Chapter 4

Someone said:

“A bit skinny. Small hips too. Probably won't give you a son.”

Aunt Huang bristled.

“She's a university student! Educated!”

“That's exactly what I want!”

Chen Jin hurried to soothe her and respectfully handed over the rest of the money.

“Count it, Aunt Huang…”

My phone had recorded the whole exchange.

I sent the video to Officer Li.

Then I picked up the woodcutting blade and rushed out.

Chen Jin. Aunt Huang.

Die.

Caught unprepared, Chen Jin fell under my blade.

His arm split open, flesh and blood scattering. White bone showed deep in the wound.

Not enough.

I raised the blade and struck his other arm.

He writhed and struggled like a dog.

The villagers froze. With a blade in my hand, none dared come close.

Aunt Huang reacted first. She cursed in the local dialect.

“Fuck you, Chen Jin! You dared trick me!”

Then she shouted:

“People! This man can't be allowed to live! Leave him alive, and I'll never bring stock here again!”

I sprang up and swung at her.

Chen Jin was a source of evil. Aunt Huang was its ringleader. Every day she remained alive meant another young woman could suffer humiliation and misery.

Her mind was quick, but her heavy body was clumsy.

My blade struck her knee.

Blood coated the shining steel.

She dropped to the ground and screamed like a pig at slaughter.

“Help!”

Her scream jolted the villagers into action.

Someone took a knife and came for me.

I didn't care. I would willingly trade my life for theirs.

With both hands, I raised the blade toward the top of her head.

“Die!”

“Don't move!”

A shout rang out. Armed police appeared around the villagers.

Officer Li's order was for them—and for me.

He didn't want me to kill.

As the police pulled me away, I kicked and struck at Aunt Huang and Chen Jin like a madman.

In the end, they restrained me.

They arrested Aunt Huang and took all the trafficked women out of the village.

The investigation found that she had sold more than thirty young women, five of them intellectually disabled.

Following the leads, police discovered she had also killed three children during abduction and transport.

When the sedatives wore off, the girls woke.

Afraid someone would hear their cries and struggles, she covered their mouths and noses with a wet cloth and suffocated them.

Trafficking, intentional homicide, offenses against corpses—the charges added up to a death sentence.

Her death saddened me.

She was merely shot.

It was too easy. She never tasted what the girls she abducted and killed had endured.

Fortunately, Chen Jin was still waiting for my revenge.

Officer Li repeatedly said a complaint would put him in prison.

I still refused.

After a few days in detention, he was released.

As he walked toward the village, I caught him unawares and struck his head with a club.

He passed out.

I rented a house and dumped him in its basement.

I stripped off his clothes and locked iron restraints around his neck and legs.

At first, he thought I was an undercover officer.

“Brother, I didn't do anything. I even helped you lure Aunt Huang into the trap. You shouldn't arrest me.”

I lit a charcoal brazier. An iron bar lay among the glowing coals.

I took it and asked:

“What do you do with a newly bought woman who won't obey?”

“Beat her…”

He answered instinctively, then fell silent and knelt.

“What did I do wrong? Why have you taken me?”

“How do you beat her?”

I lifted the bar and slowly approached, smiling.

“With an iron bar?”

He looked frightened.

“Please don't hit me.”

“Guoguo said that too, didn't she? Did you stop hitting her?”

I lashed his back.

The smell of burned flesh filled my nose.

He screamed. A finger-wide red mark ran from his back toward his waist.

“Did you stop?”

I seized his hair and pressed the tip of the bar against his stomach.

“Guoguo was stubborn, wasn't she? Headstrong?

“You wanted to teach her a lesson. So you threw her into the pigsty. Froze her, starved her, pushed her head underwater. Didn't you?”

At last, he understood who I was.

Yellow liquid ran between his legs. He crouched, hands over his head.

“I didn't! I was joking that day!”

“Then I'll joke with you.”

Like a madman, I struck him with the hot bar.

He curled on the floor, screaming, begging for mercy.

Only when his voice weakened did I stop.

I wouldn't beat him to death.

For him, death would be the gentlest release.

I wouldn't let him have it so easily.

Meeting him had been Guoguo's misfortune.

Meeting me would leave him unable even to die.

I kept him in the basement.

All he had was a ragged blanket from a rubbish bin and spoiled food from another.

Everything she had endured, I made him endure in turn.

One day, I returned.

He shrank into a corner like a mouse seeing a cat.

“I was wrong. Please, let me go!”

“Kneel and kowtow a hundred times to apologize to Guoguo. Then I'll consider it.”

I took her photograph from my clothes, intending to make him bow before it.

Then I thought of how repulsive he was.

She wouldn't want to see him.

He had already begun bowing and counting.

“One.

“Two.”

…

“Ninety-nine.

“One hundred.”

He looked up like a dog.

“That's… a hundred.”

“Not hard enough. I want blood all over your face. Then I'll let you go.”

He obeyed again.

Perhaps he really believed me. His head struck so hard that I could hear dull knocks against the concrete.

“A hundred.”

He looked up again.

His forehead was bloody.

I glanced at him.

“A hundred? I thought you were only at thirteen. Keep going.”

The pleading, ingratiating look vanished. He glared.

“It was a hundred.”

I struck him.

“Keep going!”

He wouldn't.

I poured the chili water I had prepared over him.

“Do it!”

“Ah!”

The hot bar had left his skin raw. The chili water made him scream.

“Again!”

He understood I was deliberately tormenting and toying with him.

Curled on the floor, his body twitched as the chili burned his damaged skin.

Still, he forced out curses.

“Your daughter's called Guoguo, right? Ha! She deserved to die! I was already doing that to her before she was fifteen!

“She knelt and cried from the pain. The more she cried, the happier I was. I tormented her until she couldn't even move!”

My heart pounded.

Rage almost drove it out of my chest.

“Die!”

I snatched the knife beside me and stabbed wildly, past caring about anything.