Aoyama

Chapter 354 Where to Come From
In the night, the delicate and gentle singing voice of a singer floated from Baishun Hutong, and the sound of the pipa swayed the red plum lanterns of Meihua Ferry.

Only Chen Ji and Pao Ge were left in the Plum Blossom Pavilion.

Brother Pao lowered his head and stuffed some more tobacco into his mouth, then said slowly with emotion, "Since coming here, I can't smoke smoothly anymore. The tobacco doesn't taste right either. Every time I take a puff it feels like a knife is stabbing into my lungs."

Chen Ji didn't say anything, he knew that his brother didn't need a response now.

As Pao Ge stuffed his cigarette into his mouth, he said casually, "What I can't stand most is the toilet here. The smell goes straight to my head, and I have to scrape it with a bamboo stick after I finish defecating. It's also troublesome to take a hot bath. You have to boil two large pots of water first, and then add cold water with great effort. When a bucket of bath water is ready, the roosters are about to crow. The wine here is not good either. If you drink too much, you will have a headache, and if you drink too little, you will not be able to forget everything."

Many people hate the place where they grew up. Maybe they hate some of the bad habits there, or they hate the unheartwarming relatives there, or maybe they hate a certain person.

But when this place becomes "hometown", everyone will begin to miss everything they once took for granted.

Pao Ge took out a stick of fire from his arms and blew it gently a few times. The sparks of the stick flickered in the dark night.

He brought the fire stick to the pipe, took a deep puff, and slowly exhaled the smoke: "After coming here, I always feel that every day becomes very long, and I don't know what to do with the time. I seldom watched the sunset before, and I always felt that the sky got dark in an instant. These few days I sat on the third floor of the building of Meihua Ferry and was in a daze, and suddenly I realized that the sun sets so slowly."

Pao brother was silent for a long time.

He seemed to have made some preparations. He took a puff of his cigarette, raised his head and blew the green smoke into the air, lingering under the eaves of the Plum Blossom Pavilion. "Life in the world is like a traveler on a long journey. Did you come up with this poem?"

Chen Ji hummed.

Pao Ge asked again: "I look at the sword by lamplight while drunk and dream of blowing the horn in the camp. Is that also written by you?"

Chen Ji hummed again.

Brother Pao asked again: "Did you get the cement? Many newly built houses in Beijing have used cement recently."

Chen Ji nodded: "Yes."

Brother Pao sighed, "When I was a kid, my father taught me that if I studied math, physics and chemistry well, I would not be afraid to travel the world. But I never listened to him. I thought that when I grew up, making money would be as easy as drinking water. At first, I made some money by fighting in the underworld. Later, when I couldn't fight anymore, I followed my elder brother to learn how to do acceptance bills, investment guarantees, bridge construction, and pawnshops. Then I realized that I had to learn everything again. It turns out that making money is not that easy. Isn't that right, Chen Ji?"

showdown.

The words of showdown are hidden at the end of a long speech, just like when Jing Ke assassinated the King of Qin, he hid the dagger at the end of the map of Yan State. For the first time, the time travelers were open and honest with each other, telling each other their biggest secrets.

Mandarin duck formation, iron wolf whisk, poetry, cement.

These are enough to make a time traveler realize that there are other time travelers in this world. When facing other time travelers, people with good intentions will not feel that they have encountered an enemy, but that they have encountered someone from their hometown.

The singing in the distant building stopped at some point, and Meihua Ferry became peaceful and quiet.

Pao Ge stared at Chen Ji, waiting for an answer.

After a moment, Chen Ji raised his head, pulled down the gray cloth on his face, and took off his hat: "It's me."

Pao Ge already had the answer in his heart, but when Chen Ji admitted it, he still felt a little relieved.

He took several puffs of his cigarette and remained silent. These were obviously questions he had thought of long ago, and the words he had thought of dozens of times, but after he finished speaking, he didn't know what to say next.

Chen Ji smiled and asked, "When did you know it was mine?"

Brother Pao exhaled a puff of smoke and said, "After escaping from Mengjin Post, I have always been wary of your attempt to get information from me and Erdao. When I arrived in the capital, I asked about you and learned your name. At the time, I thought it might be a coincidence, after all, you look different... But it was not until I saw the cement and the wolf's whisk that I was finally sure it was not a coincidence. Why didn't you tell me earlier? If I had known your identity, I would have shamelessly stayed in the team. Why would I have suffered all this hardship along the way?"

Chen Ji ignored Pao Ge's complaints and asked the question that had been on his mind for a long time: "How did you and Er Dao get here? What happened after I died?"

Brother Pao recalled: "After you died, I was worried that your and Wang Long's deaths would attract the police, so I immediately took Erdao away. But just as we walked out of Qingshan Mental Hospital, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit Los Angeles. I watched the mental hospital collapse, burying everyone in the ruins."

