beds on my own, that I’m a slut, and that I should be dragged through the streets…”

Hearing this, Li Yi flew into a rage.

He didn’t bother listening to the rest. He tossed the twisted doughnut he was holding onto Tang Xue’s bed, turned on his heel, and stormed out the door, heading straight for the dormitory of the male educated youths in the front courtyard!

Seeing this, Li Na knew things had gone terribly wrong!

Her younger brother was a hothead; once he got worked up, no one could stop him. If she didn’t hold him back today, blood would definitely be shed!

With that thought, she rushed out and called out urgently, “Xiao Yi, stop right there…”

Without turning his head, Li Yi said, “Sis, you go back and watch over Xiao Xue. I’m going to find that bastard. How dare he bully my wife? Does he really think all the men in the Li family are dead?”

“Xiao Yi, don’t be so impulsive. It’s not worth getting into a fight over this…”

“What do you mean it’s not worth it? That son of a bitch is picking on my wife. If I don’t stand up for her now, I’ll be a cuckold!”

With that, he shook off Li Na’s attempt to stop him and continued charging toward the male educated youth dormitory!

Inside the room, Tang Xue listened as Li Yi kept calling her “wife” outside the door. Her heart, which had been lifeless until then, suddenly stirred with emotion!

Li Yi might not be the perfect match, but it was clear he truly cared about her.

Moreover, after that incident, he’d decided to marry her right away—he certainly had a sense of responsibility.

If it weren’t for his family’s truly dismal circumstances and his own utterly tainted reputation, marrying him wouldn’t be entirely out of the question.

But that thought only flashed through her mind for a moment—everyone in Nianzi Mountain Brigade knew exactly what kind of person Li Yi was!

Being lazy and good-for-nothing was one thing, but he also loved to pilfer and steal—stealing a chicken today, snatching a few eggs tomorrow. If anything went missing in the village, he was the one to blame.

On top of that, he was the ringleader of the local rascals—all the fifteen- and sixteen-year-old troublemakers in the village listened to him. That bunch of half-grown boys had no sense of responsibility; last year, they even killed and roasted one of the brigade’s sheep. In the end, Li Shankui had to pay compensation to the brigade to settle the matter!

Could anyone possibly marry a man like that?

At this thought, tears welled up in Tang Xue’s eyes once again!

Early the next morning, when Li Yi woke up, he found his parents had already gone out to work in the fields!

After washing up and having a light snack, Li Yi got to work!

Since Nianzishan Village was a full 15 kilometers from the county seat—a journey that would take at least two hours by mule cart—he had to prepare the liangpi and chop the toppings within two hours to arrive before noon.

Fortunately, he was well-versed in all of this, and it didn’t take long for everything to be ready!

After loading everything onto the mule cart, Li Yi drove straight toward the county seat.

Traveling along the dirt roads of the countryside, gazing at the lush green crops lining both sides of the path, and breathing in the freshest air of nature, Li Yi felt incredibly happy.

Although he was currently poor—he didn’t even have a single penny in his pocket—his inner world was rich.

Thinking back to his previous life, although he had built his own business empire—with assets reaching tens of billions at its peak—whenever the night was deep and quiet, the guilt he felt toward Tang Xue and the child who had never been born would constantly gnaw at his heart. Even though he possessed the entire world and was adored by thousands, he could not overcome the loneliness within his heart, and he spent his entire life struggling with guilt and solitude.

But now, Tang Xue was still alive, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, she was carrying his child. There was still a chance to make amends for everything.

At 11:00 a.m., the mule cart arrived in the county seat, but instead of heading to the town center, Li Yi drove it to the entrance of the sugar factory on the outskirts of the county.

Although the county seat was bustling with people, the reforms had only just begun. Moreover, Qing Shan County was a small, remote inland county where people held conservative views and were not yet fully receptive to the private sector.

If he were to openly sell liangpi in the city center, he might very well end up getting arrested.

The situation at the sugar factory, however, was different. Although it was located on the outskirts of the county, the factory employed seven or eight hundred workers—all of whom were permanent staff earning thirty to forty yuan a month—giving them strong purchasing power.

More importantly, Li Yi knew that the sugar factory didn’t have a staff canteen; the workers had to go home for dinner after work or bring their own meals to work every day.

With a safe environment and a ready consumer market, this was definitely a prime spot for a street stall!

After finding a suitable spot, Li Yi arranged the prepared liangpi and all the various toppings and condiments neatly on his cart, then waited patiently for customers to arrive!

At 11:50 a.m., as a crisp electric bell rang out, the workers were off duty!

Li Yi immediately perked up—his business empire was about to set sail from this mule cart right outside the factory gates!

A few minutes later, workers began streaming out of the sugar factory gates!

Seizing the opportunity, Li Yi called out loudly, “Authentic Shaanxi-style liangpi, 20 cents a serving—first come, first served!”

“Don’t miss out—authentic Qin Province Liangpi, delicious and perfect for beating the heat!”

“For just two cents, you can’t go wrong—you’ll get a refreshing, delicious serving of Liangpi…”

The novel cries quickly drew a crowd of onlookers. When everyone saw the liangpi and various toppings and condiments laid out on the cart, they couldn’t help but swallow hard!

Finally, someone couldn’t resist any longer. A middle-aged man turned to Li Yi and asked, “Young man, what kind of food is this? I’ve never seen it before.”

“Bro, this delicacy is called liangpi. It’s the most famous and classic summer treat in Qin Province—guaranteed to have you coming back for seconds after your first bite!” Li Yi replied with a smile.

“How much is it?”

“With broth and toppings, it’s 20 cents plus two liang of grain coupons per serving!”

“Two mao plus two liang of grain coupons? That’s so expensive!”

“Bro, it takes a pound of white flour to make one serving of liangpi. Right now, the supply and marketing cooperative sells white flour for 16 cents a pound. Add in all the seasonings—is 20 cents really too much?” Li Yi explained.

“I guess that makes sense. Give me one to try!”

“Sure thing! Just a moment!”

Li Yi deftly peeled a large sheet of liangpi off the tea tray, then sliced it into strips on the cutting board, tossed it with various seasonings, and drizzled a small spoonful of chili oil on top.

He placed it in a bamboo tube and handed it to the middle-aged man, tossing him a pair of bamboo chopsticks as well.

The middle-aged man, in turn, deftly pulled out two 10-cent notes and a 2-liang local grain coupon, then squatted down beside the mule cart and dug in!

After just a couple of bites, the middle-aged man couldn’t help but exclaim, “You’re something else, kid—this tastes absolutely amazing!”

“Thanks for the compliment, big guy. In the summer, I wouldn’t trade this liangpi for a pig’s trotter!” Li Yi said with a smile.

“Is it really that good? Give me a serving too…”

“I’ll have one too…”

With the middle-aged man leading the way, Li Yi sold out all 62 portions of liangpi in less than ten minutes—the turnout was absolutely staggering.

After agreeing to come back tomorrow at noon to sell more liangpi, Li Yi finally managed to break free from the workers’ enthusiastic “surrounding”!

On the mule cart, Li Yi counted the loose change in his hand while sorting out the grain coupons.

After tallying his earnings, a satisfied smile spread across Li Yi’s face.

12 yuan and 40 fen, plus 12 jin and 4 liang of flour coupons!

The profit was simply off the charts!

Keep in mind, a jin of white flour costs 16 fen, which makes five servings of liangpi. Li Yi sells each serving for 20 fen—five servings total one yuan—and the garnishes and chili peppers are all homegrown, so they cost him nothing.

In other words, he was selling at a sky-high price of 1 yuan for a cost of just 16 fen—a 625% profit margin!

Plus, this business required no rent, utilities, or employees—it was practically like scooping money into a sack!

Furthermore, judging by how popular the liangpi was today, selling just a few dozen portions a day clearly wouldn’t meet the workers’ demand, so Li Yi decided to make more tomorrow.

However, he’d already used up most of the seasonings at home—oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and the like—so Li Yi decided to make a trip to the supply and marketing cooperative first to stock up on ingredients.

The supply and marketing cooperative was located in the main downtown area of the county seat, five or six li away from the sugar factory!

Along the way, looking at the low-lying houses lining the county town’s streets and the dirty, muddy roads, Li Yi found it hard to connect this place with the “Top 100 Counties in China” of the future—a place filled with towering skyscrapers, wide roads, and clean, orderly streets.

But then again, it was just the beginning of reform and opening-up; the shackles of the planned economy were still in full force. Most importantly, Qing Shan County’s mainstay industry—coal—was still buried underground, so it was only natural that the local economy hadn’t taken off yet.

