"Only the elderly and children can stay in this town. Once the children grow up, naturally, they want to go somewhere livelier." The old woman sighed. "Little Suolan was the same. When she was a child, she said she wanted to live here her whole life."
By the current average life expectancy in District 019, when Suolan moved to this town, the bakery owner and the others would have been no more than thirty or forty. Compared with a whole lifespan, thirty or forty could still be called adolescence. Yet the townspeople had a special kind of affection for Suolan.
That was right: affection.
Normally, people in the prime of life found it hard to show children the boundless tolerance of the elderly. This should have been an affectionate nickname given to her by the older generation who had lived here—people around the old woman's age.
According to official records, Master Suolan lived to be 125. That meant she had left Dingding Flower Town a century ago. A hundred years ago, there had been plenty of children in town. Of course, after a century, those children would now be nearly 140. If they had started families early, their descendants would have spanned several generations.
Yet Suolan's social network made no mention of any companions who had grown up with her in Dingding Flower Town.
"They moved away a long time ago. After that, just like little Suolan, they never came back." The old woman thought for a moment. "I heard some moved to other sub-districts, and some died in accidents while they were still young. I don't know whether any of them kept in touch with little Suolan."
"Did they move away the year Master Suolan turned twenty?" Xu Huo asked.
The old woman glanced at him. "No. They left