I am a dwarf, twenty-one years old.

To make me carry on the family line, my family bought me three men.

The first cost 3,200 yuan. He did not live out that winter.

The second cost 2,400. My parents turned around and sold him on to someone else.

The third cost 5,000—a “prestigious-university student” the traffickers had lured out of the city.

Every one of them tried to run, many times.

But no one who entered our village—

ever got out alive.

Before I turned eighteen, I was the family’s criminal.

Because I was a girl—and the only child.

For as long as I could remember, I had never once been allowed to eat at the table.

My father beat me often; old wounds never closed before new scars were added.

Every New Year and festival, he would drag me to my grandparents’ grave to kowtow and confess my sins.

I thought my life would simply be this...

Until the year I turned eighteen, when everything suddenly changed.

At dinnertime, for the first time in history, my father pointed to the stool beside the table. “Sit. Eat.”

I dared not move—until his fist was about to land on my face, and I scrambled to the table.

There was a plate of scrambled eggs. He tipped them all into my bowl. “You’re grown now. From now on, you’ll bear this family as many children as you can.”

I said nothing. My heart hammered.

Bear children? How? With whom?

My father seemed to read my thoughts. “I’ve bought you a man.”

A few days later, he brought a man home.

He was better-looking than anyone in the village.

Fair skin, two faint dimples when he smiled, a soft, gentle way of speaking.

The very opposite of my father.

As much as I hated my father, I liked him that much.

Men bought by other households were sent to the fields before dawn, fed sour scraps and leftovers, and beaten whenever the mood struck.

But I treated him wonderfully: secretly saving my own rations to share with him, knitting him a sweater stitch by stitch, giving him every coin I had saved over the years.

Sister Ajuan could not bear to watch. She pulled me into a corner.

“Don’t be too good to men brought in from outside.”

“They have no conscience. You can never tame them.”

“Care too much about a man, and you’ll be unlucky for life.”

I decided she was jealous—jealous that my man was handsomer and gentler than hers.

So I treated him even more devotedly.

Only later did I learn that Sister Ajuan had told the truth.

Men from outside truly cannot be tamed.

One night, while the whole family slept, he quietly pried the door open and ran.

But he did not know that no outsider had ever walked out of this village alive.

There were hidden stakes at the village entrance, traps along the roads, and sentries taking shifts through the night.

He could never escape.

And so, before dawn, he was dragged back.

Torches blazed in our courtyard, lighting up his broken body.

A hemp rope was cinched tight around his neck; one leg bent at an unnatural angle; blood ran from his temple to his chin. Even breathing seemed to cost him everything.

Raising his eyes and seeing me, he suddenly tugged up the corner of his mouth—a smile cold and cutting.

“I hate you.”

“You’re all devils...”

“Your whole village deserves to burn in hell.”

For every sentence, my father swung the wooden club down once.

Twice.

Three times...

Until he could make no sound at all.

He was dead.

And my heart seemed to die along with him...

In our village, my family actually counted as a prominent household.

My father was the village chief; my mother was the village’s only teacher.

By rights, a family like ours should never have needed to buy a man.

But I suffered a grave illness at birth.

When I grew up, my height stopped forever at one meter ten.

I am a dwarf.

No man in the village was willing to marry me; they would rather empty their family coffers to buy an able-bodied bride from outside.

My father was set on my leaving the family an heir, so he kept buying men from outside for me.

A few days ago, my mother told me they had spent five thousand to order fresh goods from the traffickers again.

A prestigious-university student, no less.

Eighteen years old, one meter eighty tall, in perfect health.

My parents were delighted. With stock like that, the son born of it was bound to be sturdy, they said.

He was originally due the following week.

But on the third day, he arrived early.

When they threw him into our courtyard, he was covered in wounds, not a single patch of good flesh—plainly “taught a lesson” the hard way.

Without another word, my parents locked him straight into my room.