When he arrived at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, the place was absolutely packed—the entrance was lined with mule carts and bicycles!

After squeezing his way inside, Li Yi found a sales clerk and asked about the prices of cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar. Price-wise, things were genuinely affordable in this era, but the fact that you needed ration tickets for just about everything was a real pain in the ass.

Even though he had money in his hand, there were many things he simply couldn’t buy.

With no other choice, Li Yi spent two yuan and eight fen to buy 12 jin of flour and two large twisted doughnuts, then left the supply and marketing cooperative.

After lunch, during a break, Li Shankui puffed on his pipe and asked, “Xiao Yi, I want to ask you—what are your plans for the future?”

“What do you mean, ‘what am I going to do’?”

“You’re about to get married soon. You can’t just sit around at home forever—you’ve got to find something to do!”

Before Li Yi could answer, Li Na, sitting nearby, chimed in with a look of disdain: “He’s so delicate and soft—what could he possibly do? He can’t even bend over to work in the fields, and he doesn’t have any connections to get a job at the factory!”

Tang Xue instinctively glanced at Li Yi and found that he was indeed just as Li Na had described: his skin was fine and fair, with a delicate, porcelain-like complexion. Paired with his square jaw and broad brows, he was actually quite handsome.

If it weren’t for his somewhat tattered clothes, he wouldn’t look a bit out of place among the young men in town.

But the more she saw this, the more sorrowful Tang Xue felt inside!

What good is being good-looking? It doesn’t put food on the table!

This was the countryside, after all. Every young man here was the family’s main laborer—everyone worked the fields until their hands ached, their skin weathered by sun and wind until it looked like a baked potato, and their hands were covered in calluses.

In the entire Nianzishan Brigade, aside from Li Yi, it would be hard to find anyone with skin as soft and delicate as his.

The thought of having to spend the rest of her life with a man who couldn’t lift a finger or carry a load made Tang Xue want to burst into tears!

If it weren’t for certain special reasons keeping her from returning to the city, she’d really just want to walk away…

“Dad, what do you think about me going to the county seat to sell liangpi?” Li Yi suddenly spoke up.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than Li Shankui’s face fell, and his voice rose sharply. “Are you out of your mind? That’s profiteering! If you get caught, you’ll end up in jail!”

Hearing the word “jail,” Zhang Yuehong also panicked and hurriedly said, “Son, you can’t be so reckless! If all else fails, we’ll just farm the land here. With me and your father helping out, we’ll never let you and Xue go hungry!”

Li Yi immediately retorted, “It’s just setting up a small stall to sell some liangpi. How is that profiteering?”

Li Yi continued, “Dad, I read in the newspaper a few days ago that because so many educated youth have returned to the city and are unemployed, the government has allowed them to set up street stalls to make a living.”

“Besides, the authorities have made it clear that cases of profiteering are primarily handled by the Administration for Industry and Commerce. Only serious or major cases requiring investigation are handed over to the public security authorities. Even if selling cold noodles is deemed profiteering, the worst that could happen is having our illegal earnings confiscated by the Administration for Industry and Commerce—we’d definitely never go to jail!”

Li Shankui hesitated for a moment, but then said firmly, “That still won’t do. Look around the city—who dares to do something like that? If we get caught, we’ll be made an example of!”

“Dad, just like my third sister said, I can’t stand the hard work of farm labor, and no factory will hire me. You can support me for a while, but can you really support me for the rest of my life?”

Li Yi continued, “Liangpi is definitely a novelty here in Qing Shan County. It’s delicious, affordable, and doesn’t cost much to make. Even if—just to be safe—they really don’t let us set up stalls in town, we won’t lose much. So I want to give it a try!”

Hearing Li Yi’s words, Li Shankui’s expression softened slightly. After a long silence, he finally spoke up: “You’re really not just trying to make a quick buck?”

“It really isn’t!” Li Yi said firmly.

“Well… then go ahead and give it a try. If they really don’t let you sell them, just stop!” Li Shankui said.

“Alright, I’ll take your advice!”

At that moment, Li Na, standing nearby, frowned and said, “You’re actually planning to go sell this stuff? Will you even make any money?”

“I don’t know if I’ll make money, but I certainly won’t lose any!”

Although he said this, Li Yi knew full well that setting up a street stall at a time like this was practically a surefire way to make money.

The reason was simple: on the one hand, due to government policies, no one dared to openly set up street stalls, so there was no competition.

On the other hand, with the development of the economy, people’s incomes had clearly risen.

And with more money came increased spending—which meant there was a market.

With a market and no competitors, it would be a travesty of justice if he didn’t make money.

However, Li Yi couldn’t bring himself to tell his family outright; otherwise, they’d just think he was bragging. He’d wait until he’d actually made some money and let the results speak for themselves!

“As long as you don’t lose money, that’s fine. Do you need any help?” Li Na asked again.

Although she didn’t believe her good-for-nothing younger brother could really make money selling liangpi, this was the first time Li Yi had expressed a serious desire to make a living, so she still wanted to help him—what if it actually worked out?

Li Yi immediately shook his head and said, “No, thanks. I can handle this on my own!”

“Alright then!”

Just then, Tang Xue, who had been silent the whole time, suddenly spoke up: “Uncle, Auntie, wait a minute—I want to go back to the educated youth commune!”

Li Shankui opened his mouth to say something, but in the end, all that came out was a “Hmm.”

He was a bit worried the girl might face hardship if she went back. Although only half a day had passed, the entire commune was buzzing about the incident; Li Shankui and the others had already heard plenty of gossip when they returned from the fields.

If possible, he really didn’t want Tang Xue to go back to the educated youth commune; she could just stay at his house.

But that would be even worse. Sleeping with a man before marriage and then moving straight into his family’s home—it would be hard for her to hold her head high in the village from then on.

Li Yi had obviously thought of all this too, so he didn’t try to keep her. Instead, he turned to his third sister, Li Na, and said, “Sis, take Xiao Xue back this afternoon. Don’t go out to work in the fields for the next few days. If anyone dares to gossip, don’t hold back—just give them a piece of your mind!”

Li Na was also a bit concerned about Tang Xue’s state of mind, so she nodded immediately and said, “Alright!”

Hearing this, Tang Xue felt a slight stir in her heart.

Although he was a bit of a rough-and-tumble guy, he wasn’t entirely without merit. At the very least, he was responsible, knew how to cook, and cared about her.

If he had a proper job, life with him wouldn’t be so bad after all!

For a moment, she couldn’t help but get lost in thought!

…….

After lunch, the elderly Li Shan Kui and his wife rested for less than half an hour before heading out into the blazing sun to work in the fields. However, they left the mule cart behind, as Li Yi needed it.

At 2:30 p.m., Li Yi drove the mule cart, taking Tang Xue and Li Na back to the educated youth compound in the village committee compound.

Afterward, he drove the mule cart toward the back mountain.

Since he planned to set up a stall selling liangpi, he had to prepare some supplies.

He had the ingredients at home, but what he lacked were bowls and chopsticks.

In later times, liangpi was typically served in plastic bags, but there was nowhere to get those supplies now.

At first, Li Yi had planned to use bowls, but upon seeing the few large bowls at home—all chipped and cracked—he could only shake his head in resignation.

He wanted to buy a few bowls, but he was completely broke, and new bowls weren’t cheap—plus he needed quite a few of them—so the idea quickly faded from his mind.

After much deliberation, Li Yi finally came up with the idea of using bamboo tubes as bowls!

Bamboo tubes were indeed a decent container, and they were everywhere. With a little polishing, they could easily serve as bowls.

After fiddling around in the bamboo grove for two hours, Li Yi returned home with half a cartload of thick bamboo.

Next came the process of making the bamboo cups. He used a saw to cut the bamboo into 12-centimeter-tall sections, then smoothed them with a file until both the inside and outside were smooth and refined.

But that wasn’t all. Li Yi then grabbed a carving knife and began etching simple patterns onto the bamboo tubes.

Li Yi spent the entire afternoon making these preparations.

By the time the sun set, he had made 50 bamboo tubes and over sixty pairs of bamboo chopsticks. He had also sifted more than ten pounds of flour and fried nearly half a bowl of chili oil.

With all these preparations complete, Li Yi’s venture to set up a stall selling liangpi was ready to go—all that was missing was the right opportunity!

The process of making liangpi is quite complex, but that didn’t faze Li Yi.

In his previous life, he had spent a long time in the Guanzhong region, where he not only developed a taste for this dish but also studied it under a local master chef for a period.

