There’s no mistake, it’s her, it really is her.
Ji Yuanjie’s pupils shrank suddenly, and the paper in his hand felt as heavy as a thousand pounds, his hand trembled uncontrollably. His face was pale, and the whole person appeared very disturbed.
"What’s wrong with you?" Gong Liping asked worriedly.
It took Ji Yuanjie a long ti to co back to his senses, his hand shook like soone with Parkinson’s as he fumbled to fold the letter, "No... nothing! I have sothing to do, so I won’t see you off to the train station." With that, he hurriedly left.
*****
Shen Zian and Li Erhua carried their luggage, transferred from a car, and then walked several dozen miles of mountain roads to reach the station where Third Uncle Shen Weixing’s unit was located. When they arrived at the destination, she quickly recognized that this belonged to the 3rd Regint of the 39th Division.
Ten years had passed, and the 3rd Regint had changed a lot. The walls of the courtyard were painted white, with slogans like "Defend the Motherland" and "Army and People United" written in red paint. Over the walls, one could see the rows of two-story family buildings and tall poplar trees inside.
She recalled that when she ca here in the past, the poplar trees were still small, just planted not long before. In a blink of an eye, they had grown so big.
Shen Zian sighed in her heart; she just didn’t know who the regint commander of the 3rd Regint was now, nor who the division commander of the 39th Division was. She estimated that so much ti had passed, the people she knew back then probably had all changed positions.
The two of them arrived at the gate and were stopped by the sentry soldiers on duty. Upon hearing they were family of Deputy Company Commander Shen Weixing, they were told to wait in the duty room while soone was sent to notify Shen Weixing.
Shen Zian sat in the duty room, looking around at the slogans on the walls and the duty roster. After a while, she still couldn’t figure out who the current regint commander was. She understood the military’s principles of confidentiality, and before their identities were confird, asking was definitely out of the question; they might even get detained, so she kept silent.
After waiting for more than half an hour, they finally saw Shen Weixing hurrying over in his uniform.
Shen Zian took a distant glance at him, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, a sun-tanned complexion, looking in his thirties, possessing a straightforward and reliable character. He was the only promising mber of the original owner’s family who grew up thoroughly decent.
"Second Sister-in-law, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!" As soon as Shen Weixing saw Li Erhua, he ca forward and apologized continually, "Training has really kept busy, I couldn’t pick you up from the station. This trip must have been difficult, right?"
"What do you think?" Li Erhua spoke with an air of authority, "My legs feel like they’re going to break from walking. This place is so remote, no cars are even willing to co here. Useless, after all these years in the military, can’t even arrange to pick soone up..."
The bus they took left them halfway, and they had to walk the rest of the journey. But for rural people and those in the military, this was common fare. However, Li Erhua, who never did any real work back in the countryside, was already exhausted from walking these roads.
Shen Zian didn’t make a sound, hearing her mother scold Third Uncle without regard for the occasion, she couldn’t even bear to look.
"Sorry! It’s my fault, it’s my fault." Shen Weixing apologized with a good temper, took the stuff from Li Erhua’s hand, exchanged a greeting with the young soldier in the duty room, then led them towards the family quarters.
The two young soldiers in the duty room were taken aback, thinking how unlucky Deputy Company Commander Shen was to have such an unreasonable relative.
Li Erhua kept complaining as they walked down the road, but Shen Weixing was long prepared for this. He knew very well what kind of person his second sister-in-law was. In fact, when the family back ho wanted to send his niece over, his wife had strongly opposed it and even had a fight with him over it.
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