Returning Home

Jialan Village is a small village with seventy or eighty households and about four hundred people.

In those turbulent years of war, even villages within the Great Wall resembled miniature fortresses.

To prevent harassment from small groups of thieves and Bandits bandits, most villages in the Goldflower Kingdom were built in the style of military fortresses, possessing simple yet fully functional defense systems.

A not-so-tall wall, made of a mixture of rammed earth and stones, surrounded the entire village. The wall had crenellations for observation and shooting. The village usually had only one main gate for vehicles and horses to pass through, which was guarded by villagers on a rotating basis. There were even shallow moats dug at the corners of the wall.

Of course, these defensive structures are far less sturdy than regular castles, serving more as warnings and delays, but they represent the greatest safety guarantee the villagers can provide.

When Tommy reached the vicinity of Jialan Village, he finally felt some of the long-lost warmth and life of everyday life.

Unlike the vast tracts of land on the Fran City, abandoned due to war and taxes, in the fields near the village, one could finally see farmers bending over and working. Although their movements seemed weak and the crops in the fields were sparse, it at least showed that life was still going on with difficulty.

He arrived at the familiar city gate at the village entrance, a sturdy wooden structure that was now somewhat crooked.

The gatekeeper was an old man with gray hair, wearing a tattered cotton-padded coat, who was dozing off against the gatepost.

Tommy showed his Carnford soldier ID, the old man squinted at it, lazily waved his hand, and let him in.

As you enter the village, the streets are narrow and muddy, lined with low mud-brick houses or wooden huts, with the occasional house with a stone foundation if you are better off.

The air was filled with the smells of animal manure, firewood smoke, and a faint musty odor.

Most of the villagers I encountered on the road had sallow complexions and empty, numb eyes, as if they had lost interest in everything around them.

They wore faded, patched coarse cloth clothes, and many of them worked silently in the fields, barefoot or in tattered straw sandals, or sat listlessly at the door of their low, dilapidated thatched huts.

To Tommy, a relatively neat and clean-looking outsider carrying a bulging backpack, most of them merely raised their eyelids, casting indifferent, wary glances, sometimes mixed with a hint of barely perceptible jealousy and hostility, before lowering their heads again to continue their daily struggles.

Several familiar neighbors recognized him by the field ridges or under the crooked old locust tree at the village entrance. Their withered faces showed surprise, and they hesitantly greeted him in their thick local accents, "Tommy? Is... is it Tommy? You... how did you come back?"

Her tone was full of inquiry and disbelief, but her gaze was involuntarily drawn to the heavy-looking bundle on his shoulder.

Tommy quickly stopped, forcing a tired and helpless smile, and nodded in response, "Yes, it's me, Uncle Jack. I'm back. The fighting over there is over, things have calmed down a bit, so I came back to check on things." He tried to keep his tone calm.

Old Jack, his back hunched, leaned closer, his cloudy eyes scrutinizing Tommy's reasonably decent clothes and bundle. His voice hoarse, he tentatively asked, "Judging by your appearance... you've... made a name for yourself in the Northern Territory? Much better off than us dirt-diggers..."

Tommy's smile turned bitter upon hearing this, and he shook his head. "There's no special story behind it, I was just lucky to find a job in Carnford to make a living. It's a dangerous job, not easy."

He didn't exchange many pleasantries and walked straight into the depths of the village.

The closer he got to the village, the more his heart clenched.

Finally, he stopped in front of a stone house that looked slightly larger than the surrounding houses, but at that moment appeared particularly dilapidated.

This is his home.

This stone house was built by his father himself, stone by stone, through years of hard work and frugality while he was still alive. It was once one of the better houses in Jialan Village, symbolizing his father's lifelong struggle and the hope that this family once had.

However, the scene that greeted Tommy's eyes brought tears to his eyes.

A corner of one side of the house wall had clearly collapsed, and it was barely plugged up with some messy sticks and thatch; the entire structure of the house also seemed to be crooked and looked like it was about to collapse; large sections of the originally smoothed mud wall had fallen off, revealing the rough stones underneath.

The sturdy wooden door that his father had built by hand when he was a child is now dilapidated, with cracked panels and seemingly broken hinges. It's ajar, as if a gust of wind could blow it over.

This is where he grew up, the "home" that holds all his childhood memories.

Now, it is in such a precarious state, and he stood in front of the door, not pushing open the dilapidated wooden door for a long time.

Tommy stood before the dilapidated wooden door, taking a deep breath as if drawing courage to push it open.

Finally, he reached out and gently pushed open the slightly ajar door.

The door hinges creaked open with a piercing groan, shattering the silence inside.

In the dim light, a thin figure was busy in front of a simple earthen stove with his back to the door. There seemed to be some thin porridge cooking in the pot, and the air was filled with a faint smell of wild vegetables and coarse grains.