However, when he took a look at the flour at home, he was stunned once again.

Making liangpi requires medium-gluten flour, but the flour at home was milled using traditional methods, containing not only flour but also a fair amount of wheat bran and impurities.

With these impurities present, not only was the flour’s efficiency low, but the resulting liangpi wouldn’t be chewy enough.

Without hesitation, Li Yi fetched the fine mesh strainer from home and scooped two large bowls of coarse flour from the jar to sift!

After filtering, the bran and larger particles were removed, leaving behind the all-purpose flour needed to make liangpi.

He then mixed the flour with water in a 2:1 ratio, kneaded it into a dough, and let it rest to develop gluten.

The key to making liangpi is “washing the dough”—that is, placing the rested dough in water to wash out the gluten and create a dough slurry.

This process is both time-consuming and labor-intensive, taking Li Yi a full half hour.

After completing these steps, steam the gluten for at least half an hour. Strain the batter, let it settle, and once it separates into layers, skim off the clear liquid from the top.

Next, Li Yi fetched a large metal tea tray from home, brushed it with oil, poured in the batter, and steamed it. The liangpi was ready in 5 minutes, while the gluten took 10 minutes.

Soon, the noodles were ready!

He cut the sheets into long strips, tore off a piece, and popped it into his mouth. It was smooth, chewy, and had a faint wheat aroma—in a word: delicious!

Over the next while, Li Yi used up all the remaining batter, making a total of 11 sheets of li pi.

Whether liangpi tastes good depends partly on how well the sheets are made and partly on how well the dipping sauce is prepared.

Liangpi itself has no flavor; it’s all about the texture. The other sensory and visual pleasures come from the seasonings and toppings.

Li Yi searched the kitchen for a long time but found only aged vinegar and salt; he couldn’t find anything else.

Relying solely on aged vinegar and salt clearly wouldn’t meet Li Yi’s standards, but luckily he spotted a bunch of dried chili peppers hanging on the wall. He immediately took them down, crushed them, and made a batch of chili oil.

The importance of chili oil to liangpi is beyond question. A good chili oil should be a vibrant, glossy red, with a rich, aromatic fragrance that fills the air when you take a close sniff.

When a bowl of liangpi is set before you, whether it’s visually appealing and whets the diner’s appetite depends entirely on the chili oil.

After preparing these, Li Yi went to the vegetable garden in the courtyard, picked a few seasonal fresh vegetables, washed them, and set them aside as side dishes.

Soon, a bowl of Guanzhong liangpi, rich in color, aroma, and flavor, was ready.

Eating liangpi on its own clearly wouldn’t do. After all, the famous Guan Zhong “San Qin Set Meal” includes not only liangpi but also roujiamo and Bingfeng soda.

Soda is a luxury item that’s impossible to come by, and there’s no meat for the roujiamo either—but we can make the bread!

In Li Yi’s hometown, the buns from Guanzhong are called “ping,” so Li Yi set to work kneading the dough and making flatbreads!

Compared to making liangpi, making pancakes is much simpler. In no time, a dozen or so palm-sized white pancakes were ready.

Just as Li Yi took the last white flatbread out of the pan, he heard the big yellow dog in the courtyard suddenly bark. Looking up, he saw that Third Sister and Tang Xue had returned.

It turned out that Li Na had taken Tang Xue for a walk in the mountains. She had given her best friend—who was two years younger than her—a good talking-to and offered plenty of comfort, repeatedly apologizing for her good-for-nothing younger brother. Finally, she managed to ease Tang Xue’s heartache.

Seeing that it was already noon and guessing her parents would be returning from the fields soon, she took Tang Xue home to prepare lunch for them.

But the moment she stepped through the courtyard gate, she sensed something was off. From a distance, a peculiar, mouth-watering aroma wafted toward her, making her swallow involuntarily.

“Xiao Xue, can you smell that? It smells so good!”

Tang Xue nodded instinctively and said, “It smells like the oil from fried pancakes, but there’s something else mixed in too!”

“Maybe Mom’s back. She must have been worried you’d be mistreated as her daughter-in-law, so she came home early to cook something special for you!” Li Na said.

At the sound of the words “daughter-in-law,” a flash of pain crossed Tang Xue’s eyes.

At eighteen or nineteen, she was in the prime of her youth, and she, too, had fantasized about one day donning a crimson wedding gown and marrying the man of her dreams.

But she had never, ever imagined that her prince charming would be someone like Li Yi.

At this thought, tears welled up in Tang Xue’s eyes.

But being stubborn by nature, she forced herself to hold them back, refusing to let them fall.

Li Na, standing nearby, noticed Tang Xue’s unusual demeanor. After silently cursing her good-for-nothing younger brother once more, she quickly changed the subject: “Xiao Xue, don’t overthink it. Let’s go inside and see what delicious treats Mom has made for us!”

However, when the two entered the room, they were surprised to find that their mother wasn’t there—it was Li Yi who was bustling around the stove!

When they saw the several large bowls of strange noodles and the plate of slightly golden-brown flatbreads on the bedside table, their eyes widened even more.

They both knew exactly what kind of person Li Yi was.

Although the Li family was of modest means, Li Yi was the late-in-life son of Li Shankui and his wife, and they doted on him immensely!

On top of that, he had three older sisters. Even though the family wasn’t well-off, Li Yi had never really suffered any hardships growing up.

Even during the collective farming era a few years back, Li Yi never had to work the fields to earn labor points, let alone do any housework.

From childhood to adulthood, Li Yi had never even washed a single pair of socks!

As for cooking, that used to be his eldest sister Li Mei’s job. After she got married, it was passed on to his second sister Li Lan, and after she got married, it’s now Li Na’s responsibility. All Li Yi has to do every day is come home on time for meals—that’s all.

“Xiao Yi… did you make all this?” Li Na asked in surprise.

Li Yi smiled and said, “Hehe, try my cooking!”

Li Na took Tang Xue by the hand, walked over to the bedside table, and took a closer look. Then she said, “Xiao Yi, what on earth is this? It looks pretty good, and it smells delicious too—I just wonder if it tastes good!”

Before Li Yi could answer, Tang Xue whispered, “This looks like the liangpi from back home!”

Li Yi immediately replied, “It is liangpi!”

Just then, the sound of a bell rang out from the courtyard, and they saw Li Shankui and his wife driving a mule cart into the yard.

Li Shankui skillfully unloaded the cart, watered the animals, and fed them hay, while Zhang Yuehong put away her hoe, went inside to wash her hands, and prepared to help with the cooking.

When she saw the liangpi and white flatbreads on the kang table, she immediately said to Li Na, “Na Na, why didn’t you take out that piece of cured pork and stir-fry it to help Xiao Xue regain her strength?”

Li Na hurriedly replied, “Mom, I’m not the one cooking today…”

“You silly girl, Xiaoxue hasn’t even married into our family yet, and you’ve already had someone else cook for her…”

Before her mother could finish, Li Na hurriedly explained, “It wasn’t Xiao Xue who made it either. To tell you the truth, your son made all of this!”

“Xiao Yi… how could that be…”

Just then, Li Shankui walked in after tending to the family’s red mule. Hearing Zhang Yuehong’s words, he immediately asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Husband, Nana says the meal on the table was made by Xiao Yi!”

Li Shankui glanced at the food on the table and froze for a moment, then frowned and said, “Did you buy this from somewhere? Don’t waste your money on this stuff in the future.”

Li Yi chuckled and said, “Oh my god, take a look at what this is before you speak!”

Li Yi continued, “This is called liangpi—a specialty from Qin Province. Don’t even mention that I’m as broke as a church mouse right now; even if I had the money, you can’t find this stuff for sale in our county!”

“Hmph!”

Li Shankui wore an expression that said, “I’d have to be a fool to believe you,” leaving Li Yi looking utterly embarrassed!

He knew his son inside out—he probably couldn’t even cook a piece of meat properly. The idea that he’d managed to whip up such a delicious dish was as likely as the sun rising in the west.

Fearing the two of them would start butting heads again, Zhang Yuehong hurried out to smooth things over. “All right, enough said. Just try the food and see if it’s good!”

Then, at Zhang Yuehong’s urging, all five members of the household sat down at the table. Each picked up a large enamel bowl and began to eat.

The fiery red chili fully awakened their taste buds, while the cool, smooth liangpi chased away the summer heat!

It was their first time trying liangpi, and whether it was Li Shankui and his wife or Li Na, they all nearly bit their tongues off—it was that delicious.

Even Tang Xue, who was from Qin Province, thought that Li Yi’s liangpi was more authentic than that of many seasoned chefs, and she polished off a whole large bowl.

