Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Reborn in a Year of Famine; My Biological Son Is Still Alive 1977, Beixiang Village, Jinan Dancheng. Seventeen consecutive days of torrential rain had flooded the entire village. Although the water was only a meter deep, the adobe houses could not withstand being soaked for so long, and many of them had collapsed. It was July. The lush green corn had already grown taller than a person, and many of the stalks had sprouted ears. In another month or so, the corn would be ready for harvest. There was also cotton. As a major cotton-producing province, more than half of Beixiang Village’s land was planted with cotton. But now, it was all underwater. Zhang Qibao had been jolted awake when an adobe brick from the roof fell and struck him. Clutching his head, he struggled to his feet. The first person he saw was Lu Wanwan. Overwhelming hatred howled from the depths of his soul. Zhang Qibao lunged forward and grabbed Lu Wanwan by the throat. “Lu Wanwan, you vicious woman! How dare you? How dare you watch me die? I’ll kill you, you vicious woman!” Caught completely off guard, Lu Wanwan was shoved onto the adobe kang. The two children she had been holding were knocked beneath the bed by Zhang Qibao. Thirty centimeters of water covered the floor beneath the bed. The moment the children landed, mud coated their faces and bodies, and they began wailing. But Zhang Qibao could not hear a thing. His ears were as though they had gone deaf, while every scene before his eyes was filled with Lu Wanwan’s betrayals in his past life and the tragedy that had befallen the entire Zhang Family. “Clang—” A thermos smashed hard into the top of Zhang Qibao’s head. His vision went black for a moment, and the force around the woman’s neck suddenly loosened. He turned his head and saw a filthy boy of seven or eight. Zhang Qibao seemed to awaken from a dream. He stood up blankly and began looking around. The walls were blackened, with tattered newspapers covering almost every inch of them. The south-facing window was an old-fashioned wooden lattice window, and the paper covering it had been pierced through by the rain, leaving it torn and ragged. Zhang Qibao saw the filthy little boy again. He looked somewhat familiar, like Zhang Zhendong when he was young. His gaze passed over Little Zhang Zhendong’s shoulder and landed on Zhang Xiuli, who looked about five or six years old. Zhang Qibao’s soul slowly returned to his body, and his senses began to recover. At last, his buzzing ears started to pick up sound. A child was crying beneath the bed. He lowered his head and saw two three- or four-year-old children lying in the muddy water on the floor, one on the east side and one on the west—a boy and a girl. They were the young Zhen Xi and Xiu Li. Zhang Qibao shifted his gaze back to the corner. Lu Wanwan was lying on the adobe kang, coughing violently. She did not shout or question him, nor did she look at him. She merely kept her head lowered. At last, Zhang Qibao had completely calmed down. The young Lu Wanwan. Seven- or eight-year-old Zhang Zhendong. Five- or six-year-old Zhang Xiuli. Three- or four-year-old Zhen Xi and Xiu Li. The familiar adobe house. The large adobe kang. Zhang Qibao hurriedly turned his eyes toward the calendar hanging on the yellow-mud wall. July 27, 1977. He had been reborn. Reborn in the year his biological son was abandoned. Reborn in the year Sixth Sister was driven away. Reborn in the year Eldest Sister and Second Sister died. Zhang Qibao touched his splitting head. His hand came away covered in blood. Seeing the adobe bricks scattered across the bed, he finally remembered. This was the day he had been struck in the head by a falling brick. In his previous life, he had been hit in the head that very day and passed out. Lu Wanwan had watched coldly from the sidelines, completely ignoring whether he lived or died. She had simply watched him bleed and lose consciousness. After he woke, he remembered that it was the first time he had quarreled with Lu Wanwan. He had demanded to know why she had ignored his life and death. Lu Wanwan had merely remained silent. For some reason, Zhang Qibao remembered a video he had come across in his previous life titled “Ultimate Indifference.” A woman with hypoglycemia had fainted in a room. The man and children walked back and forth around her, even kicking her leg, yet not one of them went over to check on her. Zhang Qibao felt like crying and laughing at the same time. He had spent his entire life in a family this utterly cold. Even when he died, those illegitimate children had not returned to look at him even once. And all that time, he had actually been deceiving himself. Zhang Qibao’s eyes swept over Lu Wanwan once more, then Zhang Zhendong, Zhang Xiuli, Zhen Xi, and Xiu Li. July 27, 1977—the day he had been struck. His Zhen Bei was still alive. Without caring about the blood on his head or settling accounts with Lu Wanwan, Zhang Qibao began frantically searching through the damp pile of bedding. Finally, behind a thick, wet quilt, his fingers touched a tiny swaddled bundle. It was Zhen Bei. Little Zhen Bei was not yet two months old. He was so thin and frail that he was smaller than a three-month-old kitten. The tiny Zhen Bei had no baby fat, nor the roundness most children possessed. His little face was deeply sunken, his cheekbones protruded sharply, and his lips were cracked. His face was grayish-blue, and his eyes were tightly shut. Zhang Qibao carefully lifted Little Zhen Bei into his arms. The child weighed less than a wad of cotton, and Zhang Qibao’s heart clenched painfully. Zhang Qibao remembered now. When he had first woken up, he had seen Lu Wanwan. Her clothes had been open as she