sunk into the earth

Zhang Chen built a row of wooden stakes next to his mother's grave, the same width and height as the blue-gray stele, and the surfaces were painted with red paint, which he built for himself.

As the weather cools down in September, the shadow of winter can already be felt on the edge of this small northern town. Zhang Chen put on a black jacket, facing the cool evening breeze, and drove the sharpened red wooden stakes into the ground one by one. inside.

After doing this, Zhang Chen breathed a sigh of relief. Looking at the row of tomb-like stakes, he finally had the real feeling that he was still rooted in this world.

When it was almost evening, Zhang Chen went to Qingshui Road. This road is next to Mudan Lane, and the business tone is similar. That alley is Yaozi Street, and this road is a small-scale underground black market.

Zhang Chen turned into a twisted and narrow side road, entered through a small doorway, and walked up the airtight stairs to the second floor.

Opening the curtain, there was a strong smell of disinfectant inside, the same feeling as the hospital where Zhang Chen went to and from every day.It's just that there is even more disorder here, medical supplies are randomly displayed on the tables and iron plates, and blood is splashed in some places.

A man in white clothes came in and stared at Zhang Chen. When someone sat in front of him, he wiped off Zhang Chen's sleeves, looked back and forth on his thin and clean arms, and asked: " first?"

Zhang Chen nodded.

The man continued to ask, as if checking his household registration: "How old are you? Have you ever been sick? Why are you here?"

Zhang Chen concealed his age, and told the truth about the rest: "I'm just eighteen, and I'm not sick. My dad didn't have enough money for the operation, and he was still short, so I came here."

The man nodded, his eyes looked around Zhang Chen's face several times, and found that this man did have an adult temperament, so he didn't ask any more questions, and even asked the nurse behind him to prepare something.

"I need to draw a tube of blood for testing first, please wait for a while."

A person who looked like a nurse moved over with a stainless steel tray in the back. Inside the tray were unsealed needle tubes with shiny, long lengths. There were commonly used items such as iodophor gauze next to it.

Zhang Chen took off his jacket and put it on a wooden chair beside him, and stretched out his arm to the nurse-looking person.Soon his arm was tied with a rubber tube, rubbed with iodine, and it was cool.

Just when the silvery needle was about to pierce Zhang Chen's arm, something suddenly occurred to his mind, he pulled his hand violently, and asked the nurse, "Can you change to an unopened needle?"

The nurse was a little caught off guard by his sudden retraction, but she quickly reacted, glanced at him, and smiled openly: "Oh, this kid is quite cautious. I will change it for you because you are handsome. No one else is treated like this!"

She put away the needle, turned around and took out a new one from the cabinet at the back, waved it in front of Zhang Chen's eyes, and said with a teasing smile: "Little handsome guy, I see clearly, this one hasn't been taken apart."

The cold needle pierced the skin slowly, and Zhang Chen felt it with his eyes closed. He knew that the air in his body was flowing along the needle to some unknown place.

The nurse put the small tube of blood on a stainless steel surgical tray and carried it steadily into the back room.

Zhang Chen has forgotten how long he waited, maybe an hour, or maybe two hours, before the nurse raised the curtain and came out from behind. On the plate in her hand was a transparent blood bag, a milky white hose, and a Thicker needles.

"There is nothing wrong with the test. Come on, stretch out your arm and take 400ml." The nurse tied a rubber tube to his arm, sterilized it again, patted his arm a few times with a few fingers, and then picked up the tube on the plate. With the needle tube, pierce the sharp end of the needle into the skin and push it into the blood vessel little by little.

Zhang Chen didn't close his eyes this time, but just frowned, watching a steady stream of bright red flow from his body into the originally empty blood bag, the blood bag slowly swelled, and became full after 5 minutes, and finally the bag of blood became empty again. The real money was put into Zhang Chen's schoolbag.

When he came out of the black clinic, the sky had completely turned black, and Zhang Chen was wearing the jacket he wore when he came here, with one arm drooping weakly.

The building of the Sangang family courtyard became darker and darker. Zhang Chen walked past the rows of buildings and forgot where his home was.He stopped and walked in the dark night, and after many circles, he finally remembered the direction of his home.

When he walked to the door of the house, Zhang Chen saw a girl on crutches standing opposite her. She had her ponytail combed, her phoenix eyes were high and her nose was high, but unfortunately she seemed to be blind.She held a wooden crutch tightly in her hand, and the crutch fell to the ground with the rhythm of her trembling wrist.

Hearing someone coming, the girl quickly turned her lonely expression, and asked eagerly: "Are you Zhang Chen? My name is Haiyan, and I'm Mingming's friend. Mingming told me that his neighbor's nickname is Zhang. Shen. Do you know where Mingming went? He hasn't come to see me for a long time, and there is no one at home. "

Zhang Chen stared at the pretty blind girl in front of him for a long time, then let out a panic, and told her: "Obviously, I went to Shenzhen to find his parents and sister."