“So you really made this yourself?” Li Shankui asked, looking skeptical.

“I made it. How does it taste?”

“Hmm, it’s okay!”

Seeing her father’s expression—clearly not what he was thinking—Li Na pursed her lips and said, “What do you mean ‘not bad’? This liangpi is absolutely delicious! With my brother’s skills, he could even make a living by setting up a stall in the county!”

Hearing this, a light bulb went off in Li Yi’s head; it seemed he had found the key to unlocking the door to wealth.

By the time they finished discussing the wedding, it was already past ten in the morning. Li Shankui and his wife were worried about the beans in the fields, so after leaving Li Na behind to look after Tang Xue, the elderly couple hurried off to work in the fields.

Meanwhile, Tang Xue felt somewhat out of place staying at the Li household, but she was too embarrassed to return to the educated youth commune, worried that others might accuse her of being immoral.

With no other choice, Li Na accompanied her to the back mountain to clear her head!

Soon, Li Yi was left alone at home, and only then did he have time to properly think about what to do next!

He went back inside to find a piece of paper and a half-used pencil, then made his way to the large willow tree in the courtyard.

Spreading the paper on the millstone, he held the pencil and pondered for a moment. Gradually, his gaze hardened, and he began to write furiously!

Ten minutes later, looking at the small “list” before him, Li Yi smiled with satisfaction.

The contents of the list were very simple:

Item 1: Do everything in my power to prepare for the wedding, marry Tang Xue in grand style, and win her wholehearted acceptance.

Item 2: Earn money to build a house and improve our family’s living conditions!

Item 3: Help Tang Xue get into a top-tier university!

Item 4: Save his older sister’s life and prevent a tragedy from happening!

Item 5: Take my father for a medical checkup…

He slowly set down the pen in his hand, tore the paper covered in writing into shreds, and scattered them into the air.

Watching the scraps of paper drift away like snowflakes in the wind, a faint smile appeared on Li Yi’s face.

Although his current life was marked by poverty and scarcity, his heart was filled with joy.

Unlike in his previous life, where he had more wealth than he could count yet was poor in every other way—dying with not a single relative by his side—that loneliness and isolation were far more terrifying than mere poverty.

Since Heaven had granted him a second chance to choose, he was determined to live this life to the fullest, leaving no regrets!

As for the immediate future, the most important and urgent task was to make money!

The decision to get married was settled, but money remained a major problem.

In this day and age, weddings still call for a certain level of pomp and circumstance. Although a house or a car wasn’t required, nor was a wedding procession or a wedding planning company, a dowry was still essential.

Tang Xue only asked for 88 yuan as a dowry—it might not sound like much.

But nowadays, even an industrial worker makes twenty-seven or twenty-eight yuan a month, so 88 yuan is equivalent to three months’ wages for a worker who doesn’t eat or drink.

In the countryside, some people might not even be able to save that much in a whole year.

In addition, families with the means were expected to provide the bride with the “three wheels and a radio”—that is, a bicycle, a sewing machine, a watch, and a radio.

Although these might seem like ordinary items to people from later generations, in this era, they were indeed the top-tier household goods that ordinary people aspired to own.

At the same time, the “three wheels and a radio” were not only the greatest wealth ordinary people could possess in that era, but also one of the key criteria for most women when choosing a spouse.

If any family could offer the “three wheels and a radio,” matchmakers would wear out the threshold of their home.

Tang Xue was originally from the city; marrying Li Yi, a country boy, was already a step down for her. On top of that, she had to give up her eligibility to return to the city and, for some inexplicable reason, had lost her virginity. Consequently, this marriage was bound to be the subject of gossip.

The best way to silence the village gossip was to throw a lavish wedding, so everyone could see that Tang Xue’s marriage to the Li family wasn’t out of desperation, but because she had good taste.

Her marriage to the Li family wasn’t about giving up the comfortable life of the city to endure hardship in the countryside—it was about coming to enjoy a life of luxury.

So, although her father, Li Shankui, had only agreed to buy Tang Xue a watch, Li Yi was determined to provide her with the full set of “three rotations and one chime.”

Of course, items considered symbols of family wealth were all quite expensive. Take bicycles, for example: one cost at least 120 yuan, and they were sold on a ration ticket system—even with money, you couldn’t necessarily buy one.

To acquire all four of these items would cost at least 400 yuan; if one were to opt for major brands, even 500 yuan might not be enough.

Add to that the dowry and the cost of the wedding banquet, and a conservative estimate puts the total at seven or eight hundred yuan.

But Li Yi was well aware of his family’s situation. If he had to describe it in one word, it would be—poor!

In the past, with a large family and the cost of sending the children to school, they had barely managed to save anything.

In recent years, with Li Yi’s eldest and second sisters getting married, the family’s situation had improved slightly, but with a spendthrift like Li Yi around, they hadn’t managed to save much.

So relying on his family to throw a lavish wedding was clearly out of the question; he’d have to handle everything on his own.

This was also why Li Yi had set the wedding date for a month from now—he needed that month to procure the three sets of wedding attire and the musical instrument, as well as Tang Xue’s dowry.

Making money wasn’t a problem for Li Yi; after all, with his memories from his previous life, earning a fortune was a piece of cake.

For instance, if his memory served him correctly, there was a general’s tomb buried beneath the cliff behind the village, containing a vast amount of gold, silver, and jewels as burial offerings.

If he could just quietly open the ancient tomb, take a portion of the burial artifacts, and sell them, he could become rich overnight.

But Li Yi didn’t want to do that. Having been reborn, he wanted to earn money honestly with his own two hands; he wanted every penny spent on his family to be clean.

Still, figuring out how to earn seven or eight hundred yuan within a month—that certainly required some careful consideration!

…….

It was already past eleven o’clock. His parents were working in the fields and clearly couldn’t come back to cook, and his third older sister was out with Tang Xue, so Li Yi decided to cook lunch for the family himself.

He went back inside and searched carefully, only to find that the large jar where they stored grain was half-full of flour—and nothing else.

Forget about meat—there weren’t even eggs, the most common food in the countryside!

Li Yi knew that his mother had surely taken the family’s eggs to the supply and marketing cooperative to trade for daily necessities again.

Looking at the meager ingredients he’d “scraped together,” Li Yi couldn’t help but let out a wry smile!

Even the most skilled cook can’t work miracles without ingredients. His cooking skills were decent, but they relied on an abundance of ingredients and a full range of seasonings.

Given nothing but half a vat of flour, he was truly at a loss!

He knew supplies were scarce in this era, but the extent of the scarcity truly took Li Yi by surprise.

After all, it was already the 1980s, and the coastal regions had long since been opened up—how could things still be this poor?

Maybe he should just steam a basket of buns and boil a pot of congee—that’s what his mother usually did.

But then he remembered that Tang Xue was supposed to have lunch at his place today. This would be the first meal his wife would eat at his home since they’d officially become a couple—he couldn’t just slap something together.

Besides, it was summer—the thought of eating steamed buns and hot porridge in the middle of the day was enough to kill his appetite.

Suddenly, Li Yi thought of a delicious dish that could be made with just flour—liangpi!

The sweltering summer heat easily saps one’s appetite, which is nothing short of torture for foodies.

Regions across the country have their own solutions to this problem, and for northerners, the answer is liangpi.

The very fact that liangpi is served cold ensures its unbreakable bond with the sweltering summer.

In the sweltering heat, what could be more appetizing than sour and spicy liangpi?

With that in mind, Li Yi didn’t hesitate any longer and sprang into action!

In his past life, Tang Xue had asked him the same thing!

Only back then, his answer had been no, because Li Yi had always harbored a secret crush on Wang Xuemei, the village beauty from the neighboring village. Determined to marry Wang Xuemei, he simply couldn’t see Tang Xue as a potential wife.

Although Tang Xue was far superior to that village beauty in every way—whether in looks, figure, or intellect, she could easily outshine her—the blind Li Yi simply thought Wang Xuemei was more attractive.

It was precisely because of Li Yi’s heartless response that Tang Xue was utterly devastated. Exhausted both physically and emotionally, she left Nianzi Mountain Village in a fit of grief and returned to her family in the neighboring province.

However, what no one could have anticipated was that three months later, the tragic news arrived: Tang Xue was dead!

It was a suicide—and she took a child with her!

It turned out that just two months after returning home, Tang Xue discovered she was pregnant. At that time, getting pregnant out of wedlock was absolutely intolerable in society. Her parents’ scolding and the neighbors’ gossip ultimately broke her spirit.

