All the heavens begin with the love in the courtyard.

Those are the eyes of a demon, those are the power of a demon, those are the mockery from hell!

Seeing that his angry curses received no response, the man's eyes were now bloodshot. His bloodshot eyes said it all: he had lost everything in this fight!

Since he was already penniless, Boss Huang naturally stopped paying attention to him. He raised Bai Jiaxuan's right hand again and loudly announced in the posture of a proud victor.

"I hereby declare that Chen Zhen has won this duel!"

As Mr. Huang's voice fell, countless cheers surged forth like waves!

There were also countless sighs of relief, and in the VIP section, the incompetent curses, laughter, cheers, and cries mingled together to create the most frenzied carnival in the world!

The victor wins everything!

Bai Jiaxuan was beaming, even though he knew this was his moment of glory, he had to leave before it all was over!

Because everything has already been arranged and is ready!

Come on! Let the storm rage on!

"Snapped!"

A crisp sound rang out, and Bai Jiaxuan's body jolted. A burst of blood erupted from his chest, and he staggered back two steps. His face was full of disbelief as he looked down at his chest!

Everyone was stunned!

Mr. Huang, trembling, tried to help him up, but then stopped and looked around blankly.

Even the cheers from both sides of the strait seemed to diminish in the face of all this, and everyone stared wide-eyed at the unbelievable scene on the ship!

In the midst of complete silence, gunshots rang out once again!

Two sounds!

"Clap!"

Two more blood-red flowers burst open on Bai Jiaxuan's already stained clothes!

Bai Jiaxuan staggered backward until he reached the edge of the deck. As if he had no more strength left, he stumbled and fell headfirst into the surging Huangpu River like a radish that had fallen over.

A bubble rose to the surface of the river, tinged with a faint reddish hue, and then fell silent.

Only the dead become legends!

From that day on, the name Chen Zhen officially came to an end!

Chapter 52: Eighteen Years

A burst of gunfire, like beans being poured, rang out from the other side of the mountain.

On the plain, the wheat ears sway in the wind, shimmering with a golden sheen.

Under the bright sun, the farmers in the fields straightened up and looked into the distance when they heard the gunshots.

The crowd seemed to have gotten used to the gunfire; they didn't scatter or panic.

Three or five tenants even took advantage of the break to drink a bowl of tea and chatter about the gunshots not far away.

A dark-skinned man, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, shouted at a slightly more well-dressed man next to him.

"Boss, you're very knowledgeable. Tell me, which side do you think will win this time?"

The man, looking impatient, finished his tea, wiped away his sweat, and angrily rebuked.

"Who cares who wins, it's all the same. They've been banging and fighting every few days, never stopping. They're all no good. The sun's already high in the sky, why aren't you getting to work? What are you all dawdling about?"

The dark-skinned tenants immediately wiped their sweat with the towels on their shoulders and quickly bent down to continue cutting wheat.

After cursing, Lu Zilin looked up at the direction of Wuzhi Mountain not far away, snorted, and then lowered his head to continue harvesting.

Nowadays, Lu Zilin has a dark complexion and his figure is no longer as thin as before. He has a broad face, a black beard, and a plump body, just like an ordinary middle-aged farmer.

The story of Bai Jiaxuan, who once fought a hundred Western men in Shanghai under the alias Chen Zhen, is long gone!

Eighteen years have passed since then, and today it is autumn of 1932.

Eighteen years is almost a generation's worth of time.

Of all the things that have happened, some seem unchanged, while others have changed beyond recognition.

Just like in the original story, Bai Jiaxuan now has two sons and one daughter: his eldest son Bai Xiaowen, his second son Bai Xiaowu, and his youngest daughter Bai Ling.

The eldest son, Bai Xiaowen, will soon be twenty, and Bai Xiaowu will also come of age this year. Only Bailing has just turned sixteen!

In the original novel, Bai Xiaowen is exceptionally intelligent, but his character is hypocritical, shameless, and insidious.

The second son, Bai Xiaowu, was straightforward but mediocre and lacked any independent thought.

On the contrary, only Bai Ling was clever and cute from a young age. As she grew up, she also became quite opinionated and won Bai Jiaxuan's favor.

In this life, Bai Jiaxuan's discipline of his children will naturally differ from that in the original story, resulting in some discrepancies between the children's personalities and those in the original work.

Bai Xiaowen was exceptionally intelligent from a young age. In the original novel, Bai Jiaxuan was extremely strict with his eldest son, almost raising him to be the heir of the family. Unfortunately, in the original novel, Bai Jiaxuan was just a farmer with little knowledge and only knew how to use corporal punishment.

That kind of education almost emasculated his nature, resulting in Bai Xiaowen's ruthless and hypocritical personality.

In this life, when Bai Xiaowen was ten years old, Bai Jiaxuan sent him to study in Xi'an City, where he was basically raised in a free-range manner.

In this life, he has a carefree father as a role model, and the relationship between the father and son is both fatherly and friendly, without the repressive atmosphere of the original story.

Growing up in such an environment, Bai Xiaowen has lost some of his gloom and gained more of a sunny disposition. He also has good academic performance and is now a senior at National Northwest University.

Moreover, as far as Bai Jiaxuan knew, that guy had already become a progressive youth of a certain organization when he was a teenager!

The second son, Bai Xiaowu, has a straightforward personality. Perhaps his name reflects his character, as he has the character "Wu" in his name and has been interested in playing with knives and guns since childhood.

Bai Jiaxuan simply established a small armed organization in Bailuyuan Village under the guise of setting up a village joint defense team.

This joint defense team is small, with only about ten people, and only a few young men with missing arms or limp legs are in charge.

