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Chapter 1: You’ve Come to Accept Your Fate

  When I was a child, whenever I got into a fight outside, my father never cared about who was right or wrong. He would always beat me first, leaving my body covered in his footprints. Then, grabbing me by the ear, he would humbly take me to the other person’s house to apologize.

  The worst time was when Jin Erban from the vilge cursed me, saying, "You have a father but no mother to raise you," and mocked me, ciming, "Your father had you with some foolish vilge woman."

  With a wild nature in my heart, how could I endure such humiliation?! Without a second thought, I grabbed a brick and smashed it against his head. Blood spilled instantly on the spot.

  After that, I was so terrified that I didn’t dare go home. I hid in the hardened wheat fields for three days.

  When hunger struck, I grabbed an unripe stalk of wheat or pulled up a few wild shepherd’s purse leaves to fill my stomach. When I was thirsty, I went to the small riverbank, ignoring the muddy water, and drank a few gulps of the dirty stream.

  Every te night, my father would stand at the entrance of the vilge, shouting my name until his voice went hoarse. But I stubbornly refused to respond.

  Why should I stay silent when others bully me? Why am I not allowed to fight back? And why, after teaching a bad person a lesson, must I still go home to be beaten and forced to apologize?!

  By the third day, I was so starved that I had no strength left. While turning to drink water by the riverbank, I colpsed headfirst into the muddy water.

  If it hadn’t been for Uncle He, the vilge kiln burner, who happened to pass by and pulled me out of the mud, I probably would have already become fish food.

  After waking up, my father—strangely enough—did not beat me. Instead, he filled a rge bowl with braised meat noodles and told me to eat as much as I could, warning me not to choke.

  With tear-filled eyes, I had to admit—my father did love me. He was the dearest and most devoted person to me in this world.

  I wanted to lower my head and admit my mistake to him. I was ready to let him beat me once and then go to Erban’s house to apologize.

  But the words got stuck in my throat—I just couldn’t say them. Because I wasn’t wrong! The one who should be apologizing was Erban!

  But my father didn’t force me. Instead, he filled a cup with strong white liquor and poured it straight into my mouth. Then, pressing down hard on his throat, he said, “Erban got four stitches on his head. We paid 2,000 yuan in compensation. This matter is settled. You don’t have to keep hiding and avoiding home anymore.”

  2,000 yuan?! In those days, my father couldn’t even earn that much after three years of hard work!

  At that moment, I finally realized the gravity of the trouble I had caused. But I still refused to admit I was wrong. My face flushed as I stubbornly expined, “Erban insulted me! He said I had a father but no mother to raise me! He called me the child of a foolish vilge woman!”

  "My child, people are born into different lives, each with their own fate. In this vilge, we don’t even count as much as someone like Lian Jiu! This is destiny—you must learn to accept it. You’re not a child anymore, you’re already eleven. It’s time to understand."

  After saying this, my father didn’t look back and simply walked home. Meanwhile, I stood there, tears of despair streaming down my face.

  After paying for Erban’s medical expenses, our family was completely drained of all its savings.

  One of my deepest childhood memories was those three long months when our family could only afford to eat pin boiled radishes. It left me so malnourished that my skin turned pale and sallow, my eyes dulled—and to make things worse, I kept passing gas during css. The stench was so unbearable that the teacher couldn’t continue the lesson and had no choice but to make me stand at the cssroom door, becoming the ughingstock of the entire css.

  Then came the issue of tuition fees. Even just a few dozen yuan for school expenses was completely out of my father’s reach. After every lesson, the homeroom teacher would pull me aside onto the pyground, gently coaxing and pressuring me at the same time, asking when I could bring in the money.

  At eleven years old, I already had my pride. Every time a female cssmate passed by while I was being questioned about the tuition, I felt so ashamed that I just wanted to find a hole to crawl into.

  Later, my cssmate Ha Bing, Uncle He’s daughter, told her family about my situation. That very night, Uncle He came over and pced 100 yuan on our table.

