Era: Rise from the Wilderness

Summer of 1990.

The cicadas' chirping sounded like it was soaked in scalding tar, thickly carrying the dry, humid heat unique to this small northern town.

Li Yunjing's consciousness was forcibly pulled out of an endless darkness by the tearing voices of several teenagers.

"Cloudscape!"

"Li Yunjing! How are you? Wake up!"

The voice approached from afar, carrying the hoarseness characteristic of puberty and undisguised panic, like a pebble thrown into a deep pool, stirring ripples in his confused mind.

"Hey, has something really happened?"

"Quick! Help him up, we need to take him to the clinic!"

Another voice followed, disrupting the rhythm.

"Damn it! That bastard Gao Tian definitely did it on purpose! Smash him on the back of the head!"

"If anything happens to Yun Jing, I'll cripple that bastard!"

The voice was rough, carrying the reckless, youthful spirit unique to teenagers.

"Where is Takatenjin?"

"He's long gone! Coward!"

"You smashed things and then ran away?"

"What the hell is that!"

The cacophony of voices, like a buzzing sound through a layer of scalding steam, seeped into my ears.

"Get out of the way!"

"Don't wrap him up so tightly, let him get some fresh air!"

A clear female voice pierced through the noise, carrying a forced calmness and anxiety.

Li Yunjing felt like a piece of rotten wood, sinking and floating in the quagmire of consciousness.

He tried to move his fingers, but his body was too heavy to obey him, and a burning pain shot through his cheeks, as if he were being repeatedly rubbed with hot sandpaper.

His last memory was of the early hours of last night, when the computer screen was filled with densely packed, twisting and spinning CAD lines. He tried to get up to get a cup of coffee to perk himself up, but suddenly everything went black. His heart felt like it was being squeezed tightly by an invisible hand, and the feeling of suffocation was like being overwhelmed by ice water...

Then, just before he fell to the ground, he felt a completely different, icy touch from the edge of the desk.

wrong!

The company has carpets, so it's impossible for it to hurt that much. The air shouldn't be filled with this primitive and vibrant smell, a mixture of dust, sweat, and sun-dried grass.

Where is this?

"hiss……"

He instinctively gasped, which aggravated the injury on his cheekbone, causing him to gasp in pain.

He raised his hand to rub his temples, but found that his arm movements carried an unfamiliar lightness and naivety.

The skin touched by the fingertips was swollen and hot.

"You're disfigured?"

The thought flashed through my mind, carrying with it a touch of an adult's instinctive anxiety about maintaining a decent appearance.

He steadied himself, struggled to dispel the fog before his eyes, and painstakingly opened his heavy eyelids.

The sun was scorching, and he squinted for a while before he could make out the faces surrounding him.

Seven or eight boys, all around seventeen or eighteen years old, were dressed in "equipment" that bore the hallmarks of the era: faded cotton vests with holes, dark-colored shorts that were clearly made from old adult clothes, and green military rubber shoes or cheap plastic sandals.

Their skin was dark, their faces smeared with sweat and dust, and their eyes held a mixture of pure worry, the curiosity of teenagers about exciting events, and a hint of barely perceptible excitement.

In the center of these faces, a young girl was squatting in front of him, her delicate brows slightly furrowed, her clear eyes filled with concern.

"This is……?"

The girl's face had a vague sense of familiarity, as if I had seen it in the corner of a faded graduation photo deep in my memory.

But at this moment, his confused mind felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool, making it impossible for him to immediately make sense of the situation.

"Li Yunjing, are you alright?"

"How are you feeling?"

Seeing him open his eyes and sit up, the girl visibly breathed a sigh of relief, gently patted her chest with her slender hand, and stood up.

The sunlight cast a hazy halo behind her.

"Well……"

Li Yunjing's throat was dry, and he muttered to himself, "Whose child is this, calling me by my full name like that? Has no manners at all..."

He could be the father of the little girl in front of him!

His ingrained middle-aged mindset made it difficult for him to adapt to this equal, even somewhat familiar, form of address.

The girl slowly stood up, her tall figure resembling a straight poplar tree.

She wore a red, fitted cropped T-shirt, a style popular in the 90s, which perfectly accentuated her youthful curves and revealed a slender, vibrant waist.

She wore a pair of faded blue flared jeans with frayed hems, the wide legs covering her thick-soled platform shoes.

Her high ponytail, casually tied at the back of her head with a black coiled hair tie, swayed gently with her movements.

A few unruly strands of hair fell across her forehead and temples, but she didn't seem to care.

The sunlight poured down on her face without reservation, illuminating the fair skin of a girl from that era, unadorned and with a healthy blush.

Her beauty has a natural, striking impact!

His eyebrows were thick and wild, with a touch of untamed heroism; his eyes were large and bright, with slightly upturned corners, and would surely sparkle when he smiled, but at this moment they were filled with worry; his nose was high and straight, and his lips were full rose color, naturally red without any makeup.

"You... Lü Ruoxi?"

As if a bolt of lightning had struck his mind, fragments of memories sealed away for over twenty years were suddenly illuminated, and a name slipped out.

She was the school beauty from his high school days, a hazy yet beautiful image in his heart when he first fell in love.

"Li Yunjing, have you really been knocked silly?"

Lu Ruoxi was taken aback at first, but then she saw his eyes clear up and thought he was faking it. Her worry immediately turned into a reproachful smile. She smiled, revealing two small dimples and a set of clean, white teeth. Her smile was so bright it was dazzling.

She habitually twirled the end of her ponytail with her index finger. "Are you still pretending not to know me?"

"Ahem!"

Li Yunjing was speechless for a moment, overwhelmed by a sense of absurdity and shock, leaving him unable to utter a word.

Lü Ruoxi!

It's really her!

The floodgates of memory were suddenly opened.

The girl he once secretly admired but dared not confess to due to his introverted nature and the reserved nature of the times; the old classmate with whom he went down different paths in life after the college entrance examination and eventually lost in the vast sea of ​​people...

She reappeared before him in such a way, and she looked so vibrant at eighteen!

His gaze swept over the faces of the teenagers around him once more.

The chubby guy at the very front, with a round face and a buzz cut, his eyes squeezed into slits by his flesh... Ma Xingyuan!

My childhood friend from the next courtyard, we grew up playing together since we were kids!

Next to him was a tall, thin guy, as black as charcoal, grinning with a missing front tooth... Ma Xiaohu!

Nickname: "Big Tooth Ma"!

The guy with the glasses whose temples were wrapped in white tape... Liu Zhigang, his dad was an eighth-grade worker in the factory!

And then there's Wang Lei, the guy who keeps urging us to play basketball and who's wearing a blue vest!

Names and nicknames surged from the depths of his memory, carrying the dust of time and an unparalleled sense of reality, impacting his chaotic thoughts.

"Yun Jing, Ruo Xi said you've gone mad. You're not really mad, are you?"

Ma Xingyuan moved closer, waving his fan-like hand in front of his eyes, and a breeze carrying the smell of sweat brushed against his face.