And so, on a cold winter night, she took her own life—at the tender age of 19—with a pair of scissors!

When the news broke, the entire Li family was plunged into grief and remorse.

Li Yi’s third older sister, Li Na, driven by guilt and hatred toward her younger brother Li Yi, left home immediately and never returned for the next forty years, sending only a sum of money to her elderly parents each year.

Her father, Li Shankui, was consumed by guilt for failing to raise his son properly—a failure that had indirectly led to the death of such a fine young woman. Plagued by depression, he finally passed away three years after Tang Xue’s death.

Li Yi, too, found himself unable to hold his head high in the village because of this incident and was forced to leave his hometown to make a living elsewhere.

Although he rode the wave of reform and opening-up to become a billionaire, he developed a deep-seated aversion to women. He remained unmarried his entire life, had no children, and was tormented by remorse every day.

It could be said that his cold-hearted decision had cost Tang Xue her life, and her death had shattered the Li family, leaving them broken and bereaved.

In his previous life, Li Yi recalled the question Tang Xue had asked him countless times, and each time, the regret tore at his heart!

If fate gave him another chance, he would definitely give a different answer!

Tang Xue had been waiting for Li Yi’s answer, but when she saw that he remained silent for so long, a deep sense of despair welled up inside her.

Gritting her teeth against the discomfort in her lower body, she staggered toward the door. She never wanted to see that bastard again!

Just then, Li Yi finally snapped out of it. He pulled Tang Xue into his arms and said firmly, “I’ll marry you!”

Tang Xue froze for a moment, then asked tremblingly, “Do you really mean it?”

“I do!”

“Waaah…”

Hearing Li Yi’s affirmative answer, Tang Xue could no longer hold back. She crouched down and burst into tears!

Although Li Yi had agreed to marry her, Tang Xue still couldn’t accept the reality that she had lost her virginity so carelessly.

Moreover, she had already received notice to return to the city; once she married Li Yi, she would inevitably lose her eligibility to return.

The thought of spending the rest of her life in this remote, impoverished mountain village filled Tang Xue with overwhelming sorrow!

Hearing Tang Xue’s sobs, Li Na was the first to rush into the room. She immediately unleashed a flurry of punches on Li Yi while roaring, “You bastard! How could you make Xiao Xue cry again? Are you still thinking about that little brat from the Wang family and refusing to marry Xiao Xue?”

“I’m telling you, if you don’t marry Xiao Xue today, don’t ever call me your older sister again!”

As soon as she said this, the villagers and educated youths watching the commotion outside couldn’t take it anymore. They all spoke up to condemn Li Yi:

“That guy’s a total scumbag! If Xiao Xue’s willing to marry him, it’s like the Li family’s ancestral graves are smoking with joy—and he’s still not happy!”

“You’re absolutely right. I really feel sorry for Xiaoxue—how did this little bastard get the better of her?”

“That kid is nothing but a good-for-nothing…”

Li Yi couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh. He hurriedly turned to his third sister and said, “I’m willing to marry Tang Xue!”

With that, Li Yi strode out the door and addressed the villagers and young intellectuals gathered at the entrance: “Uncles and aunts, I admit that I did something wrong yesterday while drunk, and I’m willing to take full responsibility.”

“I’m making a public pledge here: not only am I willing to marry Tang Xue, but I’ll also bring her into the family with the most generous dowry and a palanquin carried by eight men. I mean what I say!”

Village Party Secretary Feng Kai was the first to speak up. He shouted, “Good! Now that’s a real man. I’ll also speak on behalf of the village: if you two get married, I’ll allocate an extra person’s share of land to your family!”

Just then, a female educated youth with two braids in her hair suddenly asked from the crowd, “When are you going to marry our Xiao Xue?”

Li Yi recognized the woman. Her name was Zhang Xinyao, and she was a close friend of Tang Xue’s.

Li Yi thought for a moment and replied, “Marriage is a sacred matter, and I don’t want Xiao Xue to suffer any hardship. So our family needs to make proper preparations, and then we’ll bring Xiao Xue into our home in grand style!”

“How long? Give us a definite answer!”

“A month, I suppose. In a month, we’ll hold a wedding banquet and invite everyone!”

“Since Xiao Xue has already agreed, we’ll wait a month for you. If you dare to go back on your word, even if Xiao Xue doesn’t press charges, we’ll report you to the county authorities!” Zhang Xinyao said.

“Hmm!”

Seeing that the matter had finally been settled, Secretary Feng immediately said, “All right, it’s settled. Everyone, please disperse. Go on!”

Seeing there was nothing more to watch, the crowd quickly dispersed!

…….

Although the onlookers had left, the atmosphere in the Li household remained heavy!

With an incident like this, not only had Tang Xue lost her reputation, but the Li family had also been thoroughly disgraced!

Moreover, the Li family already had many children and was so poor they barely had enough to eat. A wedding was a significant expense—where were they supposed to come up with that kind of money?

Once the crowd had dispersed, Li Shankui immediately summoned everyone in the household into the room to discuss arrangements for Li Yi’s wedding.

In the low, dimly lit room, Li Shankui sat crouched by the stove, while Zhang Yuehong and Li Na stood on either side, shielding Tang Xue, whose eyes were bloodshot. Only Li Yi sat perched on the edge of the kang.

“So, how do you plan to go about this wedding?” Li Shankui asked his son.

Li Yi glanced at Tang Xue, who looked haggard, and said, “Let’s hear what Xue has to say first!”

Li Na chimed in, “Right, let’s hear what Xiao Xue has to say first!”

Tang Xue opened her mouth, but in the end, she didn’t say a word.

Zhang Yuehong, standing nearby, hurriedly said, “Xiao Xue, if you have any requests, just speak up—Auntie will do her best to accommodate you!”

Tang Xue hesitated for a moment, then bit her lip and said, “I don’t want to tell my parents about the wedding…”

“That won’t do! How can you get married without telling your parents?” Zhang Yuehong exclaimed.

“I… I don’t want them to see me getting married this way!”

“But… but how long can you keep something like this a secret? Besides, haven’t you already received the notice to return to the city? Your parents must have received it too—you can’t hide this from them!”

“Auntie, I’ll write them a letter saying there’s been a last-minute change at the county office, and my return to the city has been postponed until next year! I’ll keep it a secret for as long as I can!”

Seeing that his mother was about to say something else, Li Yi immediately cut her off and said, “Let’s go with what Xiaoxue says on this!”

Then Li Yi turned to Tang Xue and asked, “What are your requirements regarding the dowry?”

“I know your family’s situation. I don’t want a dowry—just clear out the room you’re living in…”

Before Tang Xue had even finished speaking, Li Shankui and Li Yi said in unison, “No way!”

Li Shankui took a couple of puffs on his pipe and said, “Child, it’s our family’s fault that Little Yi has wronged you. That you’re willing to marry into the Li family is a blessing our ancestors have earned over eight generations—how could we possibly let you marry into this family under such unfair terms?”

“I’m making the final call on this: an 88-yuan dowry, a watch, three new outfits, and all brand-new bedding!”

Li Yi added, “I won’t go into the details, but whatever others have, you must have too; and even if others don’t have it, I’ll do my best to make sure you do! In short, I’ll bring you into our family in style—no one will ever have anything bad to say about you behind your back!”

Hearing Li Yi’s words, Tang Xue felt a slight stir in her heart.

The only reason she wanted Li Yi to marry her was because she had already lost her virginity to him; marrying him was her only option.

But she knew exactly what kind of person Li Yi was: uneducated, idle, a drunkard and womanizer, a gambler and swindler. Though he hadn’t committed any major crimes, he was full of bad habits.

Even Li Na, her own older sister, looked at him with utter disdain whenever she mentioned him.

So she truly hadn’t expected Li Yi to speak with such conviction. For a moment, her heart was filled with a mix of emotions—it was incredibly complicated!

“Sniffle, sniffle…”

In a daze, Li Yi seemed to hear a girl crying, followed immediately by a commotion that grew louder and louder.

Struggling to open his eyes, Li Yi stared at the scene before him, completely bewildered!

What met his eyes was no longer a hospital ward, but a dim, cramped mud-brick hut. The smell of disinfectant had vanished from the air, replaced by a faint, pleasant fragrance.

Through the paper window screen, Li Yi saw a crowd gathered outside and faintly heard their chaotic voices:

“What a disgrace! How could Tang Xue end up in bed with that street thug from the Li family? What was she thinking?”

“You’re telling me! Little Tang is about to go back to the city—what on earth are we going to do now?”

