RCHE # Chapter 2 Reborn

"Old Wen, get up and go to school, or you'll be late!"

"Old Wen, did you wet the bed again? Why is there a smell of urine?"

Two little girls' voices reached Chen Kangjie’s ears. He felt it was strange. He did have a nickname, Old Wen, but only his family and childhood friends called him that. Since he started working, no one had called him that anymore. How strange.

Chen Kangjie slowly opened his eyes and saw a short-haired girl in a floral shirt standing by his bed, which gave him quite a scare. "Who are you? How are you here?" Chen Kangjie exclaimed.

"Old Wen, what's wrong with you? Don't you recognize me? Are you sick?"

Chen Kangjie took a closer look. How come this girl looked so familiar? Then, upon closer inspection, his expression turned horrified, and he muttered to himself, "Isn't this Juyan?" This girl was Chen Kangjie’s sixth sister, Chen Jing (nickname Juyan).

The little girl, seeing Chen Kangjie in such a daze and staring at him with big eyes, turned and ran off while shouting, "Mom, Mom, Old Wen has gone mad!"

In less than a minute, he heard a rush of footsteps. A middle-aged woman and two girls came in. Before even sitting down by the bed, the middle-aged woman reached out to feel Chen Kangjie’s forehead, then lifted his head to look at his complexion. She muttered to herself, "No fever, his face looks a bit off, but he doesn't seem sick."

"Old Wen, what's wrong? Juyan said you went mad?"

Chen Kangjie finally saw the appearance of this middle-aged woman. With slightly furrowed brows, a head of short black curls, and eyes full of love, she was wearing an 80s-style gray jacket.

"Mom," Chen Kangjie called out, feeling even more puzzled. Wasn't he on the bus? How could he be seeing his younger sister and his young mother? Did he die? This person was indeed Chen Kangjie's mother, Ma Fangqin, who was only forty at the time.

The girl behind Ma Fangqin stepped forward, took Chen Kangjie's hand, and softly asked, "Old Wen, what's wrong? Did you have a nightmare?"

At this moment, Chen Kangjie finally saw the two girls behind him. The older one, who seemed a bit older, appeared to be around thirteen or fourteen years old, with sharp features and a yellow hairband tied around her head, exuding a delicate charm. Surprisingly, she was his fourth sister, Chen Mei (nickname Juxiang). Behind her stood a round-faced girl of about eleven or twelve years old, his fifth sister Chen Mei (nickname Juhua), who was smiling and looking at Chen Kangjie. She chuckled and said, "Old Wen, did you wet the bed again because you're afraid of getting scolded, so you're pretending to be crazy?"

Chen Kangjie finally smelled a long-forgotten urine odor. He pulled back the covers and looked down. Wow, his pants were wet. He really wet the bed, darn it. Then, upon further inspection, Chen Kangjie was stunned again. What was happening? Why were his pants so small? He opened his pants and nearly burst into tears. What the heck was going on? Why was his ** so small? It was so strange, everything was too strange. He lifted his head and stared at his mother and two sisters intently, then turned around to scan the room they were in.

"Isn't this my childhood home?" Chen Kangjie's mind was filled with endless confusion. "How am I in my childhood room? What on earth is going on?"

Ma Fangqin noticed that Chen Kangjie had wet the bed. Initially, she wanted to scold him, but seeing his dazed and unusual behavior, she swallowed her words.

As the youngest in the family, Chen Kangjie was usually not scolded much by Ma Fangqin. The family generally doted on him. In his memory, he had never been beaten by his parents. On the other hand, his third brother, Chen Yuchang, was often beaten by their father. He even remembered that after getting married, Chen Yuchang had been punished twice by their father for hitting his wife.

"Did you have a nightmare?" Ma Fangqin asked, tenderly touching Chen Kangjie's head.

Ma Fangqin lovingly 'patted' Chen Kangjie on the head and asked,

Without thinking, Chen Kangjie nodded reflexively. At that moment, he didn't know how to answer his mother's question, as he still hadn't figured out what was going on.

Ma Fangqin turned to Chen Kangjie's three older sisters and instructed, "You guys hurry up and go to school, don't be late. Ju Hua, on your way to class, go to the office and ask for leave from Lao Wen's homeroom teacher, Teacher Chen. Just say Lao Wen is sick, and your father will write a leave note to give to her in the afternoon."

The two sisters nodded and left.

Ma Fangqin lifted the quilt, picked up Chen Kangjie, and after taking off all his pants, carried him to his fourth sister's bed. Seeing Chen Kangjie's blushing face, Ma Fangqin smiled and left. From the sounds that followed, she seemed to be tidying up the bed, likely washing and drying the sheets he had wet.

