It takes 50 minutes by bus from J City to Changxi City, and the fare is 4 yuan.
For Shi Zhen, whose entire fortune amounted to less than 100 yuan, the 8 yuan train tickets for the two of them were a considerable sum of money.
Shi Xinghuo had finished eating the six buns in his hand and was looking out the car window excitedly.
Shi Zhen also silently watched the scene outside the window.
In 1994, J City was far less developed than it would be in later years, but the houses along the roads and farmland were almost all two-story buildings.
However, these small buildings were not as stylish as the later ones. Most of them had the simplest appearance, with only white lime plaster on the walls and black tiles.
He recalled that in the following years, J City developed rapidly. During these years, wealthy families in the countryside would demolish these houses and build new-style small buildings with tiled walls. Some of these houses were even more beautiful than the villas in the city.
After arriving in Changxi City along the national highway, Shi Zhen took Shi Xinghuo onto a bus and headed straight for Anshan Town.
The rural areas of J City are developing very well. Changxi City, as one of the top 100 counties in the country, has towns that are all becoming increasingly wealthy and have large populations.
There is a bus from Changxi City to Anshan Town every half hour. You can buy a ticket on the bus for three yuan per person.
The bus stopped every now and then along the way, and people got on one after another.
Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo were dressed rather shabbily. There weren't as many migrant workers these days as there are now, so everyone stared at them curiously.
When Shi Zhen was young, he hated this kind of look. He had a high sense of self-esteem back then and always felt that others looked down on him. So when he had some money, he thought about dressing well and using nice things all day long. But now he no longer has that thought.
The two traveled by car and soon arrived at Anshan Town.
Despite having "mountain" in its name, Anshan Town actually has no mountains. It is a small town in the Jiangnan region with a dense network of waterways and fertile land. In ancient times, it was even a county seat.
Guan Baiyu lives here.
Thinking of Guan Baiyu, Shi Zhen felt a shiver run through his heart. A tingling, itchy, and numb sensation spread from his heart throughout his body, making him unable to move.
After he brought Shi Xinghuo to J City in his previous life, he didn't come to Anshan Town. Instead, he kept looking for work in J City and eventually found one: a laborer on a construction site.
There are many kinds of jobs on construction sites. There are skilled jobs such as bricklaying, carpentry, and plumbing, which pay higher wages and are respectfully addressed as "master". Those jobs that do not require skills are all done by "laborers". Going to a construction site to do unskilled work is also called "working as a laborer".
Construction sites need people to carry bricks, mix cement, and do all sorts of odd jobs, so naturally, they need a lot of laborers.
The work was tough and tiring. He and Shi Xinghuo worked as laborers on the construction site, working ten or so hours a day, with the contractor promising them a daily wage of ten yuan.
They've dredged riverbeds, carried bricks, demolished houses, and done all sorts of odd jobs from dawn till dusk. Even after all that, the contractor still always deducts from their pay or delays payment.
But Shi Zhen tolerated it all.
He wanted to learn technical skills on the construction site.
He had already planned it all out: once he had learned what he needed to learn, he would go back to the village and recruit some of his fellow villagers to work.
He can't take on large projects, but there are plenty of people in the rural areas of J City who want to build houses.
He can take on the job of building self-built houses from farmers.
There are local people in J City who build houses, but there are simply not enough of them. As long as their fees are not high, they will not have to worry about not having work!
He had a good plan, but an accident happened.
That day, Shi Xinghuo was moving bricks when a stack of bricks suddenly fell from the scaffolding, hitting him on the head and causing him to bleed profusely because he wasn't wearing a safety helmet.
When Shi Xinghuo was taken to the hospital, he was still alive, but the contractor refused to pay a single penny for his medical expenses.
Although Shi Xinghuo is not very smart, he is actually fine in terms of daily life. He is also very obedient and works very hard at physical labor.
On the construction site, because he was honest, he did more work than the other laborers who were his peers.
Now, he was injured by falling bricks due to safety hazards at the construction site. The contractor not only refused to pay his medical expenses but also protected the bricklayer who didn't place the bricks properly, simply because the bricklayer was from the same hometown as the contractor.
Shi Zhen was practically begging on his knees for Shi Xinghuo's medical expenses, but the man drove a luxury car and ate at fancy hotels, only paying them the few hundred yuan in back wages he owed them, claiming that Shi Xinghuo had only gotten injured by accident.
Seeing that Shi Xinghuo was dying after a simple surgery with no follow-up treatment, he couldn't bear it any longer. So he found a way to arrest the contractor, beat him up, and forced his family to give him money.
The contractor's family reported the incident to the police, and Shi Zhen was detained in a detention center on charges of kidnapping, extortion, and assault.
He kidnapped people to collect medical expenses, but he wasn't sentenced. He only stayed in the detention center for a few months before being released. However, by the time he got out, Shi Xinghuo was already dead.
The contractor, after losing 50,000 yuan, continued to live his carefree life.
