When April comes each year, the flowers will turn red, the willows green, the waters clear, and the hills green. There are many early risers in this season.

Zhang Yang walked out of his house, watching the white sky being dyed slowly by the orange hues of the sunrise. The fish ponds nearby were glittering with a golden glow. Wearing a proud and self-satisfied look, he felt that the light was warm and gorgeous, giving him hope and expectation. It was his second year he had been running the fish ponds. He earned more than 60,000 yuan last year and could hopefully earn more than 100,000 yuan this year. His father Lao Zhang, who had also got up early in the morning, was mixing fish food at the back of the house with a polished crutch beside, while his mother Fan Ying was preparing to cook the breakfast.

His parents once strayed into an evil cult

Zhang Yang, 21, is a second-generation fisherman. Ever since he could remember, he knew there were two fish ponds managed by his family. His father often went to the market before dawn, while his mother took care of the ponds at home. When someone came to buy fish, Zhang Yang would help his mother with catching fish and weighing it. Their life was the envy of people from nearby villages.

The turning point came when Zhang Yang was in his second year of junior high school. His father had a car accident on the way to deliver fish to customers, which resulted in one of his legs being amputated and all the family's savings being spent. As a result, Zhang Yang’s father became bad-tempered. His mother had to take care of both his father and their fish ponds, which made her tired physically and mentally. Zhang Yang remembered those days as a time of darkness, often filled with his father’s angry cursing and his mother’s quiet sobbing. When there were no quarrels in the family, it would be horribly silent.

Zhang Yang was often shut out of his home when he came back as the gate of his house was bolted from inside. He knew that some mysterious people must have come to his home in the name of “God”. So he asked his mother who those people were, and she told him they were “kind-hearted people” sent by "God" to help their family. His father also gave the same answer to his question. A long time had passed before Zhang Yang knew that both his father and mother had believed in "God". Sometimes he found his mother kneeling on the edge of the bed, praying for “God’s blessings".

Zhang Yang vaguely felt that his family went into disorder: his parents cared only about “God” instead of fish-farming. But little did the still-young boy know that his parents had become followers of the "Almighty God" evil cult.

His family got poorer and poorer because of the cult

It was a period of helplessness for Zhang Yang's family after his father got injured, so the “Almighty God” evil cult members took advantage of it, telling Zhang Yang's parents that only by believing in "God" could they avoid worse disasters. Thus, Zhang Yang's parents began to seek the protection of “God”.

When Zhang Yang's father Lao Zhang recovered from his injury, he was able to take care of the fish ponds again even though he had some difficulty in moving. Zhang Yang’s mother Fan Ying took up the job of selling fish. But it was unknown why Fan Ying often took a few baskets of fish out for sale without bringing back a cent of money. As Fan Ying hadn’t concentrated her mind on the fish ponds, while Lao Zhang was unable to manage them alone, it became increasingly difficult for the family to sustain the operation of the fish ponds. Later, they couldn't even afford to contract for the fish ponds. In the end, Lao Zhang had to abandon the fish ponds dejectedly after catching the last fish in them. Was it because they hadn’t raised the fish well or because they couldn’t sell it? No, neither of them! It was because Lao Zhang’s wife Fan Ying had given all the earnings from selling fish to the “Almighty God” organization as “dedication money” to “God”.

By the time Zhang Yang entered the second year of high school, his family was too poor to afford his tuition, so he was had to drop out of school. Being persuaded by his mother to believe in “Almighty God”, he had a big quarrel with his mother before going out to work in a place away from his hometown.

The local village provided his family with timely support

Lao Zhang couldn’t understand how their life had become like this, but his grown-up son Zhang Yang knew that it was because his parents were blinded and led astray by the “Almighty God” cult.

Over the years, Zhang Yang has been working outside and has learned a lot, knowing that happiness will not come from the sky and that a good life can only be achieved through hard work. Therefore, when his father Lao Zhang told him on the phone that the Village had asked his family whether they wanted to contract for the fish ponds again, Zhang Yang immediately told his father to accept the offer. The Village Party Branch Secretary encouraged Lao Zhang by saying, “You have fish-raising skills. As long as you put your mind into fish-raising, you won’t have to worry about not making money. It is better to think about how to raise fish than to think about anything else. You must trust the government, its policies, and your hands. Only in this way can you live a good life.”

With the support of the Village Communist Party Branch Committee and the Villagers' Autonomous Committee, Lao Zhang's family contracted for three fish ponds in the name of their son Zhang Yang. The total area of the three ponds is twice as large as that of their former two ponds. Zhang Yang came up with a new idea of raising ornamental fish in one of the fish ponds; besides, he launched the fishing business allowing people to fish in the ponds. Meanwhile, Zhang Yang’s mother Fan Ying, a devout “Almighty God” follower who had been staying in a “host family” for cultic activities, was driven away after she got a serious skin disease. Then, she lost the ability to “indoctrinate” new members, as she had been abandoned as a useless woman by the “Almighty God”. Unexpectedly, she still believed in "God’s words" after recovery from her illness, except that she no longer brought her "church brothers and sisters" to her home. In her eyes, her husband and son were two “Satans” of her family, with one of them being an unfaithful follower of “Almighty God” and the other being a strong opponent of it.

The chairman of the Village Women's Federation visited Fan Ying repeatedly to talk to her, persuading her to quit the evil cult. After all, Fan Ying couldn’t give up her family affection, love, and friendship as the "Almighty God" had required. With doubts about the cult emerging in her mind, she no longer went out to attend the gatherings. Instead, she began to help take care of the fish ponds, and the fish she cooked for the family also appeared on the dinner table. Zhang Yang, the second-generation fisherman of his family, bought a hat for his father and a dress for his mother with the money earned from selling fish.

On New Year's Eve, Fan Ying prepared a large table of dishes, resuming their family’s ancestor worship ceremony. Although none of their relatives came to attend the ceremony, three family members sat together around the table for quite a while, talking about their ancestors opening up wasteland and building roads for the benefit of their village.

On the second day of the lunar New Year, Zhang Yang joined the village pandemic prevention and control service team and went on duty at the village entrance checkpoint. This is his hometown, the place where he was born and raised. The prosperity of his family depends on this land, and he is determined to make contributions for this land.