{"id":18164,"date":"2026-06-23T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/?p=18164"},"modified":"2026-06-27T11:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T15:53:13","slug":"teld005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/teld005\/","title":{"rendered":"Two or Three Events in the Last Days 005"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Chapter 5<\/span><\/h1>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Since he could not get in touch with the landlord, Jing Lin could only leave the apartment key under the doormat before departing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

When he reached the security booth, he thanked the guard. Jing Lin unfolded the bamboo mat and placed it in the tricycle. Then he laid Le Le on the mat, positioned the suitcase and the stock pot on opposite sides, opened the umbrella above them, and finally draped the removed duvet cover over the umbrella. It was still hot, but at least Le Le would not be exposed to direct sunlight while lying in the tricycle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

After arranging everything, Jing Lin set off toward home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The sun was blazing overhead, and it did not take long for Jing Lin’s white shirt to become soaked with sweat. In the past, traveling from the city to his home had taken nearly three hours, including transfers and waiting for buses. Jing Lin figured that riding this second-hand tricycle home would probably take at least ten hours.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The traffic conditions improved somewhat on the road leading out of the city. Cars that had not been pushed home by their owners had all been moved to one side and parked in the same direction, leaving half the road open for pedestrians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

A city without cars felt remarkably quiet. Aside from pedestrians, the only people on the road were cyclists. Whenever Jing Lin grew tired, he would find a shady spot to rest. He tried feeding Le Le some porridge that he had stored in a thermos, but Le Le refused to eat it. The moment it touched his tongue, he pushed it back out. Water, however, he swallowed obediently. There was another strange thing as well. Despite the sweltering heat, Le Le did not sweat at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Not counting the red bumps on his body, excessive sleepiness and the inability to sweat were the second strange symptoms Le Le had displayed. Jing Lin could only pray that none of these abnormalities would harm him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Along the way, Jing Lin saw many cars abandoned on the roads. There were no traffic police nearby clearing the streets. Some vehicles had unlocked doors and no one guarding them, while other owners stubbornly remained beside their cars, frowning as they stood watch. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Two or Three Events in the Last Days (TELD)\u00a0 is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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It was already close to lunchtime when Jing Lin left the residential complex. By the time he reached the county where his hometown was located, darkness had long since fallen. Fortunately, the moon was bright enough that he did not have to travel in complete darkness. His clothes had gone through countless cycles of becoming drenched with sweat and drying again. His entire body seemed to give off a sour smell of perspiration. Of the bottled water he had purchased, only one bottle remained. During the journey, Le Le had drunk nearly three bottles by himself. Yet when Jing Lin pressed gently on his lower abdomen, it was neither swollen nor bloated, and Le Le showed no sign of needing to urinate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Once he reached the county seat, home was not far away. Jing Lin rode for nearly another hour before finally entering his village and returning to his own house.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The village lay in complete darkness. The noise of Jing Lin’s arrival only managed to wake the villagers’ dogs, which barked one after another for quite some time before finally settling down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

There was no electricity at home either. He returned once every month to clean the place, and with the doors and windows kept shut, it remained fairly clean despite a somewhat unpleasant smell. After riding for so many hours, Jing Lin found it amazing that he had not completely collapsed from exhaustion. Carrying Le Le, he returned to his bedroom. After giving him some water, Jing Lin lit a candle and drew up a bucket of water from the well in the courtyard. He took a cold bath and then went straight to bed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Jing Lin had been utterly exhausted the previous day. Worried about Le Le, he had briefly woken in a daze that morning, nudged him awake, heard him call out “Uncle,” and then immediately fallen back asleep. He did not wake again until hunger forced him to. Without a phone and with no clock in the house, Jing Lin had no idea what time it was. He washed his face with well water, dug out a partially finished packet of biscuits, ate several mouthfuls, and drank a few gulps of water from the well. Only after getting some food into his stomach did he begin to feel better.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The village where Jing Lin lived was called Chashan Ridge*<\/u>. There was no tea there, despite the name, but there were certainly mountains. Aside from the single road leading into the village, the other three sides were bordered by rice fields and mountains. Jing Lin’s house was located some distance from the village center, near the very end of the settlement, and closest to the mountains. When he was a child, his parents had died in an accident, and the villagers had spread gossip that he and his sister were cursed and brought misfortune to their relatives. After hearing such rumors, his grandfather had built a new house on a different homestead, away from everyone else. As a result, theirs was the only house in the immediate area.
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*Cha shan = Tea Mountain<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Two or Three Events in the Last Days (TELD) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The house was a two-story building of a very ordinary rural style, a simple square structure. The main house stood in the middle of the property, with courtyards in both the front and the back. A concrete driveway wide enough for vehicles ran through the center of the front yard, with vegetable plots on either side. The back yard contained the kitchen, woodshed, storage room, and bathhouse, with several walnut trees growing nearby. Both courtyards were enclosed by walls.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Jing Lin opened the iron gate in the wall and stood by the roadside, looking around.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Although the village was surrounded by mountains on all sides, the land outside the mountains was very flat, allowing him to see far into the distance. The concrete roads in the village had been funded collectively by the villagers themselves, and rice paddies stretched along both sides of the roads. It was now July, the growing season for rice. Jing Lin saw several elderly men carrying pesticide sprayers on their backs as they sprayed the rice fields.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The people still farming in the village were mostly elderly residents and a few women whose families remained there. The younger and middle-aged adults had largely gone elsewhere to work. Although farming subsidies existed, growing crops alone did not bring in much money over the course of a year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

