After an unknown amount of time, the bus stopped at another small town. The female conductor shouted at the top of her lungs, "Train Station! Going to the Train Station..."
Chen Guiliang pointed out the window. "This is my town."
"A tourist ancient town?"
Bian Guanyue stuck her head out the window and saw a replica ancient archway ahead, with rows of late Qing-era buildings off to one side.
Chen Guiliang said, "It's a tourist ancient town, but it hasn't been developed very well... Forget it. I shouldn't badmouth my hometown. They're limited by objective conditions too."
Bian Guanyue was already sick of riding the bus and wanted to chat with someone. "Did you go to middle school in this town?"
"No. This is the town central school; I attended the township central school," Chen Guiliang explained. "Although the township was merged into the town, and the township government and police station were both abolished, the township central school was kept. It was poorer and more remote there. That year, I was the only person in the entire township admitted to No. 2 Middle School."
"You were the only one who got in?" Bian Guanyue unconsciously became more talkative. "That really was impressive. You must have studied very hard."
Chen Guiliang shook his head. "I wasn't hardworking. I loved playing around as a kid. I went to primary school in the village, and the entire school only had two teachers taking turns teaching us."
Bian Guanyue couldn't work it out for a moment. "The entire school only had two teachers? How often did they enroll students?"
"Every three years. If you missed first grade at six, you could only wait until you were nine to start school. If you really couldn't wait, you could transfer into a class," Chen Guiliang said with a smile. "I was lucky. I happened to be the right age when they enrolled students."
Bian Guanyue found it hard to imagine. "It sounds about the same as those mountain village schools on TV."
Chen Guiliang recalled his childhood. "Actually, it wasn't bad. It was much better than a real mountain village. I was mischievous from childhood. I never took notes in class and never did homework. But whenever there was trouble, I was always involved. I even pissed into someone else's well once. Heh heh, but I came first in the whole school every time!"
"You sound pretty proud of yourself." Bian Guanyue looked down on him for pissing in a well.
Chen Guiliang sighed. "Later, things stopped being so easy. When I was in fifth grade, the village school collapsed after being soaked by rain. Luckily, it was the weekend, so nobody was crushed to death. All the students studied on the open-air playground for half a year, with a makeshift shed to keep out the wind and rain."
"The conditions were that bad?" Bian Guanyue asked.
Chen Guiliang said, "We held out on the playground for half a year, then started sixth grade early in the township. Don't be fooled by how poor the township was—it seemed like a big city to us rural kids. Students who lived around the township market looked down on us village kids. Ha ha, though they were rural residents too."
Bian Guanyue suddenly felt that Chen Guiliang was rather pitiful.
Chen Guiliang said, "Back then, I was often bullied by the township students. I fought with them almost every day. After half a year of fighting, my grades slipped a lot, but I beat people up until no one in school dared provoke me. If someone older than me was too strong for me to beat, I bit them. If I couldn't bite them, I threw rocks at them."
Bian Guanyue grew even more curious. "What happened after that?"
"Then Young and Dangerous became popular, and thugs started appearing in the township," Chen Guiliang said with a grin. "I stole the ball from one thug, then blocked his shot right in front of the girls. What do you think he did?"
"Did the thug beat you up?" Bian Guanyue asked.
Chen Guiliang said, "More than ten of them waited by the school gate to block me after school. A classmate warned me in advance, so I got scared and climbed over the wall to escape. They chased me for several miles before I got away."
Bian Guanyue said in surprise, "Didn't the school do anything? Didn't it have security guards? How could they let thugs into the school to play basketball?"
Chen Guiliang said, "They couldn't even pay the teachers' salaries. How could they afford security guards? I remember that during remedial classes over the third-year holiday, half the students didn't pay the tutoring fees. Our homeroom teacher practically begged us, saying, 'The teachers haven't been paid for more than half a year. We're counting on your tutoring fees to get by.'"
Bian Guanyue couldn't understand why teachers wouldn't get paid.
This was not something that could be explained in detail. In those years, many places across the country were like that.
"Did you call the police? Were those thugs arrested?" Bian Guanyue felt as if she were listening to a story.
Chen Guiliang said, "Our homeroom teacher called the police for me. A report was taken, but they didn't catch the ringleaders. Several thug leaders got wind of it and ran away. The rest were all minor lackeys, and since no one had been hurt, their parents were called in and they were scolded a few times. Two months later, the thug leaders came back. More than ten of them blocked me on the road with machetes."
Bian Guanyue became a little nervous and unconsciously clenched her fists. "Did you run again?"
"There was nowhere to run."
Chen Guiliang shook his head.
"Actually, those thugs only wanted to scare me. They wanted me to kneel and beg for mercy, then crawl between their legs. Their watermelon knives weren't even sharpened. At most, they would have beaten me up again."
