"Have you heard that the village chief's youngest daughter, Zhang Youyu, is said to have fallen in love with the second-rate Meng Xiangbei and is crying and making a fuss about marrying him?"
"Where on earth did Meng Xiangbei get his shitty luck? Look at how old he is, twenty-six, his family only has a shabby house, and he's lazy and gluttonous. I really don't know what Zhang Youyu, who's only sixteen years old, likes about him."
"I heard that Meng Xiangbei was the one who saved Zhang Youyu from a wild boar on the mountain. Not to mention, hero saved the beauty, plus Meng Xiangbei's handsome face, it's no wonder that Zhang Youyu fell in love with him."
"To be able to hook up with the village chief's beautiful daughter, Meng Xiangbei is really lucky."
Lin Zhibai held the hoe and swung it again and again to cultivate the land. He was thin to begin with, and even if he used his greatest strength, he had to use three or four strokes to turn the land that others could turn over with just one or two strokes. The scorching sun was overhead, making people dizzy, but his forehead was covered with layers of cold sweat, and his body was a little shaky.
The discussions around him gradually reached his ears. He tightened his grip on the hoe, and the fingertips of his pale, almost transparent hands were tinged with white.
Suddenly, someone next to him pulled his sleeve.
"Lin Zhiqing, you live with Meng Xiangbei, have you heard any news?"(Zhiqing means educated youth.)
Lin Zhibai didn't look up. His eyes fell on his cloth shoes, which had a hole in them and exposed a toe. He swayed slightly and said in a low voice, "I don't know."
Those people didn't believe it and wanted to ask more questions, but Lin Zhibai was a rather introverted person. He might not be able to answer three or four out of ten questions.
The dizziness became more and more severe, and the next second, Lin Zhibai's body softened and he fell to the ground.
"Lin Zhiqing fainted."
-
When Lin Zhibai woke up again, there were several people standing around him. Zhao Aiguo, the team leader of the production team, came to him and asked about his physical condition.
"Lin Zhiqing, why are you in such poor health? You even have a fever. Doctor Sun said that if you don't take good care of yourself, you will probably suffer from various illnesses in the future."
"I'll assign someone else to do the land reclamation work. How about giving you some easy tasks like cutting grass for the pigs and feeding the pigs?"
When Lin Zhibai heard that he was going to change his job, he panicked and immediately got up from the earthen bed and said anxiously, "No, Captain, I don't want to change. I can do it."
Cutting grass for pigs and feeding pigs are indeed easy jobs, but the work points earned are few. Plowing the soil is the most tiring, but the most work points can be earned. The more work points you get, the more food you get.
If there's more food, that person won’t be hungry.
The people in Daohua Village are generally warm and friendly. They have a good attitude towards the educated youth who went to the countryside. They know that their physical fitness is not as good as that of the country people, and they don't plan to assign them heavy work. But there came a man named Lin Zhibai who took on the heavy work of turning the soil.
Persuasion was fruitless, and the few people could only say a few words of comfort and leave.
Lin Zhibai looked at the packets of Chinese medicine, asked about the consultation fee, took out 1.5 yuan, and asked the captain to pass it to Doctor Sun.
When people left, the shabby little house suddenly became empty.
After drinking a bowl of Chinese medicine prepared by the villagers, Lin Zhibai lay down on the earthen kang again. His body was so thin that only bones were left. There was not much flesh on it. It was wrapped in thin clothes with several patches. His pretty face was pale and bloodless.
Thinking back to what he had heard in the past few days, he pressed his lips into a stiff straight line and tears flowed down.
Brother Meng, you really don’t want Zhibai anymore. Are you going to marry someone else?
-
"Brother Xiangbei, what is the matter that you asked me to come here for?"
Before Meng Xiangbei opened his eyes, he heard a sweet and coquettish female voice next to him.
He shivered, felt a chill, and slowly opened his eyes.
Looking around, I was in a small woods on the mountain. There was no one else around except a girl about sixteen or seventeen years old wearing a Dacron floral dress.
The girl had a sweet face, with two blushes on her cheeks, and was looking at him shyly.
The two of them were very close, with the girl almost touching him, and from a distance, it looked like they were hugging each other.
Meng Xiangbei, who had already known the situation in advance, was stunned for a moment, then immediately distanced himself from the girl.
Amid the girl's surprise, he cleared his throat and said, "I do have something to tell you."
The man in front of her was handsome and charming, especially his deep black eyes. When they first met, they seemed to have magic that attracted Zhang Youyu's heart and made her fall in love with him.
Thinking of his previous confession to her, Zhang Youyu's heart was pounding. Has Brother Xiang Bei decided to go to his house to propose marriage?
"Well, you say." Although Zhang Youyu wanted to agree immediately, she still lowered her head shyly.
But the next second, Meng Xiangbei's words made her stunned.
"Zhang Youyu, the words I confessed to you before were all jokes. I'm sorry, I don't like you."
Zhang Youyu's expression froze instantly. She looked at him with wide eyes and said in a daze, "You said you don't like me, and you were just joking with me before?"
Meng Xiangbei nodded, "Yes, so it's better for us to keep our distance from now on."
“I don’t believe it.” Zhang Youyu growled almost the next second, tears welling up in her eyes. She tried to pull Meng Xiangbei’s hand, but the latter dodged her. “If you didn’t like me, why did you try so hard to save me then?”
Meng Xiangbei's face was serious. "If it was someone else at that time, I would have saved them too."
He said this on the surface, but he was roaring in his heart.
God damn, he saved people. It was just a piece of shit luck. For a lazy, cowardly and fearful second-rate guy like "Meng Xiangbei", he would definitely run away if he met a wild boar.
Zhang Youyu staggered, tears falling, still not believing it. But after saying these words, Meng Xiangbei turned and walked into the mountain very quickly, disappearing in a few steps.
-
After leaving Zhang Youyu, Meng Xiangbei walked alone in the mountains.
The Meng Xiangbei at this moment was not the original "Meng Xiangbei".
Meng Xiangbei is the only nightmare beast in the world that feeds on dreams and can weave dreams. His favorite thing is to wander around the underworld, especially the place where Meng Po makes soup.
Meng Xiangbei listened to those who drank the soup and entered reincarnation as they told their life stories, which he then weaved into dreams and devoured.
Different lives have different flavors in their dreams.
Six or seven out of ten little bottoms who enter the cycle of reincarnation have been hurt by scumbag tops, and the dreams they create are also bitter.
Later, the little victims asked Meng Xiangbei to enter their dreams and weave a beautiful dream for them, at the cost of their souls dissipating.
Many people are like this, willing to throw themselves into the fire for the sake of an illusory beauty and expectation.
So, Meng Xiangbei began to weave dreams, becoming the scumbag top in the lives of the little bottoms, weaving a happy and fulfilling life for them (a dream).
Lin Zhibai was the first little bottom who asked Meng Xiangbei to weave a dream at the cost of his soul dissipating.
This is an imaginary time and space, the year 1979 in China, commonly known as the 1970s and 1980s . The people have survived the hunger era and were gradually moving towards food and clothing.
In the 1970s and 1980s, due to policy reasons, highly educated urban youth went to work in the countryside. Lin Zhibai was the youngest among that group of youth three years ago. He was only seventeen years old at the time, and now he's only twenty years old.
But at an age when he should have been in the prime of his life, because of his encounter with Meng Xiangbei, his life path completely turned into darkness, despair and death.
t/n: hi guys!! I'm back with another story!
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