Chapter 84
I slept dreamlessly all night and woke up naturally. When I opened my eyes, it was not even eight o'clock. Ranlong's daily routine was so healthy that it seemed like he was back in middle school.
I kicked Yao Ling awake, who was still groaning in his nightmare while his butt was exposed to the sun, packed his luggage, and set off for the village.
Passing the fork in the road, there were two more piles of fresh cow dung on either side. Ranlong now hoped the bus would take a detour, perhaps so they could pick up Qiu An.
The scenery in the countryside is much more desolate than in the town. The world around them is developing rapidly, young people are rushing to leave, and those who remain here are all elderly people.
Large tracts of farmland lay abandoned, overgrown with weeds that were half green and half dead. We passed several thatched houses far apart, drove across several stretches of muddy ground, and finally arrived at a place where ramshackle houses overlapped.
The old people in the village cannot speak Mandarin, so Ranlong sent Yao Ling to communicate with them. Unexpectedly, Yao Ling, who can speak ten dialects, also met with failure here.
They finally found a clearly articulate peasant woman in the farmland. She told them that the family where the woman surnamed Pei lived had suddenly become rich for some reason. A long time ago, several stylish four-wheeled vehicles drove side by side and moved away with people and luggage.
It just happened to coincide with the time when Qiu An became famous. Ranlong's eyes lit up when he heard it, and he poked Yaoling to ask her where he had moved to.
The peasant woman walked up the ridge of the field, looked around, and pointed in a direction in the distance.
She said that if you walked straight along the river without turning, you would see a row of small Western-style houses halfway to another town. The houses that looked the same were those allocated after the neighboring village was demolished, while the ones that looked different were the ones built by wealthy people with their own money.
The woman surnamed Pei probably lives there.
Ranlong thanked the peasant woman and drove on the road. The river bank was very high and the road was very narrow. The guardrails on the river bank were sparse and had been in disrepair for many years, so they creaked and shook. If the wheels turned slightly, his life would be in danger.
Ranlong was born with a fear of driving on this kind of road. Not to mention driving on it, even seeing it on TV makes his legs go weak.
"How about you open it instead?" Ranlong asked Yaoling in a hurry.
“I can’t drive.”
"I can teach you!"
“I don’t have a driver’s license.”
"There's no traffic police here! Please, I beg you!"
"I beg you too..."
The negotiation failed, and Ranlong could only grit her teeth and keep muttering "Go in a straight line, go in a straight line". She drove for an hour on a ten-minute journey, which made Yaoling, who didn't sleep well last night, so sleepy that she fainted.
Finally, they drove to the small villa that the peasant woman mentioned. As soon as Ranlong got out of the car, he accidentally stepped on a stone and fell to the ground.
Yao Ling woke up after hearing a plop. She got out of the car and saw Ran Long sitting on the ground, looking as if she had given up on treatment. So she reached out to pull her.
Yao Ling was small and weak, and he pulled and tugged for a long time but couldn't get Ran Long's butt off the ground at all.
"What's wrong? Are your legs weak?"
Ranlong wanted to be stubborn, but she was too lazy to come up with excuses. She thought Yaoling couldn't even drive, so what could she blame her for? She simply admitted, "A little bit."
The expected sarcasm did not come, but Yao Ling said: "It's okay, sit down and rest, you will be fine after a while."
"Huh? Why don't you say 'We're just getting started'?"
Yao Ling stretched and yawned: "After all, you have been a driver for such a long time. I am not an ungrateful ungrateful person. I will save my smile for next time."
“…”
"There seems to be a vegetable market over there. Are you thirsty? Let me buy you a bottle of water."
"Give me a hand, I can almost walk."
When Ranlong and Yaoling met Ms. Pei, she had just bought vegetables and was walking out of the vegetable market.
Ms. Pei was only a little over 1.60 meters tall, yet still stood out from the crowd. Her gaze was carefree, and she looked clean and clear, unadorned. Her hair was casually tied over her shoulder, and her eyebrows and nose were a bit like Qiu An's.
Ranlong's attention was immediately attracted to her.
-
"So you...actually saw her...them?"
Qiu An's burning eyes were fixed on Ran Long, her voice trembling, and the hand holding the chopsticks unconsciously tightened more and more. The blisters on her fingertips finally couldn't bear the pressure and burst.
Seeing this, Ranlong quickly held her self-torturing fingers, took off the chopsticks, and said gently: "I saw it, I know everything, it's okay, it's okay, don't worry, don't be afraid."
Ranlong hugged Qiu An, who looked a little dazed, and led her to sit on the sofa. He asked her for a medical kit, took out iodine and cotton swabs from it, and carefully helped her treat the wound.
"Does it hurt?"
"They...didn't give you any trouble?"
"No. Everything is going well."
Ranlong tore off a Band-Aid and put it on the wound.
-
Ranlong and Yaoling were still racking their brains over how to approach Ms. Pei naturally and get information out of her.
If you lie and say it's a reporter, you will probably get rejected; if you tell the truth and say it's a friend, what kind of friend would come all the way here to pry into someone's privacy.
Unexpectedly, Ms. Pei saw them and walked straight towards them with a basket of vegetables.
