When Hu Wei saw his mother again, she was no longer the person he recognized.

A great fire in old Guan Yinli had burned the Lin family’s old house into a pile of charcoal. Though Lin Xiufen had escaped through the flames and made it to the door when the incident occurred, all the surrounding neighbors had already moved away. By the time the nearest rescue personnel arrived at the scene, Lin Xiufen had already fallen into a coma from severe burns, her entire body so badly damaged that not even a patch of good skin could be seen.

The fire came suddenly, and what followed was complete chaos.

Since Lin Xiufen’s parents were both dead and her only sister was abroad and had long severed contact with the country, when it came down to it, the only blood relative who could seek justice for her was seventeen-year-old Hu Wei.

However, at the emergency room entrance, the underage Hu Wei didn’t even have the right to sign for Lin Xiufen’s treatment. After much discussion, it was finally her ex-husband Hu Chong, divorced from her for many years, who signed for Lin Xiufen.

When paying the surgery fees, Hu Wei heard his father’s cursing voice. He was saying: “I’m covering for her now, can’t let her die, otherwise how can we make those real estate developers cough up the money? This house was definitely burned down by them.”

His father’s phone conversation grew distant, and Hu Wei looked at his mother in the hospital room, her entire body wrapped in bandages. Suddenly, the phone ringing in the emergency room, arguing voices, the sound of stretchers being wheeled, and nurses making their rounds all mixed together into a thunderclap hidden in dark clouds. When Hu Wei looked up, he realized those dark clouds had already pressed down heavily upon him.

In that incredibly chaotic moment, inexplicably, Hu Wei remembered the scene from his last visit to his mother’s house.

It was clearly the brightest afternoon of midsummer, yet old Guan Yinli was like a ghost town, with small houses standing empty one after another.

Walking through those long, winding lanes, Hu Wei suddenly felt that old Guan Yinli was like an abandoned ant colony. A giant was about to crush it underfoot with a single step, and the shadow of that giant cast upon his mother’s house was like a dark cloud that wouldn’t dissipate.

They thought they were human beings, and what was coming was just a rainstorm.

However, they were actually just ants beneath the giant’s feet.

Thinking of this, a tremendous sense of powerlessness flooded over Hu Wei like a tide.

He wanted to save his mother, but Hu Wei had no money. He wanted to seek revenge against the giant, but how many years would it take for an ant to defeat a giant?

Seventeen-year-old Hu Wei raised his head, the giant’s form shrouded in dark clouds.

Under the hospital’s full treatment, Lin Xiufen’s injuries temporarily stabilized, but the subsequent hospitalization costs remained a bottomless pit.

Initially, Hu Wei had been constantly worried that his father, who had never had much affection for his mother, would give up treatment. However, the Hu family clearly had other plans for Lin Xiufen’s injuries.

Lawyers entered the Hu family’s door one after another. Even though Hu Chong would drive Hu Wei into the bedroom each time, telling him that his immediate priority was the upcoming college entrance exam, Hu Wei still couldn’t control himself.

He tiptoed and pressed his ear against the door panel, hearing his father and uncle’s voices coming through.

“They’ve already said that their commercial district is basically ready and just needs one final push. They don’t want us making a big fuss, but they’re definitely willing to pay up anyway.”

“It’s actually good she didn’t burn to death. If she had died, they’d only pay one lump sum. This way, keeping her hanging, we can trouble them anytime.”

“I’m just worried these people might play dirty. Xiao Lin just got into college, and Xiao Wei is about to take his college entrance exam. We still need to be careful and not push too hard.”

After listening for a while, Hu Wei returned to his desk. He looked at the white test papers in front of him, but his mind was filled with images of his mother’s clean, fair hands when she used to serve him rice.

Now those clean, fair hands were gone. The last time Hu Wei had gone to the hospital, his mother’s hand was hanging lifelessly in mid-air, with pus seeping through layers of bandages.

After that fire, Lin Xiufen had become a burden, but for the Hu family, she was also a card they could play repeatedly.

Half a month later, the police gave their investigation results. The cause of the fire at the Lin family’s old house was aging electrical circuits, which coincidentally ignited flammable demolition debris scattered on the ground nearby. Combined with the fact that the old Western-style house was originally wooden construction, once a fire started, it often led to disaster.

Through the door, Hu Wei heard the police leave, and his father immediately called his brother. He said: “The police didn’t say it was arson, but it’s still related to their demolition. Have the lawyer bite down on this point later—they must cough up the money.”

In the small room, his father’s voice was so clear, like a hand suddenly gripping Hu Wei’s heart.

The long-awaited justice never came; what came was just another bargaining chip.

Why wasn’t it arson? Why did his father just accept it? Why should his mother be treated this way? Why could a person’s life be degraded to such a level?

Hu Wei angrily clenched his fists, his ears buzzing. Those dark clouds descended once again, and piercing through the cloud layer, Hu Wei vaguely saw the giant’s form.

There was even his father’s face among them.

Hu Wei refused to accept it.

Even if everyone in the world treated his mother as an ant that could be toyed with and crushed to death, to Hu Wei, she was different.

Hu Wei couldn’t forget how she looked watering roses in the sunlight, nor could he forget her smile when she waved goodbye to him at the door.

From very early on, Hu Wei had understood that his mother didn’t abandon him and stay in that house because she didn’t love him.

She simply had no choice.

Because no one in the world would care about what an ant treasured, not even her life—it was just a chess piece.

Hu Wei gritted his teeth, then suddenly locked his room door and returned to his desk.

That night, Hu Wei went online and randomly created several accounts, beginning to anonymously post about his mother’s experiences in Guan Yinli on various portal websites. At first, no one paid attention, until Hu Wei posted photos of the burned old house on a forum, causing an immediate uproar.

