It took fifty minutes to go from J City to Changxi City by bus, and the ticket was four yuan*.
For Shi Zhen, whose entire net worth was less than 100 yuan, the total fare of 8 yuan for the two of them was a lot of money.
Shi Xinghuo had already finished the six meat buns in his hands and looked out the bus window excitedly.
Shi Zhen also looked at the scene outside the window silently.
In 1994, J City was far less developed than in later generations, but almost all of the private houses beside the farmland on the roadside were two-story buildings.
It was just that these small buildings were not as Western-style as those that came later. Most of them had the simplest appearance, with only white plaster on the walls and black tiles.
He remembered that in the next few years, J City developed rapidly. In these few years, families with a little money in the countryside would demolish these houses and build small buildings with novel styles and tiled roofs. Some of the houses they built were more beautiful than the villas in urban communities.
After arriving at Changxi City along the national highway, Shi Zhen pulled Shi Xinghuo onto a bus and went straight to Anshan Town.
The rural areas of J City were developing very well. Changxi City was one of the top 100 counties in the country, and the towns below were also richer and more populous than ordinary towns.
There was a bus from Changxi City to Anshan Town every half hour. They could buy a ticket on the bus for three yuan per person.
The bus stopped from time to time along the way, and people got on the bus one after another.
Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo were dressed rather shabbily. There were not as many people working as migrant workers these days, so everyone looked at them curiously.
Shi Zhen hated this kind of gaze when he was young. He had a high self-esteem at that time and always felt that others looked down on him. So when he made some money, he thought about dressing well and spending money all day long. But now he had long grown out of this kind of thinking.
The two of them took the bus and soon arrived at Anshan Town.
Anshan Town had “shan (mountain)” in its name, but it actually had no mountains. It was a small town located south of the Yangtze River with dense waterways and fertile land. In ancient times, it was even a county city.
Guan Baiyu lived here.
Thinking of Guan Baiyu, Shi Zhen’s heart trembled. A sore, itchy, and numb feeling spread from his heart throughout his body, making him unable to walk.
After he brought Shi Xinghuo to J City in his previous life, he did not come to Anshan Town. He kept looking for a job in J City, and later he actually found one. That was, working as a “small laborer*” on a construction site.
There were many kinds of jobs on construction sites, such as masonry, carpentry, plumbing and other jobs that required skills. The wages were higher and you would respectfully be called “master”. Those jobs that did not require skills were all done by “small laborers”. Those who went to construction sites to do unskilled labor were called “small laborers”.
On the construction site, someone needed to move bricks, someone needed to mix cement, and someone needed to do various chores. Naturally, many small workers were needed.
The work was hard and tiring. He and Shi Xinghuo worked as laborers at the construction site for more than ten hours a day. The contractor promised a salary of ten yuan a day.
They dug mud from rivers, moved bricks, demolished houses, worked from early in the morning to late at night, and did all kinds of work. Even though it was like this, the contractor always deducted their salary or withheld payment.
But Shi Zhen could bear it.
He wanted to learn skills on the construction site.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
He had already planned that after he had learned what he wanted to learn, he would go back to the village and recruit some fellow villagers to start his own construction company.
He couldn’t take on big projects, but in the rural areas of J City, there were many people who wanted to build houses.
He could take over the work of self-building houses from farmers.
There were also local people in J City who helped people build houses, but there were simply not enough. As long as their fees were not high, there was no need to worry about running out of work!
He thought well, but something unexpected happened.
That day, Shi Xinghuo was moving bricks when a pile of bricks suddenly fell from the scaffolding and hit Shi Xinghuo, who was not wearing a safety helmet. Shi Xinghuo’s head was hit and he was seriously injured.
Shi Xinghuo was still alive when he was sent to the hospital, but the contractor refused to pay even a penny for medical expenses.
Although Shi Xinghuo was stupid, he actually had no problems in daily life. He was also very obedient and worked particularly hard even if the work was hard and tiring.
On the construction site, because of his honesty, he did more work than other small laborers.
Now that he was injured due to safety hazards at the construction site, the contractor not only refused to pay for medical expenses, but also protected the bricklayer who did not place the bricks properly because the bricklayer was from the contractor’s hometown.