But the blind girl didn't stop asking, and immediately asked, "When will he be back? Did I tell you?"

"I'll never come back." Zhang Chen said, "He's gone to a big city to live a good life, so don't wait for him."

This time the air in front of her was completely quiet, and the blind girl didn't ask anxiously any more, she just muttered "Okay, thank you for telling me" in a low voice and walked downstairs step by step on crutches.

The sound of tapping the crutch echoed in the corridor, Zhang Chen opened the door in this slow and quiet sound, and returned to the home where he was the only one left.

There was no one in the house, so he half closed the windows of the two bedrooms that were constantly blowing in the wind, and went to the kitchen to cook the simplest bowl of dried noodles for himself.

There is a guitar and an open music theory book on the sofa in the living room.Zhang Shen didn't move his chopsticks, but touched the left acoustic guitar as if possessed.He pressed a chord, swept it, and a sentence appeared in his mind, changed another chord, and swept it, and the sentence flowed down like a river, branching into many rivers and turning into many sentences.

Cheng Sheng never told Zhang Chen why he played in the band, because he couldn't understand the beginning of his falling into music.But when Zhang Chen closed his eyes, he understood that matters related to emotions are only a momentary thought, and as long as there is emotion, he can make music.So he dragged his black and blue arm after drawing blood, and wrote the first immature and out-of-tune song in his life in a living room alone.

Zhang Chen felt that he was left behind by this world.

After dinner, Zhang Chen returned to his bedroom. The lights in the room were not turned on. He walked to the window sill in the dark, looked out through the window, and looked at the steel factory in the distance like he did when he was a child.The fourth floor of the steel factory was blown up by a group of rioting workers, and the whole factory was shut down for rectification. The leader and the small boss who bought and sold the factory privately were also lying in the hospital, but the endless black smoke from the steel factory's chimney still stood firmly in Zhangjiakou. The center of Shen's line of sight.

He began to have a stomachache, and his eyes became blurred. There were figures in the smoke. Zhang Chen looked carefully, and found that the fog was full of familiar faces, and the people who had left him returned to him.

Mingming came home with a stack of DVDs, they watched several movies in a row, cried and laughed with the people in the movies, and spent half a roll of paper.Mingming went to Shenzhen to find his parents and sister. He said that he had saved enough money and would marry Haiyan soon. Haiyan's family liked him very much.

Li Xiaoyun was still by his side, about seventeen or eighteen, wearing a red skirt and red high-heeled shoes, taking pictures inch by inch in front of the mirror.Zhang Chen walked up to her, picked up a big red lipstick on the table, and helped her apply it carefully. The lipstick spilled out of the lip line, and the mother didn't blame him, just looked at his face and smiled.

Zhang Chen stroked the young mother's black hair and talked to her, saying that if there was a next life, he would not be someone's wife or mother, live alone and only live for himself.

He also saw Cheng Sheng, who said that people can't see the unknown, but he just saw it.

He saw dense codes and a huge electronic screen with bright green and blood red letters and numbers jumping on it, jumping like fire, and Cheng Sheng was the one manipulating them.

The 21st century is here, and the millennium is exploding at a historical point. The Olympic Games, the moon landing program, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and brain science all explode into the sky like fireworks. Cheng Sheng is inside, he is at the helm, and it is a bright light the brightest point.Zhang Chen looked at him silently in a place where he couldn't see the light.

He also heard the cheers and celebrations in his ears, and saw that man got married and had a son. His son was smarter than him. Their family had achieved Tsinghua University for four generations. His son was stepping on the knowledge and wealth accumulated by his grandfather and father to the world. Climb to the top.No one remembers the lingering rainstorm nights in Little Cloud City, the rainy first kiss in the dark closet, and how lingering they were in the small hotel that cost 35 yuan a night.

Everyone talks about love, what is love, love by thousands of people, love by thousands of people, love by billions of people, Zhang Chen has not yet understood what his love is, he just feels very painful, Cheng Sheng said he loves him, that he loves It hurts from time to time, every part of the body hurts, so is their love just pain?

Maybe, Zhang Chen thought, his wrist and arm were still hurting, and there were bruises on them, and he remembered that he had drawn a large tube of blood at the black clinic today, and [-] milliliters of blood was exchanged for the rest of his father's operation fee , His back was also hurting, and there were several long scars on it, which were the evidence that Cheng Sheng forced him not to forget himself.

There was no electric fan in the house, and the summer night wind blew in from the half-opened window, brushed past the rustling curtains, and blew on the wooden table, where Cheng Sheng left him a letter, which was when Cheng Sheng came back alone to pack his luggage that night The farewell words written on Zhang Shen's desk.The letter paper was pressed by a wooden drum stick, and there was only a short sentence, which read:

Although the mountain league is there, the Jinshu is hard to trust.

August 31, [-]

(End of the upper part)

Note: "Although there is a mountain alliance, brocade books are hard to entrust." From Lu You's "Chai Fengtou Red Crisp Hand"