Chapter 1: Reborn and No Longer a Saint

Northern Frontier, December, 1981.

Snow nearly half a meter deep covered the fields completely.

Outside the kitchen, the temperature difference between the cold air and the heat from inside had caused the snow on the eaves to melt, creating icicles nearly a meter long hanging down, looking quite dangerous.

Li Long, who had come out to relieve himself, looked up. He searched around, picked up a shovel from the base of the wall, and knocked all the icicles down.

He vaguely remembered that it was in this year that his niece, Li Juan, had her head injured by an icicle, and it took a long time to heal. Even after it healed, it left a scar on her face. Because of this scar, she was mocked by others, which caused Li Juan to develop a serious inferiority complex.

Having been reborn, there was no way he would let this tragedy happen again.

Li Long was not sure how he was reborn; he only remembered that he had died, and then, in a haze, he found himself back at this moment.

In his previous life, Li Long had lived to be sixty-seven without any major illness or disaster. He was at home swatting flies, jumped up, and suffered a brain hemorrhage, dying on the spot without suffering much.

However, his elder brother, Li Jianguo, who loved him dearly, had died from a fall early on because of him, and his sister-in-law and nephew and niece had treated him like an enemy ever since. Although they lived in the same village, Li Long lived like a lonely soul. Even when he later teamed up with others to get by, having no family made him feel like he was just an extra.

Heaven gave him a chance to live again, and he would never let those things happen again.

However, the immediate problems to solve were firewood and rations.

The Northern Frontier was too cold. Before winter, the production team issued two hundred kilograms of coal to each household for heating.

This amount of coal was definitely not enough. Li Long remembered that in later years, every family stored seven or eight tons of coal, after all, it had to be burned for half a year.

Now that the coal was insufficient, before winter, every household would go to the sand dunes in the north to dig for tamarisk roots and saxaul firewood—behaviors that would be seen as extremely destructive to the environment in later years, but were necessary for survival at the moment.

Originally, the Li family’s coal, plus the firewood they dug up, would have been enough to burn through the winter.

But Li Long had returned.

Before winter, Li Jianguo had spent money to send Li Long to the August 1st Food Factory in Wucheng to be a worker. In this era, being a worker was a very glorious thing—of course, what made people even more jealous was that workers had wages. Holding several dozen yuan in cash a month and being able to spend it however you wanted, that was something to be excited about!

After all, when working in the team, before the household contract responsibility system, you worked all year round, and only when the accounts were settled could you be allocated grain and a small amount of money.

Of course, many farming households even had to pay money back, because the work points calculated were based on reality. If you didn’t work well, or if the team’s harvest was poor, there would be nothing to distribute.

Therefore, Li Long was once the object of envy for the young people in the team, and in the second month after he arrived, the prettiest girl in the team, Wu Shufen, took the initiative to start seeing him.

But now Li Long had been fired from the food factory, and he knew that in two days, when the team’s big-mouth, Gu Ermao, spread the news of him being fired, Wu Shufen would come to break up with him.

In his previous life, this incident hit Li Long very hard, even influencing some of his behavioral styles and serving as an indirect cause of Li Jianguo’s fatal fall.

But this was just a small matter now. Li Long was back, and for a vain woman like Wu Shufen, he felt that a breakup was for the best. Even if Wu Shufen didn’t bring it up, he would initiate it himself.

However, he couldn’t squeeze onto the same heated brick bed as his brother Li Jianguo’s family either. So when he returned at noon, Li Jianguo cleared out the east room he originally lived in, set up a stove, lit the fire bed, and arranged for him to stay there. But this way, the Li family’s coal and firewood would definitely not be enough; let alone burning it until the spring in March, even making it to the New Year would be difficult.

When Li Long was twelve, his father, Li Qingxia, sent him from his hometown and handed him over to his elder brother, Li Jianguo. Li Long remembered very clearly that his father, who had brought him, said to his elder brother and sister-in-law:

“The family back home can’t afford to eat. As long as you take good care of Xiao Long, I will be at peace in this life. You don’t need to worry about my old age or my funeral; just taking good care of Xiao Long will be considered filial piety.”

In his hometown, Li Jianguo still had a younger brother and a younger sister. Li Long was the youngest and the most spoiled by his parents, but the family land was limited and life was not as good as it was here, which is why Li Long was sent over.

And Li Jianguo had indeed taken care of Li Long as Li Qingxia requested. The grain allocated to the family was eighty percent coarse grain and twenty percent fine grain. Li Jianguo and his wife, Liang Yuemei, only ate coarse grain; the twenty percent fine grain was all given to Li Long, his niece Li Juan, and his nephew Li Qiang.

A growing boy eats his father out of house and home. Li Long was at an age where he was growing rapidly, and his appetite was even bigger than Li Jianguo’s. Li Jianguo could only think of ways to trade for good things for him, even at the expense of his own children.

For this reason, Liang Yuemei had argued with him many times.

But Li Jianguo took the saying “the elder brother acts as a father” too seriously, even losing his life for it.

In this life, Li Long would absolutely never let such a thing happen again!

