"Zichong, Zichong, your father was beaten to death."
The piercing cry jolted Lin Zichong awake. He sprang upright and saw the familiar room: whitewashed walls painted by his rural family, a simple wardrobe and large bed, and a cheap desk by the window.
On the desk sat a gaming computer he had picked up secondhand, a filthy mechanical keyboard, an ashtray, and a bottle of mineral water stuffed full of cigarette butts.
How did I get back to the past? Confusion flashed through Lin Zichong's eyes. His head felt muddled, like he was nursing a hangover.
A hangover—right. He had drunk with several childhood friends from the village yesterday. Recently, the entire village had been thrown into chaos over the farmland acquisition.
Land acquisition brought joy to some and sorrow to others. For those who had gone out to work, getting a sum of money for fields that had long been abandoned was better than leaving them idle.
But for some middle-aged and elderly people who had depended on the land all their lives, it was a devastating blow.
The older men had spent their entire lives scraping a living from the fields and had long grown accustomed to that life. They lacked the ability to seek work elsewhere, and their age no longer allowed them to do physical labor year-round.
Taking their land was no different from taking their lives.
Thus, a fierce conflict had erupted between the two sides. The developers had now hired a group of idle thugs armed with clubs to guard the excavators, and several violent clashes had broken out intermittently.
Many of the village's young and able-bodied men had been taken away because of the armed brawls, and the village's resistance had rapidly weakened.
By the time he recalled this much, Lin Zichong's mind