sovbooks 0012 generation
0012 generation
Modern time and space.
Around 10 p.m., Zhu Shiting drove the rented old Nissan Sylphy back home.
I was in a car accident around 7 a.m. and unexpectedly traveled to the late Ming Dynasty. More than ten hours have passed since then.
Even though he's been running a delivery truck for years and has boundless energy, he was yawning non-stop and extremely sleepy by this time.
With his body covered in cuts and bruises, Zhu Shiting couldn't even take a shower. He crawled into his room, smelling terrible, and fell fast asleep.
"Ooh ooh ooh~"
The next morning, Zhu Shiting, who had made a lot of money and wanted to sleep in a little longer, was woken up by the crowing of several free-range chickens kept by his neighbor.
"Disturbing my sleep so early in the morning, I'll stew these damn chickens sooner or later!"
He sat up in bed and muttered a few curses.
When I went downstairs to wash up, my mother, Li Yuan, was already preparing breakfast in the kitchen, while my father, Zhu Youlong, came in from outside carrying a thermos.
Seeing his elderly father's bloodshot eyes and sallow face, it was clear he had been working the night shift at the factory all night.
"Dad, why don't you stop going to this class? You're already so old, I'm afraid your body won't be able to handle it if you keep pushing yourself like this."
Zhu Shiting sat down at the table with the eggs, pickled vegetables, shredded pork, and rice noodles that his mother had cooked, and took the opportunity to offer a few words of advice to his elderly father.
He made over 100,000 yuan in net profit yesterday, which gives him a much stronger financial foundation to support his family than when he used to earn only two or three hundred yuan a day running a delivery truck.
In addition, my father only earns a little over 5,000 yuan a month. Although he has pension insurance, working night shifts as a security guard in the factory and staying up all night is quite harmful to the health of a 60-year-old man.
The meager salary I earn might end up going towards hospital billing in the future.
"Hey! If you don't go to work, what will your mom and I eat?"
"You haven't bought a house or gotten married yet. I'm retiring so early. If I go out, my relatives and friends will laugh me to death."
It was rare for his own son to show him such concern, so Zhu Youlong jokingly scolded his son a few times.
Most parents in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions are like him—stubborn and hardworking, wanting to earn more money for their children and grandchildren even until they die.
Many of those who set up vegetable stalls at the entrances of upscale residential areas in the city are landlords worth tens of millions, but they are unwilling to enjoy life and instead work hard from dawn till dusk to earn a few extra dollars from selling vegetables.
In Jiangsu and Zhejiang, this is not an internet joke, but a folk custom that has been passed down for thousands of years.
"I'll work hard on buying a house and getting married myself, you don't need to worry about it," Zhu Shiting stammered while slurping his noodles.
He couldn't explain being transported to the late Ming Dynasty to his parents, but Zhu Shiting was very confident about making money.
He could become a billionaire sooner or later by trading goods between the two time periods, as long as he found a suitable excuse. Therefore, he wanted to persuade his parents to take a break and not ruin their health for such a small amount of money.
"Son, if you go out and work for Lalamove, you'll only earn two or three hundred yuan a day, leaving early and returning late."
"Back in 2000, your dad could earn two or three hundred yuan a day doing odd jobs in Wenzhou! At that time, the price of houses in the county was only two thousand yuan per square meter, but now it's twenty thousand! If you rely on the little money you earn driving, our Zhu family line will die out."
Zhu Youlong, with an air of old age, once again boasted at the dinner table about his glorious past as a bricklayer in the city when he was young.
Like the four-story house in Zhu Shiting's hometown, the land for the house belongs to his mother, but the money to build the house was saved up by his father through hard work.
At that time, Vancouver's economy was developing rapidly, and there were many opportunities. Rural people could come to the city to work as decorators or learn to drive and become taxi drivers. As long as they were willing to work hard, earning more than 10,000 yuan a month was not a problem.
Unfortunately, more than 20 years have passed, and the income of ordinary people in this area has not only failed to rise but has actually fallen back, while housing prices and commodity prices show no signs of recovery.
If Zhu Youlong doesn't work hard while he's still able to and help his son buy a house in the county town as soon as possible, he's really worried that Zhu Shiting won't be able to find a wife in the future, which would affect the continuation of the Zhu family line.
……
The father and son debated back and forth at the dinner table.
Although both sides were thinking of the other's best interests, the stubbornness inherited in the Zhu family meant that neither could convince the other.
Zhu Shiting knew that if he didn't achieve something great outside, his parents would never change their current habit of saving money and working hard.
So while his father went upstairs to catch up on sleep, Zhu Shiting made an excuse to visit his grandparents and drove out to the more remote Panlong Township in the mountains.
After driving for seven or eight minutes along the newly paved asphalt mountain road, the old Sylphy stopped at a newly built parking lot outside an old village called Aodi.