Lying on his fourth sister's bed, Chen Kangjie was full of confusion. 'I was clearly hit by a truck while on a bus from Deying City to Pengcheng. How did I end up back in my childhood home? If I'm not dead, I should be in the hospital. He lifted the quilt and looked at his small arms and legs, and his tiny JJ. He looked only about five or six years old. A thought flashed through his mind, 'Could I have been reborn?' He looked up and saw a calendar on the wall. He quickly got up and went to check it out. 1986. My god, I've really been reborn, back to 1986!'

Chen Kangjie crawled back into bed and hid under the quilt, feeling a mix of shock and excitement. In his previous life, he had nothing and lived a messy life. He even had a girlfriend who made things so difficult for him. Now that heaven has given him a chance to be reborn, he vowed to seize the opportunity and not repeat the same mistakes.

In his previous life, his sisters and he lived decently but not particularly comfortably. His mother worked hard for decades and only relaxed after most of her children were married. His father was just a minor section chief at work, supporting a family of seven or eight on a meager salary, making life rather tight. To ease the burden, before 1985, his mother and sisters still lived in the countryside, doing some farm work to help make ends meet.

In this life, with such a rare opportunity, Chen Kangjie vowed to bring a beautiful change to this warm and harmonious family.

His thoughts shifted to Li Tingyan. 'She should know I'm dead, right? Would she cry when she found out I left this world?' After thinking for a while, he found it amusing. 'Why think so much? She's just a two-year-old toddler now. Besides, my disappearance might be good for her. At least she can live freely without worrying about my constant complaints. It's better to take care of myself first.'

After some random thoughts, his mind gradually became clear. 'Since I'm here, I should make the best of it.'

Chen Kangjie got up, found a small pair of blue shorts, and put them on. Compared to the pants he wore at 1.76 meters tall in his previous life, these could only be considered small shorts. He went back to his fourth sister's room, muttering to himself, "What should I do now? Dad, Chen Qigang, went to work, and my fourth, fifth, and sixth sisters went to school. My third brother, Chen Yuchang, is either sleeping or out playing. My eldest sister, Chen Yuqiong, married Xu Guohua, who lives near the Si Jiaotian mine. However, Dad got Xu Guohua a job as a contract worker at the mine, and they live in the dormitory near the mine. My second sister, Chen Yufen, should be at home now. She has always been good to me since childhood. I should go and chat with her."

Chen Kangjie left his fourth sister's room, planning to go next door to find his second sister, Chen Yufen.

The reason he referred to it as the house next door is that the unit had only given the Chen family a three-bedroom, one-living room, and one-kitchen house on the ground floor. Because there were many people in the family, it wasn't enough space. Fortunately, it was on the edge of the ground floor. So, Chen Qigang found someone to build two extra rooms using bricks, covering them with asbestos tiles. Chen Kangjie lived in the innermost room, and the fourth and sixth sisters lived in the outer room.

The main three-bedroom house was used as follows: Chen Qigang and Ma Fangqin had one room, Chen Yuchang had one room to himself (after graduating from junior high and starting work, he got his own room), and the remaining room was for Chen Yufen and Chen Mei.

Entering the house, Chen Kangjie didn't see his second sister, only his mother busy in the kitchen. He ran to the kitchen and pulled Ma Fangqin's clothes, asking, "Mom, where's my second sister?"

"Your second sister is staying at the farm school, how could she be home now?" Ma Fangqin replied without turning her head, continuing with her chores.

Chen Kangjie then remembered that his second sister was repeating her senior year at the farm school and would only come home during holidays.

Disappointed, Chen Kangjie walked back to his fourth sister's room and casually flipped through a junior high English textbook. The more he read, the more puzzled he became.

Why? Because Chen Kangjie found that after reading the first page, he didn't need to read the second page; he already knew the content word for word. Although this junior high English book was the same as the one he studied in his previous life, it was amazing that he could remember everything so clearly after so many years.

He put down the English book and tried to recall a high school essay, focusing on Jia Yi's "On the Faults of Qin."

"Qin Xiaogong, relying on the strategic location of Xiao and Han, occupied the land of Yongzhou, and the ministers and the people defended it to monitor the Zhou Dynasty. They had the ambition to sweep across the world, encompass the entire universe, and swallow all eight regions...," he could recite it word for word. Even though he had studied and memorized this essay in his previous life, it had been over ten years, and there was no way he could still recite it perfectly.

Puzzled by this phenomenon, Chen Kangjie thought that perhaps when he was reborn, some material had affected his memory, making it incredibly strong. He could remember everything he saw precisely.

