Chapter 224 Chen He’s Story (Part 3)
I, an educated and honest man, borrowed 30,000 yuan from Ma Dao.
I wrote my name on the IOU and pressed a red fingerprint.
With all that money, I decided I couldn't live my life the same again, so I made a plan...
I bought some things first and went to my eldest daughter's home. She had already married and moved to another mountain village.
When her father saw me, he didn't beat me anymore. He just said that the eldest daughter was no longer a member of his family.
The kid took me through mountains and across rivers to look for her. As soon as we entered the village, we saw the eldest girl with a yellow face carrying manure.
The moment the eldest daughter saw me, she ran over crying and threw herself into my arms.
Before she could tell me what had happened to her during those days, she was forcibly dragged back by her new husband and his family.
Seeing my eldest daughter being dragged on the ground and crying heartbreakingly, I took out two thousand yuan and said I wanted to buy my eldest daughter to be my assistant.
It didn't cost much to marry the eldest daughter, so the business of buying a person was successfully completed.
The eldest daughter didn't dare go back to pack her things, and she didn't have anything to pack.
After asking the boy to go home and keep the secret, I took my eldest daughter out of the mountains overnight and sent her to a small county town in Mangmao.
That night, my eldest daughter and I chatted for a long time in the small room of the hotel.
The eldest daughter said she never wanted to go back because she couldn't bear to leave her younger brother.
I asked my eldest daughter what she wanted to do in the future. She shook her head and then said that she wanted to repay me.
My eldest daughter had already reached adulthood by then, and my three years of persistence had some results. At least her father did not marry her off when she was a minor.
The repayment the eldest daughter talked about was sleeping with me. She said she only knew how to have children after she got married, and then she said she wanted to give birth to a child for me as a repayment.
The eldest daughter that night was like a weird poppy flower. She took off her clothes and revealed her dirty body.
I didn't accept her, not because I thought she was dirty, but because I already had Xiaohui, and I only treated my eldest daughter as my student.
After daybreak, I sent her to a private nursing school which I didn't know whether it was formal or not, paid her tuition, left her some money, and returned to the mountains.
By the way, when she went to school to register, I also gave her a big name, Zhang Xianglian.
I believed that Zhang Xianglian could live a good life in the county town, so I took the remaining money and went to find the leader of the mountain.
Yes, many villages do not have cadres, but they have leaders and clan leaders.
They don't know the policies outside and are locked up in the mountains. They only know that growing poppies can make more money than growing grain.
I told them that I wanted to build a school in the mountains so that their children could learn to read and become educated .
They laughed at me and said that educated people were stupid.
I know they are referring to my experiences in the mountains over the years, but what they don’t know is that I am stupid not because I have studied literature.
But it’s because I have a heart that has not been completely polluted.
Later... I borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from Ma Dao over and over again.
I hired the villagers in the mountains to help me build a school, and mobilized every household.
When it comes to dry mouth, it can't compare to my promise to give them a little benefit.
In this way, I seemed to have become a mountain dweller, but I lived in a simple thatched hut and my body was red and swollen from mosquito bites every day.
When I was hungry, I could only dig wild vegetables, pick fruits, or exchange money for some food and salt.
I never thought that I would live like this for five years.
In order to make them trust me, I also helped them grow poppies. I knew I couldn't change those adults, I could only start with the children.
But my efforts finally gave nearly twenty children from several nearby villages the opportunity to learn cultural knowledge from me for two hours every day.
Day after day, my teaching in the mountains slowly took effect.
Those children learned Chinese pinyin and simple addition and subtraction.
Using the knowledge they had just learned, they went home and helped their parents keep accounts, which surprised their parents who were also illiterate.
I feel like learning a little knowledge is useful, but that’s all.
When they found out that their own children were good at calculating, they stopped calling them and took them to sell poppies instead.
During this period, I went to the post office in the county town countless times, but I never received any letters from Xu Xiaohui.
I wrote her several letters but received no response. Finally, I learned from an old classmate that Xu Xiaohui came to see me.
It was the time when I was beaten half to death and hospitalized. She resigned and came to Nanzhan to find me, and there was no news of me after that.
I panicked and asked around for her whereabouts. She knew my approximate location, but it was very difficult for a woman to enter the mountains without someone she knew to lead the way.
Until 2003, I didn't find Xu Xiaohui. I heard from my classmates in my hometown that her parents had reported the case to the police and Xu Xiaohui became a missing person.
I also reported the case to several police stations in Mangmao and asked many local people to help me search.
I was also afraid that she had gotten lost in the mountains, just like I did the first time. But no matter how much I begged, the mountain villagers who had received countless favors from me and were very familiar with the mountains could not help me.
None of them were willing to help me search for Xu Xiaohui in the mountains.
Until a girl came to my class with an old purple plastic hairpin on her head.
I felt that it looked familiar, and when I asked her about it, she just said that her father picked it up in the mountains.
I took the hairpin and ran to the girl's house, but they denied it and said they didn't know.
She asked so anxiously that she wanted to punch me and kick me out. This made me realize that Xiaohui might have really been here.
I began to search Xiaohui's whereabouts in that village like crazy, but I couldn't find her. As a result, the children from that area of the mountain stopped coming to study there.
That was the first time I felt that this place was the darkest place in the world, and even if I spent my entire life, I would not be able to bring light here.
The people here have dirty and dark hearts since they were born.
Later, when I was still a child, I was told quietly to go to the market in another village to ask.
I ran out in a panic like a madman, no one paid any attention to me, all I could find was my saber.
Ma Dao told me that someone from the market had sent a woman into the mountains, robbed her of her belongings and then dumped her in the mountains.
When Ma Dao saw how distraught I was, he said that I still owed him a lot of money and I couldn’t die.
He brought people to accompany me to find those people who often committed robbery and asked about the whereabouts of Xu Xiaohui.
They said that the woman had long hair, big white eyes, and a red mole between her eyebrows.
When I heard it, I was sure that was my lover. It had been so long, I couldn't bear to think about it, I was so scared that I couldn't even walk.
Ma Dao told me not to look for it anymore, as it must be gone, but I still insisted.
I forced the robbers to take me to that place, and for the sake of Sabre, they took me there.
…
I didn't see Xu Xiaohui's body, but I picked up a rotten pair of women's leather sandals there, the style of which was popular in the city.
I don't know if this belongs to Xu Xiaohui, and I hope it's just the belonging of another unfortunate woman.
But I actually knew that Xu Xiaohui was dead. When I tried to take the two robbers to the police station, they pulled out knives and wanted to kill me.
I yelled that I was going to call the police, but everyone at the market looked at me and laughed because they felt that it was just robbery and no one was killed.
Yes, they do not recognize the law. If they understood the law, I would not have had the difficult experiences I have had in the past five years.
Ma Dao protected me as I left, and he lit a homemade cigarette and put it in my mouth.
I can't smoke, and the choking smoke rushes into my trachea, making me cough so hard that tears flow.
Ma Dao said, "Go back home, and remember to pay me back when you have money."
I am confused. For my ideal that was unwilling to be ordinary, I have paid too much and even lost the only woman I have ever loved. I can't go back.
I said to Sabre, "I will pay you back before I die."
Ma Dao laughed. "I said that educated and honest people will not default on their debts."
Later, I didn’t remember how I walked into that mountain again. The layered mountains looked like a sinful place forgotten by the gods.
Ma Dao taught me how to make money. I no longer shouted for justice like I did before. It turned out that every bill I borrowed before was dirty.
I just want to destroy and take everyone here to hell together...
