Chapter 22 Another Chance Encounter
My older brother called and asked her to transfer money.
Jiang Ruzhen's tired mind immediately began to work.
She had originally planned to settle her family affairs in the past two days, then buy some supplements and take the money to visit her elderly father, mother, and two older brothers in the rural area of Jishi.
Before she could even set off, a letter arrived.
In my previous life, my parents and two older brothers were sent down to a remote mountain village where conditions were extremely difficult. They lived in a cowshed all year round.
They suffered greatly, enduring both the cold winters and the scorching summers.
The village assigned them the dirtiest and most tiring jobs, and no one dared to talk to them or help them out.
Shortly after losing her daughter, her eldest and second eldest brothers returned to the city and sent her a letter severing ties, informing her that her parents and niece had died of malaria.
She was heartbroken and didn't know why, nor where to ask her two brothers. She could only bury all her pain in her heart and cry secretly every night.
She always thought that the few dollars she secretly saved up each month to send over were too little, which led to her parents and niece falling seriously ill and dying without receiving timely treatment.
That's why her two older brothers resented her so much and wanted to sever their sibling relationship with her.
This made her already frail body even worse, and the regret and self-blame tormented her until she became emaciated, like a skeleton.
But in this life, she received her elder brother's distress call ahead of time, which must mean that they had encountered some kind of emergency.
Jiang Ruzhen quickly turned around and told her children, "Eldest child, Mom is going to Jishi to visit your grandparents. I won't be back for three or four days."
"Take good care of your younger siblings. If anything important happens, go to the brigade leader. If you can't resolve it, have the brigade leader call Jilin City to let me know."
Shen Zhuoli also realized that something must have happened to his maternal grandparents, otherwise his eldest uncle would not have called so late.
He quickly agreed, and Jiang Ruzhen took out a hundred yuan from her pocket and handed it to the eldest brother, telling him to go to the post office tomorrow to send money to his uncle.
After explaining these things, Jiang Ruzhen quickly followed Liu Guihua to the brigade leader's house.
She found the captain, who gave her a letter of introduction, and then rushed to the train station without stopping.
The brigade leader asked his eldest son to take Jiang Ruzhen on his bicycle. Along the way, urged on by Jiang Ruzhen, Xiao Song almost pedaled the bicycle like a whirlwind.
Upon arriving at the station, Jiang Ruzhen jumped off the train and went straight to the ticket hall to buy a ticket for the next available train.
Fortunately, few people were taking the train north at that time, and Jiang Ruzhen was lucky enough to buy a hard sleeper ticket for fifteen yuan.
The train was scheduled to depart in half an hour. She quickly took her ticket, went through the security checkpoint, and boarded the train. As she lay down on her sleeper berth, her heart was pounding wildly.
It got dark quickly. Jiang Ruzhen had something on her mind. Listening to the snoring in the carriage, she couldn't sleep at all, so she lay on her bunk with her eyes closed, lost in thought.
Suddenly, a white light flashed through her mind.
Logically speaking, her older brother should have looked for her in his past life, so why didn't she receive any news?
In her past life, she gave her own daughter's school admission to Qin Lanlan, and afterwards Qin Lanlan kept asking her for money to buy this and that.
She said it was something her teacher told her she needed to prepare for college, but she didn't understand it at the time. So she took her son and daughter out every day to work like oxen to earn money for her.
He often comes home very late, and Qin Lanlan is alone at home.
In her previous life, when Liu Guihua came to her house to inform her, Qin Lanlan was definitely home alone. However, Qin Lanlan chose to deliberately conceal the truth and told her nothing.
In Qin Lanlan's eyes, she didn't take Jiang Ruzhen's family's request for help to heart at all, and even deliberately tried to prevent Jiang Ruzhen from spending all the little money left in the family on others, affecting her food, clothing and daily necessities.
This is why Jiang Ruzhen had no idea what was happening with her parents, and she regretted not being able to see them one last time.
Jiang Ruzhen was truly filled with hatred, wondering how Qin Lanlan would be tortured after being dragged home by Old Hu.
She really wanted to see with her own eyes the suffering Qin Lanlan had endured in her life; even tearing someone to pieces wouldn't be enough to erase her hatred.
After a night of bumpy travel, the train finally arrived in Jilin City at around 2 p.m. the next day.
Jiang Ruzhen rushed to the hospital to get some of the best malaria medication, then took a bus to Baiyuan Town. At that time, there were no paved roads in the countryside.
The dirt road was bumpy and uneven, making Jiang Ruzhen feel nauseous. Luckily, she didn't eat anything on the train.
It took her more than an hour to reach the town. She then found a donkey cart and gave the old man driving it a huge sum of five yuan. The old man whipped the cart and drove her to Kubazi Village.
It was getting dark. The old man was a kind man and was even thinking of sending Jiang Ruzhen into the village.
Jiang Ruzhen thanked the old man for his kindness, but she had to wait until dark to sneak into the village so that no one could see her.
At that time, villages and towns strictly managed the personnel who had been sent down to the countryside, and they certainly wouldn't allow just anyone to visit them.
She ducked into the cornfield by the roadside, checked that no one was around, and then wiped the lotus birthmark on her chest before entering her spatial dimension.
She took this opportunity to go back to the villa and rest properly. After she finished showering, she came out wearing a clean, faded set of coarse cloth clothes.
It was already dark outside, so she left the space and quietly circled around to the back hillside from the edge of the village.
She vaguely remembered her father mentioning in a letter that their family had been assigned to a cowshed at the foot of the northernmost mountain.
She trudged through the mountains, her feet sinking into the mud, clutching a small self-defense baton she had taken from her spatial storage.
She was afraid of encountering some wild beast; with her small stature, she probably wouldn't even be enough to fill its teeth.
After finally finding a cowshed area, Jiang Ruzhen squatted in the woods and anxiously looked down, not knowing which cowshed housed her family.
Just as she peeked out and tucked her head in, the bushes a dozen meters away from her stirred.
A blurry figure sat up and glanced in the direction she was standing.
With just one glance, the person sat up straight.
It's that interesting woman I met in Liancheng. What's she doing here?
Lu Mingzheng chewed on a blade of grass, idly nibbling at it.
He never expected the two of them to be so destined for each other; he seemed to see this woman everywhere he went.
Judging from her demeanor, this must be her first time doing something so bad, unlike him who seemed so adept at it.
Should I remind you?
If that woman makes any noise that alerts the villagers, wouldn't he also be implicated and suffer the consequences?
Thinking of this, Lu Mingzheng got up and quietly crept towards Jiang Ruzhen's direction.
When he squatted down behind Jiang Ruzhen, the woman in front of him didn't even notice him, and Lu Mingzheng had a mischievous thought.
"Are you checking the plate?" he whispered in Jiang Ruzhen's ear.
In an instant, Jiang Ruzhen felt a chill run down her spine, as if she had fallen into an ice cave.
Oh no, has she been discovered? Without thinking, she raised the self-defense baton in her hand, turned around, and lashed out at Lu Mingzheng.
Although Lu Mingzheng had been discharged from the army for two years, he never gave up his skills. His soldier's intuition allowed him to dodge Jiang Ruzhen's attack in an instant.
He covered Jiang Ruzhen's mouth with one hand and grabbed her wrist with the other, holding her tightly.
Jiang Ruzhen lost control of her strength and fell into Lu Mingzheng's arms.
Fearing that someone below would discover them, Lu Mingzheng lay down on the ground following Jiang Ruzhen's force.
The two of them fell together, their bodies touching.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