These people were the first generation of retired personnel from Wuzhishan who were disabled due to injuries. A group of them with clean backgrounds were carefully selected and Bai Jiaxuan arranged for them to be sent to Bailuyuan under other pretexts.

Bai Xiaowu and Hei Zi, along with a group of local children who weren't academically gifted but were physically fit, learned to wield knives and guns from these people from a young age, and thus acquired a set of skills.

Because of the existence of Wuzhi Mountain, Bailuyuan is now completely different from what it used to be.

Bailuyuan is still Bailuyuan, but the population has grown from just over a thousand to just over two thousand, which can be considered a break from the curse that has haunted generations, where a population exceeding a thousand would inevitably suffer disaster.

The land on Bailuyuan is still mostly used for growing crops like wheat, and the area planted with that mysterious medicinal powder has not increased much in recent years.

Each household can grow one or two acres of medicinal herbs and earn twenty or thirty silver dollars. With other crops, every household can barely make ends meet.

These were naturally things that Bai Jiaxuan did intentionally.

The reason why the population of Bailuyuan increased by thousands in less than 20 years is that the villagers on Bailuyuan can now have enough to eat!

In the thousands of years of Chinese history, the era when all farmers could have enough to eat is probably only now in the 21st century, but in this era, having enough to eat is not easy.

Bai Jiaxuan did not make the villagers of Bailuyuan rich; instead, he firmly controlled their wealth by monopolizing the price of medicinal herbs.

The key reason why Bailuyuan was able to increase its population is that, starting about twenty years ago, they stopped paying taxes to the county officials.

Nowadays, the villagers on Bailuyuan only need to pay a head tax of one silver dollar to the bandits on Wuzhi Mountain every year; they don't need to pay any other taxes.

Nineteen years ago, after Zishui County's failed attempt to suppress Wuzhishan, Zishui County completely lost control of Bailuyuan's tax revenue.

Each person only needed to pay one silver dollar per year as a poll tax. Such an excellent environment could not be found anywhere else in the entire Republic of China!

For the villagers of Bailuyuan, this was one of the few good days they had experienced in hundreds of years!

However, for Lu Zilin, these good days were filled with melancholy for several years.

The reason is simple: as a seasoned official-obsessed man, Lu Zilin lost his position as the village head because of the existence of Wuzhishan, and could only settle down to be a small landlord.

In addition, Bailuyuan has enjoyed favorable weather and abundant harvests in recent years, and Bai Jiaxuan remains the clan leader. He has virtually no chance of usurping the throne and can only follow Bai Jiaxuan around, eating his dust. This feeling of frustration naturally makes Lu Zilin depressed.

The only thing that made Lu Zilin happy was that he had two good sons, and both of them were more successful than their father!

The eldest son, Lu Zhaopeng, was also a college student, and an extremely outstanding one at that. After graduating from university, he was assigned to be the principal of Bailu Town Primary School.

For Lu Zilin, a careerist who had always wanted to be an official, this was a very important figure in the context of a primary school principal in this era!

The only regret is that he arranged a daughter-in-law for his son Lu Zhaopeng, but the two have been married for more than a year and their relationship is still very cold. This has become a thorn in Lu Zilin's side!

The youngest son, Lu Zhaohai, is now studying in Xi'an and is also a university student. He is very outstanding!

At least in Lu Zilin's mind, his two sons were better than his mortal enemy Bai Jiaxuan's two sons.

Leaving aside the eldest son, let's talk about the youngest son. Bai Jiaxuan's youngest son, Bai Xiaowu, only knows how to practice swordsmanship all day long. He only has an elementary school education and can't compare to his own youngest son at all!

Of course, aside from being heartbroken about not being able to become an official, Lu Zilin is actually quite satisfied with his current life.

Even a small landlord like him with hundreds of acres of land could support two college students, and the family would still have a surplus every year. He never dared to dream of such a life before!

Apart from Bailuyuan, other places are now almost in dire straits. People can't even get enough to eat, and countless people are selling their children.

There's nothing I can do!

More than 20 years have passed since the beginning of the Republic of China, but this land has been the site of twenty years of war!

Take the county magistrate of Zishui County for example. In the past twenty years, there have been at least twenty different magistrates. The longest-serving magistrate did not even stay for a year. The first thing these magistrates did upon taking office was to collect taxes!

Every county magistrate plunders the people's wealth; even the richest families can't afford such exploitation!

The population of Zishui County has not only not increased in the past twenty years, but has actually decreased by a full 30%.

Even though the population was only 70% of what it used to be, they still couldn't get enough to eat or wear, and things got worse year by year.

In other words, the Bailuyuan area became a special paradise!

Because there is Wuzhi Mountain here!

There is a group of extremely powerful bandits on Wuzhi Mountain.

For over twenty years, this band of bandits has not expanded their territory, but has only operated in the Bailuyuan area.

In the past, the bandits on Wuzhi Mountain only protected Bailuyuan Village. Later, five villages built around Wuzhi Mountain took the initiative to request its protection. Now, Wuzhi Mountain protects five nearby villages, with a population of about 6,000.

This band of bandits is extremely mysterious. Although they protect 6,000 villagers, they never enter the village except once a year after the autumn harvest when they come down the mountain to collect a head tax.

Moreover, they never recruited people from the nearby villages, nor were they ever seen bandits coming down from the mountains to trade with the villagers. It was as if they were self-sufficient in all their necessities.

For many years, successive county magistrates of Zishui County have wanted to wipe out this band of bandits. On one occasion, a county magistrate with powerful connections even borrowed 600 soldiers and stormed up Wuzhi Mountain.

The gunfire and artillery fire were deafening and lasted all night.

After one night, a brave villager went to investigate and found that the mountains and fields were full of corpses. Before the villager could get close, he was driven back by the gunfire of the bandits from Wuzhi Mountain.