Rebirth in 1972: Redemption in Changbai Mountain

"Let go of Xiao Niangao, we're not selling her. She's my older brother's daughter, I won't let you take her away."

"Get out of here, you little brat. Your older brother is dead, your sister-in-law ran away, who are you going to support? You're lucky if you can even support yourselves. Your uncle took fifty yuan from me, so give me back the child now."

"My uncle has nothing to do with my family. Go find whoever took the money. Get out of my house! Second brother, second brother, wake up! Little Rice Cake is going to be stolen!"

Zhou Rui listened to the commotion around him, his eyes slowly opening. His gaze rose, and a blood-red veil seemed to shroud his vision. He saw a man in his late thirties, almost forty, holding a swaddled infant, with a small, thin child of about ten years old draped over his lap. Wasn't that his younger brother? He was thirteen, but because of malnutrition, he looked like a ten-year-old. "I've been reborn, back to the day my niece, Xiao Nian Gao, was kidnapped."

Zhou Rui wiped his eyes, his vision clearing; the blood from his head had blurred his vision. His thoughts gradually returned, and Zhou Rui slowly began to recall. It was 1972. Last year, to pay for his elder brother's wedding, he had borrowed money from relatives to build a house. To pay off the debt, he went to work as a laborer carrying timber at a neighboring forest farm in early spring. But this seemingly ordinary job destroyed Zhou Rui's family's happiness. A train transporting logs had a loading and unloading accident; an aging fixing cable snapped, resulting in five deaths and three injuries. Zhou Rui's father, Zhou Dashi, and elder brother, Zhou Feng, died on the spot. Zhou Rui's mother had fled famine and had no relatives. She had died of illness a few years earlier. His sister-in-law, seeing this, abandoned her five-month-old daughter and ran away without looking back, leaving fifteen-year-old Zhou Rui with his thirteen-year-old brother and six-year-old sister, and their five-month-old baby.

However, less than a month after his father and elder brother were buried, his uncle sold the small rice cake to a family in Taiping Town who couldn't have children, claiming it was to pay off debts. He said that by taking the baby from another family, he could have a son himself. His grandparents didn't say they were being biased, but since they lived with his uncle's family, they never objected to this.

In his past life, Zhou Rui was pushed down by this man and hit his head on the corner of a bench, losing consciousness. When he woke up, his little sister, Xiao Niangao, had already been taken away. Zhou Rui later went to the family in town to cause trouble several times, each time getting beaten black and blue. Eventually, he became too afraid to go back. Later, his uncle and relatives frequently came to collect debts. Once, while Zhou Rui was out working, his younger brother, Zhou Ping, took his younger sister to a pond to catch snow frogs to exchange for money, but they fell in and drowned. Zhou Rui was heartbroken and ran away from the village, becoming a vagrant. It wasn't until the Reform and Opening Up that Zhou Rui, who was doing small business, met his ex-wife when he was thirty. But when his ex-wife gave birth to a daughter, Zhou Rui looked at the infant in her swaddling clothes and suddenly thought of Xiao Niangao, and his younger brother and sister who had drowned in the pond, and inexplicably ran away again. Afterward, he went to Russia, where he hunted, worked as a bodyguard, went to Africa, robbed tombs, and worked as a mercenary.

Zhou Rui had considered returning to his family, but his wife hated him to death. Who would abandon their wife who had just given birth without saying a word? Naturally, she remarried not long after.

Zhou Rui was forced to travel the world, sending back large sums of gifts and money to his daughter every year on her birthday. These included bear bile, tiger skin, and ginseng from Russia; uncut diamonds and rhinoceros horns from Africa; a gold mask and walking stick from Egypt; and rubies and sapphires from India. Zhou Rui dared not return home. Even at his daughter's wedding, he only dared to glance at her from afar. His daughter felt neither love nor hate for him, but the annual birthday gifts made her feel that someone was always thinking of her, creating a complex mix of emotions. Therefore, she would send him photos every year. Until one day, nearing sixty, Zhou Rui looked at a photo of his grandson and finally understood. He planned to finish his last job as a mercenary and return to his daughter's city, buying a house not far from her home to live out the rest of his life. Unexpectedly, his final employer was so unscrupulous that when they unearthed the Mayan treasure, they wanted to kill his entire mercenary team to silence them. Zhou Rui was holding a palm-sized plaque from the treasure, lost in thought; otherwise, his usual vigilance wouldn't have led to this attack from behind. The fact that the treasures of the Mayan civilization contained a Tai Chi Bagua symbol, something only found in China, is absolutely outrageous.

