30: C30

C30

There were several knocks on the outer door, and Tension, Li Zheng, Xie Hui, and their wives and children knocked on my door several times. I was told to go to dinner. I wasn't in the mood to eat. He just laid on Guo Qing's bed blankly, staring at the ceiling as he slept.2

After an unknown period of time, I suddenly woke up. He didn't know when, but he had a feeling that he had been lying there for more than two hours. He lazily got out of bed. After a short rest, he calmed himself down and thought for a bit before making up his mind again. He then packed his luggage. "It was simple, just a few of the necessary clothes; and there were two sets of Sister Guo Qing's.

Outside, Tension, Li Zheng, Xie Hui, and a few others were sitting in the yard, chatting. I said hello to everyone and went straight to Tension, telling him that I would take the last bus home to Jingbin tonight, that I would give him the key to the house, that he would hand it over to the landlord tomorrow, that the rent had already been paid and four days were due, and that he would have to help me collect the money I had earned on the site and save it for later. Tension nodded.

In the eyes of the crowd and the words of farewell, I alone with some nostalgia, carrying my small bag, the journey home alone.

There was more than an hour left before the last train was due to take the one yuan bus ride to Jingchu railway station. After spending 22 yuan to buy a train ticket, I squatted on the ground for another half an hour before finally following the flow of people into the waiting room. Not long after, I boarded the train home. At noon the next day, I finally got to Jingshan City. I was getting closer and closer to my mountain. Another six dollars was spent, and by evening I was deep in my mountain. The county bus left me by the side of the road and continued on down the road. I walked on the last of the sunset and walked along a dirt road towards my home, which still had fifty miles of mountain road.

The mountain was quiet, so quiet that I could clearly hear many strange sounds. But I'm not afraid. I've been through this kind of thing a lot, and I don't know what it means to be afraid anymore. The roads in the mountains were difficult to walk on, uneven, and full of foot-mixed weeds and unknown vines. I'm not afraid, I've walked so much on this road. Ever since I was very young, my brother and I had gone up the mountain in the middle of the night, under the leadership of my father, since we had to go out at night to hunt for mountain rats and tree frogs. Or rather, early in the morning, at two or three o'clock in the morning, we had to get up and go deep into the mountains and pick the freshest wild mushrooms, ferns, and wormwood before the sun came up. After so many years of training, it has become a habit in my life to walk the mountain paths at night. Therefore, for ordinary people, such a terrifying thing is a necessity for my life!

I took the short cut. I knew that if I crossed this ridge and went down the hillside in front of me, I would see a small river. On the other side of the river was a simple road. The road was simple because it had been dug entirely from the mountainside, and the ground was uneven, a dirt road that led only to the hawking lake inside the hill. More importantly, the road was narrow enough to allow only one car to pass through, and there were only a few places where cars could pass through, but only two cars could pass through.

The water source of the Eagle Lake came from the mountains. As for where it came from, even I do not know. However, from the clarity of the lake, I guessed that it was all formed from streams in the mountains. My home was not too far from the lake, less than twenty miles from the mountain road; this simple road was connected to the one I had just left by the county bus, but no bus came here. As far as we mountain people are concerned, the most convenient way to go home is through the mountain road!

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