Homecoming and Moving House

"Heh, your dad's just a bag of old bones, yet he still had to compete with the young ones. He insisted on carrying that sack of grain to show off, and look at him now—flat on his back, isn't he?"

Listening to his mother, Lu PingAn felt increasingly conflicted.

When he got home and didn't see the old man smoking at the entrance as usual, he had been a little worried—especially when he entered the room and saw him lying in bed.

After asking around, he learned that the old man had strained his back while doing farmwork, trying too hard to prove himself.

After thinking it over, Lu PingAn could only helplessly ask a pointless question.

"Didn't I send money home? Why are you still doing farmwork?"

"Your old man isn't so old he can't move! Should I just sit around and wait to die?!"

The roar from inside the room was as vigorous as ever, which put Lu PingAn considerably at ease.

"What are you doing? Our son finally came home, and you still don't know how to speak properly." His mother immediately stood up for him and snapped back.

"Fine, fine. Anyway, I came back this time because there's something we need to discuss as a family."

The somewhat unfamiliar rural scenery and this rare stretch of leisure finally gave the perpetually tense Lu PingAn a chance to take a vacation.

It was now mid-December 1998. If not for the unexpected complication, Lu PingAn had planned to relax here properly and return to the city after New Year's Day.

He had even been looking forward to seeing whether anything truly "unknowable" would happen in the coming year of 1999.

However, before he left, the authorities had asked to speak with him, greatly cutting short his vacation.

"Move