“If word of this gets back to the village committee, do you think Little Tang will be in trouble?”

“Ah, it’s truly a case of a fine flower planted in cow dung. What a pity for Tang Xue, a virgin girl…”

In bed?

Tang Xue?

A glimmer of clarity pierced Li Yi’s muddled mind, and he turned toward the sobbing figure in the corner!

Although the girl was wrapped in a thin blanket, her little head buried between her legs, Li Yi’s heart still skipped a beat!

It was her—Tang Xue, the woman who had haunted him with guilt his entire life!

“Smack!”

Li Yi slapped himself hard across the face, and half his face swelled up instantly!

It hurt!

Is this real?

Had he really gone back forty years?

After forcing himself to calm down, Li Yi tried to piece together his current situation.

Judging by the situation outside, he must have gone back to the day after he’d accidentally slept with Tang Xue, and now he was cornered on the kang.

Tang Xue wasn’t a member of the Nanzishan Brigade; she was a female educated youth who had been sent down here from her hometown in Qin Province three years ago.

Because she was close friends with Li Yi’s third older sister, Li Na, Tang Xue often visited the Li household and was deeply loved by Li Yi’s parents.

Just a few days earlier, Tang Xue had received a notice from the county authorities instructing her to return to the city, marking the end of her life as an educated youth in the Nianzi Mountain Brigade.

To bid farewell to Tang Xue and several other educated youths returning to the city, the Nianzi Mountain Brigade held a farewell party. At the party, many people got drunk, including Tang Xue.

To look after her tipsy best friend, Li Na took Tang Xue back to her own home and put her up in her younger brother Li Yi’s room—after all, her brother hadn’t been home for several days, so it wouldn’t matter if she slept there for one night.

However, no one could have anticipated that Li Yi would return home in the middle of the night—and he, too, had had quite a bit to drink.

And so, Li Yi and Tang Xue ended up in bed together by accident!

Early the next morning, several educated youths from the village came to the Li household looking for Tang Xue, intending to pack her things and head back to the city. Instead, they caught the two of them in bed together.

Word of the incident quickly reached Li Yi’s parents and the rest of the villagers, who now gathered outside Li Yi’s room to gawk at the spectacle!

Outside the wooden door, Feng Kai, the Party branch secretary of Nianzishan Brigade, glared darkly at Li Shankui, who was crouched on the ground beside him, and demanded angrily, “Shankui, how could your family do such a thing? How am I supposed to explain this to the county authorities?”

Li Shankui said nothing, merely taking deep drags from his pipe. No one knew what was going through his mind!

It was Li’s mother, Zhang Yuehong, who spoke up anxiously, “Uncle Feng, please think of a way out of this! Little Yi won’t end up in jail, will he?”

Feng Kai said in a grave tone, “If Xiao Tang decides to press charges against your son, he’ll definitely be sentenced to prison!”

“Oh my God, the sky is falling… Xiao Yi is our only son. He can’t go to prison…”

Perhaps not wanting to hear Zhang Yuehong’s wailing, Secretary Feng cut in sharply, “Enough with the fuss. Right now, there’s only one way—and it might just save Xiao Yi!”

“What’s the solution?”

“Have Xiao Yi marry Tang Xue—but only if Tang Xue agrees!”

Hearing this, Li’s parents fell silent!

Never mind that their son was uneducated, unemployed, and unqualified to be with Tang Xue—according to the policies from above, once an educated youth married locally, they could no longer be arranged to return to the city.

Because of this, many educated youth had been filing for divorce at the county Civil Affairs Bureau recently.

Tang Xue had already received her notice to return to the city. If she were to get married now, she would likely lose her eligibility to return—and surely no one would agree to that!

At that moment, Li Yi’s third older sister, Li Na, stood up and said, “I’ll go ask Xiao Xue!”

“Creak!”

The wooden door of the mud-brick house swung open, and Li Na’s spirited figure appeared in the room!

She first glared angrily at Li Yi, then said coldly, “Get dressed and get out of my way!”

Knowing his third older sister was furious, Li Yi didn’t dare say a word. He hurriedly found his clothes on the kang, pulled them on, and headed for the door.

The moment he opened the door, everyone’s gaze fixed on Li Yi.

Li Shankui, who had been smoking just moments ago, suddenly stood up, grabbed a cattle whip from nearby, and charged toward Li Yi, lashing the whip straight across his back.

Li Yi remembered that lashing from his past life all too well—not because of the pain, but because he had run away, and his father had broken his arm chasing after him to beat him.

So, when he saw the whip coming at him, this time he made no move to dodge!

“Ouch!”

The excruciating pain made Li Yi’s whole body tremble, but he didn’t dodge or run—instead, he knelt directly before his elderly father!

Enraged, Li Shankui’s anger was not appeased by his son’s kneeling; the whip in his hand cracked and lashed against Li Yi’s body.

Soon, Li Yi’s clothes were torn in several places, and his back was covered with seven or eight bloody welts.

At that moment, Zhang Yuehong snapped out of her daze. She rushed forward to stop Li Shankui, wailing, “You old fool! Do you want to beat my son to death… waaah…”

“Get the hell out of my way! It’s you, you old hag, who spoiled him rotten—drinking, gambling, whoring, swindling, and cheating. Now he’s done something so utterly depraved. Do you really want to watch him get dragged to the execution ground while you munch on peanuts?” Li Shankui shouted furiously.

Just as the commotion was reaching its peak, Li Na emerged from the house and shouted, “Everyone, stop arguing!”

The crowd fell silent instantly, all eyes fixed on Li Na!

Li Na ignored the others and said to Li Yi, “Go inside. Xiao Xue has something to tell you!”

Li Yi stood up from the muddy ground, gritting his teeth against the pain in his back, and turned toward the mud-brick house.

Once inside, Li Yi saw that Tang Xue had already gotten dressed, but her expression remained sorrowful and desolate—a sight that tugged at his heartstrings.

“I’m sorry!”

Tang Xue didn’t respond to Li Yi’s apology, but instead said in a hoarse voice, “Will you marry me?”

Hearing those words again, Li Yi felt a surge of mixed emotions, and for a moment, he was completely lost in thought!

That pen holder was, without question, the most mysterious birthday gift I received in all my years at university.

Near the final exams of the first semester of junior year, Xiao An and I, inspired by a sudden spirit of adventure, decided to study in the school’s famous haunted building on a gloomy afternoon. Compared with the teaching buildings built in the past twenty years, the classrooms there had extremely high ceilings. Dim yellow light fell from above like a thin smear of butter. Through the windows one could see leafless trees, their hard branches stabbing upward into the sky.

Only the two of us were in the classroom, sleepily memorizing dull theories of literary aesthetics. At one point, we went to the restroom together.

That night, when I returned to the dormitory, I suddenly discovered an extra ceramic pen holder in my backpack. It had no wrapping at all. It lay bare in one corner beside my glasses case. Across its body stretched a vividly colored painting: flat, rounded green leaves with clear veins, and above them a profusion of splendid flowers whose name I did not know—lively yet lonely, flourishing in silence.

“Maybe a ghost gave it to you,” Xiao An said, shivering as she spoke.

“Maybe,” I agreed, though I did not find it frightening. “If it really was a ghost, then it must have been a ghost with very good taste.”

Although I was shy then, at certain moments I was strangely brave. Later, when I learned that the painted design had been added by hand, I cherished it even more. Whoever had given it to me had put thought into it. I was grateful.

A week later, after the Marxist philosophy exam, Xiao An’s mind had been rearmed by materialism. She decided the ghost theory was absurd and came up with a new idea. “Maybe it was from someone who has a crush on you. He designed the pattern himself and painted it on a pure white pen holder as a confession. How romantic. Just wait—maybe he’ll appear in a few days.”

That rumor later collapsed on its own, because the person never appeared.

Ren Fei’s fingers were long and fine. Now they waved once before my eyes. I blinked. I did not know how many moments had passed before I came back to myself.

*The Cuckoo’s Egg* had been closed. On its cover, warmly printed, was an egg from which a baby was breaking free. Ren Fei held the tea I had poured for him. The liquid was a healthy brown, and it seemed to have gone cold.

“You finished?” I asked.

As I spoke, I took the book in puzzlement and opened it to the title page. He did not answer, only slowly drank the cold tea. My gaze fell upon the sketched flower pattern in the center of the page.

Many years later, when listening to old songs full of nostalgia, I would still sometimes think of this moment. In all twenty-seven years of my life, it was the only minute that went completely blank, as if I had briefly stepped out of the mortal world.