held the dragon-and-phoenix twins, Zhen Xi and Xiu Li, one on each side, feeding them milk. Those two children were already three years old. It had been the same in his previous life. After more than ten days of rain, the family’s food supply had run dangerously low. They had been surviving on relief grain brought by Eldest Sister after traveling over mountains and through flooded roads. Lu Wanwan felt sorry for the dragon-and-phoenix twins, so she had cut off Zhen Bei’s share of milk and given it to them instead. She had not consulted anyone before doing it. Lu Wanwan had always been like that. She never said anything unnecessary. She always acted first and reported afterward. Only the outcome mattered. Or perhaps Lu Wanwan simply had no wish to waste even a single sentence on a country bumpkin like him. If she wanted Zhen Bei to starve to death, then he would starve to death. The milk was in her body. If she wanted Third Sister’s job placement, she would bring her younger brother and complete every procedure herself, without a single unnecessary word. If she wanted Sixth Sister driven out, then she would drive her out. Once the person was gone and could no longer be found, the Zhang family could make as much of a fuss as they liked. She would simply present the result: this was how things were, and the Zhang family could cause whatever trouble they wanted. Just as, in the final moment of Zhang Qibao’s life, Lu Wanwan had waited until that very moment to tell him the truth. He was going to die anyway, so it did not matter how unwilling he was or how resentfully he died with his eyes open. Lu Wanwan only cared about taking every benefit for herself and achieving her objective. With some people, he could argue and make a scene. But with Lu Wanwan, he could not. She would not argue with him or make a scene. She had her own plans in her heart. She would simply watch him argue, watch him make a fuss, watch him lie there with his head split open by an adobe brick, completely unmoved. Even if he tried to strangle her to death, she still would not show much emotion. She was far too clear-headed. After living two lifetimes, Zhang Qibao finally understood that Lu Wanwan was not even-tempered, nor was she gentle and mild. She was clear-headed. She knew exactly what she wanted. Marrying him had been the most advantageous choice available to Lu Wanwan at the time. Afterward, she had plundered every benefit the Zhang Family possessed, shattered the Zhang Family’s bones, and drunk the Zhang family members’ broth. But in this life, Zhang Qibao would not let Lu Wanwan have her way. Zhang Qibao extended a trembling fingertip and gently checked beneath Zhang Zhenbei’s nose. There was still breath. The child was alive. Zhang Qibao lifted his eyes toward Lu Wanwan in the corner of the large kang. She was lying on the kang and coughing violently. She did not cry, shout, or question him. She merely kept her head bowed, just as she had in his previous life when he had demanded to know why she had watched him die without offering help. She neither argued nor made a fuss. She simply remained quiet and let him do whatever he wanted. If this had been his previous life, Zhang Qibao would have felt helpless. He would have raged impotently and brainwashed himself, telling himself that Lu Wanwan had not had it easy, that she had given birth to so many children for him, that she was simply cold by nature. But in this life, at this very moment, Zhang Qibao was suddenly incomparably calm. A merciless heart was unyielding. A merciless heart could break through ten thousand situations. Zhang Qibao did not go mad again or demand an explanation. He simply adjusted his hold on Little Zhen Bei and placed him into Lu Wanwan’s arms. “Feed him.” His voice was perfectly calm. Lu Wanwan froze for a moment. Then she gathered her clothing and glanced at Zhang Zhenbei in the swaddling clothes. Disgust flashed through her eyes. Zhang Qibao saw that flash of disgust. But he did not react. He merely continued, “Feed him.” Lu Wanwan glanced at Zhang Qibao’s blood-covered face and clutched the clothing over her chest. Her voice was neither loud nor soft. “The twins still haven’t had enough to eat. The older ones should naturally be hungrier than the younger one. The younger one doesn’t know what hunger is…” Zhang Qibao did not argue or withdraw the hand he had extended. He simply stared into Lu Wanwan’s eyes with a cold, severe gaze. Lu Wanwan felt her skin crawl beneath his stare. Knowing she could not avoid it, she silently took Zhang Zhenbei from him, opened her clothing, and began to nurse him. The little one caught the scent of his mother and instinctively searched for food. Before long, he began sucking hard, gulping down mouthful after mouthful. Zhang Qibao kept staring at Little Zhenbei as the child drank greedily. At last, the fact that he had been reborn became real to him. His only biological son was still alive. [Ding-dong! Welcome, Host, to the Child Rescue System. It has detected that you have successfully rescued a child. You are now being rewarded with one Child Rescue Gift Pack: two packs of formula, two jin of pork, three jin of brown sugar, four jin of milk candies, fifty eggs, fifty jin each of rice, flour, and cooking oil, three padded cotton coats, and twenty yuan in cash and ration coupons. Please enter the Magical Space and light Zhang Zhenbei’s Life Lamp to obtain your child-rescue reward.] As the mechanical voice rang out in his mind, Zhang Qibao was slightly stunned. Before his death, short-form dramas had been everywhere, with plots involving rebirth, Magical Spaces, Systems, and the like appearing one after another. He had never expected that after being reborn, he would get swept up in it too.