This village is Zhu Shiting's true hometown. It is surrounded by mountains on three sides, with beautiful scenery, and is right next to an unnamed man-made reservoir.
In recent years, as part of rural revitalization efforts, a rubberized walkway has been laid along the reservoir outside the village, and many villagers take walks along the walkway in their spare time.
Occasionally, you can see tourists from the city camping, fishing, and relaxing by the reservoir.
After getting off the car, Zhu Shiting went straight to his old family home. He called out to his grandparents but couldn't find them there. He then went to the village store to inquire and finally found the elderly couple busy picking tea leaves in the tea garden in the mountains.
"Grandpa, Grandma, I've come to see you."
"Shi Ting is here!"
Seeing that his grandparents were in good spirits, Zhu Shiting helped them pluck the tender buds in the tea garden.
There is a tradition of growing tea in the Wenzhou area. The "Wu Niu Zao" tea produced here is a variant of Longjing tea that was transplanted from West Lake to Wenzhou. After brewing, the tea has a rich and refreshing flavor, and drinking it for a long time can help clear the liver and improve eyesight.
However, the production of this type of Wuniu early tea is relatively small, and Wenzhou business owners love to drink it, causing the price of the tea to rise steadily.
My grandparents mentioned that the price of finished dried tea leaves has risen to over 3000 yuan per kilogram this year. The old couple wanted to pick more in the spring so they could earn a little more for their children and grandchildren.
This familiar feeling made Zhu Shiting mentally complain, "Well, so that's where our Zhu family's stubbornness comes from; it's been passed down through generations."
While chatting with his grandparents and picking the jade, Zhu Shiting eventually brought up the topic of the ancient jade pendant around his neck.
"Shi Ting, you're asking about this jade pendant? It's been passed down through generations of our ancestors, and only the eldest grandson can wear it."
Seeing that his grandson kept asking, Grandpa Zhu Dongyan stopped picking the fruit and replied.
"The eldest grandson? Can't Chao-ge and Xiao-jun wear it?" Zhu Shi-ting asked curiously.
Zhu Dongyan shook his head: "The ancestral precepts say that the eldest son is the legitimate heir, and your cousins are all born out of wedlock."
Zhu Shiting's father had four brothers and sisters, and in his generation there were seven or eight cousins. Logically, all descendants should be entitled to inherit this ancient jade pendant, but Zhu Shiting was surprised to hear his grandfather mention that there was also a direct line of inheritance involved.
"There's a family tree in the cabinet. Shiting, you're almost thirty. Our ancestors said that one should be established by thirty, so you should take a look at it."
"Our Zhu family ancestor was once a prince!"
Zhu Dongyan chuckled and continued picking tea leaves, his back bent.
"A prince from the Ming Dynasty?"
"I think I often heard my grandfather say this when I was little, but it's been so long that I've almost forgotten it."
Zhu Shiting muttered to himself and immediately returned to his old house in the village.
After rummaging through my grandparents' room, we finally found the family tree in a tin biscuit box where money was hidden.
As Zhu Shiting flipped through the yellowed pages of the family genealogy, his expression became increasingly interesting.
According to this genealogy revised in 1986, the Zhu family in Aodi Village, Ruixian County, is indeed a descendant of the Ming Dynasty's Zhu family.
However, it wasn't the branch of the famous Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di), but rather the branch of the relatively unknown Prince Lu (Zhu Tan), who was also Zhu Yuanzhang's tenth son.
"On the 28th day of the intercalary sixth month of 1645, Zhu Yihai, the eleventh Prince of Lu, took over the reins of government in Shaoxing. He was defeated in June of the following year and fled south. Most of the Prince of Lu's family members scattered to various places in Zhejiang and Fujian."
"So, my ancestors were indeed related to the imperial family, and my ancestral home is, in fact, in Shandong, the region of Lu."
Zhu Shiting took off the jade pendant from his neck and touched the characters "Ming" and "Lu" on it.
Throughout ancient China, dynasties rose and fell, and many ancestors had been emperors. By the time these emperors reached their generation, few people took them seriously anymore; at most, they would boast about them online or at a dinner party.
These days, whose family hasn't produced emperors or generals?
However, when Zhu Shiting saw the generational ranking in the family tree, his eyes widened and he exclaimed "Holy crap!" in the house.
"Blessed by the bright calendar, blessed with virtue; in the mountains, immortals dwell in the caves."
"My grandfather was a 30th-generation descendant of the Prince of Lu, belonging to the 'Dong' generation; my father also has a generational name; and I am... belonging to the 'Xian' generation?"
If he is named according to the generational order in this family genealogy, when the genealogy is revised later, his full name will not be Zhu Shiting, but Zhu Xianting.
Thinking about what he had experienced in the past two days, and how the villagers of Jiyun Village kept calling him "Immortal Lord," Zhu Shiting suddenly got goosebumps all over his body.
He really did become an immortal!