Southern tide

Chapter 8 08

Mu Yang suffered from insomnia for the first time on a rainy night, tossing and turning on the bed alone until three o'clock.A ray of light from the window fell on his eyes, and he squinted those beautiful amber eyes.

Yes, the insomnia is because of Zhou Mingsheath.

Zhou Mingshea made him realize that he was different from the self he knew.

At least, he is not as ruthless as he imagined.

Mu Yang was born in Xia Tian.

It was also a midsummer night in Lingnan, in the midst of a violent storm.

He was born in a small county not far from Hong Kong City. The day he was born was also the anniversary of his mother's death.He has no memory of his mother, only a drop of blood under the wooden bed.The blood was so deep that it melted into the soil and couldn't be wiped off, as if it reminded him to always remember the efforts his mother made to bring him into this world.He dare not forget this kindness.

Before the age of 13, Mu Yang grew up in fields full of fish and shrimps and by ponds with floating lotus leaves.

He frolics in the soft mud, algae, and the scorching sun, and sleeps peacefully in the shadow puppet show, the emperor's flower, and the oyster shell house.Everything in the countryside in childhood is beautiful and natural, and it is a time that every soul who has traveled freely between heaven and earth will miss.However, such heartless days only lasted 13 years. On his 13th birthday, he met his father.

That was almost the first meeting between father and son. Before that, he had only seen money sent by his father from Hong Kong City.Each sheet was stroked extremely flat, folded and stuffed in an envelope made by myself.

Mu Huaitian is an extremely silent person.

That day, Mu Yang stubbornly stood behind his grandfather, refusing to call anyone.He didn't speak, neither did Mu Huaitian.In the hot July, the two just looked at each other, looking back and forth, as if they had already had a hearty fight.Until grandma came back from the yard with the chicken, took off the bamboo hat, and pushed Mu Yang.

Mu Huaitian grabbed his arm.

He looked him over from head to tail, covering the top of his head warmly with a large, scarred hand.Three seconds later, it slid to his face, stroked his skin as if touching a piece of porcelain, and then looked away.

The meeting of father and son is nothing more than that.

Afterwards, he said that he would bring Mu Yang to the city.

Because of education, because of life, because of the future.

Mu Yang still doesn't understand these three words.

He went to Hong Kong City with his father.

He walks in the cramped urban village every day, along the muddy paths, facing the wires and clothes poles that divide the sky into seventeen or eight pieces, avoiding the low houses with their tails between the walls. The walking yellow dog... At this time, he couldn't figure it out.

He felt that he was an animal in a cage, brought into the city from the vastness of the world.

There are many young people of his age in the villages in the city, whether they come to study or work, they leave early and come back late, breaking one yuan into three parts.They fell asleep with other people's snoring on their pillows, listening to other people's quarrels. In their dreams, they had a bright future ahead.Their future can be described in only a few words: house, car, woman.

But Mu Yang didn't understand.He will never understand.

His biggest and deepest dream was to be an ordinary carpenter in Pingnan Town.

Carpentry is a profession that has been forgotten by modern society.But in Pingnan, people need carpenters.

Make wardrobes, bedsides, small and exquisite music boxes and flowing horses.Handy carpenters can also repair electric fans and TV sets for others on weekdays.Few people in Pingnan install air-conditioning, which is a thing in big cities.But carrying a toolbox, walking around in the pure white sunlight of a small town, saying hello to the neighbors, and just aging in the fields like this...

Isn't it the most natural way to live?

Mu Huaitian spent a lot of money to get him into a private junior high school, and he expressed his opinion in class.

He was greeted with a roar of laughter.It was the narrow eyes of the students, the whispers of pointing at the patches on his rough white and ripped clothes, and the frowning of the teacher, saying that this was a sign of no future.Talking about your father’s hard work and hard work for others does not mean that you will go back to be a farmer.Between the lines is contempt and disdain.

That was the city's first trick on him.

Mu Yang began to gradually realize the natural gap between him and the city.The students disdain him to go with him, and he doesn't bother to be friends with the people in the city.He is withdrawn, silent, and fierce.When the senior students blocked the road to rob, he would beat them with his bare hands so that their noses would bleed profusely.This little leopard-like ferocious beast became famous because of this, and got acquainted with those young people who were dormant and sluggish like him in the underground canals of the village in the city, and who had seen all the cruel and mean truths of this world, but pretended to be stupid.

