Chapter 2 At this time

  The summer night breeze carried the sultry heat, drilling into my chest through my nose and mouth, making me feel suffocated from skin to bone. Wenhe leaned against the wall and walked out of the alley slowly, looking at the suddenly open road in front of him, and let out a long sigh.

  The place where he was beaten on his body still hurts, but it's still within the tolerable range. At this time, Wen Jian is much more resilient than a 16-year-old boy. He uses his thumb, index finger and middle finger to form a fan shape and presses them on the wound, sometimes with three points of force, sometimes with five points of force, doing clockwise and counterclockwise massage. In an instant, the pain has eased a bit.

  This was after graduating from university in a martial arts school in Beijing, where I met a middle-aged teacher who taught his techniques, which had an amazing effect on dispelling blood stasis. Later, Wen Ze only found out that this burly man was actually from the internal school of boxing, but could only make a living by teaching at a taekwondo gym. This is also an unavoidable thing, as the learning conditions for internal school boxing are harsh and the results are slow to appear, without years of perseverance, it's impossible to achieve anything. Wen Ze followed the teacher for over a year, but only understood some superficial things, didn't learn much real kung fu, but some practical little tricks were mastered extremely well.

  Standing on the streets of Qingzhou in '95, Wen Liang still couldn't quite believe his eyes. The low-rise buildings, the broken roads, the white ceramic tile walls that shone brightly under the night sky, without the hustle and bustle of later years, without the noise of cars and people coming and going, two rows of tall willow trees in the night wind making a low hum, occasionally a few old men with bare arms drinking Qingdao beer walking by, laughing loudly, the little sisters standing under the streetlights, their hair styled in a fancy way, suddenly bursting into loud laughter.

  Qingzhou, still as beautiful as ever.

  Silently identifying the direction, Wen Xiang walked towards home. At this time, Father should be curled up on the sofa holding the latest documents to study the domestic policy trends. As the deputy director of a municipal party committee's policy research office, who was ranked last in the party group and still suffered from ostracism, his status at home can be imagined. Old mom must have been scolding him while watching TV, saying he should go to his boss more often. Thinking of her parents, Wen Xiang smiled slightly, and her hesitant footsteps also quickened a bit.

  After turning into a few small alleys, passing by Dong Street, I suddenly saw a black Santana parked on the side of the road. A woman in a black suit was bent over the rear trunk lid, vomiting, with her long hair scattered and hanging down beside her ears. Her well-made uniform wrapped around her slender figure, revealing a pair of delicate white legs tightly pressed together under the skirt, which accentuated the prominent bulge underneath, shocking to behold.

  He whistled softly as he walked past the woman, who was looking down and whose face couldn't be seen, but she shouldn't be more than 30 years old. At this time, a young man with a height of about 1.7 meters, wearing military green shorts, slippers, and a white vest on his shoulder, with a cigarette in his mouth, sporting the "Ekin Cheng" hairstyle that was popular among young thugs at the time - after the release of the movie "Young and Dangerous" in 1995, which caused a huge sensation through video halls all over the mainland, it's said that people from Qingzhou even formed groups to watch the movie together, greatly enhancing their combat effectiveness and centripetal force.

  Wen Cheng didn't want to cause trouble, and with his current physique, he wasn't capable of causing trouble either. The road wasn't a main thoroughfare, and there were no pedestrians around. He slightly lowered his head and brushed past the young man, putting his right hand into his pants pocket to touch the only 5 yuan he had left, mentally preparing himself for being robbed.

  It was strange that the young man walked past without stopping, not even glancing over, and what made Wen Chen feel even more surprised was that he felt the young man seemed to be trembling with tension.

  Tense?

  There is a popular saying in Qingzhou: "By day, people are like dogs and men; by night, they become thieves and prostitutes. The big masters are the kings of Qingzhou, while the little rascals are the cockroaches of the night." With such favorable timing and circumstances, if we don't take action, it would be an insult to our profession as rascals.

  Wen Qian couldn't help but satisfy his curiosity, turning his head to take a glance. With the piercing gaze he had honed in his later years, he immediately noticed that the young man's gait was somewhat stiff, and even had a few awkward movements.

  Huh? Walking forward for about twenty meters, his face suddenly changed color. He finally remembered that it was tonight, and it was this place, where a shocking rape case had occurred. The youngest deputy director of Qingzhou City, Vice Director of the Municipal Education Bureau, Zuo Yuxi, was raped by a social youth while returning home from a reception dinner party. The rapist was caught on the spot after being discovered by passing crowds and reported to the police. Given Zuo Yuxi's background, this case could have been suppressed within a small scope, but it caused a big stir at that time because one of the passersby happened to be an amateur photography enthusiast who took a few photos, which later became the key evidence for the police to convict the rapist. The photos were somehow leaked out and circulated, with surprisingly high clarity...

  The result was predictable, and overnight, Qingzhou was filled with rumors and gossip. Various versions of the story spread through government offices and city streets. Zuo Yuxi first resigned from his administrative position, then left the education system, but ultimately could not withstand the pressure and died. The rapist also took his own life in detention.

  In his previous life, Wen Chao was too young and ignorant to pay attention to social news. He only remembered this incident because the next day, his father warned him not to go out at night, and after inquiring about the situation, he learned that on the same night, a few streets away, a woman had suffered an even more brutal humiliation.

  He was merely stripped of a little boy's dignity, while that person was deprived of the right to survive.

  Wen Qian stopped in his tracks, clenching his fists tightly. His 16-year-old frail body didn't have the slightest feeling of being filled with power. Trying to stop a professional who had been struggling on the streets was undoubtedly a foolish dream.

  Report an alarm?

  In the era without telephones, mobile phones, or even 201 prepaid cards, reporting to the police was a technical task. Wen Ze had lived in Qingzhou for twenty years and had never troubled the police before, nor did he know where the nearest police station was recently.

  Looking for someone?

  The entire street, except for himself, the woman and the young man, was only illuminated by the stars above and the reflection of the lamp below. I really don't know where the passing crowd mentioned in the newspaper is? If Wen Jie hadn't just been reborn and wasn't a bit dizzy and had taken a wrong turn, he wouldn't have passed through Dong Street Alley.

  A low, muffled cry of surprise came from behind, and Wen Jian suddenly turned his head, only to see beside the car, a pair of beautiful long legs kicking non-stop, high heels scraping out two shallow marks on the ground, disappearing from the boy's line of sight.

  There is a narrow dead end!

  Wen He finally made up his mind, looked around and found a large pile of construction waste not far away. Wen He knew this all too well - in '95, Qingzhou was just starting to revamp its urban landscape, and some construction companies would secretly dump their waste at night to save costs. They'd load the trash onto small pickup trucks or tricycles and find a secluded spot in the city to unload it. Often, residents would wake up to find huge piles of cement dust, brick fragments, and steel scraps right outside their doors or nearby - it was like a chronic skin condition for Qingzhou. The alley where Gu Wenyan and Mu Shanshan had just beaten up Wen He also had two such trash heaps. It wasn't until the Qingzhou municipal committee and government ordered five departments to work together to clean it up that things started to improve, but not until '96.

  Now, these trash are like thieves' daggers in Wen Qian's eyes. He didn't hesitate any longer and ran over to pick up two 50cm long steel bars from inside, gripping them tightly in his hand before turning back.

  Last night in this life, I lost my future, but you, however, lost a dazzling and captivating life.

  At this moment in this life, I have gained the right to write the future, and that allows me to give you the glory that is rightfully yours!