"But I couldn't handle being scared back then. I really thought they were going to hack me to death. In my panic, I ran to a fruit stall by the roadside, grabbed a sharpened watermelon knife, held my schoolbag in my left hand as a shield, and swung the knife wildly with my right."
"One against thirteen. In the end, I was the one chasing them down and slashing at them. My mind was completely blank at the time. I didn't even know how I stopped. Four thugs ended up in the hospital after I cut them, and one of them nearly died from blood loss."
Bian Guanyue exclaimed, "You made that up to fool me, didn't you?"
"Ha ha, yeah, I made it up to fool you." Chen Guiliang smiled and ended the story.
The more Chen Guiliang said that, the more Bian Guanyue felt it was true.
The ending of the story was simple.
It was self-defense, and it didn't even delay his high school entrance exam.
The injured men's relatives still demanded compensation, but Chen Guiliang's family did not pay a single cent.
Because while Chen Guiliang's father was working in the south, a fellow villager talked him into jointly subcontracting a small construction project. The fellow villager took the final payment and ran off with the money, leaving all the unpaid wages on Chen Guiliang's father's head.
The workers whose wages had been withheld were all fellow villagers too. Chen Guiliang's parents could only pay them back slowly, piling up debt for years and unable to return home.
The moment they went home, people would come demanding their wages!
After that incident where he slashed people, Chen Guiliang realized something: if he didn't want to be bullied, he had to be fiercer than the bad guys.
From then on, he loved standing up for justice and meddling in other people's business like an idiot. He foolishly treated himself like some kind of hero.
Childish!
But hot-blooded.
Even choosing journalism in college and becoming an undercover investigative reporter after graduation had been influenced by that middle-school slashing incident. He feared neither heaven nor earth and thought he was a savior.
Until reality taught him lesson after lesson.
His blood had not gone cold, but his dreams were gone.
The bus suddenly started moving again without warning, and the female conductor resumed arguing with the passengers.
When the bus crossed a stone arch bridge, Chen Guiliang looked at the fruit stall at the bridgehead. "Heh, that fruit seller is still here."
Bian Guanyue looked closely. "That's where you got the watermelon knife?"
Chen Guiliang bragged, "Me alone, with one knife, chasing a whole gang of thugs from one end of the bridge to the other."
This story sounded childish when told to adults.
But it was just right for a high school student.
Bian Guanyue remembered it firmly and felt that Chen Guiliang possessed a hint of legendary charm.
Chen Guiliang had other stories too.
They were too dark to tell a girl, and they could easily get this book 404'd.
Around the year 2000, public security was just that chaotic.
Growing up in that kind of environment, without his parents around to guide him, it would have been strange if Chen Guiliang's personality had not become extreme.
Fortunately, he had become more laid-back now.
"Middle school was so chaotic. How did you get into No. 2 Middle School?" Bian Guanyue became increasingly curious about Chen Guiliang.
Chen Guiliang said smugly, "Middle-school material was too simple. You only needed to pay attention in class, maybe memorize some politics and history after class. On my high school entrance exam, I only lost a few points each in Chinese, math, and English. I got full marks in every other subject."
Bian Guanyue could not help rolling her eyes.
That was so infuriating!
Chen Guiliang waggled his eyebrows. "Have you noticed that you're talking more?"
Bian Guanyue froze, then immediately resumed her cool, aloof expression. She turned toward the window and said nothing.
Chen Guiliang laughed. "That's more like it. I like you cold and icy."
Bian Guanyue said angrily, "Give me back my MP3!"
"I was wrong." Chen Guiliang apologized sincerely.
"Hmph!"
Bian Guanyue turned back toward the window, leaving Chen Guiliang with the back of her head.
Mm, and a ponytail.
Chen Guiliang really wanted to grab that ponytail and see how it felt.
But Bian Guanyue was thinking, This guy is so annoying, even more annoying than Li Jun!
Chen Guiliang kept tugging at her. "All right, smile. Haven't you forgotten all your troubles now?"
Hearing that, Bian Guanyue turned around and looked at him suspiciously.
Could it be that he had said so much just now to cheer her up and make her forget what had happened today?
It did seem as though she was no longer dwelling on it.
Chen Guiliang smiled. "There's no hurdle in this world that can't be overcome. I climbed out of that rotten mire and still came out lively and kicking. What is there for you to be sad about? Don't tell me it has something to do with family. I haven't seen my parents in seven years, yet I still live easily and happily every day."
Bian Guanyue's curiosity was hooked again. "How could you not have seen your parents for seven years?"
"I can't be the only one telling stories. You have to trade one of your own stories too." Chen Guiliang finally revealed his true purpose.
As long as the other person was willing to reveal some secret, he could blast a hole through the fortress around their heart.
He might even conquer it outright!
But Bian Guanyue hesitated. She did not like talking about those things.
(That making-money part you all wanted is coming soon. Why are you in such a hurry? The protagonist has only been reborn for one week. He can't exactly skip class to start a business. Taking action over the weekend is already pretty fast.)
Before you continue