Daily Life in the Countryside After Being Reborn
Chapter 44 - 43: Blessing in Disguise

Chapter 44: Chapter 43: Blessing in Disguise

Xiao Xian hastily entered the space, she had thrown anything and everything into it, but she had never thrown in a living thing, let alone a big living person.

When that van came hurtling towards them, her only thought was to save her grandpa, everything else was already forgotten, the space was opened at top speed, and the entire van was swallowed whole, sort of like Zhu Bajie devouring Ginsengfruit—she hadn’t even tasted its flavor, just went straight in.

Inside the garbage space, the six-seater van was enveloped in a layer of verdant spiritual energy, the Chaos Seed seemed rather pleased, energetically wriggling its "sugarcane" body.

"Calm down for a sec, where are those two people, don’t tell me you ate them," Xiao Xian didn’t see anyone, and was quivering, wouldn’t it be something if she had actually grown a cannibal grass.

Like the last time with the hammer and nails, the space didn’t immediately digest the metal van, but slowly digested it, transforming the metal items into digestible spiritual energy, it’s just that the van was too big this time, so there was still more than half left undigested.

"They were spat out." The answer from the little fairy seedling relieved Xiao Xian. It looks like it knows to "spit out the grape seed after eating the grape," the car was kept, but where the people were tossed to, who knows.

**

At Guiyang City Police Department, the officers were handling a case, never imagining that an ordinary street brawl would be connected to a cross-province train theft incident.

The case was bizarre indeed. The suspects Blue Hair, Brother Leopard, and others failed in their street assault, and while fleeing to Yun Nan Province, were caught on the spot. The other two accomplices were later found hanging from a street lamp post in the city center and were rescued with the help of the fire department.

When recounting the incident, Blue Hair insisted that a six-year-old girl had stolen his money, and that his two accomplices were also hoisted onto the lamp post by some kind of sorcery. After repeated interrogations and a consultation by a mental health specialist, it was determined that Blue Hair had gone mad. As for the two criminals who were hung up on the lamp post, it was as if they suffered amnesia; they had no recollection of where they had been after their vehicle crashed and where it had gone.

The police followed the clues and swiftly dismantled the criminal gang, preventing millions in economic losses for the citizens. For their substantial contribution to solving the case, Zhou Xingshao and Zhu Family received a banner of honor each.

When the banner was delivered to the hospital, the doctors were conducting the final physical examination for Zhu Shijun. They were astounded to find that Mr. Zhu’s hair had turned green overnight, his physical condition had reverted from that of a sixty-year-old to that of someone in their forties, the tumor in his chest had vanished without a trace, and his vision had also miraculously changed from presbyopia with cataracts to normal - marvels that modern medical science could not explain.

"Mr. Zhu, we are very thankful to you and your granddaughter for your tremendous support to the Guiyang Police in solving the case," said the chief of the police department, visiting Zhu Shijun with the honor banner after hearing of the old man’s full recovery.

"It’s nothing, just our duty," the old gentleman only knew that after waking up, he felt lighter on his feet and was breathing easier. Xiao Xian, who was tugging at his beard, was lying next to his pillow. When the physical examination report came out, his health indicators were inexplicably excellent. This bout of trouble with thieves had truly turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

The other side of the police station was not so easy to bestow, the day the Zhou Family left, they only advanced the hospitalization fee for Zhu Shijun, and in the end, it was through the payment records provided by the local Industrial and Commercial Bank offered by the hospital that they were able to find Zhou Qiang.

Zhu Shijun did not know Zhou Qiang, but upon learning that the hospital fees were advanced by Zhou Qiang, he took a trip outside, and upon his return, handed over more than six thousand yuan to the police, asking them to make sure it was given to the other party.

Xiao Xian also pestered the police station for a long time, barely extracting from them that the boy who saved her and her grandpa was from Shanghai, surnamed Zhou. Beyond that, out of a need for security protection, the police were unwilling to say more.

Having gone through such a life-and-death trial, Zhu Shijun, on the contrary, had become enlightened about many things. Through this incident, he came to know more clearly that he could not live without Xiao Xian, that although the city was prosperous, the squalor and filth hidden under the city’s prosperity were not something a six-year-old Xiao Xian could bear alone.

If he, Zhu Shijun, could not stand up again, rise from his past failures, he would be unable to protect the only relative he had left in the world.

"So what if I’m sixty-three years old? The iron tree that has lasted a hundred years can still bloom. I, Zhu Shijun, want the world to know that even if I leave Beijing, leave the Tobacco Bureau, I can still stand up," Zhu Shijun had made a trip to the bank during his recent outing, accessing his "small treasury" for the first time.

Having been an official for decades, from a technical expert to the director of a state-owned tobacco factory and then to the head of the National Tobacco Bureau, Zhu Shijun, even if he had always been upright and incorruptible, had saved some money.

This "small treasury" was provided by the tobacco factory back when he first took the role as the head of the Tobacco Bureau, not for anything else but simply to thank Zhu Shijun for rescuing a nearly bankrupt tobacco factory into China’s largest tobacco factory. Though it’s said that people’s hearts are separated by their stomachs, there are many who truly cherish Zhu Shijun with good intentions.

Even during the most difficult times, Zhu Shijun had never thought of touching a penny from the "small treasury," not even after the death of his daughter and son-in-law, when he never considered using it for all the funeral expenses at the mortuary. But this time, he did.

When he was demoted, all of his income including his salary was restricted. After his recovery, the hospital had also said that if it wasn’t for the kind Zhou Family that advanced his hospitalization fees, the hospital would not dare to rashly admit the two Zhu Family members with an unknown background. And Beijing, knowing that his life was hanging by a thread and his little granddaughter was helpless and alone, still refused to expedite the approval of the hospitalization costs.

This delay, this dragging on, was nearly putting them, grandfather and granddaughter, to death. If Zhu Shijun did not become more enlightened now, his over sixty years of life would have lived in vain. Zhu Shijun decided to take Xiao Xian back to Ge Village, to lift the small mountainous area in the Southwest out of poverty and to wealth. Give him ten years, and he would create another era of brilliance.

Xiao Xian accompanied Zhu Shijun out of the hospital, unaware that a huge change was stirring in his heart. She was even more unaware that it was precisely because of her grandfather’s transformation that her future life trajectory was also undergoing a tremendous shift.

Far away in the capital Beijing, thousands of miles away, a young woman was questioning the staff at the Beijing Social Security Bureau: "You’re telling me that old man Zhu Shijun is nearing his end, you notified me to come. But then you say it’s none of my business again, that the old man has come back to life, and there’s no need for a change in guardianship, what does this mean, where exactly is my niece Xiao Xian?"