Then through the door they tossed out one line: “Until you bear a child, neither of you comes out.”

I suspected they already knew that the second man they bought and I had never shared a bed at all.

That was why, half a year on, my belly showed not the slightest sign.

They had resold him to another village household that wanted a son; by now, I heard, he had a new bride of his own.

The room held only me and my third man.

Even huddled at the foot of the bed, he still towered over me by a head.

He glared at me, his eyes like those of a man about to kill.

I could never understand it.

Why did every man my parents bought detest me, just as my father did?

I sighed and said dully, “Shall we have a child? Once there’s a child, my parents won’t mistreat you. They favor men.”

He looked as if he had heard the greatest joke on earth. He sat stunned for a long while, then suddenly burst out laughing.

By the end, the laughter sounded like weeping.

Without being asked, he told me his story.

He had been waiting for a classmate downstairs from a KTV next to his university when an auntie asked him to show her the way. Thinking nothing of it, he followed. At a roadside supermarket she went in, bought two bottles of water, and handed him one in thanks. He had barely taken one sip when he blacked out. When he woke again, he was already locked inside a car. All the way here he had tried to escape countless times; each time he was caught, they beat him within an inch of his life, harder every time—one ear was nearly beaten deaf.

When he finished, I said quietly, “If you won’t have a child with me, it won’t be only beatings. My parents will sell you to the old widows in the village—women with no man who still want sons.”

He panicked at once, nearly screaming: “Let me go, let me go now! I’m begging you! I have a girlfriend! I can’t stay here! I can’t have children with you...”

That night, nothing happened between us.

We lay fully clothed, back to back, the whole night through.

Early the next morning, my mother pushed the door in carrying two bowls of congee.

Her eyes swept the sheet at once. Finding none of the traces she expected, her face darkened instantly.

“I’ll give you one month. If there is still no child, I’ll hack your legs off and hold the two of you down myself to breed.”

With that, she turned and left.

The door was locked from outside.

I sat at the table and looked at the man, his face ashen gray. “If you truly cannot bear it, I’ll ask my parents to find someone else to have the child.”

The air suddenly froze.

He jerked his head up, lips trembling; in a few short seconds his shoulders sank again, inch by inch, and he asked hoarsely, “If there’s a child... will you let me go?...”

I shook my head and told him the truth. “No. Once you enter our village, there is no precedent for anyone getting out.”

He said nothing more, as if his soul had been hollowed out.

I bowed my head and drank the congee. It was already cold, a paste sticking in my throat that would not go down.

Only when my bowl was nearly empty did he speak again. “Don’t change it. I don’t want to be sold to another house.”

That night, he was the one who came to me...

In the dark, I heard his breathing, heavy and chaotic; his hands shook violently.

His movements were stiff and brutal—no desire, only despair.

The whole time, both of us might as well have been under torture.

It ended quickly. He pulled away at once, turned his back to me, his voice breaking beyond control.

“I’m so filthy...”

“I’ve betrayed her...”

“I miss her so much...”

In that moment I understood: a girl had lived in his heart all along.

She must be beautiful, clever, tall—to be longed for like that.

At any rate, nothing like me: ugly, coarse, thin and small as a stone no one could love.

From then on, we applied ourselves to “making a baby” as if conceiving as fast as possible could buy a thread of life.

He said, “Once you’re pregnant, I never want to do this again in my life.”

I said nothing.

Because I knew perfectly well that my parents had spent five thousand yuan buying him; they would never let us have just one.

“By the way. My name is Xin Sheng.”

He added suddenly, “You can call me A-Sheng.”

It was the first time a man had ever told me his name of his own accord.

Something in my chest trembled faintly.

A-Sheng.

For the rest of that night, I repeated the name silently to myself—four hundred and fifty-nine times.

A month later, my mother came bringing the village barefoot doctor.

After a simple examination, the doctor said, “It’s still early, but by the looks of it... she should be pregnant.”

