1 Chapter 1: The Old Black Umbrella

In the past, Hongdu was known as a place of great beauty and talent, a place where famous scholars marvelled at its wonders. In modern times, it became the birthplace of a great movement that grew from a red seed.

Today, however, Hongdu is just one of the many unremarkable second-tier cities.

Li Xiu is one of the many ordinary people who live in Hongdu.

In his early twenties, he has a relatively handsome face and deep, intelligent eyes. His expression is generally neutral, but when he is serious about something, his eyebrows are always slightly furrowed. This is the usual impression that people who know him have of Li Xiu.

Li Xiu had finished setting up the tables and chairs he had just cleaned and was washing his hands when he turned to look at the wall clock. Knowing what time it was, he asked his colleague: "If there's nothing else to do in the shop, I'll go out."

At the counter in front of the shop, a slightly overweight middle-aged man was checking the day's accounts on a calculator to see if there were any discrepancies.

After hearing Li Xiu's request, Zhang Chang turned to look at the situation in the shop.

Seeing no problems, he casually replied: "It's fine, you can go ahead. Don't miss the bus."

As Li Xiu walked past the counter, he called out another greeting: "All right, Zhang Ge, I'll go now."

Zhang Chang, still looking at the book and not raising his head, nodded to the sound of the adding and subtracting keys on the calculator.

After leaving the Zhang family's noodle restaurant, a late autumn breeze blew. Feeling the sudden drop in temperature, Li Xiu quickly pulled his thin jacket up to his neck and looked up at the sky. The night sky, which was usually pitch black around eleven o'clock, was covered with thick grey clouds, and the moon was only faintly visible. The stars were barely visible. "It looks like a big rain is coming," Li Xiu thought to himself as his footsteps picked up speed. Under the dim yellow light of the street lamps, there were not many people on the street at that time, so Li Xiu did not care so much and ran.

Luckily, the Zhang family's noodle restaurant is only about a hundred metres from a bus stop, which is not too far. After running all the way and arriving, Li Xiu had just stopped for a moment when the last bus of the day stopped right in front of Li Xiu.

Get on the bus, swipe your ticket and take a seat.

There were only a few people on the bus at that time, and no familiar voices for conversation. It was very quiet.

But the silence did not last long and was broken by the gradually increasing sound of rain.

Raindrops carried the accumulated descent from high in the sky and hit the glass hard. The sound clearly reached the ear of Li Xiu, who was sitting by the window. Upon hearing the sound, Li Xiu turned his head towards the window. The raindrops blurred the bus window, making it difficult for him to see outside. After looking away, he couldn't help but frown. He remembered that the bus stop in the neighbourhood was not a short distance from his home.

If it rained like this, he estimated that he would be soaking wet by the time he reached the corridor. That would be a problem for tonight and tomorrow.

The next twenty minutes or so would depend on whether the heavens took pity on him and reduced the intensity of the rain a little.

It is now well into the night and there are very few vehicles on the streets of the city. Even the usually slow bus seems to have picked up speed.

The bus, which normally takes more than twenty minutes, takes Li Xiu to his destination in just over ten minutes.

As he gets off the bus and steps over the puddle at the side of the road, he enters the "safe zone" under the bus stop sign. At that moment, an unknown number of raindrops fall on Li Xiu's head and shoulders, soaking a large part of his upper body. After getting off the bus, he can see the rain clearly.

"What terrible weather!" Li Xiu complains to himself. It is an accurate description to use a downpour to describe the rain in front of him.

It seemed that the heavy rain had trapped Li Xiu under the bus stop, but he couldn't just stand there and wait for the rain to stop before walking home.

Besides, judging by the intensity of the rain, it was not impossible for the rain to continue all night. Li Xiu looked in the direction of the community, and despite the heavy rain, he could clearly see that the community's security room was still lit.

After some thought, Li Xiu took off his coat and put it on his head. Despite the heavy rain, he ran towards the community, taking three steps and two steps at a time. After a few dozen steps, his coat was almost completely soaked, but Li Xiu had successfully run under the roof of the community's security room.