He was young and hot-blooded at the time, and naturally couldn't stand the loss of a life. He was determined to get revenge on the contractor and make something of himself so that he would never encounter such a thing again.
He then followed his plan, leading a group of young people from the group to Changxi City, which is under J City. They traveled around the rural areas surrounding Changxi City, building houses for people to make money.
He used this to save his first pot of gold, and later, when Changxi City and the surrounding towns began to carry out demolition and relocation, he took on some larger projects.
He couldn't compete with others in the fiercely competitive J city, but he thrived in a smaller place.
He met Guan Baiyu in 1998.
He was 22 at the time and had some money, so he started thinking about getting married and having children.
Before they even got married, she met Guan Baiyu.
Guan Baiyu was brought to the construction site to work as an assistant by a tile setter he knew.
The nineteen-year-old was exceptionally handsome, with rosy lips and white teeth. The first time he saw him, he was immediately struck by his good looks.
However, he paid attention to Guan Baiyu not because of Guan Baiyu's appearance, but because Guan Baiyu was a person who didn't fit in with the construction site.
He was frail and wore glasses, and didn't look like someone who did manual labor. During his lunch break, while others were playing cards, he picked up a book and read.
Shi Zhen glanced at his book but couldn't understand it at all.
He later learned that it was a textbook for adult self-study exams.
After dropping out of high school, Guan Baiyu wanted to take the self-study exams and was studying at the time.
The people on the construction site respected scholars, so everyone treated Guan Baiyu well and took good care of him. He had more and more contact with Guan Baiyu and grew to like him more and more.
At that time, he knew nothing about homosexuality or his own thoughts. It wasn't until one time when he got drunk and hugged and kissed Guan Baiyu, who was taking him home, that he realized he had a problem.
After that, he only cared about his own pleasure and coaxed Guan Baiyu to be with him.
In those days, the internet was not well-developed, and people were very guarded about sex. Guan Baiyu was only nineteen years old and knew nothing. He was coaxed and deceived into being with him.
He lived a life similar to that of Guan Baiyu and his wife.
But he failed Guan Baiyu.
At that time, he was ambitious and obsessed with fame and fortune, wanting only to stand out from the crowd and become rich.
This thought cannot be wrong.
His initial goal was to make money so that people around him could live a better life, but as time went by, he had long since deviated from his original intention.
Because of interests, his relatives and friends turned against each other, and because of his busy schedule, he and Guan Baiyu rarely saw each other.
At that time, he was completely irresponsible. Even though he was already with Guan Baiyu, he still had the idea of finding someone to marry and have children.
But... before he could do anything, something bad happened.
At that time, he had been with Guan Baiyu for six years. During those six years, taking advantage of the large-scale development and construction in J City, his career soared.
Over the years, he has acted somewhat extremely. After becoming successful, he clashed with the contractor who had refused to pay Shi Xinghuo's medical expenses.
The two men fought over workers, over projects, and everything else.
In order to suppress that person, he did many things that he initially hated, and eventually he became a person he himself hated.
He won the argument.
As for that contractor, he got rich too quickly and picked up many bad habits, including gambling. He first lost a lot of money, and then tried to recoup his losses by investing in stocks, only to encounter a major bear market. He also lost everything when he invested elsewhere...
Even so, because everyone in J City knows that this person is rich, he can always find ways to borrow money and attract investment, or have his relatives and friends get loans from banks for him.
This person's projects never stopped; he kept going.
However, Shi Zhen repeatedly caused trouble for this person, snatched the project that this person regarded as a lifeline, and even made public the news that this person had gone bankrupt.
The facade he maintained by borrowing money from all sides vanished instantly. The workers owed wages by him, the friends who had given him many investments, the relatives he had tricked into taking out bank loans for him... everyone came to him.
Shi Zhen felt uneasy again as he thought about what happened back then.
He was overjoyed to learn that his enemy had gone bankrupt and even bought firecrackers to set off. Little did he know that the man, having nowhere else to turn, would try to take him down with him and would run him over with his car.
He didn't die, but Guan Baiyu did.
Guan Baiyu was truly unlucky to have met him.
She was tricked into going astray and getting together with a man, doing his laundry, cooking for him, and helping him with chores, and in the end she even lost her life.
After Guan Baiyu's death, he was in a daze for a long time. He handed over the company's affairs to others and spent his days at home reading the books that Guan Baiyu had bought.
When he was young, he couldn't concentrate on reading books; at most, he would listen to martial arts stories on the radio. After Guan Baiyu died, he started reading a lot.
After reading more books, his thinking changed.
Shi Zhen carried the snakeskin bag and walked out of the cramped Anshan Town bus station.
Everything in this era seemed insignificant to him.
A "bridge" with only two lanes is small, a national highway that seems spacious to others is small, and a bus station is even smaller.
After all, in the next twenty years, the entire city of J was undergoing demolition and construction, changing almost every year.
There are countless opportunities here, and a bright future awaits.
More importantly, Guan Baiyu is here, full of life.
Shi Zhen smiled, genuinely.
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