  I was truly grateful for his kindness. If not for that 100 yuan, I might have ended up following in my father’s footsteps—spending my entire life stuck in the vilge, unable to ever lift my head with pride.

  Because of the “Erban Incident,” I no longer dared to fight with anyone. When people insulted me, I pretended not to hear. When they bullied me, I found every possible way to avoid them. I became known among my cssmates as the "weakling"—someone anyone could curse at or kick without consequence.

  But deep down, I knew my wild nature hadn’t changed. The only reason I suppressed it was that I didn’t want to bring any more trouble to my struggling father.

  So, I channeled all that ambition into my studies. I realized that through education, I could fight against fate!

  Time flew by, and soon I was in my final year of high school. By then, I ranked third in the entire school. But in our county, where educational resources were scarce, even being the top student didn’t guarantee admission to a prestigious university.

  So I had to keep pushing forward, keep that wild determination alive! Because I was different from others—I had to change my fate. I could no longer endure indifference, humiliation, and being trampled on. I had suffered enough!

  Every night, after the dormitory lights went out, I would take a pile of exam papers and sit in the bathroom stall to study. The bathroom lights were motion-activated, turning off every minute. So, every sixty seconds, I would cough just to trigger the sensor, relying on the flickering light to continue.

  That year, in secret, I completed over a hundred sets of Huanggang exam papers!

  At the same time, my father heard that fish farming could make money. Without hesitation, he took out loans and borrowed from vilgers to build a fish pond.

  We thought everything was finally going to get better—when I went off to university, my father’s fish farm would bring in steady profits, and our family would finally rise above poverty.

  But just before my college entrance exams, disaster struck.

  My father had no real education and only a shallow understanding of fish farming. Then came the storm. When it passed, all the fish were dead.

  I will never forget that evening before my exams—light rain drizzling down, the soft pattering sounds blending with the silence. My father squatted alone by the fish pond, his face wet with tears.

  During dinner, he once again swallowed a bowl of harsh white liquor. Smacking his lips, his trembling mouth struggled to form words. Then, with all his strength, he said to me:

  “Son, forget about school. You’re a high school student, you’re educated. Stay home and help me run the fish farm. You handle the technical side, I’ll do the bor. In less than a year, we’ll pay off our debts.”

  Hearing those words, I felt as if thunder had struck me from above!

  The college entrance exams were just around the corner—how could I possibly drop out at such a critical moment? For the sake of this exam, I had struggled tirelessly day and night, spent a year squatting in the bathroom to study, and even had my hair turn gray from the stress. And now, you’re telling me I shouldn’t continue my education?!

  Seeing my silence, my father smmed his cup forcefully on the table and said, “This is fate—you have to accept it! Even the heavens don’t help me, so why would the Star of Literature descend upon our family? Even if you pass the university entrance exam, with all the debt we owe, how will we afford your tuition?”

  At that moment, I deeply realized something—people remain poor not because they don’t work hard enough, but because of their circumstances, their ck of resources, their outdated way of thinking, and the pitifully scarce and fragile opportunities avaible to them.

  Our barren family could only struggle on the edge of survival!

  And yet, after all these years of effort—after pouring every ounce of strength into securing a chance to change my fate—a single storm was enough to destroy everything!

  But I refused to believe in fate—and I would never accept it!

  The next morning, I grabbed my books, packed my bag, and rushed to the battlefield of the college entrance exam.

  My father didn’t stop me. In his eyes, everything was already decided. Even if I passed the exam, without money for tuition, I would still have to come back home and farm the nd.

  And that’s why, to this day, I remain grateful—not to fate, not to luck, but to the version of myself from back then. I am grateful to that young boy who refused to bow to destiny, who had the unyielding will to fight on.

  Even though, at that time, I didn’t fully understand what I was fighting for—even though, even if I won the battle of the college entrance exam, I would still have to face the harsh reality of life’s struggles—

  Perhaps, it was all just to prove a point.

  Perhaps, it was just one final, desperate strike—one st, fierce attack against fate itself...

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