Actually, the security room was just a name, as there was usually only one gatekeeper there. With the gatekeeper's "familiar face and the feeling of having seen him a few times" and a few kind words, Li Xiu left the security room with a wet coat in one hand and a slightly old black umbrella in the other.

Even though he had an umbrella, Li Xiu didn't slow down. After all, he was only wearing a thin shirt, and every extra moment in the cold rain would increase the chances of him catching a cold and fever tomorrow.

Li Xiu's rented apartment complex was large, but it was also old. When it came to "historical relics" and "cultural accumulation", Li Xiu was confident that his apartment complex was one of the best in the city.

And to think, he was only renting, and it was just a basement storage room that came with someone else's bought house. Li Xiu's face couldn't help but show a hint of bitterness as he mockingly and self-deprecatingly thought to himself.

After passing a slightly dilapidated building, Li Xiu saw his home, or rather the entrance to his home. It was a bit of an exaggeration to say that he could see his home from the ground.

Looking up, Li Xiu saw that only a few windows in the entire building were still lit, and most people had already fallen asleep.

Those who were still awake had their own reasons, and Li Xiu knew exactly why the family on the fourth floor was still awake.

They were the ones who had rented their basement storage room to him at a relatively cheap price. They were an ordinary middle-aged couple with a high school senior son.

The boy was about to take the college entrance exam and wouldn't be home until late at night after studying at school. The couple were waiting for their son, which was why they were up so late. Li Xiu had met the boy a few times when he paid rent. Although he looked like an adult, he still had some of the innocence of his age, and would shy away from the eyes of strangers: he was an ordinary high school student who had not yet entered society.

In fact, Li Xiu was not much older than the boy. If you count by age, he should also be a college student now, in his second year of college...

But these are normal circumstances, and life is always full of surprises, big and small. For example, losing money, catching a cold or spraining an ankle are all minor accidents that have no major consequences.

However, there are times when fate plays a joke on you and loses control of the scales. For example, a car accident, or even worse, a car accident in which both parents are killed...

According to a rough estimate by a relevant department in a given year, there are on average more than four million traffic accidents in the country every year, of which more than 200,000 people are killed in traffic accidents.

Although the probability of such an event may seem acceptable based on large amounts of data, Li Xiu was still shocked and unable to accept it when the teacher, with a look of compassion and sadness on her face, called him out of class to tell him the news.

Accidents always happen suddenly, but no matter how sad they are, the consequences still have to be dealt with.

With the help of relatives and elders, Li Xiu managed to deal with the legal matters and his parents' affairs relatively smoothly.

There was no rich second generation running over people drunk and bribing judges to confuse right and wrong.

In fact, his parents were mainly responsible for the accident. The brakes failed at a junction, the car lost control and crashed into a bread van, causing a chain reaction of accidents. His parents died on the spot and the driver of the bread van was seriously injured and had to be hospitalised for a long time before being rescued. Several other people were slightly injured. The huge compensation payment after the accident wiped out the Li family's relatively substantial assets.

Within a month, his parents, house, and car all disappeared, and the originally normal family of three was reduced to just Li Xiu alone after the accident.

It was a hard time for Li Xiu, who was lost and felt like a walking corpse, wooden and cold. But time has a way of healing wounds, and it took several months for Li Xiu's visible grief to subside. Despite everything, people have to go on living, and after the incident, Li Xiu could not and did not want to return to school. Instead, he started working early to earn a living. Two years have passed since the incident.

But this was just a fleeting thought that crossed Li Xiu's mind as he walked towards the entrance of the building with an umbrella in his hand. At the same time, dark clouds swirled above Li Xiu's head and a bright silver flower exploded in the still night sky, its ''petals'' pointing directly at the tiny umbrella below. As Li Xiu stepped forward to touch the ground covered in a thin layer of rain, time seemed to slow down and the raindrops fell at an unbearably slow pace. The puddle under his foot had not finished forming before the next one was about to be stepped on.