A large number of residents who had been forced to move from old Guan Yinli began responding on the forum. People successively revealed that the compensation terms given by Guan Yinli were unfair. Within hours, the incident began to rapidly ferment. Hu Wei, who had locked himself in his room, hadn’t even had time to celebrate when a furious pounding on his door yanked him back to reality.

Hu Chong had already discovered it.

Before his father’s fists, Hu Wei had nowhere to hide, but this storm-like emotional outburst came and went quickly—not for any other reason, but because the phone in his father’s pocket also began ringing non-stop.

Hu Wei’s anonymity clearly hadn’t made him invisible, and when the previously delicate balance was broken, the already-negotiated business naturally began to have complications.

His father soon had no time to bother with Hu Wei, and Hu Wei took the opportunity to run out the door. He ran through the streets, breathing deeply the air of victory.

The ant had won!

Hu Wei thought excitedly—as long as a thousand ants could unite, they could win it all… they could get their justice back.

The seventeen-year-old young man ran wildly through the night, all the way back to old Guan Yinli, sneaking into the restricted area blocked by wire fencing, wanting to tell this news to his mother in his memories.

Yes, his mother and Guan Yinli, Guan Yinli and his mother—these two couldn’t be separated.

Hu Wei finally stopped, gasping for breath, outside that burned old house. He took out his phone, wanting to loudly read some of the replies he’d just seen. However, he soon froze in place.

The page was blank.

Hu Wei was shocked to discover that in just one short hour, the news he’d just posted online had disappeared, and his original forum posts were gone too… everything was gone.

He directly searched for “Guan Yinli fire.” At first, one or two news articles appeared, but after refreshing, these news stories vanished like wisps of smoke.

A night breeze blew, and Hu Wei shivered. Before he could stubbornly continue, Hu Chong’s call came.

What happened next, no one had anticipated.

Hu Chong’s call wasn’t to scold Hu Wei, but to immediately ask where he was, his tone extremely tense.

Hu Wei didn’t dare tell his father the truth, only stammering that he was out having dinner. He thought Hu Chong would soon come looking for him angrily, but instead, his father only told him to stay in crowded places and not come home for now, to avoid bringing trouble upon himself.

Hu Wei was frightened and stammered, asking what was wrong.

His father’s next words directly chilled half of Hu Wei’s blood.

He said: “Your cousin was hit by a car outside and is still being resuscitated at the hospital. You know what trouble you’ve caused yourself. From now on, don’t run around anymore, so no one comes looking for trouble with you.”

After hanging up, Hu Wei’s legs went weak, and he leaned directly against Guan Yinli’s dilapidated wall.

He didn’t dare go home and spent the night at a 24-hour McDonald’s. When he received a call from home the next day, his cousin Hu Lin had already died from his severe injuries.

Police investigation found that Hu Lin, suspected of being the anonymous whistleblower about old Guan Yinli’s demolition, had encountered a car accident while avoiding media interviews. Before the incident, he had even been about to call home.

Hu Wei returned home with his mind completely blank.

At McDonald’s, he hadn’t slept all night, continuously watching news related to Guan Yinli. But those enthusiastic responses from not long ago had completely vanished.

Except for cousin Hu Lin’s death, everything that happened last night seemed like a hallucination.

The ants had returned to dust, and the fate awaiting Hu Wei was something he had never imagined before.

Because of his cousin’s death, his uncle and aunt, who had always been decent to Hu Wei, directly turned against him. They firmly believed that Hu Lin had died because of retaliation from the Guan Yinli real estate developers, and demanded that Hu Chong give them an explanation for their son’s death.

Hu Lin’s mangled corpse was still at the funeral home, and after several days of arguing, finally, Hu Wei, cowering in the corner, saw his father slowly turn his head. His face was full of exhaustion, but in that instant, Hu Wei already had a premonition in his heart.

He too was about to become one of his father’s “business deals.”

In the end, Hu Chong reached an agreement with his brother to compensate them with his own son. The family pulled strings to make the car accident victim become Hu Wei, while Hu Wei became his cousin who would have to repeat a year of school, formally adopted by his uncle and aunt.

By this point, because of that night’s decision, Hu Wei’s life had been completely changed.

His mother ultimately couldn’t survive that winter either. The giant effortlessly tore apart Hu Wei’s family, took away his mother, and had him betrayed by his father.

Hu Wei was forced to become another person, and as the murderer who had killed his cousin, his days after adoption naturally wouldn’t be easy. Faced with his uncle and aunt’s scolding, Hu Wei couldn’t say a word. He could only slowly endure, slowly persevere, storing what happened that summer in the deepest part of his heart, occasionally going back to look at it in the depths of night, alone savoring that hatred.

Later, Guan Yinli was rebuilt. On the ruins of old Guan Yinli, new Guan Yinli rose from the ground. Ironically, it even retained the original layout, all to restore Guan Yinli’s “local customs and culture.”

After graduating from a second-tier university, Hu Wei used Hu Lin’s name to apply for a small real estate agency near Guan Yinli. Five years later, he had returned to this familiar yet strange “home.”

After new Guan Yinli was completed, the shops didn’t sell as expected. Within half a year, many houses had gradually become vacant, with prices written all over the blackboard outside the real estate agency.

Among them, Guan Yinli No. 29 was written at the very bottom, crooked and askew.

This was a house built at the cost of his mother’s life.

Hu Wei stared expressionlessly at those white chalk characters, finally erasing the monthly rent at the end and rewriting it in red chalk.

He thought, perhaps ants could never defeat giants in this lifetime, and ants could never unite together, but even so, the ant’s revenge would not stop.

His revenge was just beginning now.