When Jing Lin’s grandfather was still alive, he farmed the land and had also leased two ponds in the village, where he raised fish and cultivated lotus roots. That was how he managed to raise Jing Lin and his sister. After his grandfather passed away, there were still fifteen years remaining on the pond lease. After discussing it with his sister, Jing Lin transferred the lease to a family in the village that had always been on good terms with them. The farmland was rented to that family as well. The pond lease fees and land rent were both settled once at the end of each year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Now Jing Lin was completely out of money, and there was not even a grain of rice left in the house. He could only go and collect this year’s payments in advance. At the same time, he needed to find the village’s elderly doctor and ask about Le Le’s condition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Jing Lin did not know where the old doctor had worked before. Ever since he could remember, the doctor had run a small clinic in the village. Later, he had been hired as the director of the township health center and usually did not return home until evening.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Villagers usually sprayed pesticides either early in the morning or in the late afternoon. Judging by the time, it clearly was not morning, so Jing Lin estimated it was already late afternoon. No wonder hunger had woken him up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

After returning home, Jing Lin cleaned the kitchen and used the traditional earthen stove to boil a kettle of water. He mixed a packet of children’s milk powder in a bowl, cooled it with well water until it was suitable to drink, and carried it upstairs, intending to feed it to Le Le. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Two or Three Events in the Last Days (TELD) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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However, just like before, Le Le refused to eat. Anything fed into his mouth was spat back out while his eyes remained closed. He would only drink water.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Jing Lin had no choice. Not wanting to waste the milk powder, he ended up drinking it himself. Then he left the house, locked the door behind him, and headed toward his destination. <\/span>
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<\/span>The family leasing Jing Lin’s ponds lived in the center of the village. The head of the household was Zhao Chenghuai, and his wife was Zhou Yu. They had only one son, Zhao Zhiwen, who was about the same age as Jing Lin.<\/span><\/p>

When they were children, Zhao Zhiwen was the only kid who had not listened when other children were told not to play with Jing Lin. Zhao Chenghuai and Zhou Yu never stopped him, either. Whenever Jing Lin visited their home, they would even bring out candy for him. Because of that, Jing Lin and Zhao Zhiwen became close childhood friends.<\/span><\/p>

Later, Jing Lin went to college. Zhao Zhiwen was not academically inclined, and after failing the college entrance examination, he left to find work elsewhere. A few years earlier, when his family took over the pond lease, he returned home to help with the work. Although he and Jing Lin no longer lived in the same place, they still chatted online every few days. Whenever Jing Lin came back to the village each month, he would usually meet Zhao Zhiwen for a meal or spend some time catching up with him.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Words from the Translation Crew<\/strong><\/h3>

Miiya: One of two for the week. Meeting many new characters soon, now that they’ve reached the village.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Translator: Miiya<\/em>
Editor:\u00a0<\/em>MushroomKnight73
<\/em>Proofreader:\u00a0<\/em>Yume<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Avid BL reader, editor, and translator with 1 story completed (CLWP) and 1 story in progress (TELD). Support this translation with a Ko-fi. Three Ko-fis will add an extra chapter from the stockpile to the next weekly release.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":15070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[92,35,93],"class_list":["post-18164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-teld","tag-apocalypse","tag-bl","tag-farming"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/clwp.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18164"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18192,"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18164\/revisions\/18192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betwixtedbutterfly.com\/translations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}