"Zhou Yang, your parents have been buried for a few years now, why the hell did you have to run back?"
"You're demobilized now—who's going to send me money to spend?"
"That pittance of a pension isn't even enough between my teeth. Hand over whatever cash you have left right now, before I smack you!"
Fugui Township, Shaoguo Tun, Zhou Yang's former home.
His second uncle, Zhou Zhiguo, sat across the table, still holding half a bottle of liquor. He had been dead drunk for a while.
That wrinkle-lined face was twisted with anger, a smirk of disdain hanging at the corners of his mouth.
He kept jabbing Zhou Yang on the head with his finger, swearing continuously, spraying the stench of alcohol all over Zhou Yang's face.
Having heard all of this, Zhou Yang's face twisted with rage. No longer caring about elders or anything of the sort, he stood up and threw a vicious punch right into the scumbag's face.
The rickety wooden table and chairs overturned with a muffled crash.
The unfinished half-plate of peanuts scattered everywhere.
A few peanuts rolled to the feet of Zhou Zhiguo, who had tumbled pathetically to the floor. The chronic freeloader, who had idled away most of his life, clutched his smashed, caved-in bridge of the nose in shock and fury.
"You little bastard, how dare you hit me?"
"Just wait, I'm going to go tell your father..."
Having taken a punch, he still didn't seem sober, instinctively pulling out Zhou Yang's father as a threat.
Once it registered that Zhou Yang's parents were long dead, a pair of spiteful triangular eyes finally cleared up quite a bit. "My good nephew, let's talk this over. I'm your second uncle, after all..."
"Talk your mother's ass!"
Zhou Yang stepped forward, hauling him up from the floor. "All the money I sent home over the years was swallowed up by you! You caused my wife to freeze to death five years ago, and after my parents died, nobody even bought them coffins! And now you still have the nerve to ask me for money?"
"You animal, how the hell are you fit to be my second uncle?!"
The man's voice trembled with rage. Beyond his fury lay an unspeakable remorse.
He had enlisted at nineteen, spending half his life as a special forces soldier, gambling with his life on the line, believing he could give his family a good life.
And now, after finally returning home in glory to Shaoguo Tun, wanting to take his parents and wife away with him, all he found upon arrival was a string of tragic news!
Before leaving back then, he hadn't been at ease, repeatedly urging his father to watch out for his second uncle.
Before Zhou Yang was born, his grandfather's generation had sent his second uncle up the mountain to chop and sell firewood in order to buy a bride for his father, only for the uncle to fall down the mountain and cripple his leg. From then on, the man had latched onto his eldest brother for life.
Afterward, he developed an idle, gambling-addicted nature.
Even after Zhou Yang's father married and built a new bamboo-thatched house, Zhou Zhiguo still showed up every few days to throw tantrums, demanding either food and drink or money to pay off gambling debts.
Yet his father, weighed down by guilt, swallowed his insults every single time, leaving the entire household in endless turmoil.
And coupled with old age later on, and his own departure like that, his honest, law-abiding father had ultimately been broken by this younger brother of his!
Red-eyed with fury, Zhou Yang grabbed a liquor bottle from the floor and smashed it against the edge. The sharp shards glinted under the light of the kerosene lamp.
His parents and wife were all dead, leaving him completely alone—he had no reason left to live.
At the very least, before dying, he would kill this beast with his own hands so he could face them with a clear conscience below!
"My good nephew, d-don't do something beastly!"
His second uncle retreated frantically, soon pressed flat against the wall.
Zhou Yang advanced step by step, his expression resembling a soul-reaping ghost.
At that moment, the door was suddenly kicked open from the outside.
Believing he had escaped death, the second uncle's face instantly lit up with hope. Stretching out his neck, he bellowed, "Comrade! It's him! He's Zhou Yang from the PLA Special Operations Team! Reconnaissance squad leader! Don't let him get away!!"
There was not a trace of surprise on Zhou Yang's face; he didn't even turn his head.
Before joining the special forces, he had been a village mountain forager. His nose, ears, and eyes were sharper than ordinary people's, and after enlisting, he had pushed those strengths to the absolute limit, his reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance skills renowned throughout the unit.
The house was surrounded; in truth, he had noticed long ago. The dozen or so men lying in wait were hostile elements—evidently, his second uncle had sold him out.
Only because he had already courted death did Zhou Yang couldn't care less.
"Zhou Yang, put down what's in your hand and put your hands up!!"
Several familiar bolt-action sounds rang out from behind.
A few cold sneers tugged at the corner of Zhou Yang's mouth. Completely ignoring the commands, he gripped the jagged bottle neck tighter and drove it savagely into his second uncle's neck!
"Ah—!!"
Bang!
The gunfire rang out at almost the exact same instant.
Several bloody holes instantly blossomed across his back, but as if he couldn't feel pain and was impossible to kill down, Zhou Yang kept stabbing his second uncle, over and over again.
"Zhou Zhiguo, I want you to pay for my entire family with your life!!"
The muzzles behind him fired a full three rounds before his body finally lost strength and collapsed.
As for that animal in the corner, his face and neck had long since been hacked into a bloody pulp by Zhou Yang, dying in utterly wretched fashion.
With a look of satisfaction and release on his face, Zhou Yang gave a mocking smile to the hostile agents, tremblingly pointing down toward their feet.
Those men looked down and saw several steel tripwires weaving across their calves. At the very end of those wires stood several grenades resting by the door frame in the corner.
"Take cover, fast!!"
Their pupils contracted. They only had time to shout those words before, in the next instant, a massive sheet of flame swallowed the dilapidated shack whole.
...
In the darkness, Zhou Yang seemed to smell that familiar earthy scent of the deep mountains.
Amid the chaotic and piercing calls of birds and insects, he opened his eyes once more. It took him a great deal of effort to adjust to the blinding light around him. What met his eyes was an endless expanse of deep forest.
Soaring trees blotted out the sky, and sunlight could only filter down through layers of branches and leaves to cast mottled patches of light and shadow.
The ground was thick with fallen leaves and withered branches, and the occasional footprint or claw mark left by wild beasts added a touch of mystery and danger to the profound silence.
[Ding! System binding successful.]
[Detection function loaded, environment scanning...]
[Current era: 1958.]
[Location: Northeast region of China, Laoye Ridge, twenty miles near Fugui Township's Shaoguo Tun.]
Listening to the emotionless, mechanical, metallic prompts ringing in his mind, Zhou Yang's expression shifted from bewilderment to astonishment, then to sheer disbelief, until finally, he burst into wild laughter.
Face turned up to the sky, he knelt on the ground and laughed until tears streamed down his face.
Filled with gratitude, Zhou Yang kissed the black soil beneath his feet, thanking the Mountain God for his mercy in granting him a second chance, allowing him to return to the past.
In that year, his parents were still alive, and his wife was still an eighteen-year-old girl. In that year, his second uncle was still just a crippled man. Everything could start all over again.
He had already spent one lifetime repaying his country, fulfilling his ultimate loyalty right up until the moment of death.
In this lifetime, he would transition from a special forces soldier back to that mountain forager who relied upon the great mountains and revered them, staying by this land that bore and raised him, and staying by the sides of his parents and wife, never letting the tragedy of his past life repeat itself.
"Mountain God, I'm back."
Zhou Yang stood up from the ground, gazing at the boundless deep ridges with a devout expression.