I looked at the drawing. The pattern was exactly the one from the pen holder I had loved most and broken.

It took all my strength to hold back my emotions long enough to ask, “That pen holder… was it from you?”

He turned the empty cup in his hand and did not look at me. After a long while, he said, “Perhaps.”

Another silence passed. Then he said, “At graduation, I remember asking where you planned to go, what you wanted to do. You said you were going to Australia to continue studying.” He raised his head and smiled faintly. “I never thought you would end up opening this inn.”

What remained of that afternoon, in the end, was an enormous silence.

When he picked up the teapot again to refill his cup, his wife, who taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, appeared at the courtyard gate carrying a huge easel. From afar she called, “Ren Fei, Qin Ran, I painted something pretty good. Do you want to come see?”

He set down the teapot and rose to meet his wife.

I propped my forehead on my hand and felt dampness gathering at the corners of my eyes. Lifting my head, I looked at the wisteria blooming overhead like a quiet blue fire and heard Mi Xue ask, puzzled, “Qin Ran, what’s wrong?”

I smiled and handed her *The Cuckoo’s Egg*. “Nothing. I’m just… saying goodbye to the past. This is for you.”

After a moment, I added, “I wish you happiness.”

Her delicate fingers opened the cover. “Wow,” she said. “What flower is this? It’s beautiful.”

Beside her, Ren Fei answered, “Iris.” He paused, then added, “At least, I meant to draw irises. Somehow they turned into this instead.”

So that was how it had been.

A few days later, I packed my bags and set out for Shangri-La. Neither too far nor too near, it was a place where I could remember some things and forget others. A journey is a new stretch of life. The world contains all kinds of regrets, and the regret of that moment was only the tip of the iceberg of the greater regret called living.

Perhaps I had always lived inside my attachment to the past. But time is a river of growth. Sometimes we feel it flows year after year with no difference at all, yet the water passing through this moment and the water passing through the next are never the same.

That was what I thought.

June third. Clear.

I sent Xiao An a postcard, shouldered my enormous backpack, and walked into Shangri-La.

END

When I was little, our family lived in a traditional Chinese courtyard house, a siheyuan. There was a flowerbed in the courtyard and a green grape trellis above it. In summer I often did my holiday homework beneath the vines.

In the courtyard of this inn, the previous owner had clearly put in a great deal of care. Beside the xiangsi tree, he had built a wooden shade pavilion from treated timber. Some unknown green plant with healthy, toothed leaves had once climbed over it. During my first week here, I replaced it with Japanese wisteria. It budded in April and bloomed in May; now the branches were heavy with flowers. From a distance, they looked like a vast, misty blue haze—fragile and beautiful.

The weather was fine today. I moved a small table and a wooden stool beneath the trellis to trace a pattern, in the old-fashioned way described in that famous Lu Xun essay from our middle-school textbook: laying a sheet of thin, translucent paper over a picture book and following the existing lines. A very old game.

Not far away, a little boy of six or seven clattered down the wooden stairs. He was probably one of the inn’s guests. He ran straight toward the small flowerbed in the eastern corner of the courtyard, sunlight stretching his little shadow long and slanting.

I whistled. “Little handsome guy, what are you doing?”

The boy braked with a tap of his feet and turned to look at me. Pointing at the flowerbed, he said, “Mom told me to come down and pick two of those flowers for her.”

I frightened him. “Those are poisonous. Very poisonous. If you get too close and smell them, you’ll get sick. If you pick them, that would be even worse.”

The little boy took a step back. “R-really?”

I looked at him with great seriousness. “Do I look like someone who lies?”

He thought about it, stared unwillingly at the flowers for a while, then clattered back upstairs.

The large pink-blue clusters in the flowerbed were irises, not poisonous plants. But if I had not said so, there would probably have been no way to protect that little garden from the guests. Some people like to keep beauty close at hand. I prefer to let it remain where it is.

I twirled the pencil once between my fingers and bent over the table again. Then a voice sounded behind me. “Since when are irises poisonous?”

Instinctively, I raised a finger to shush him. When I looked up, I saw Ren Fei leaning against the courtyard gate covered in wild roses, arms folded. He wore a white T-shirt like a university student, a faint, enigmatic smile playing on his face.

I froze for about five seconds. “Oh. It’s you.”

“It’s me.” He crossed the short stretch of bluestone path and came to stand before me, bending slightly. Sunlight sifted through the wisteria like mist and mottled his white T-shirt with patches of light, large and small. “What are you doing?” he asked.

The lines of his face seemed deeper than they had six years ago. In his hand was a book: Keigo Higashino’s latest mystery, *The Cuckoo’s Egg*.

“Drawing.” I handed him the picture book. “It’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

He took it and casually flipped through two pages. “Are they all the same thing?” he asked, unsure.

I could not understand how, in this place and at this moment, I could be speaking with him as if we were old friends. Although we had been in the same university class, we had belonged to different circles. Our worlds overlapped only along the narrow line of basketball: he was a forward on the university team; I was the friend of the girlfriend of the point guard. Occasionally, when team gatherings needed more people, they would pull me in as a plus-one guest. In dimly lit karaoke rooms, he would sing love songs in a low, beautiful voice. I usually sat alone in a corner, holding a drink with no alcohol in it.

I suppose he had never noticed me.

He turned to the last page of the picture book and paused there for a long time. Lowering his head, he asked, “It’s a flower, isn’t it? What flower?”

I poured apple black tea from the glass pot. “To be honest, I don’t know either. Would you like some tea?”

The steam carried a delicate green-apple scent. I handed him a cup and continued, “I had a ceramic pen holder I liked very much. I don’t know who gave it to me. The painting on it was probably done by the person who gave it to me. I broke it by accident while moving, so I wanted to paint another one. I finally found a similar pattern in an album, and I thought I’d trace it first for practice.”

He paused. “How do you know the person painted it by hand and gave it to you?”

I took back my tracing from him. “Because I once saw the exact same white porcelain pen holder in a shop, but the clerk told me that series didn’t come with that pattern.” I smiled awkwardly, aware that the answer did not quite connect. “But I have limited talent for drawing. I can never make it look right.”

He said nothing for a long while. Then he reached out, took my pencil, and opened *The Cuckoo’s Egg* to a blank inside page. The pencil touched the white paper and drew its first line. Only then did he seem to remember something. He looked up briefly. “Let me try.”

“Try what?”

He did not answer. He truly began to draw with my 2B pencil, focused and quiet. The scent of green apple had already faded from the tea steam. That summer, too, seemed to be dissolving slowly, like foam. Sunlight stood on tiptoe at the ends of Ren Fei’s hair. His profile, intent and still, looked like the most beautiful sculpture in the Louvre.

This was the boy who had occupied every longing of my university years. After he had become someone else’s husband, one day he stood so near before me. That feeling was not easy to name.

I tried to turn my attention elsewhere, and so I remembered the pen holder.

Last night, while taking a walk, I passed the stall that sold egg pancakes. The uncle who ran it kindly told me something had come up at home and that he would not be open the next day, saving me a wasted trip. My stomach happened to miss my mother’s breakfast too, so I set an alarm and got up at seven sharp, determined to snatch a bowl of porridge from the mouths of those ravenous art students. My mother had specially stewed the rice porridge thick and fragrant with lily bulbs.

Even in early summer, the mornings here held a thread of cold. The little inn was like an enormous perfume bottle wrapped in beautiful paper, filled with molecules of wildflowers, damp earth, and the young people’s laughter from the courtyard. I pulled a coarse-knit cardigan over my long dress and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen in search of breakfast, but my mother still spotted me. From a distance she called, “Night owl, come say hello to the guests.”

The courtyard, neither large nor small, was thick with grass. Drops of night dew still clung to the fragile leaves. I walked over smiling and glanced at the table, where cups and plates already lay in disorder. “Hey, you have to save me at least one bun.”

Laughter rose at once. Someone hurried to move a chair for me. Wood scraped over stone with an old, creaking sound.

In truth, all through high school, university, and even the end of senior year, I had never been very good with people. Yet my first job after graduation happened to be in the sales department, handling VIP clients. Day by day, it forced me into someone skilled at socializing. People often say society changes a person beyond recognition. Sometimes I think it is more like a charitable clinic, especially good at treating the ailments of the heart and defects of personality.

Amid that burst of laughter, beneath the xiangsi tree not far away, someone who had just finished a phone call turned around. A blue-striped shirt. Beige casual trousers. An exceptionally tall figure.

I think he saw me at once. Surprise flickered across his too-handsome face.

My heart began to pound.

After a long moment, he called my name uncertainly. “Qin Ran?”