At that time, Shi Zhen kneeled down and begged for help for Shi Xinghuo’s medical expenses. As a result, the contractor drove his car and ate in a big hotel, and only gave them a few hundred yuan of wages owed to them. He kept saying that it was Shi Xinghuo who caused the accident himself by not being careful and that was why he got injured.
Seeing that Shi Xinghuo was about to die after a simple operation without follow-up treatment, he couldn’t bear it anymore, so he tried to find a way to capture the contractor, beat him up, and force his family to take out the money.
The contractor’s family called the police, and Shi Zhen was sent to the detention center for kidnapping, extortion, and wounding.
He kidnapped someone to get money for medical expenses, so he was not sentenced. He was released after living in the detention center for a few months, but when he came out, Shi Xinghuo was already dead.
And the contractor, after paying fifty thousand yuan in compensation*, continued to live his happy life.
He was young and energetic at the time, so naturally he couldn’t bear the loss of a human life, so he made up his mind to take revenge on the contractor, and also wanted to get ahead so that he would never encounter this kind of thing again.
He then followed his original plan and took a group of young people from the village to Changxi City. They traveled around the countryside around Changxi City, building houses for others and earning money.
He saved the first pot of gold in his life by doing this. Later, when Changxi City and surrounding small towns began to demolish old buildings for new construction, he even took on some larger projects.
The competition in J city was so fierce that he couldn’t compete with others, but in a small place, he could get along like a fish in water.
He met Guan Baiyu in 1998.
He was twenty-two years old at the time and had some money, so he began to think about getting married and having children.
As a result, before he got married, he met Guan Baiyu first.
Guan Baiyu was brought to work on the construction site by a bricklayer he knew.
The nineteen-year-old young man was extremely handsome, with red lips and white teeth. The first time he saw him, his eyes lit up.
However, he paid attention to Guan Baiyu, not because of Guan Baiyu’s appearance, but because Guan Baiyu was incompatible with the construction site.
He was frail and wore a pair of glasses*, and he looked nothing like a manual laborer. During lunch break, while others were playing cards, he read a book.
Shi Zhen went over and took a look at his book, but couldn’t understand it at all.
He later found out that it was a textbook for adults to take self-study exams.
After Guan Baiyu dropped out of high school, he wanted to take a self-study exam and continued reading books at the time.
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 he liked Guan Baiyu more and more.
At that time, he knew nothing about homosexuality and did not know his own thoughts. It was not until he was drunk one time and hugged and kissed Guan Baiyu who was sending him home that he realized that there was something wrong with him.
After that, he only cared about his own happiness and coaxed Guan Baiyu to get together with him.
At that time, the Internet was not developed, and people were very guarded about sex. Guan Baiyu was only nineteen years old and didn’t understand anything. He coaxed and deceived him into being with him.
He lived with Guan Baiyu like husband and wife.
But he was unworthy of Guan Baiyu.
At that time, he was very ambitious, and all he wanted was fame and fortune. He just wanted to get ahead and become a rich man.
This thought grew more and more.
Although he initially wanted to make money so that the people around him could live a good life, but as time went by, he had already deviated from his original intention.
Because of interests, his relatives and friends turned against each other. Because of his busy schedule, he and Guan Baiyu spent less time together and more time apart.
At that time, he had no sense of responsibility. He was clearly with Guan Baiyu, but he still had the idea of finding someone to get married and have children.
But… before he could do anything, something happened.
At that time, he had been with Guan Baiyu for six years. During these six years, while J City was engaged in development and construction, his career soared.
In those few years, he had been a bit extreme in his behavior. After he became prosperous, he got into trouble with the contractor who refused to pay Shi Xinghuo’s medical bills back then.
The two competed for workers, projects, and everything.
In order to suppress that person, he did many things that he hated at first, and he eventually became a person that he hated.
He won the fight.
As for the contractor, he got rich too quickly and fell into many bad habits, including gambling. He first lost a lot of money, and then he went into stock trading in order to make the money back. However, he happened to start trading in a big bear* market. No matter what he invested in, there was no return.
