"": 200,
"": "",
"": "Just as Shang Liuli had said, every gathering had to come to an end.
Zhang Baijiao walked them to the village entrance.
A rural bus heading into town came around roughly every half hour.
Luo Feng, Gu Ya, Luo Bin, and Shang Liuli boarded the bus and left.
Once they reached town and found an ATM, Gu Yiren withdrew ten thousand yuan and gave Shang Liuli three thousand, enough for travel expenses and a short stretch of everyday living costs.
She handed the remaining money to Gu Ya.
Shang Liuli left them a landline number and a contact address before parting ways with them.
Even though she was near Nanping City and might have been traveling in the same direction, she chose not to go with them.
They took a bus from town to the nearest city.
There, they faced another problem.
Four people, but only one ID card.
Luo Feng and Gu Ya had had theirs, but after so long in the mountains, those were long gone.
Luo Shan had been too young when he went into the mountains with them to have any identification at all.
Their plan to take the high-speed train fell through. They could not even buy coach tickets, leaving them no choice but to charter a car, which cost more and took longer.
Traveling day and night, they took two full days to return to Nanping City.
It was early morning on the third day when they reached the urban village where Luo Feng and Gu Ya lived.
The morning sun shone bright and lovely.
High-rises surrounded the urban village on all sides. Its roads were shabby, and old tiled houses patched with corrugated steel mingled with two- and three-story buildings whose walls were covered in moss.
Grubby children