Ranlong and Yaoling looked at each other, and looked around, but it seemed that there seemed to be no one else standing next to them.
Ms. Pei's gaze on them was so intense that they stood there, not knowing where to put their hands.
Until Ms. Pei walked up to Ranlong and said, "You are Huanhuan's friend, I recognize you."
"'Huanhuan' is..."
Ms. Pei smiled kindly: "I forgot, everyone calls her 'Qiu An' now."
Ranlong's heart skipped a beat, and he asked Ms. Pei, "Wait, wait a minute, is 'Huan'... the one next to the character for fire?"
Ms. Pei said, "Yes, the huan next to the fire character."
Yao Ling asked Ran Long in confusion: "How do you know?"
"Uh, this...I guess?"
Huan next to the character for fire...
It was Boss Huanhuan who gave her rewards regularly and protected her time and time again.
Surprisingly, it was really Qiu An...
Ms. Pei was still in front of him, and Ranlong forced himself to calm down.
Now that she had been recognized, there was nothing left to hide. Ranlong simply revealed her identity to Ms. Pei and told her that Qiu An had been troubled recently and she came here to find out the reason.
Ms. Pei didn't say anything, asked them to wait there, turned around and went into the vegetable market and brought out a full bag of vegetables.
Ms. Pei rode on the electric scooter and asked Ranlong and Yaoling to drive behind her.
The electric scooter climbed up a long slope, taking them past one demolished small house after another of uniform style, and arrived at the innermost one.
As the peasant woman in the village said, the Western-style building where Ms. Pei lived was different from the others. It was not only wider, but also two stories higher.
Ms. Pei led them into the living room on the first floor. The living room was connected to the second floor, and a huge crystal chandelier hung directly above it.
The decoration style of self-built villas in the countryside is always like this. Ranlong is sitting under the chandelier and always feels very oppressive.
When she withdrew her slightly nervous gaze from the chandelier, she saw a middle-aged man with gray hair lying on a large lounge chair in the corner of the second floor.
The man's face was thick with flesh, and his dark skin was wrinkled layer by layer. Even an ant, smaller than a millimeter, would be pinched and burst with juice if it passed by, let alone a fly or mosquito. I guess washing his face must have been very difficult for him, as he had to peel off and scrub layer by layer.
Of course...the premise is that he really knows how to wash his face.
The man had a ferocious look in his eyes, looking down at the two people in the living room downstairs from his high vantage point.
As soon as Ranlong's eyes met his, he shuddered violently.
She quickly looked away, but saw Yao Ling beside her still looking up at the man.
Yao Ling's eyes moved left and right as he glanced at the man. There was no trace of fear in his eyes, only curiosity and, pity?
Ranlong tugged at her sleeve and whispered to her, "Hey... stop looking. Aren't you scared?"
Yao Ling looked back at her: "What are you afraid of?"
"He looks so scary..."
"That man has been disabled for a long time. Look at him. He hasn't walked in years and doesn't exercise. His legs are just skin and bones. He has a sour face and looks like he doesn't welcome us, but he hasn't even farted yet. He must be mute."
Upon hearing this, Ranlong looked up timidly. The man's exposed leg muscles had indeed shrunk severely, with only two thin copper tubes sticking out from his wide trouser legs. He did not look like a normal person at all.
If you only look at this calf, no one would think he is still alive.
Ranlong became bolder and bolder as she looked around. She found that the recliner the man was sitting on had no wheels, and there were no crutches or wheelchairs around him. It seemed that he had completely lost the ability to move and could not even use any mobility aids.
Who knows, it might have grown together with the recliner.
The sound of pots and pans colliding with running water came from the kitchen, and Ms. Pei started to cook lunch.
Ranlong and Yaoling wanted to help, but Ms. Pei glanced at their tender white fingers that had never been touched by water and refused.
Lunch was served on the table soon. Looking at the time, it was much earlier than Ranlong’s usual meal time.
She wasn't hungry, but it was difficult to refuse, so she had to bite the bullet and pick up the bowl of rice.
Ranlong originally thought that the food cooked by Ms. Pei would be as delicious as that cooked by Qiu An, but the reality was just the opposite.
The food that Ms. Pei served was very "rough", with no taste or appearance to speak of.
There was too little water in the rice, so it was not only dry but also burnt on the bottom; the water spinach was not picked, and the cuts were neat, probably because it was cut with a knife; the clam meat was full of sand, and the soup was turbid and looked muddy; the scrambled eggs with tomatoes were too salty, and a small piece could finish an entire bowl of rice.
Ranlong ate each mouthful with great agony. He glanced secretly at Yaoling and found that even she, who had been through many battles, had been defeated.
Yao Ling's face turned green, and he only chewed half of a mouthful of rice before swallowing it in small mouthfuls without any soup to go with it. He looked more painful than taking medicine.
Ms. Pei was concentrating on eating without saying a word. Ranlong thought that Ms. Pei did not welcome them and deliberately made bad food to drive them away. However, she saw Ms. Pei finished the whole bowl of rice in a few bites and then spoke slowly.
She said that it was destiny that Jiang Huan could reach this day.
Otherwise, she would have been killed shortly after she was born.
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