93. A Sensation (Second Update! Please Subscribe!)

The second update—please subscribe, brothers!

South Jiang Province.

In the deep interior of the southwest of the province, it was already close to dusk. A long-distance bus marked "Donghai" turned slowly off the highway exit into Ha County, then followed Taihe Road all the way to the county's eastern coach station.

The embassy’s handling of Li Changjiang’s return had in fact been extremely low-key, with no reports and no attention-grabbing moves, which without a doubt spared him a great deal of trouble.

After arriving at the station, the doors opened, and the clamor of voices rushed into his ears.

Seated by the window, Li Changjiang narrowed his eyes, his nerves seeming to flicker in his head.

It was not that he had truly gone mad; rather, the brilliantly lit night scene before him was so dazzling, so nearly extravagant, that it felt uncanny beyond words. Those more than two months in Libya had seemed like a lifetime.

For more than half those nights, he had endured them with every nerve taut and every ounce of attention focused to the limit. Libya’s nights were deathly quiet, quiet in a way that was almost frightening. A scene like this before him had almost faded from his memory.

“Kid, we’re here. Why aren’t you getting off?”

“Oh, oh, right! I’ll get off right away!”

His answer came a little too quickly.

But the local dialect that slipped out made Li Changjiang break into a faint, delighted smile.

To hell with it. He was still the real thing, a proper local.

If he had blurted out English just now, then he would truly have become some foreign lackey.

The county town at night was lively. Li Changjiang did not immediately transfer to the country bus. In fact, the moment he stepped off, he felt a strong unease, like the timidity of one who nears home.

After he wolfed down his third bowl of egg-and-shredded-pork noodles, the owner of the station diner finally could not help saying, “Young man, you’ve got quite an appetite!”

An appetite only when one is starving.

He was hungry, damn it.

Li Changjiang very much wanted to hurl out some rough, vulgar curse, but what came out instead was the opposite: refined, courteous.

“No, it’s just that I’ve been on the road these last two days, and I haven’t had a proper meal more than a few times. I was a bit hungry tonight.”

The owner smiled as he took the money and said nothing more.

Having lived through an accident, he naturally could tell Li Changjiang was talking nonsense. But everyone has secrets of their own, and he was not about to tell him that the three bowls of noodles he had just eaten only required ingredients for two; all that had been added was extra broth.

Li Changjiang walked along the station fence to the barber shop across the way. The young man inside was cleaning up, and it was already nearly half past nine, almost time to close.

By chance, Li Changjiang got the very last haircut before closing, but when he returned to the station after the trim, he was instantly stunned.

There were no more buses.

The last bus from the county seat back to Tai’an Town left at 9:30 p.m. Taihe was the most remote town in Ha County, and aside from holidays, almost no one was willing to take the night road into the countryside.

So now Li Changjiang was, without doubt, in an awkward position.

Go back to the village? No bus.

Stay? The feeling inside him was so intense it was practically about to explode; there was no way he could remain in the county town. So he had no choice but to head along the highway toward Taihe.

It was already early June.

South Jiang lay in the southern part of the country, and the weather at this time of year should have been quite pleasant. In the rice paddies on both sides of the road, frogs and insects sang out in a lively chorus.

If this had been before, Li Changjiang would certainly not have dared to move through the night as he did now. But at present, this should count as an almost indulgent pleasure.

Before war, any fear becomes pale and powerless.

The nearly twenty-kilometer stretch was actually easy for Li Changjiang, lightly equipped as he was. A normal person walking at a pace of four to five kilometers an hour would need an hour to cover that distance, but with his mind on other things, he strode forward briskly, and in less than three hours he could already see the lights still burning in the direction of Stone Lee Village.

Some households left their corridor lights on at night; Li Changjiang knew that well. And not someone else’s house, but the Lin family’s.

The familiar bend.

The familiar curb.

Even the old willow leaning beside the pond at the village entrance made Li Changjiang’s heart throb wildly.

By then it was already nearly one in the morning.

The village was very quiet. As he passed several houses, Li Changjiang could even hear snoring beside his ear, and he smiled knowingly. Such a feeling is hard to capture in words.

Mixed in with it were tension.

Excitement.

Agitation, nervousness, and a feverish thrill, even a trembling delight.

Only when he reached the gate he knew better than his own hand did Li Changjiang stop and stare blankly at the bright incandescent bulb under the corridor, and the still-unfaded mourning banners on both sides of the gate.

“This is—”

Could it be that my father—

Li Changjiang was instantly stunned.

He kept telling himself that this was impossible, kept repeating that he was simply imagining things.

“Impossible! This is absolutely impossible!” he muttered under his breath again and again, almost as if possessed.

But the mourning banners on the wall were stark proof that a funeral had indeed been held here not long ago. It was like a bolt from a clear sky.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Mom! Open the door! Mom—Mom! It’s me, Changjiang!”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The two-leaf wooden door, painted with tung oil, was pounded so hard that it banged loudly, the sound especially sharp in the stillness of the deep night. Li Changjiang’s voice carried a trace of sobbing.

Clatter!

Suddenly, he seemed to hear chairs and bowls crashing to the floor. His heart shook even harder, and his whole body, as if drained of strength, pressed against the door and nearly slid down it.

“Changjiang!”

“It’s our Changjiang! He’s back!”

“Mom! Brother is dead!”

“No! Our Changjiang must have come back!”

“Xiaofen! Xiaofen! Coco, hurry and hold your mother back!”

The familiar voices by his ear suddenly pulled Li Changjiang, who had seemed mad with fear, back from the abyss of panic and terror.

It was his father, Li Lin!

It was his younger sister’s voice!

And his mother, Liu Fen’s, voice too!

Impossible! Impossible!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Dad! Mom! It’s me, Changjiang!”

This time, Li Lin and Liu Fen heard it clearly.

Inside the house, Li Lin almost lunged to the door in a single stride. In a flurry of hands and feet, he pulled the latch and yanked the door open.

The moment his son’s face, both unfamiliar and yet unimaginably familiar, came into view, even this iron-boned man could no longer hold back and burst into loud, desperate tears.

Liu Fen and Li Ke clung tightly to Li Changjiang’s clothes and wept until they were nearly beside themselves. In an instant, the hush of the entire village was shattered.

Lights suddenly came on before every house, orange-yellow incandescent glow spilling through the windows, lighting the village road and the people of the village alike.

When all the men and women, old and young, with sleep still in their eyes, came to the front of the Li family’s old home, they were all stunned by Li Changjiang’s sudden appearance.

“Look, isn’t that Changjiang?”

“It really is the third family’s Changjiang!”

“That boy’s life is really something—he actually made it back!”

“Heavens, how pitiful!”

“—”

The uproar gradually faded. The pale light before dawn slowly drove away the last darkness before daybreak, and Li Changjiang, as if in a dream, kept replaying the scenes from Libya in his mind.

Tripoli.

Benghazi.

The Russians.

And Elisa.

Of course, there was also that huge bag stuffed full of U.S. dollars.

The rice man will post two updates at dawn first, then keep exploding with more in the daytime. Minimum of five updates on release day. To be continued.