Fortunately, it was not very far from the Tianshan Mountains. Besides the endless wind-felled timber in the mountains, there were sika deer, brown bears, wild boars, gazelles, and the silly marmots that lived on to become internet celebrities in later years, all of which were full of treasures.

As long as the Wildlife Protection Law hadn’t been fully implemented yet, and as long as one was diligent and flexible in their thinking, it was possible to become a ten-thousand-yuan household within two or three years!

Oh, first, let’s solve the problem of needing to urinate!

He quickly followed the small path trodden in the snow to the toilet built of reeds outside the courtyard. Li Long unzipped his pants and relieved himself all over the snowy ground.

The snow was immediately stained with yellow marks, forming a strange figure, looking like an S, and also like an 8.

He shivered after finishing, zipped up his cotton trousers quickly, and ran back. In minus thirty-degree weather, one could quickly be frozen to the bone.

When he reached the door, before he could even enter the room, he heard the voices of his elder brother Li Jianguo and sister-in-law Liang Yuemei in the west room.

You didn’t say Xiao Long wouldn’t be back? Now that he is back, what are we going to do about the coal we have to burn? It is the middle of winter, and we cannot dig for tamarisk roots!

Don’t worry about it, I have a way. Li Jianguo’s voice was a bit low.

You have a fart of a way! Are you going to borrow from the team? If you borrow, you will have to borrow at least five hundred kilograms of coal! How will you pay it back? The money earned in a year isn’t enough to pay it back!

I told you not to worry about it, I’ll figure it out. We can’t let Xiao Long freeze!

Then, everything was going fine, so why did he come back? And fired… what kind of good person gets fired from a factory? Didn’t you ask why he was fired? At that time, we spent fifty yuan; can that money be recovered?

The money has already been spent, how can it be recovered?

Then ask Xiao Long, how much is his salary for these few months? If there is any left, maybe we can buy some with that money…

Why ask that? If he had money, would he not take it out? In Wucheng, he was the only one, in a strange place, could he not spend money? Don’t ask. I told you, I will find a way!

Fine, fine, fine, you just insist on being the hero! Anyway, I don’t care, we cannot let Xiao Juan and Qiangqiang freeze anymore…

Mom, I want to eat meat… His nephew Li Qiang’s voice rang out, and the voices of his brother and sister-in-law also stopped.

Li Long sighed and pushed the door open to enter the east room where he lived.

The west room was the main house; the entrance was a corridor that also served as a kitchen, with two or three dark rooms for bedrooms, a kitchen, and a room for sundries. The bedroom also served as a living room. The east room was originally a storage room, with only one space, but it did have a stove, a fire wall, and a fire bed.

Feeling the temperature in the room, Li Long knew he had to plan well for what to do next.

In his previous life, he had contentedly enjoyed the sacrifices of his brother and sister-in-law, never thinking about how his brother had been scrimping and saving for his sake.

And Li Long’s personality was a bit vain and warm-hearted, or as they say now, a bit of a “saint,” often taking things from his brother and sister-in-law’s house to help others.

As a result, he was taken for a fool many times.

In this life, Li Long would never do that again.

However, that was what he thought, but others would not think so.

Just as Li Long started to figure things out, hurried footsteps came from the courtyard, and then someone knocked on the door next door.

Li Jianguo opened the door and saw that it was Gu Ermao, a young man from the team, and asked:

Ermao, what is it?

Brother Jianguo, I heard Li Long is back. Where is he?

He’s over there. What’s the matter? Li Jianguo did not trust Gu Ermao; this person was a loafer in the village, and he wanted to find out exactly what was going on.

In Li Jianguo’s eyes, Li Long was still a child, and he was not reliable in doing things, so he had to keep a check on him.

Li Long heard the voice and opened the door. The cold wind blew in immediately.

Ermao, what’s up?

You’re really back? Gu Ermao, wrapped in a tattered cotton-padded jacket, saw Li Long, his eyes lit up, he sniffed his nose hard, and pushed him into the east room with one hand:

Come, let’s go inside and talk!

Li Jianguo had wanted to follow him in, but Gu Ermao closed the door as soon as he entered the room.

Behind him, Liang Yuemei complained:

Why don’t you close the door? All the heat is gone!

Li Jianguo closed the door.

In the east room, Gu Ermao said to Li Long:

Li Long, brother is in trouble now, I need your help.

What is it? Tell me first and let me listen, but I can’t promise I can help. Li Long said with a smile, his heart already on guard. Although Gu Ermao looked like a thug, he had a sweet mouth and often coaxed Li Long into being thrilled, making him think the other person really admired him.

Only later did he realize that this Ermao just wanted to freeload off his money.

How much money do you have on you now? I’m going to the third team tomorrow to meet a potential partner, and I don’t have any money to buy things, so lend me some money.

His words were said in a very matter-of-fact way, as if it were only natural for Li Long to lend him money.

In his previous life, to appear generous, Li Long had lent all his ten or so yuan to Gu Ermao. As a result, the family had no money to buy coal, and Li Jianguo had to borrow coal from the team, and the debt took three years to pay off.

And the money Gu Ermao borrowed was never paid back until the day Li Long died.

In this life, would he lend it again?

Impossible.

Put away the urge to play the saint and respect the fate of others.

[End of Chapter]