When Ning Xi woke up, she was lying on a bed in the commune clinic. There was a figure sitting by the door in front of her, and both of them were on IV drips.

"Awake?" Chu Hongchen turned around when he heard the voice.

"Well, how come you died too?" Her last memory was frozen at the moment of dizziness. There were no subsequent fragments, and no dreams at all.

Ning Xi felt a surge of fear in her heart. Was this what death was like? She would suddenly lose consciousness and never wake up again.

Chu Hongchen briefly explained the situation with some embarrassment. After he fell, Qu Hua thought he had fainted and woken up, so he asked him to follow him to the health room to check it out.

Ning Xi was unconscious and pinching her Ren Zhong point didn't work, so Qu Hua ran to borrow a bicycle from the team leader's house, tied her up on his body and brought her to the commune.

Thinking of the distance between the commune and the brigade, Ning Xi was filled with emotion, which finally turned into one sentence: "Sister Qu is such a good person."

Ning Xi would be lying if she said she wasn't touched that he brought an unconscious person here in such hot weather and delayed her work points.

"Yeah." Chu Hongchen responded and sat on the chair, staring outside in a daze.

Ning Xi watched the dripping bottle with boredom. The bottle was labeled "Glucose".

"Where are you from?" Ning Xi was bored lying there, so she started talking to Chu Hongchen. She felt a sense of familiarity and a little curious about him from the first moment she saw him.

Chu Hongchen: "Same as you, Province C, Mingjiang City."

"Why didn't I hear you introduce yourself yesterday?" Ning Xi remembered that he only said last night that he was from Province C. Since they were from the same hometown, she remembered it more clearly.

"Um."

Ning Xi:......

This character is really boring.

However, Chu Hongchen looks young, with fair skin, delicate and superior facial features, a cute voice, and a good temperament. He looks a bit like a young master from an ancient scholarly family.

Just looks like a minor.

"How old are you this year?"

"I just turned sixteen." Although Chu Hongchen didn't talk much, he still answered every question.

"So young?" Ning Xi raised her eyebrows in surprise. With her rich experience in reading novels, it seemed that in this era, only the third batch of educated youth who went to the countryside had more younger people.

Later, the government realized this problem and relaxed the entrance examinations for junior high school and high school, so that basically anyone who wanted to go to school could go.

The original owner's memory also mentioned that the teacher mentioned that Mingjiang City would cancel the junior high school entrance examination next year and high school admission would be free of entrance examination, which also proved this point from another perspective.

So in the past two years, most of the people who went to the countryside were around 18 or 19 years old.

But Ning Xi changed her mind and realized that it was very likely that they signed up to go to the countryside for the purpose of "seeking refuge".

......

Mingjiang City, Province C.

"Xiao Yu, come and have some porridge." Guan Yulan knocked on the door with the cooled vegetable porridge.

Guan Yulan was a distant relative of Mr. Zhao. Her family was poor at that time, so she was sold to a landlord as a concubine before the founding of the People's Republic of China. Later, during the war, the landlord's house was burned, killed, and looted, and she escaped on her own.

After moving around many places, she finally lived with the old man and helped with housework at home.

Zhao Huaiyan's mother, Lu Chuman, suffered heavy bleeding during childbirth and could not be saved. At that time, Zhao Zhengrong was sent to the eldest brother to learn advanced technology, and the old man went to the front line to aid Korea, leaving Guan Yulan as the only adult at home.

The two elders of the Lu family lost their only daughter and had to deal with the funeral. They were emotionally broken and couldn't control themselves, so how could they take care of their grandson?

So the newborn Zhao Huaiyan was raised by Guan Yulan alone.

At this moment, Zhao Huaiyan was lying on the bed, his face was blue and his expression was uglier than that of a terminally ill patient.

"Okay, thank you Aunt Guan, I'm sorry for making you worry." Zhao Huaiyan knew that Guan Yulan had stayed with him all night, and he felt touched but also sad.

If his leg hadn't been broken...

Sun Zhigao's job was to take care of Zhao Huaiyan. He carefully helped him up to a half-sitting position, and took the special small wooden table beside the bed and placed it on the bed.

It was common for Zhao Huaiyan to feel unwell, so this table was specially prepared for him to eat in bed.

Guan Yulan felt so distressed when she saw him looking listless. She sat down beside the bed with a bowl in her hand and said, "Xiaoyu, Auntie Guan will feed you."

"I...thank you, Aunt Guan." Zhao Huaiyan wanted to say that he would do it himself, but he found it difficult to even move a finger.

"Isn't it much more stable this year? How come he got sick again?" Guan Yulan had a light sleep and kept hearing noises at home in the second half of last night. Later she found out that it was Zhao Huaiyan humming.

There was no response when they knocked on the door, so they woke up Sun Zhigao and kicked the door open, only to find that he was in so much pain that he was unconscious and could only moan intermittently in pain.

When Zhao Huaiyan was about to be sent to the hospital, he hesitated for a while and insisted on not going.

Guan Yulan couldn't persuade him, so she had to stay by his bedside.

"Eat more. A full stomach will help your body get better quickly." Guan Yulan urged him to eat like she was coaxing a child.

Zhao Huaiyan didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "Aunt Guan, you always treat me like a child. I'm already twenty years old."

However, he still endured the physical discomfort and continued to eat.

"Even if you are 200 years old, you are still a child." Guan Yulan was satisfied only when she saw that he had finished eating obediently, and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief.

"You take a rest, I'll finish brushing. Just tell me if there's anything you want to eat." Guan Yulan also stayed up all night, her eyelids were fighting, and she was ready to clean up and go to sleep.

Sun Zhigao closed the door and made sure Guan Yulan couldn't hear him before he spoke: "Did the medicine you took yesterday work?"

"Um."

After Ning Xi told him the recipes of those medicines, he asked Uncle Sun to find Uncle Hu who was treating him.

Uncle Hu's name is Hu Jishen. His family has been practicing medicine for generations. In his generation, he spent all his family wealth to treat the people during the war without asking for anything in return.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he returned to his old job and became quite famous in Mingjiang City. Later, due to special reasons, he was counted as one of the "Four Olds" and was arranged to sweep public toilets.

After Zhao Huaiyan injured his leg, the hospital recommended amputation to save his life. Finally, after much inquiry, he found Hu Jisheng.

However, the nature of this poison is just like its name - ever-changing. The dosage of the ingredients in the formula is different, and the antidote is also different. Hu Jisheng can only save his legs and slowly regulate his body.

"Then I'll go tell Uncle Hu now?" Sun Zhigao was delighted. It seemed that Huaiyan's leg could be saved?

Zhao Huaiyan shook his head: "Not for now."

The medicine he took last night was newly prepared by Uncle Hu based on the dosage of several medicines given by Ning Xi. The medicines he tried on the usual days made him feel pain all over his body but had no feeling in his legs.

After the medicine took effect last night, the pain in my legs was the most severe.

"Go to the machinery factory and find my dad. Ask him to come over in the evening."

"No, let's go now. You accompany me to find him."

Seeing hope for the first time in many years, Zhao Huaiyan didn't want to wait any longer.

"Okay, wait for me to prepare." Sun Zhigao left the room, but did not really prepare anything. Instead, he rode his bicycle to the post office to make a phone call.