At the dining table, a girl in a white dress raised her head. Her curls were soft, her makeup gentle and natural. She looked from him to me in confusion. “You know each other?”

The sunlight seemed not fully awake yet. It hid silently behind the clouds, letting only a pale violet mist fall over the little courtyard.

Of course we knew each other. Fate is strange like that.

I raised my hand and smiled. “Long time no see, Ren Fei.”

My hand was trembling. Perhaps my smile was stiff too. Fortunately, there was some distance between us. A light wind passed, bringing the breath of summer against my face.

He still looked as he had in my memory, as if nothing had changed. Yet between those two tables lay six entire years.

The girl beside him was Mi Xue. She had grown even gentler and more beautiful, and she was now his wife. For a moment, I could not sort through what I felt. There is a saying: some people should never meet again in this life; once they do, it becomes a tragedy stripped of all punctuation. I had not understood that sentence before. Now, dimly, I understood a little.

An old photograph treasured in memory—the one that had stood for those carefree, radiant years—was torn apart with a sharp rip.

The following week, I resigned and moved to the little inn I had taken over before the New Year in City X. My mother had already put it in good order. My father had torn down the low brick wall the former owner had built around the courtyard and replaced it with two rows of fencing made from Russian Scots pine. Pink wild roses climbed all over the rails, glittering in the sun.

I had thought that by twenty-seven I had lost all sensitivity to beauty and art. Yet in that instant, I unexpectedly remembered the fairy tales I had read as a child—the little house deep in the forest.

Ren Fei getting married and my resignation had no real connection. I had been planning the inn for three years. Asking after him was probably only… a sudden impulse. I cannot deny that for six years I had kept him carefully somewhere in my heart. But perhaps time had washed that memory clean, inch by inch. After two thousand days and nights, what remained of him was no longer the real person, but a symbol, a private totem I had made for myself.

What had Ren Fei become?

In the courtyard of the inn stood a xiangsi tree planted by the previous owner—a love tree whose very name in Chinese carries the idea of longing. Its trunk was straight and graceful, its foliage deep and lush, with an elegance that reminded me of him in university. And now? What was he like now? Sometimes I could not help wondering.

When I was little, I once got lost chasing a butterfly. At an unfamiliar crossroads, I wiped my eyes and cried at the top of my lungs. From then on, a butterfly-shaped shadow was branded into my childhood. I cannot say whether that experience was good or bad. I only know that I thought of it often. I was not sure whether Ren Fei, in my private definition, had become something like that butterfly too.

Across the Atlantic, in the middle of the night, Xiao An worried at me over the phone. “Qin Ran, pining for a married man is wrong. A crime. A serious crime.”

Yawning, I toyed with the new pot of mimosa by my window. “Thinking about it won’t get me pregnant. I’m delighted to hear you’ve recently converted to Catholicism, but has the Almighty Lord given you any basic reproductive health lessons?”

She mumbled, “Not exactly.”

I did not argue. This was not pining; it was memory. Pining belongs to the future; memory belongs to the past. But there was no need to explain that to Xiao An. Later we began discussing her seventh boyfriend. An open world, an open America, an open Xiao An. When she was little, she wore two horn-shaped pigtails, and if a boy accidentally brushed her hand, she would cry until the sky seemed to fall. She would run over and ask me, “Ranran, am I going to get pregnant?”

To be honest, at that age I did not know whether holding hands could make someone pregnant either. I answered irrelevantly, “If it’s a boy, I want to be his godmother.”

Then she cried even harder.

The inn had already built up a stable base of guests under its previous owner, so it ran without much strain. A few days earlier, a group of students from the Academy of Fine Arts had come to sketch and were staying with us. My mother liked them very much. Every morning she rose early to make breakfast, setting an old-fashioned round table in the flower-filled courtyard and inviting the early risers to eat together. I guessed she had begun to miss the days when she made my breakfast and hurried me off to school with my bag on my back.

From time to time, scattered laughter drifted up from the courtyard and floated into my dreams. Yes—when they were having breakfast, I was usually still asleep. Each morning, when the sun had moved to the middle of my quilt, I would rub my eyes awake and look through the open window at the white clouds resting in the far sky. After a quick wash, I would step onto the bluestone slabs, worn smooth as jade by generations of tourists’ shoes, and drift to the old street next door to buy an egg pancake for breakfast.

Those art students devoured my mother’s breakfasts every day. They did not even leave the pickles.

My mother did not believe I would spend the rest of my life in this ancient city. She thought I had merely grown tired of the cutthroat chaos of office life and fled here for a while. Her proof was that we had signed the inn’s lease for only five years. She often joked, “If you’re going to waste the best years of your youth here, I may as well choose a eligible boyfriend for you from among the guests.”

My parents had finally begun to worry about my marriage. I was twenty-seven, but I did not think that was old enough to make marriage necessary.

My father made a trip back to our hometown and brought me some books I had loved in middle school, along with a few little odds and ends. Leafing through them in idle moments, I even found several Ultraman (a classic Japanese superhero) paper cuttings. I discovered that my taste as a child had been truly mysterious.

Time, once gone, never returns. Only the sky above this ancient city remained, blessed day after day by ancient sunlight and moonlight, at ease in its own long leisure.

The year I quit my job, I began asking every university classmate I was still in touch with for news of Ren Fei. I always brought him up as if by accident. Most of the answers I received were rumors, each vague enough to be true or false. We had studied under a credit-based academic system, and our class had never been especially close. After graduation, everyone went their separate ways, and classmates often vanished from one another’s lives altogether.

But I had always thought Ren Fei would be the exception.

Back in university, he had been one of the eight most talked-about figures in our school.

Some said he had gone to Australia after graduation and stayed there all the way through postdoctoral work. Others said they had run into him recently in City C; apparently he had returned to China and joined a securities firm as an investment analyst. That afternoon, I ran into Xiao An on MSN. From thousands of miles away, she typed a line of enormous bold text at me: Ren Fei? I heard he got married recently. The bride is the girl he was with at the end of senior year—what was her name again? Oh, Michelle.

She sent an enormous smiley face. After years abroad, Xiao An—who had once spent most of high school failing English—had become thoroughly Westernized in style. Then she typed out the bride’s Chinese name for me: Mi Xue.

Yes. I remembered her. The girl really was called Mi Xue: Mi was her surname, and Xue meant snow.

That night, after hearing the news, I went downstairs to KFC and ordered a family bucket. I ate while sorting through my memories of Ren Fei. By the time I had polished off the entire bucket, even licking the grease from my fingers, my recollections had arrived at the eve of graduation. That unremarkable stretch of memory was nearing its end too.

In truth, the story was a rather sad one.

I had always had a crush on Ren Fei, just like many of the other girls in our school—only I was shyer, more insecure, and far less brave. The bolder girls would hand him towels and water when he rested during basketball games. They wrote beautiful, moving love letters. Some of them probably sent him suggestive text messages too.

The boldest thing I ever did happened during the autumn of sophomore year, when I traveled to Miyaluo. At a roadside stall selling colored postcards, I bought a set, chose the prettiest one, and mailed it to him. The card itself was not particularly fine, yet it did nothing to diminish Miyaluo’s famous red leaves. A rich, burning crimson filled the whole face of the card; behind it lay green-blue water and the shadow of emerald mountains, like a line from an old poem:

> At dusk, sweetgum blossoms rest in stillness;

> Brocade waters mirror the southern hills.

Before I wrote anything, I worried for a long time about what might sound special. Yet when the pen touched paper, all I wrote was this: “The sky in Miyaluo is very blue, and the red leaves are beautiful, but the food here is awful. If you ever come, remember to bring snacks, or you’ll suffer. Also, bring an umbrella. It drizzled suddenly yesterday. The weather here changes as unpredictably as our English teacher’s temper.”

Our shared English teacher was then in menopause. She was like some cryptic ancient text, her moods harder to decipher than the dreaded College English Test Band 6 (CET-6).

A postcard that read more like a travel tip than a confession was mailed in the end. Even now, I do not know whether he ever received it, or whether, if he did, he found it bewildering. I only remember that many years later, the moment I dropped it into the mailbox still felt strangely peaceful.

The wonder of nature lies in the courage it lends people. Perhaps that was why Du Fu could write, with such grandeur: “One day I shall stand upon the highest peak and see all other mountains small.”

Those clouds, those trees, that wind—they turned me, for one fleeting moment, into a girl brave beyond measure. For the first time, I wanted to send the feelings in my heart to him, to let him know.

And once I left Miyaluo, that courage left me too.