"The rescue team arrived very quickly. They dug through the rubble and pulled out bodies one by one. I thought about our past relationship and that you had no relatives, so I wanted to take care of your funeral. So I went to the mental hospital the next day. There I saw the rescue team digging out the bodies of your uncle and aunt, the adulterous couple, but I didn't see your body."

"On the seventh day of the search, all the ruins were dug up, and the rescue team confirmed that no one survived. I looked at the bodies one by one, and I was sure that your body was not among them. I told the rescue team that you were still down there, but they said that was impossible. I said that you were not among the bodies inside, but they said that many of the bodies were unrecognizable, and that I must have failed to recognize them, and that I could go to the morgue to look for them again. But I knew that was not the case. You had a knife wound on your waist, which was different from the bodies of others."

"The rescue team ignored me and left. I didn't believe it, so I led Erdao to look for you in the ruins. But in the middle of the night, the ground suddenly began to collapse, and the ruins of the mental hospital fell down as if something had swallowed it."

"Not only the ground, but even the sky had a hole. The dark clouds in the sky rolled down like a waterfall and flowed into the abyss on the ground. I led Erdao to run outside, but before we could run out, we fell into the abyss together. When we woke up again, we were here."

Chen Ji was puzzled: "Why such a big commotion?" Brother Pao looked at Chen Ji straight in the eye: "I remember that crazy young man once said to you, 'The forty-nine heavens can't hold you back, go, go to where you should go.' I am now very sure that the land collapsed because of you, and the sky was torn open because of you... Who are you?"

Chen Ji did not answer. This was not a question he could answer right now.

Brother Pao didn't care: "Forget it, as long as you are the Chen Ji I know, I will ask you one last question."

"You ask."

"Can we still go back?"

Chen Ji opened his mouth, seeming to want to say something but stopped himself.

After thinking for a long time, he replied: "Maybe I can't go back."

Pao Ge leaned back, took a deep puff of his cigarette with melancholy look, and the two of them fell into silence.

After the pot of tobacco was completely burned, Pao Ge knocked the ash on the ground in boredom and said, "Then my social security payment was in vain, right?"

Chen Ji: "..."

Brother Pao smiled and said, "It's just a joke. I have lost my assets worth hundreds of millions, so why should I care about social security? Let's go. Now that we are reunited in Ning Dynasty, we have to have a couple of drinks."

Chen Ji shook his head: "I've stopped drinking."

Brother Pao thought for a moment: "Only those who want to do great things will quit drinking. Tell me, what do you want to do?"

Chen Ji thought for a moment and said bluntly: "I need to make a lot of money within a year, you have to help me."

Pao Ge also said bluntly: "What can I get?"

Although the two are "fellow villagers", there has never been everlasting friendship in this world. No one is born to be loyal to anyone, and no one is born to be anyone's subordinate.

The only thing that can bind them together is interests.

Chen Ji said confidently: "In this year, you and I will still split the profits 10:9, you 10 and I 90. But after a year, I will leave and all the business here will belong to you."

"You are my biggest supporter in this world now. There is no problem with this division. It can continue like this." Brother Pao scratched his scalp with his little finger. "But what big thing are you going to do? Why do you want to leave your hometown after the success? You won't implicate me, will you?"

Chen Ji shook his head: "No, I just want to stay away from trouble, not to do anything heinous."

Pao Ge crossed his legs and put his arms on the railing behind him: "Based on the questions you asked me just now, I can roughly guess what you want to do with these salt permits. I also know a little bit about it, so I can really help you. But one year is too short. It will take at least ten years to achieve some success."

Chen Ji shook his head again: "I can't wait that long."

Brother Pao stopped talking, thinking silently in his mind for a long time before he said, "You can give it a try, but it may not work."

Chen Ji looked at Pao Ge and asked solemnly, "How confident do you think you are?"

Brother Pao said seriously: "Only 20%."

Chen Ji asked again: "If the salt permit I have can be exchanged for salt in all the salt fields in the inner court, how much can it be?"

Brother Pao thought for a moment and said, "Still 20%."

Chen Ji thought for a moment, "Is it still only 20%?"

Brother Pao smiled and explained, "I said only 20%, not because it's difficult, but because it depends on how strong your life is. Chen Ji, this business will block a lot of people's financial resources. Don't die before you make any money. The lives of people in Ning Dynasty are too cheap, so cheap that it scares me."

Chen Ji smiled and said, "Since you know this, why do you still dare to help me?"

Brother Pao laughed: "No man is good forever, no flower is red forever. If you want to be a real winner, you must be able to afford to lose. I have experienced ups and downs seven or eight times in the martial arts world. I always fell and got up again. If a person cannot make a name for himself in this life, there is no point in living."

Brother Pao changed the subject: "However, no matter how anxious you are, this business must be done step by step, starting from small things, starting from the details. Before the final plan is revealed, we must not let anyone see what we are going to do, otherwise we will definitely die. And the first step now is to find suitable buyers and sellers for the salt permits."

(End of this chapter)