But even so, because everyone in J City knew that this person was rich, this person could always use various methods to borrow money to invest, or ask relatives and friends to take out private bank loans to lend him money.
The project under this man’s hands had not stopped and he insisted on completing it.
But Shi Zhen repeatedly caused trouble for this man, snatched away the project that this man regarded as a life-saving straw, and publicly spread the news that this man was bankrupt.
The dignity that this man maintained by borrowing here and there disappeared in an instant. The workers whose wages he owed, the friends who had loaned him money, the relatives he had deceived into going to the bank to take out loans to lend him money… everyone came to him looking for their money.
Shi Zhen felt a little uneasy when he thought about what happened back then.
When he learned that his enemy was bankrupt, he was overjoyed and even bought firecrackers to set off. However, he never considered that when that contractor was driven to a dead end, he actually wanted to die with him and drove his car to crash into his.
He did not die, but Guan Baiyu did.
Guan Baiyu was really unlucky when he met him.
He coaxed him into taking a detour to be with a man, washing, cooking and doing things for him, but in the end he even lost his life.
After Guan Baiyu died, he was confused for a long time, and he left the company’s affairs to others. Every day, he stayed at home and read the books Guan Baiyu had brought home.
When he was young, he couldn’t read books. The most he could do was listen to martial arts stories on the radio. After Guan Baiyu’s death, he read a lot more.
After reading more books, his ideas changed.
…
Shi Zhen carried a snakeskin bag and walked out of the small Anshan Town bus station.
Everything in this era was small in his eyes.
A “great bridge” with only two lanes was small, a spacious national highway in the eyes of others was small to him, and a bus station was even smaller.
After all, in the next twenty years, the entire J City would be demolished and rebuilt, changing almost every year.
There were countless opportunities here and a bright future.
More importantly, there was an alive Guan Baiyu here.
Shi Zhen smiled wholeheartedly.
***
T/N: Shi Zhen was such a scumbag in his last life!!! But don’t worry – he’s not like that anymore. This is a very sweet story.
*Just to be clear, the ticket is 4 yuan, so total was 8 yuan for two people. Shi Zhen paid with a 10 yuan bill last chapter and presumably got change.
*Small laborer/small worker will be used interchangeably – basically just someone who does odd jobs.
*Direct translation here was the contractor lost 50,000 yuan, but I changed it to compensating for Shi Xinghuo’s death as it is mentioned in a future chapter the contractor did end up paying compensation (not specified, but presumably there was an investigation after Shi Zhen made such a fuss with the kidnapping and extortion).
*Not sure if this is a typo or something because the author never mentions Guan Baiyu wearing glasses again. Maybe he only wore them in Shi Zhen’s previous life?
*Bear market – if you’re familiar with the stock market, you probably already know this. A bear market is a colloquial term for a period of downturn in the stock market (opposite is a bull market, a period of upswing in the stock market).
So I’m guessing he’s the gong? Shoulda tagged it tbh was expecting him to be the shou but hey it seems like a good setup
Yes Shi Zhen is the gong.
But he learned. He is described as someone who earned money for the sake of charity. He lovingly remembered his partner even many years later, and regretted his past choices. The moment he got the chance to do better, to be kind, he took it. He had to learn through terrible mistakes, but he learned, and so far, it seems that he made the most of these lessons.
I just hope, that he continues on this path, and really, Guan Baiyu deserves more respect. I really feel like if Shi Zhen was equiped with the proper knowledge, education, and guidance, basically if he was well adjusted to life, he would have made the right choices.
Well said!
after reading this i have changed my views!
He was still scum. Regardless of age or education, he casually dated a guy with no intentions of being responsible for the relationship he deliberately nurtured.
All crematoriums start with a guy who has a white moonlight or still intends to marry a woman, and we rightly call them scum.
☺️☺️
Since he knows he owes Guan Baiyu, I hope he doesn’t coax him into a relationship again. Instead he should create an environment that nurtures his dreams.
A life for a life. Wth didn’t MC directly seek the contractor’s life when he had the means? He involved so many people to destroy one man.