Chapter 1

My daughter had been missing for eight years.

Then a man called and said he had bought her. He demanded two hundred thousand yuan to let me take her home.

To prove it, he sent a video.

My precious girl was huddled in a pigsty in thin clothes, her legs locked in iron chains.

But when I arrived with the money, she was already dead.

I swore that everyone who had hurt her would pay in blood.

That day, I was discussing a timber deal when the call came.

The man spoke in heavily accented Mandarin.

“Are you Xu Huaguo? I've got your daughter. Bring two hundred thousand yuan, or I'll kill her!”

Then he added:

“She has a red mole on her bottom and another on her chest, right?”

Every nerve in me went taut.

“Who are you? Where is she?”

“Bring the money. Don't blame me if I kill her!”

He sent a video to make me believe him.

I opened it and saw my daughter chained inside a pigsty.

In the bitter winter cold, she had only a filthy, tattered quilt and a large iron basin filled with a mixture of food.

Her thin clothes barely covered her. Dirty and disheveled, she slept curled on the yellow mud.

Eight years.

I had never imagined that when I saw her again, she would be penned up like livestock, eating pig feed.

She was my princess. I had cherished her and cared for her so carefully.

She should never have been chained up like a dog or a pig.

I called the police at once and went with them to the place where she was held.

She had been trafficked to an impoverished province, an impoverished county, an impoverished village.

The dirt road was rutted and uneven. Towering trees and dense, low thorn bushes hemmed it in.

A world buried deep in the mountains.

The moment I set foot there, despair nearly choked me.

She must have tried to escape.

But how could she?

Even I, a grown man, struggled to get through. What chance had she had?

At last, we reached the isolated village.

Every villager—men, women, old and young—watched us with open hostility.

Outsiders were clearly unwelcome.

Using the surroundings in the video, I headed toward the place where she had been locked up.

Villagers silently followed with farming tools in their hands.

One of the officers spoke quietly.

“With just the few of us, getting your daughter out won't be easy.”

I said nothing.

I only thought: let me see her, and even if it costs my life, I'll get her out of this hell.

But when we reached the pigsty, she wasn't there.

Only the iron basin remained.

The police asked its owner where the woman had gone.

He was about forty, roughly my age.

Thin, dark-skinned, with a conspicuous black mole above his mouth. A hair grew from it.

He stroked the hair and answered casually.

“That woman? Dead.”

Dead.

My daughter was dead.

I had come full of hope. She hadn't even lived long enough to wait for me.

Rage swept away my reason.

My eyes fixed on the woodcutting blade beside the pigsty.

A frantic voice repeated in my head.

Pick it up.

Split this man open.

The officer saw the murderous look in my eyes and grabbed me.

“Kill him and you'll go to prison. You could even be sentenced to death.”

The hot blood in me seemed to freeze.

Death.

The word brought me back.

For this man, dying would take only one blow.

My daughter had suffered for seven years.

He would die in an instant.

How could that be enough?

“You're here for that woman, right?”

There was no wariness on his face.

He stared at the bag in my hand, delight flickering in his dull eyes.

“I'm the one who called. Listen, even if she's dead, I paid for her. You want the body, you pay!”

While she was alive, he had forced her to bear his children.

Even dead, he wanted to wring out her last value, turn her into money.

My fists clenched. My breathing grew rapid.

“Go to hell!”

I couldn't control it anymore. I drove my fist into his face.

He fell.

“You dare hit me?”

“I don't just want to hit you. I want to kill—”

My gaze locked on the blade again. I wanted to pick it up and bring it down on his head.

The officer seized my shoulders.

His grip was hard. He leaned close.

“Calm down!”

The villagers nearby took hold of their tools and advanced, glaring.

The other officer waved his hands and forced a smile.

“A misunderstanding! Just a misunderstanding!”

“A misunderstanding?”

The man scrambled up.

Blood ran from his nose. He covered it.

“You're her father, aren't you? I was going to take pity on you. Since she's dead, a hundred thousand would've been enough to take her away. Now, without two hundred thousand, you won't get so much as a finger!”

I panted and twisted, but couldn't break free.

Of the two officers with me, one tried to mediate. The other, Officer Li, held me tight and kept urging me to calm down.

“Your daughter is already dead. If you kill him, you'll pay with your life too. Think carefully, Mr. Xu. Is he worth it?”

After a long time, I finally regained control.

I turned away from the face I wanted to hack apart.

I couldn't kill him.

I absolutely couldn't.

I repeated it to myself.

Death was the easiest thing in the world.

What I needed was to make him suffer ten thousand times what my daughter had suffered.

I became very calm.

“She's dead. Why should I pay? That woman has nothing to do with me.”

He picked his ear, flicked away the wax, and eyed me sideways.

“Nothing to do with you? Then why did you start shouting and hitting me the moment you saw me?”

“A living woman dies in your hands, and you're still trying to sell her corpse. What sort of person does something that vile? Who else should I hit?”

I forced the anger out of my voice and continued.

“I'm a businessman. I've noticed the timber around here. I'm considering buying it.”

He looked at me suspiciously.