Chapter Thirty: I’ve Been Targeted (Please Subscribe!)

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When Li Yi walked out of the state-run restaurant, he was in an excellent mood.

He had saved Wang Anguo partly out of compassion. He could not bear to see a hero meet such a tragic end.

More importantly, however, Li Yi wanted to use Wang Anguo to test whether it was truly possible to change a person’s fate.

After all, history possessed tremendous inertia. Forcing a change in someone’s destiny was actually extremely difficult.

In his previous life, Li Yi had once watched a film in which the male protagonist knew that the female protagonist was going to die in a car accident that day. He changed his plans in advance, allowing her to avoid that particular vehicle—but in the very next moment, she was struck and killed by another car. No matter how hard he tried, the ending remained impossible to change.

Having been reborn, Li Yi’s greatest wish was to alter the fate of Tang Xue and the unborn child.

But he was genuinely worried that his strength alone might not be enough to overturn the arrangements of destiny.

Besides, Li Yi also wanted to know what effect abruptly changing one person’s fate would have on the world as a whole.

He did not dare use Tang Xue as an experiment. But since Wang Anguo had practically delivered himself to Li Yi’s door as a willing laboratory mouse, Li Yi naturally had no reason to be polite.

So far, the results were quite encouraging.

Wang Anguo was still alive, the suspect had been arrested, and Li Yi had also established a connection with the captain of the criminal police team.

From now on, unless something truly serious happened, this man alone should be able to protect him.

Still, this was only Li Yi’s initial judgment. Whether he could completely alter Wang Anguo’s destined death remained to be seen.

In high spirits, Li Yi drove his mule cart toward the sugar factory and began his grand street-vending enterprise.

When he passed the supply and marketing cooperative, he went inside and bought a large quantity of rice and flour, along with two bottles of fine sorghum liquor.

Now that he had both money and ration coupons, he no longer needed to wait until after finishing his stall for the day, recover his grain coupons, and then make a special trip into town to buy supplies. He could simply purchase whatever he needed on his way home after selling the mountain produce.

What Li Yi did not know was that someone with ulterior motives happened to witness him carrying bundle after bundle of goods out of the cooperative.

Xu Hong had never expected to see Li Yi in the county town. He had come into town that day mainly to check at the post office whether his parcel had arrived.

Although they had been sent down to work at Nianzi Mountain Brigade for nearly five years, they still found it difficult to adapt to the harsh conditions there. Most of the educated youths needed financial or material assistance from home every so often.

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Xu Hong’s family lived in Qin Province. Their circumstances were not especially good, but both of his parents were workers, and their combined monthly wages came to around eighty yuan, which was not a small sum.

As a result, his family sent him a parcel every month. Sometimes it contained money and ration coupons; at other times, food.

But the month was nearly over, and the family parcel still had not arrived. Xu Hong could not help growing anxious. Since farm work had been relatively light over the past few days, he asked the brigade leader for leave and went to the post office to inquire.

As he passed the supply and marketing cooperative, he happened to catch sight of Li Yi.

Xu Hong felt nothing but hatred toward Li Yi.

In his eyes, Li Yi was an illiterate wastrel, a parasite on society, a piece of human garbage.

None of that would have concerned him personally, but the bastard had ruined the girl he loved and forced her to marry him. That crossed Xu Hong’s bottom line.

Yet compared with the tall, powerful Li Yi, who was also a local, Xu Hong was completely helpless.

That day, he had plucked up his courage to harass Tang Xue, only to nearly be beaten to death by Li Yi. The experience had made him even more fearful of Li Yi, and ever since then, he had kept his distance whenever he saw him.

At first, Xu Hong had planned to pretend he had not seen Li Yi that day. But Li Yi’s actions were simply too conspicuous.

He kept going in and out of the cooperative, carrying out large quantities of goods every time he emerged.

Although Xu Hong was across the street and could not see clearly, he could still make out rice, flour, grain, cooking oil, and all sorts of seasonings. There even appeared to be bottled liquor.

Although the country had already begun opening up and reforming, life in a remote county town like theirs remained bitterly hard.

Any family that managed to save a few yuan was considered fortunate. Who could afford to shop at the cooperative so extravagantly?

And as for drinking—when someone’s craving became unbearable, they might buy a little loose liquor. Who would be willing to spend one or two yuan on a bottle of the stuff?

Therefore, once Xu Hong realized that the person was Li Yi, jealousy surged through him.

But after the jealousy came another question: Where had that Li fellow gotten so much money? What gave him the right to spend so freely?

For the past few days, people in the village had been spreading the word that Li Yi had struck it rich. After all, the Li family had both paid a betrothal gift to Tang Xue’s family and bought a bicycle, and both things required a substantial amount of money.

The honest, simple farmer couple, Li Shankui and his wife, could not possibly have so much money, even if they emptied their entire coffin fund.

It was also said that Li Yi had organized the village’s older boys and young men to go into the mountains gathering mushrooms for sale. Thus, everyone claimed that he had made his money by selling mushrooms.

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But Xu Hong knew that although someone might buy mushrooms, the price certainly would not be high.

After all, they had once considered going into the mountains themselves to gather wild produce and supplement their livelihoods. They had collected plenty of mushrooms, but when they brought them into town, hardly anyone showed interest. In the end, they had been forced to dispose of them for next to nothing.

He simply did not believe that Li Yi’s mushrooms were any different from theirs. If no one would buy their mushrooms, why would anyone pay a high price for Li Yi’s?

Thus, Xu Hong concluded that Li Yi must have another way of making money.

At that thought, Xu Hong suddenly felt that going to the post office was no longer so urgent. He decided to keep an eye on Li Yi that day and find out exactly what he was up to.

Li Yi had no idea that someone was watching him. By then, he had successfully purchased all the supplies he needed and was happily preparing to head to the sugar factory entrance to set up his stall.

All he wanted now was to sell the cold rice noodles and white-crust flatbreads on his cart as quickly as possible, then return to the village and ask Feng Kai to approve a homestead for him so that he could begin building a house at once.

After all, there were only a little more than twenty days left before his wedding to Tang Xue. To build a house and get everything arranged within such a short period would be extremely tight.

But he truly did not want Tang Xue to suffer any grievances.

For most people in this era, marriage was something that happened only once in a lifetime, and everyone wanted to celebrate it in grand style.

The old house was simply too poor. It was cramped and confining, and he would also have to share it with his parents and elder sister. It was far too inconvenient.

Building a house and marrying his bride were the most important matters before Li Yi at present. As for making money from his stall, that was secondary.

Anxious to reach his destination, Li Yi failed to notice that at some point, a meaty tail had appeared behind his large red mule cart, following him from a distance.

And so Xu Hong secretly trailed Li Yi all the way to the entrance of the sugar factory.

When he saw Li Yi park the mule cart, skillfully unload the equipment for his stall, and quickly set everything up, a strange trace of madness appeared in Xu Hong’s eyes.

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