Chapter 13: The Youth Does Not Know the Goodness of a Little Sister

Xu Heng was born into an ordinary family.

Xu Heng's father was a working-class employee, and his mother was a laid-off worker; one earned a fixed salary, the other a laid-off pension, barely enough to support their household.

From a young age, the education Xu Heng received was not very good; his father dropped out of school after high school and never attended a vocational school, so his cultural level was not high, and although his mother had attended vocational school, as she aged, she was unable to teach Xu Heng his academic subjects.

Coupled with the fact that the family's circumstances did not allow for providing him with high-quality tutoring classes, Xu Heng's admission to Jinling University was indeed entirely due to his own efforts.

I remember when they held the celebration banquet for his admission, relatives all said the old Xu family had produced a talent, and in ancient times, this would have been a matter of passing the imperial examinations and bringing honor to one's ancestors.

Regarding this, Xu Heng once felt that he was a unique existence, often placing himself on a very high pedestal.

After graduation, Xu Heng discovered that so-called "top students" were not that sought after in society.

That talk of 985 and 211 graduates getting million-yuan annual salaries right out of the gate was all a lie.

People with real ability either went to graduate school or were sent by their families to study at famous foreign universities; they were the talents with a promising future.

For the batch of undergraduate students he belonged to, all that fell to them were nine-to-five jobs with a monthly salary of a few thousand.

If Ying Ziyun was the greatest regret of Xu Heng's life, then failing to find a job for nearly half a year after graduation was the greatest blow he had suffered in his life.

Watching his former friends either get hired by good units or start their own businesses and become bosses, Xu Heng realized with a shock.

A university diploma was not a guarantee of a job for him, but a stepping stone.

How high one could go using this stepping stone was a person's true ability.

And what about Xu Heng?

Xu Heng had no ability; he only knew how to take exams.

So he took exams, and under the half-pushing and half-persuasion of his parents, he became a civil servant; the salary wasn't high, but the overall benefits were considered excellent, and he began a life of living day to day, like a marionette.

Was this the life he wanted at the start?

No!

Xu Heng had fantasized countless times about what kind of boss or leader he would become in the future, but he had never thought he would become a civil servant in a small city.

But reality defeated his fantasies.

He was just an ordinary person, at most an ordinary person who knew how to take exams.

Staying in a small city, year after year, finding an ordinary wife through family matchmaking, having an ordinary daughter, buying an ordinary house and car...

This was the life of over a billion ordinary people.

Too ordinary... too ordinary...

"Tong City station has arrived, those getting off, hurry up!"

A woman's shouting reached his ears, and Xu Heng woke up with a start.

He clutched his slightly dizzy head, waking up to find his back soaked with sweat.

He opened his old-fashioned mobile phone to check the time: July 4, 2007.

A false alarm.

He was truly afraid that his rebirth was just a dream.

He really did not want to repeat that kind of ordinary life again.

The green-skinned train swayed and jolted, and after half a day, it arrived in Tong City on the morning of the second day after he boarded.

The aged train station was covered in the traces of weathering, dust piled up like mountains beneath the peeling earthen walls, and trash was thrown about everywhere.

Seeing such a familiar yet unfamiliar city, Xu Heng took a deep breath, ignored the strange looks from outsiders, and let out a roar.

"I, Xu Heng, have returned!"

After leaving the station, Xu Heng did not go home first, but went to the state bank to open a new card, transferred all the one hundred thousand yuan he had earned from writing novels into it, and then used this bank card to open an account in the stock market, starting to buy some high-quality stocks he remembered very clearly.

Even though these high-quality stocks were already at a high level, he still did not switch to stocks he was unfamiliar with.

Unlike those stock friends who were still watching and worrying about the high level of quality stocks, he knew the stock market would not have a downward trend for the next few months, so his stock market strategy was one word: Charge!

After buying the stocks and leaving the securities market, Xu Heng finally took out his phone to call his mother and tell her he had arrived in Tong City.

His mother complained about why the train arrived two hours later than expected, and he explained that he had encountered a traffic failure on the road and had stopped for a while.

A delay for a green-skinned train was a quite normal phenomenon, and his mother did not suspect much.

"Do you want me to come pick you up?"

"No need, no need, I know the way."

"Oh~" On the phone, his mother's tone shifted, "Ziyun came back with you, right?"

Both his parents knew about Xu Heng and Ying Ziyun dating, and during winter break last year, he had even brought Ying Ziyun home as a guest.

In the eyes of the two elders, the girl was pretty, sensible, and from the same university and city as Xu Heng, making it a perfect match—the textbook daughter-in-law.

It was a pity that Xu Heng and Ying Ziyun had already broken up, and there would likely be no possibility in the future; he did not tell his mother about this on the phone and brushed it off with other topics.

After hanging up the phone, he hailed a taxi straight to the entrance of his residential compound.

The residential compound in the old city area was something others would buy as a school district house in later generations, and no one would want to live there, but now it was still quite new, and the paint on the walls hadn't peeled much.

Following the path in his memory, he found his "home."

He went upstairs, stopped, and with a bit of anticipation, Xu Heng knocked on the security door in front of him.

"Who is it?" A slightly childish voice came from inside the door.

"Your brother!"

The security door opened, and a small head with a ponytail poked out from the gap; those dark, bright eyes couldn't help but light up upon seeing Xu Heng.

"Holy cow! Brother, you really came back!"

After saying this, the girl's eyes stayed fixed on the plastic bag in Xu Heng's hand.

Xu Heng laughed in annoyance: "Don't worry, I bought you something to eat; the whole bag is yours."

"Brother is the best!"

The girl beamed with joy, took the plastic bag from his hand, and ran toward the living room.

Xu Heng shook his head and changed out of his shoes at the doorway.

The old house, etched into over a decade of memories, had a layout that was slightly cramped but very clean.

The old-fashioned, bulky color television was showing its age, and the landscape painting on the wall had become somewhat mottled.

A few years later, because he was getting married, his parents sold this house and bought a larger one in the new district, and his younger sister cried for a long time because of it.

And the girl curled up on the old sofa, hugging a bag of potato chips and munching away, was his younger sister, Xu Ruoxi.

Younger sister Xu had just started her first year of high school this year; she was exceptionally beautiful, looking a bit like Zhao Ling'er from *Chinese Paladin 1*, perhaps even prettier than Zhao Ling'er, with facial features that were almost flawless—it seemed the Xu family's genes had evolved in her generation.

However, while her appearance was good, her academic grades were just so-so; she couldn't compare to Xu Heng and could only be described as barely getting by, hovering right on the edge of the first-tier university cutoff line.

Father Xu and Mother Xu didn't put much pressure on her in this regard, feeling that as long as the girl could marry into a good family when she grew up, that would be enough.

Xu Ruoxi was often dissatisfied with this: "You guys are so attentive to our brother, aren't you? Why aren't you more attentive to me? If you supervised my studies more, I definitely wouldn't have only scored these marks!"

Consequently, during her third year of high school, Mother Xu stayed home specifically to supervise her studies for half a year, and later, she actually supervised Xu Ruoxi into a 211 university.

Every time this incident was brought up, it left the whole family laughing and crying; after all, Xu Ruoxi was the first high school student they had ever seen who asked others to manage her.