So Mu Huaitian had to go to work from the construction site to take a shower from time to time, change into the neatest set of clothes—a suit picked up at the wholesale market for 20 yuan, and go to school to find Mu Yang.The reason was that he was fighting with his classmates.

Mu Huaitian scolded, scolded and beat him, but Mu Yang never listened.No big trouble was caused, only that one time, people got blood all over their heads and faces.When asked why, no one would say.

Mu Huaitian did not know the cruel truth until many years later.

He refused to say, Mu Huaitian could only find the steps by himself.They are inferior migrants, and it is difficult to get a degree from a borrower.Mu Huaitian had to slap Mu Yang with his hands, and use harsh lectures to calm down the teacher's face.

Mu Yang remained silent.

He wrote a review and was suspended for a week.

Mu Huaitian knew that this was the most merciful punishment, so when the sun went down, he pushed a second-hand bicycle and left the school one after the other with Mu Yang.Mu Yang doesn't look like a fourteen or fifteen-year-old child at all, Mu Huaitian often feels that he looks at him like an old man who is dying.

It seems that he has seen this huge world clearly, and no longer has any chances.

His face was bruised and swollen, and he was extremely embarrassed. The students who passed by frequently turned their heads and pointed.Not surprisingly, the next day, Mu Yang will be famous in the whole school.But Mu Yang didn't care.He just raised his head, calmly and silently blocked his bleeding nose with a tissue.

That slap was really hard.

So Mu Huaitian's heart softened and he told him to put his schoolbag on the back seat.

Mu Yang retorted: "There are no books, they are not heavy, just carry them on your back."

Mu Huaitian felt a sudden pain in his heart.

He remembered the transcripts he had kept in his home letters many years ago.There will always be full marks on the report card, and the son is as smart as his mother.

When did Mu Yang get to where he is today?

Mu Huaitian remained silent, and walked back and forth to Hechong with Mu Yang.They took advantage of unpreparedness to turn out and hide under the bridge hole.The stench of the water and the smell of damp algae was overwhelming.But here they are free.No one will drive them away.

Mu Huaitian smoked a cigarette: "Actually, you know everything. Why don't you study hard?" Before leaving, the class teacher gave him a small report, saying that Mu Yang always scored [-] to [-] points in the exam, and he would not change after repeated admonitions.

Mu Yang told him: "If you have learned it, what can you do?"

Mu Huaitian said, if you learn it, you will go to a good high school, get a better education there, and then go to a university.Going to college, life will be completely different!Whatever you want to study, you will have a way out after graduation.Get a job and put down roots in the city.If you take root, your destiny will change. From then on, you will raise your head and be a man... and these things, no matter what, I will support them.

Mu Yang interrupted him: "Is that fate better than mine now?"

After all, Mu Yang was his child, and the father knew exactly what he was talking about and what he was thinking.He was not a kid who would willingly be a normal person.Such a child was born in the wrong era.

After Mu Huaitian didn't answer for a long time, Mu Yang stretched out his hand to him: "Give me one."

Mu Huaitian frowned, and looked at Mu Yang condescendingly, his heavy eyes were full of questioning and threats.And Mu Yang looked at him without fear.He suddenly realized that the child had already grown so tall.The top of his hair was even with the tip of his nose, and as long as he raised his head slightly, he would confront him without flinching like an adult.

Mu Huaitian had no choice but to put half a cigarette in his palm.

How much he wished that Mu Yang would cough like a consumptive person after taking a sip, and then he could justly reprimand him, children shouldn't touch these things.Unfortunately, Mu Yang exhaled a puff of smoke rings with ease.

He has grown up groping in the darkness that he cannot see.

Mu Yang said, "I hate cities."

Mu Huaitian was silent for a moment: "Why?"

"Too icy, too cold. Too narrow." But in fact, Hong Kong City is such a hot place.

Mu Huaitian said: "You shouldn't think so. There is everything in the city, and there are many new things. Trams, escalators, you are in that small place in Pingnan..."

Where can I see it?

"Yes, I can't see you." Mu Yang interrupted him. "But why do you want to see it?"

He said so.

He knew everything Mu Huaitian wanted to say, and he even understood this truth better than Mu Huaitian.Cities, the inevitable product of the development of human civilization, are the convergence of all human wisdom, and the inevitable direction of a race's life...

But why.