However, Zhou Rui couldn't afford to be taken advantage of. After being shot from behind with a rifle, the still-alive Zhou Rui detonated the explosives used to blast the cave. "They'll all die with me." His last thought in his previous life was the black light emanating from the Tai Chi Bagua plaque as the explosives detonated.

Zhou Rui shook his head and slowly got up from the ground. It seemed that the light emanating from the Tai Chi Bagua sign was not wrong; the sign had truly brought him back, back to the spring of 1972. Today marked the beginning of Zhou Rui's lifelong inner demons. Zhou Rui vowed to change everything, which meant keeping his little niece, Xiao Niangao, raising his younger siblings well, watching them grow up, and seeing them get married and have children.

Zhou Rui gritted his teeth so hard that his gums bled, finally regaining a sliver of clarity. He darted around, looking for anything he could handle; otherwise, he couldn't possibly defeat the burly man who had come to snatch the child.

"Let me go right now, you little brat! If you don't let go, I'll slap you!" the burly man said menacingly.

"I won't let go! You snatched my little niece and injured my second brother. You have to pay compensation!" The third brother, Zhou Ping, sat on the ground, clinging to the big man's legs with both hands and feet.

The fourth sister, Zhou An, was being pulled by a middle-aged woman dressed in floral cloth, and was crying incessantly.

"Go to hell!" the big man said, raising his other foot and kicking his third brother, sending him tumbling to the ground.

Upon seeing this, Zhou Rui's eyes instantly turned red. Forgetting all about finding any weapons, he jumped up and slapped the burly man across the face. The man, with his back to Zhou Rui, was struck on the back of the ear by the slap, and a series of loud thuds filled his head.

"Husband, what's wrong with you? You dare hit my man? I'll tear you apart, you little beast!" The woman next to her saw that the big man had been hit by Zhou Rui, and immediately pounced on him, baring her teeth and claws.

Almost forgot, this big man came with his wife. Zhou Rui stepped aside, letting the fat woman pass, and at the same time stretched out his foot, causing the woman to fall flat on her face, even losing a tooth.

"Good, good for you to fall! Serves you right for stealing my little rice cake!" Zhou Ping, the third brother, clapped his hands and shouted as he sat on the ground.

The burly man, seeing his wife fall to the ground and howl loudly while covering her mouth, finally snapped out of his daze. He turned around, took two large strides, and kicked Zhou Rui in the chest. Zhou Rui narrowed his eyes, and without thinking, he twisted his body and raised his hand to block the man's shin. Then, without time to think, his foot shot out, heading straight for the man's groin. The burly man let out a howl, his hands loosening their grip on the swaddled baby as he reached for the testicles.

This startled Zhou Rui, who swiftly reached forward and scooped the swaddled baby into his arms.

"What's wrong with me? How come my physical condition and reflexes are so good?" Zhou Rui thought to himself. Suddenly, he felt a surge of malice from behind him. Reflexively, he crouched down and rolled away. A small wooden stool flew over his head and crashed against the mud-brick courtyard wall with a loud thud. Zhou Rui turned around, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the direction the stool had come from. It was the wicked woman the burly man had brought.

Zhou Rui handed the swaddled baby to his fourth sister, who was still sneezing: "An'an, hold Xiao Nian Gao tight."

Without saying a word, he swept his leg across the plump woman, knocking her to her knees. Then he grabbed her hair and started slapping her repeatedly until she cried out in pain.

"Help! Someone's being killed! Help, my mother! Husband, come quick and help me!"

The burly man next to her was clutching his own thighs, gasping for breath, his legs twitching uncontrollably; he had no time to help her.

"Stop! What are you doing here?"