Chapter 2

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There is no train from Quanzhou City to Wude County, so Xu Junran had to wait for four hours at the city bus station. After that, he took a long-distance bus and endured a bumpy three-hour ride on the mountain roads to return to his hometown, where he had lived in two lifetimes.

Getting off the bus, Xu Junran had not yet had time to marvel at the changes in his hometown over the decades when a shrill cry pierced his ears.

"Robbery!"

A woman's scream rang out in Xu Junran's ears.

Immediately after, a loud "Ah!" made Xu Junran's face change.

Turning around, what Xu Junran saw was a shocking scene.

In an open area of the bus station, several people were surrounding a young man, beating him with their fists and feet. The scream just now must have been from the young man being beaten. Beside them, a disheveled woman was pleading bitterly.

Frowning, Xu Junran glanced at the attackers and noticed that they were not very old, wielding thick sticks and cursing foully. The onlookers, though watching, did not intervene, as if they were used to it.

"Please, please, we don't want the bag. Don't beat my son anymore."

The woman was kneeling on the ground, pleading bitterly with the young men. The young man on the ground was already bruised and swollen.

"Ha ha, you stinking woman, if you had just handed over the money obediently, it would have been over. But now, look, you got hurt, didn't you?" One of the young men, with long hair, stopped his beating and said with a grin.

"Here, here, all of it! Please, let my son go." The woman threw the handbag on the ground and kept bowing to the men.

Seeing this, Xu Junran could no longer hold back. He put his backpack on the ground, picked up a brick, and threw it, shouting, "Get lost!"

At that moment, he did not think about whether he could beat these people. For Xu Junran, who had been an orphan in both of his lives, the word "mother" was always a taboo.

"Damn!" Xu Junran's brick hit the unsuspecting young man, who cursed and turned to charge at Xu Junran. The others also abandoned the beaten young man and rushed towards Xu Junran.

But before he could reach Xu Junran, someone shouted, "Hey!"

Then, the man flew as if riding the clouds, crashing into the side of a parked bus and unable to get up.

Xu Junran was also stunned, but when he saw the figure that had kicked the young man, his tense face relaxed.

"Uncle Hu Zi..." He opened his mouth to speak but swallowed the words "uncle."

A figure nearly two meters tall stood not far in front of Xu Junran, a man in his early twenties with thick eyebrows, big eyes, and a square face, wearing a simple smile.

"Junran, why are you back?" The man called Hu Zi turned to look at Xu Junran and asked with a smile.

Xu Junran smiled genuinely and said to the first familiar person he met after his rebirth, "I graduated and was assigned to the county committee."

Hu Zi, whose real name is Li Yifeng, is from Li Family Town, where Xu Junran's parents were sent for re-education. In Xu Junran's previous life, Uncle Hu Zi had risen to the position of deputy secretary of the municipal political and legal affairs committee, thanks to his father, Li Dongyuan, who was a member of the Jiangnan Provincial Committee and the provincial political and legal affairs secretary when he retired.

Li Dongyuan was one of the key figures who helped Xu Junran become the mayor in his previous life.

Wude County is the poorest region in all of Quanzhou City, and it is not an exaggeration to describe it as a remote and impoverished area. Even in the county town, only the county committee and government buildings are three-story structures, which are said to have been left over from before the liberation. The rest are mostly single-story houses, and some are even thatched cottages.

As the saying goes, "poor mountains and harsh waters breed unruly people." The harder the environment, the more difficult it is for the rulers to manage the people.

Wude County is such a place.

In Wude County, there are five towns and six natural villages. The main component of these towns and villages is the clan.

For example, in Li Family Town, most people are surnamed Li, making Li the dominant surname. Li Dongyuan and Li Yifeng are from Li Family Town.

The relationships between these clans vary, but they are extremely united internally, and when one family has a problem, all the families come to help.

Xu Junran's adoptive father was born in Li Family Town. His parents were among the intellectuals sent to Li Family Town, but unlike the other "stinky ninth category" people who were forced to do hard labor, his parents had a high reputation in Li Family Town, even surpassing the oldest clan elders.

The reason for this was that Li Family Town once experienced an influenza outbreak. For modern people, influenza is just a minor illness that requires a few injections at the hospital, but in the early 1960s, this acute respiratory infectious disease could be fatal. Within a week, about 70% of the population in Li Family Town showed symptoms such as fever, headache, runny nose, sore throat, and dry cough, and some even developed pneumonia or gastrointestinal influenza.

Xu Junran's adoptive father's father, to help these mountain people who had never been to a hospital, risked his life to gather medicinal herbs in the mountains. For half a month, he traveled back and forth between the mountains and the town, treating the patients. Eventually, he died from overwork, falling off a cliff and leaving behind a wife who was eight months pregnant.

Xu Junran's adoptive mother taught in Li Family Town for ten years during the turbulent times, teaching the people of Li Family Town to read and write, planting the seeds of civilization. In Xu Junran's previous life, during the reform and opening-up period, Li Family Town was one of the first to become prosperous, and most of the clever businesspeople were students of Xu Junran's adoptive parents.

Of course, this great mother also died from overwork when Xu Junran's adoptive father was ten years old.

On the day she died, the four clan elders of Li Family Town, who usually favored men over women, personally carried her coffin to her burial.

Xu Junran's adoptive father was raised by the people of Li Family Town under these circumstances, and his teacher was a professor from a normal university who was also sent to Li Family Town.

In both his past and present lives, Xu Junran's feelings for Li Family Town have never changed. The simple villagers are like family to him, closer than blood.

To the people of Li Family Town, Xu Junran is the most successful and proudest person