Chapter 1: It Feels So Good to Have a Father

"Mother of my child, don't stop me! I'm going to the village office right now to borrow a horse cart. I’m going to the logging camp to get justice for our Xiao Feng! This is the Communist Party’s world—have they gone mad? How dare they take Xiao Feng’s job and beat our boy on top of that!"

"Dear! Your leg hasn't even healed properly yet. If the boy lost his job, we can find another way. If something else happens to you, how are we supposed to go on living?"

...

Yue Feng felt as if he had been having a very long, long dream. In the dream, he was back at his old home in his youth, lying on the kang in the west room. His father, whose broken right leg hadn't fully healed, was arguing angrily with his mother. If not for the splint on his leg, he would have charged out of the room already.

The sound of his parents' arguing grew quieter, slowly fading back into silence.

After that, in a daze, various sounds began to echo near his head. Yue Feng vaguely heard neighbors and relatives from the village coming to visit him.

He didn't know how much time had passed before Yue Feng struggled to open his eyes.

What met his gaze was a mud-plastered wall connected to a ceiling covered in yellowing newspaper.

The old house was low and cramped, the room dim, with only a small, square window letting in a faint sliver of light.

The scenes from his memories slowly overlapped with reality. A vast amount of information, long sealed away in his memory, was reactivated, flooding Yue Feng’s mind.

Yue Feng looked around, his gaze landing on the calendar hanging behind the door.

September 12, 1980. The Year of the Gengshen, the fourth day of the eighth lunar month.

Could it be... a rebirth?

Yue Feng went from initial confusion and looking around, to the slow activation of dormant memories. His state of mind shifted from bewilderment to surprise, then shock, and finally, an irrepressible, wild joy tugged at the corners of his mouth!

In his previous life, Yue Feng hadn't lived well at all. To use a trendy phrase, he had held a great hand of cards and played it into a disaster.

Objectively speaking, his family’s conditions in his youth weren't actually that bad in the village.

His older brother had taken over their second grandfather’s position as a worker at the city coal mine and had found a wife, settling down in the city as a "commodity grain" citizen.

His father knew how to drive a large cart and was considered a person of some standing in the village production team.

Yue Feng was the second child, with a younger sister twelve years his junior.

The critical turning point in the family’s decline centered on Yue Feng.

The family had emptied their savings to pull strings and find Yue Feng a temporary job stacking logs at the mountain logging camp. But he hadn't been there for more than a few days before he was beaten unconscious and sent back. His father, despite his injured leg, was furious; he grabbed his crutches and headed to the village office to borrow a horse cart, intending to go up the mountain himself to demand justice for his son.

As a result, his father, whose leg was already weak, was attacked by a "big cannon egg" (a large wild boar) on the way up the mountain and died in the accident.

With the pillar of the family collapsed, the household never recovered. Yue Feng became the family’s laborer, but working himself to the bone in the production team for a year barely earned enough money to keep the family fed.

Fortunately, the Changbai Mountains were rich in wildlife, and in that era, hunting and guns weren't prohibited. Yue Feng’s family were hunters by trade for generations; he had gone into the mountains to hunt with his father during the off-season since he was a child, and he had even inherited the skill of training eagles from his grandfather.

Relying on the supplemental income from these mountain goods, the family finally made it through those difficult years.

Later, when Yue Feng was twenty-five, he was tricked by a matchmaker named Wang Tiezui into marrying a woman from out of town. After several years of marriage without children, he realized he had been deceived—the wife had a medical condition.

After learning the truth, Yue Feng’s temperament changed drastically. His life went from bad to worse; he became addicted to alcohol and learned to gamble. He lived in a haze from then on, until he died at sixty after a heavy bout of drinking.

Thinking of this, Yue Feng scrambled out of the room and went straight to the east room where his parents rested.

Thank goodness, his father was still lying on the kang; he hadn't gone up the mountain yet.

"Dad!" Seeing his father’s face, tanned dark from years of labor, Yue Feng’s heart sank, his voice already tinged with a sob.

"Xiao Feng is awake! How do you feel? Are you dizzy?" his father, Yue Lei, struggled to sit up from the edge of the kang to respond.

"Yeah, I'm awake! Does your leg feel any better?" Yue Feng walked to the edge of the kang and gripped his father’s hand, which felt as rough as a steel rod.

His father looked his son up and down, then touched the bump on Yue Feng’s forehead, saying indignantly, "Those bastards! Tomorrow I’m going to the brigade to borrow a cart and head up the mountain. I’ll call your Uncle Li, and we’ll go get justice for you together!"

"Forget it! Look, I'm fine, aren't I? Where's Mom?"

Yue Feng did the opposite of his past self; instead of stoking the fire, he rationally tried to de-escalate the situation.

In his previous life, his father Yue Lei’s accident was, strictly speaking, directly related to Yue Feng stoking the flames.

A nineteen-year-old boy is at the age where he cares most about his pride. Being beaten and losing his job made Yue Feng feel like he couldn't hold his head up in the village, which was why he had said those inflammatory things at dinner, ultimately leading to his father’s death.

The reborn Yue Feng now possessed the soul of a man who had lived over sixty years; his mind was extremely mature.

"Your mom went to the edge of the village to pick up your brother! The village office called to say your brother and sister-in-law are coming back today. Your mom fed the pigs and then took Jingjing to wait at the village entrance!" his father, Yue Lei, said.

"Oh."

Yue Feng thought of the expressions his brother and sister-in-law had worn in his memories when they returned home, and he responded calmly, showing nothing on his face.

"That man surnamed Zhou took our family’s money. We can't just let your job at the logging camp and this beating go!"

Yue Lei leaned against the wall, took a pipe from the box on the edge of the kang, and pulled tobacco from a cloth bag on the stem, carefully filling and packing it.

Hearing this, Yue Feng’s heart stirred. After thinking for two seconds, he said, "That log-stacking job isn't a good one anyway. They claim there's hope of getting a formal position at the logging camp, but that's just a lie to trick people. The whole yard is subcontracted; only the people measuring the logs are on the camp's payroll!

Everyone there is hired by the subcontracting foreman, and many of them are drifters from out of town. The people who beat me that day were drifters; it’s hard to say if I could even find them again.

The yard is subcontracted; it’s not even considered a public unit. You can't reason with people like that!

Your leg hasn't healed, and my head is injured too. What could we possibly do if we showed up there?

Let’s just put it aside for now. Once we’ve both recovered, we’ll find another chance to settle the score! The yard isn't going anywhere; the monk might run, but the temple can't!"

Hearing his son’s words, Yue Lei was slightly stunned.

In his impression, Yue Feng was a powder keg that would explode at the slightest touch, with a violent temper. But today, he had changed; not only did he not stoke the fire when he heard about seeking revenge, but he had become rational and calm.

This analysis was well-reasoned and logical, leaving no room for argument.

"Then... when your brother gets back, we'll hear what he has to say!"

As he spoke, Yue Lei finished packing the tobacco into his pipe. Yue Feng, showing great initiative, took out a match and lit it for his father. His dad took a few puffs, the red glow ignited in the bowl of the pipe, and the room was soon filled with the scent of tobacco.

In his previous life, the image of his father in Yue Feng’s memory had long since blurred with the passage of time, but at this moment, his father, only forty-six years old, was still a young, middle-aged man.

The feeling of having a father—it’s truly wonderful.

Yue Feng sat quietly on the edge of the kang, his heart filled with immense emotion.