Chen Kangjie secretly rejoiced. With such a powerful "cheat," what couldn't he achieve? In his previous life, he loved reading books and newspapers. Apart from gossip and romance novels, he enjoyed almost everything else. From fifth and sixth grade, he often read "Half-Monthly Talk" and "Party Construction" magazines that his father brought home from work. In junior high, he never missed issues of "Readers," "Reference News," "Global Times," and "World Pictorial" from the school library. Although he liked reading, his academic performance was never outstanding. He never won any awards and was considered a poor student in elementary school. He only started improving in junior high and finally got into a third-rate provincial university, Qianzhou University of Finance and Economics. Now that he had the chance to be reborn, he was determined to make a great turnaround.

The more he thought about it, the happier he felt, and he couldn't help but laugh out loud.

At that moment, Ma Fangqin, possibly hearing Chen Kangjie's laughter, pushed the door open and saw him gesticulating excitedly.

She asked curiously, "Lao Wen, what are you doing?"

Chen Kangjie blushed and replied with a laugh, "Nothing, nothing. I just saw a joke in my sister's book, hehe."

Ma Fangqin was taken aback, and after a moment, she walked out, still puzzled. 'Since when does Lao Wen like reading? He usually sleeps late and doesn't like reading. Why didn't he sleep late today but instead read Juxiang's book?' In the end, not understanding, she shook her head and continued with her chores.

At noon, the broadcast started.

Chen Kangjie's home was in Dizhong Mine, one of the eight mining districts of Liuzhi Mining Bureau in Qianzhou Province, located in Liuzhi Special District, part of Liupanshui City. On November 29, 1965, during the Third Front construction period, Qianzhou Province decided to establish the three mining districts of Liuzhi, Panjiang, and Shuishan, under the dual leadership of the Coal Ministry and the Qianzhou Provincial People's Committee. On December 2, 1970, the State Council approved the establishment of the Liupanshui Regional Revolutionary Committee, a regional-level authority, and the dissolution of the Southwest Coal Construction Command. The original Liuzhi, Panjiang, and Shuishan mining districts were merged with the counties of Langdai (Liuzhi), Panjiang, and Shuishan into the Liuzhi, Panjiang, and Shuishan Special Districts, respectively, exercising county-level authority under the Liupanshui Regional Revolutionary Committee. On December 18, 1978, the State Council approved the establishment of Liupanshui City (a provincial-level city), with jurisdiction over the three special districts of Liuzhi, Panjiang, and Shuishan.

Liuzhi Mining Bureau was a provincial-level enterprise with

 a department-level status. Dizhong Mine, one of the eight mining districts, had a county-level status and was only two kilometers from the Liuzhi Special District's administrative center, making it the closest of the eight mining districts. The Liuzhi Mining Bureau was essentially the biggest pillar of the Liuzhi Special District, with tens of thousands of employees, both permanent and temporary, and over a hundred thousand family members. Hence, the prosperity of this "small county town" was largely due to the Liuzhi Mining Bureau, influencing all aspects of production, life, economic consumption, and cultural entertainment.

In the 1980s and 90s, the entire mining district would be enveloped in the sound of broadcast loudspeakers at 6:30 in the morning, noon, and 5:30 in the afternoon, each lasting half an hour, mainly from the Central People's Broadcasting Station. At that time, information channels were not very smooth, and not many families had TVs (even those that did could only receive a few channels), so the broadcast became the main way for ordinary people to receive external information. For those without watches, it even served as a fixed time signal, much like the ancient practice of hitting the watchtower drum, except that the mine broadcast "hit the drum" only three times a day.

Outside the window, the sound of children chattering and playing indicated that his sisters were back from school and his father should be home from work.

After a while, Ju Yan came over to call Chen Kangjie for lunch.

Entering the living room, he saw a middle-aged man sitting on the sofa, neatly dressed and dignified, with a thin face. This was Chen Kangjie's father, Chen Qigang, a college graduate from the 1970s, working in the labor department at Dizhong Mine.

Seeing his son enter, Chen Qigang affectionately waved him over.

"Why didn't you go to school today? Are you not feeling well?"

Chen Kangjie nodded, smiling awkwardly, unsure how to answer.

At this moment, his fifth sister, Ju Hua, teased, "Dad, you don't know, Lao Wen wet the bed today. He was afraid of being scolded, so he pretended to be sick, hehe."

Chen Qigang chuckled lightly, "Lao Wen is so big, how could he wet the bed?"

Chen Kangjie wished he could find a hole to crawl into. After all, he had the body of a six-year-old but the mind of a thirty-year-old.

Ma Fangqin, Ju Xiang, and Ju Yan also laughed at Chen Kangjie's embarrassed expression.

It was Ma Fangqin who saved him.

"Stop talking about that. Hurry up and eat. You need to help him write a leave note for him to take to his teacher this afternoon."

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