They are creatures in the heaven and earth, they are nurtured by nature, and they can gallop freely like wild horses in the vast wilderness, by the pond, in the clouds and water, among the willows and bamboo forests...why, use false Wrap yourself in a mean shell, why should you whitewash yourself with a hypocritical civilization?

Mu Huaitian took off his clothes.He suddenly stood in the river.

The river water was not clean, dirty and dim, but it was enough to soothe his restless heart.

They lie on the surface of the water, floating, like a fallen leaf, with nowhere to go, just floating down the current with ups and downs.There was a heavy rain in the sky, and the pearls fell on a jade plate, and the slap on the face hurt like a whip.So the surrounding residents all hid at home, and no one would notice this strange father and son.

Mu Huaitian said: "This world is like a wheel. Rolling, always moving forward. Just like this river..." The water wave was stirred by him, making a gurgling sound, "Always moving forward. You are just the frenzied flow of history If you don't follow a drop in it, don't you want to go in the opposite direction?"

If the times are like this, how can an individual have a personal choice?

Just bloody.

Mu Yang didn't say a word, Mu Huaitian thought he had listened.

But Mu Yang suddenly said: "Do you know what I hate about you the most?"

Mu Huaitian didn't speak.He knew that Mu Yang hated him, and his hatred was quiet and restrained, but he didn't show it.He and Mu Huaitian maintain the etiquette between father and son, but there is no intimacy, because Mu Yang knows that his father has paid too much.He is a smart and restrained person, he can clearly distinguish between black and white, so he always respects Mu Huaitian.

But emotionally, he hates.

Mu Huaitian wanted to pretend he didn't care, but his slightly trembling knuckles betrayed his heart: "What do you hate?"

Mu Yang smiled: "We actually don't want money. Money is not important. We eat potatoes and cabbage in the field, not money." The "we" he said obviously belonged to Pingnan Town other than him. At home, the two old people in the oyster shell house.Mu Huaitian suffered from a famine when he was a child, and was later adopted by his mother's family.He is a married couple.

Mu Huaitian said: "You are young and don't understand. Those days are too hard..."

"It's even more difficult when you're sick and no one sends you to the doctor. It's even more painful when your name is called in a dream and no one responds. The neighbors laugh at my family as being lonely, widowed, old and young. What do you think?"

Mu Yang's words hurt people at that time.

He didn't understand that this is a dilemma that everyone faces all their lives, but it forced Mu Huaitian to break his heart.

He was just selfish at that time, like a white fish, he swung his tail and arms flexibly, and slowly rushed upstream against the river.He swam about five meters away and turned to look at Mu Huaitian.The sun dotted the waves, sparkling with light.He was suddenly dazzled by such cold sunlight, and felt that he couldn't see his father's expression clearly.

He said: "They are all going down, but I want to go up. Time moves forward, so let's go. I want to go back, and I will go with a bloody head. Because I am not happy."

Why are teenagers always unhappy?

From then on, he rarely saw Mu Huaitian again.

It was Mu Huaitian's last plea for him to be admitted to a high school, but he didn't go often.He has many things to do, whether it is to make money or to hang out.He walked alone in the society and truly felt the darkness and coldness of a city.But sometimes he hides in his small room doing carpentry, carving some trinkets, keeping them privately or selling them.

But his heart gradually cooled down.He watched everything hidden in the corners of the city with cold eyes, and hid those tragedies in life, those roars and pains in the middle of the night in the back of his eyes and deep in his ear canal.So he knew that the city was a huge cage built on transparent human bones that could never be seen.The cage is a long table and wine cups for the upper class, they toast and drink the flesh and blood of people like Mu Huaitian.

So he no longer has any expectations and hopes for this world.

He knew that his life was over at a glance, and he never envied anyone else's wealth or power.He realized 60 years in advance that life is meaningless and that a person's life is suffering.

Unless you meet someone who rekindles your passion, your passion.

Therefore, fate wants him to meet Zhou Mingshea.

He lay on the bed with his eyes lowered, thinking about these things in a daze——

The teachers in the school really looked down on him.They all thought that Mu Yang was an out-and-out jerk, who would just come to school with a cigarette in his mouth every day.If you are happy to listen to a class, if you are not happy, you will leave through the back door with your bag.

But in fact, Mu Yang has a steelyard in his heart, and the door is clear.

The moonlight floated in front of his eyes, and he suddenly felt as if he had grasped something.

He sighed, got up from the bed, put on a black baseball cap, turned and went out the door.