Chapter 49
A Winter Without Warmth🌨️
The sky was pale grey when Zhao Chen opened his eyes.
The silence of the countryside was not peaceful—it was heavy. It pressed against his chest like cold stone, reminding him that nothing came easily here, not breath, not warmth, and certainly not comfort.
He sat up slowly from his thin blanket, tucked on a rough wooden bed that smelled faintly of mildew and straw. His hands reached for the jacket he'd folded with military precision the night before. Every movement was economical. Deliberate.
The stove in the corner of the dormitory was dead, just like yesterday. No one had bothered to relight it. Zhao Chen didn't blame them. Everyone was too tired, too worn. Just like him. But unlike them, he had something they didn't—a second chance.
He moved through the room like a shadow, washing his face with near-freezing water and quietly dressing layer by layer. His movements were mechanical, but his thoughts ran sharp.
It was late autumn. Soon the water basins would freeze overnight.
Zhao Chen adjusted his coat collar, tucked a weathered book under his arm, and stepped outside.
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The dirt path behind the educated youth dormitory crunched beneath his boots. Frost kissed the edges of the low-growing weeds. The fields lay empty now, harvested and bare, sleeping beneath the frost like corpses dressed in straw.
He walked toward the small tool shed behind the storage barn. It wasn't locked—no one cared to lock anything here. He knelt, reached beneath the old wooden floorboard, and pulled out a cloth-wrapped parcel. Inside were two books: a tattered high school physics volume and a math exercise notebook. He had found them a month ago while doing labor in a nearby village. No one there wanted them.
But Zhao Chen did.
He wanted more than they could ever imagine.
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He remembered dying. Clearly.
The fever. The distant voices outside the infirmary. The unbearable chill in his lungs. The silence of his own family.
No one had come. Not his father. Not his mother. Not the relatives who claimed to love him. In that first life, he had still clung to hope until the very end.
In this one, he clung to nothing but resolve.
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His aunt. She had been the one who changed the name on the assignment papers. Her own son was supposed to go. But she—crafty, bitter—had quietly swapped the documents.
Her son stayed home. Zhao Chen was exiled.
He remembered the look on his father's face when he'd confronted him that day. Not guilt. Not grief. Just cold acceptance.
"A man should suffer. It'll make you grow."
Zhao Chen had never forgotten it.
Now, years later, his father's words still rang in his ears like a dull iron bell. There was no affection between them. No softness.
His father wasn't a weak man. He was simply indifferent to emotion. He valued control and tradition above connection. Zhao Chen had cried once—only once—in front of him.
He had never cried again.
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Zhao Chen returned to the shed before sunrise fully broke and slipped the books back into hiding. He didn't let the others see.
None of the other educated youths here could be trusted.
In both lives, they had shown him how far their sympathy extended—no further than convenience. When he was sick, they avoided him. When he fell behind in labor, they mocked him. And when he died, they had simply… moved on.
This time, he would smile and nod, but he would not forget.
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He spent the afternoon in the communal fields. The village had asked the youths to help mend fences and chop wood.
A boy beside him—Wang Jie, one of the more outspoken ones—joked about how things might get better if another policy changed.
Zhao Chen kept his gaze lowered.
He already knew the exams would return next year.
He would not tell them.
They had never offered him a hand.
They would not ride the wave of his rebirth.
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In the evening, as dusk deepened and the smell of smoke and weak cabbage soup drifted from the village kitchen, Zhao Chen sat alone near the well.
He opened the physics book and began again from Chapter Four.
The formulas came easily to him. They always had. In his first life, he had dreamed of engineering. Of building, not just surviving. Of creation, not labor.
This time, he would not let that dream slip through his fingers.
He scribbled notes under the faint glow of a flickering oil lamp. His hands trembled from cold, but he didn't stop.
---
He thought of his father again.
In this second life, they still hadn't spoken. Not really.
The man would send him the occasional bundle of salted vegetables or old letters from the county, but they were never addressed with warmth.
Zhao Chen wondered if his father even regretted it. The way he had stood back when Zhao Chen was sent away.
He didn't think so.
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The night deepened.
Zhao Chen walked back to the dormitory, a book pressed to his chest like a secret heart.
A brittle wind swept through the dry stalks in the fields.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, and an ox bell clinked.
Zhao Chen looked up at the moon, pale and watching.
Then he said softly, almost to himself:
> "I won't die in this dirt again. Not for them. Not for anyone."
> "This time, I leave on my own terms."
> "And I'll make sure they all see me rise."
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He turned away from the moonlight and closed the door.
The frost was heavier that night, but inside Zhao Chen's chest, a fire smoldered. Quiet. Controlled.
But unrelenting.