Li Yu faced the wind, letting it blow, and scooped a ladle of water.
He drank from the gourd ladle on the field ridge,
while memories and thoughts of his life before the apocalypse flooded his mind:
People always yearn for boring, leisurely days when they are busy.
But when they actually reach that kind of boring, leisurely time,
they feel a sense of self-reproach, thinking they should put in some effort, at least do something.
Then, with three minutes of enthusiasm, they might do things like a thorough room cleaning.
Very serious, but just not sustained.
Therefore, people themselves are like a besieged city.
Never satisfied, always pursuing desires, always rushing to fulfill their inner cravings.
In this world, there is always a group of elites at the very top, using the power of capital, political power, and military force, subtly controlling things both openly and secretly.
They control the information that is disseminated; what ordinary people see and know is what they want people to know.
And those who manipulate from behind often exploit human nature and human weakness, then fan the flames and hype up the occurrence of a certain hot topic.
Even the trending searches on Weibo before the apocalypse were essentially just the power of capital; whether it was good information or bad, it was simply about having money or not.
Positive or negative news, as long as it could become a hot topic,
it carried a certain purpose or indirectly reflected the social atmosphere, touching people's sensitive nerves.
It's easy to blacken someone's name, very easy to speak ill of someone; in the online world, destroying a person is extremely simple.
Just like Teacher Ma at the time, how many people praised him as amazing then, and how many people spoke viciously about him later when they cursed him?
In reality, most of those who praised and those who cursed were the same group of people.
And those who can maintain their own opinions and independent judgment are extremely rare.
This is not their fault; with the development of the times and the openness of the internet, everyone has been tagged under big data surveillance.
With tags, after all behaviors are monitored and categorized into audience segments, it gains advertising significance. For many manufacturers, they can accurately find their target user groups.
However, it is precisely this big data that makes people spend more and more time and feel increasingly empty.
Therefore, before the apocalypse, under that tide of the era, before major technological changes, it was still essentially about deepening existing technologies.
The supply side continuously improved efficiency.
The demand side, with more and more choices, began to continuously shrink demand.
This led to involution.
After involution, content economy was propelled forward, and people had a greater demand for content.
It was essentially two categories: time-saving and time-consuming.
Time-saving content: similar to quick tutorials in certain apps, high-intensity, short-duration knowledge output, saving people the time they would spend learning themselves, saving the time to figure things out little by little.
Time-consuming content: human nature, the satisfaction of human desires. Beautiful women, cute pets, novels that immerse people in fantasy, good movies.
Time-saving is for improvement, to earn more money.
Time-consuming is because more money has been earned, or money hasn't been earned yet but one wants to earn it to achieve certain goals, which cannot be reached immediately, so one first makes do with a 'pie in the sky' solution.
It is also a solution.
As Li Yu thought, he was momentarily speechless; he had actually thought of some aspects of life before the apocalypse and even some past events.
It must be said that this recent farming life has indeed relaxed him greatly, even making him recall his life before the apocalypse.
He gave a self-deprecating smile.
Before his rebirth, during the apocalypse,
Li Yu was actually somewhat broken because he had no family, and everything around him was a wicked reality, a brutal reality without any embellishment. It forced him to passively accept too much negative energy.
In fact, before his rebirth, reality wasn't good enough either, but it had been embellished, and Li Yu couldn't see through it then.
However, after the apocalypse broke out, it made him see through many things.
This reality, without any embellishment, made him feel extremely painful and desperate once he understood it.
He didn't know what to do.
Sometimes, not knowing some things is a greater happiness than knowing them.
Because if you know some things and cannot change them, that is a despairing pain.
In this apocalypse, Li Yu once couldn't trust anyone.
Because after trusting, reality dealt him heavy blows.
No one could be trusted.
It's like a field; if there's no sunlight, no water, no seeds, and not even the diligent sweat of people, can it grow fruit and produce grain?
This piece of land is like Li Yu's heart.
No one could be trusted, only a bleak reality; no one could truly communicate with, no one worth relying on;
He didn't even know what he was living for.
This field of his heart was incredibly desolate, overgrown with weeds.
Even before his rebirth,
Li Yu had become incredibly cold-hearted, able to survive alone, his combat power had increased significantly, and he could cruelly kill people. He could even eat a meal and sleep after killing someone.
There were no difficulties.
However, that was merely existing.
Now, with his family by his side and this farming life, he felt a sense of living.
His second uncle and father had worried about him before because they were concerned about his psychological state; killing is a negative state and always needs to be balanced.
At this moment, he found a way to balance it.
From now on, when he kills again, he'll come farm.
All three mu of land have been planted.
Grandpa's smile was simple and honest. Li Yu took the things from Grandpa's hand and followed him down the mountain.
Behind them, Li Hang and Ding Jiu's daughter, Ding Qingqing, were exchanging glances.
Li Yu saw it and felt like smiling; youth is truly wonderful.
Although he was only two years older than Li Hang, he always felt like he was very old.
Li Yu and Grandpa walked side by side, occasionally hearing Li Hang and Ding Qingqing's conversation.
"Qingqing ~" Li Hang suddenly called out, his tone a bit shy.
"What is it?" Ding Qingqing looked at him with some confusion.
"I have something I want to tell you."
"What is it? Go ahead and say it."
After interacting with Ding Qingqing for a while, Li Hang felt more and more that he liked her.
But he didn't know how to express it, so he asked his older brother, Li Yu.
Li Yu didn't have much experience either, but someone had told him that any doubt could be answered in books.
He also told this to Li Hang.
Li Yu had hoarded many, many books; after all, it was the entire stock of a bookstore.
Plus, he later purchased some other books, so in the base, there was a very large reading room, not much different from a library.
Li Hang looked up some cheesy lines and learned some conversational tactics.
Tactics for pleasing girls.
At this moment, after hearing Ding Qingqing's words, Li Hang scratched his head.
He said to Ding Qingqing:
"My love for you is like a tractor climbing a mountain, roaring and magnificent."
Magnificent, magnificent, magnificent.
Li Yu and Zhao Dapao, walking ahead, nearly stumbled and fell.
Grandpa also heard it and paused his steps, a faint smile playing on his lips: Xiao Hang's literary talent... is quite good.
Li Yu was speechless, covering his forehead with his hand.
Ding Qingqing was also a bit stunned; she had never heard such a direct,
such a corny love confession.
After Li Hang finished speaking, he himself felt something was off, that it wasn't sophisticated enough.
So he said again, "I have one more thing I want to tell you."
His eyes began to deepen, become distant, even carrying a hint of melancholy.
He had a bit of the temperament of Tony Leung before the rebirth, not a perfect imitation, but the tone in his eyes was right.
He slowly opened his mouth:
"A mole,
due to the whiteness of the flesh,
becomes an island:
I miss the vast, shimmering sea
within your clothes."
The evening spring breeze stirred people's hair, strumming the heartstrings of the young, making them feel ticklish.
Some say, take advantage of spring,
like pigs and dogs, find your mate, don't be shy!