Everyone exhaled in relief.

A-Sheng and I were finally allowed out of that room.

All his wounds had healed, but he was terribly thin, his face unnaturally pale.

Only in his eyes had a faint new light appeared.

I asked him, “Would you like to take a walk outside? The scenery up on the mountain is lovely.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, very slightly. “All right.”

That one “all right” felt as though it had been waited for, for a very long time...

Up on the mountain, A-Sheng looked strangely happy.

He ran along the path, humming off-key, an unfamiliar lightness in his voice.

I followed behind, wanting to catch hold of him, but I could reach no higher than his thigh.

He was simply too tall.

He stopped, looked down at me, and slowly crouched.

Until his line of sight was level with mine.

In that instant, I felt the distance between us shrink to almost nothing.

Again I began giving him my whole heart—even more than I had given my first man.

Knowing he was a university student, I secretly dug out the old poetry anthology my mother kept at the bottom of her trunk and haltingly read it to him.

He stared, then lifted his eyes to me. “You can read?”

I nodded.

But he did not want to discuss verse. Instead, he taught me to recite articles of law.

“Article 240 of the Criminal Law: Whoever abducts and traffics in women or children shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years and not more than ten years and shall also be fined; under any of the following circumstances, the sentence shall be fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years or life imprisonment...”

He said, “If I hadn’t come here, in four years I would have become a judge.”

“Do you know what a judge is?”

I shook my head.

“Someone who sits in judgment on your parents—and on the traffickers who seized me.”

“They are all bad people, guilty of the most heinous crimes—people the whole world ought to judge.”

I dimly felt he was right. But in our village there were no judges, and no bad people either.

Much of the time, A-Sheng kept me at arm’s length.

Sometimes he would sit with me on the threshold reciting law articles; sometimes he would not speak to me for days on end.

It hurt. But he was already the kindest person I had known in years.

One afternoon, while A-Sheng was out working, my mother suddenly came home.

She rarely appeared at this hour.

As soon as she entered, she fixed me with a stare, her gaze heavy and cold.

“You’ve fallen for that man again?”

“A man bought from outside can never truly care for you. Have you forgotten the last one?”

“They can only be tools for breeding, beasts of burden. You must not feel affection for them—much less treat them as a husband or family. Do you remember that?”

I swallowed and suddenly asked, “Ma, what about Dad? What do you treat him as?”

Her face changed drastically. The next instant, a slap landed hard on my cheek.

She glared at me, her voice loud and urgent.

“Your father is right! You’re nothing but a useless, money-losing thing!”

“Nothing in your head but men—and no one will ever truly like you.”

“If your father weren’t capable, forget three men—not even one would take you!”

I cried.

When my father lashed me until I was covered in blood with thorn branches, I had never cried.

But now I cried.

I was in agony.

Sleeping with men who disliked me, even loathed me; pinned beneath them for that act, again and again, until I conceived a child.

I was in agony too.

After a long while, my mother bent down and touched my swollen face.

“Ma was wrong...”

“I shouldn’t have taught you to read. I shouldn’t have given you books.”

“I taught you wrong. I’ve ruined you.”

As the words left her, my father lurched in drunk from outside, reeking of alcohol, cursing and muttering.

“Stinking woman—bring me water to wash my feet, now!”

My mother’s body went rigid. She turned and hurried over to steady him, then expertly drew the water, carried the basin, removed his shoes, washed his feet, and massaged them.

The whole sequence flowed without a hitch.

As natural as breathing.

My father squinted in pleasure, then suddenly lifted a foot and splashed water all over her face.

She did not dodge; she did not even blink, only quietly wiped it away.

My father glanced at me, then turned back to my mother. “Tell me—this one she’s carrying, could it be a son?”

My mother kept her head bowed. “It should... should be.”

He flew into a sudden rage and kicked over the foot basin; hot water spilled across the floor. “Three women and not one can bear a son? What use is she alive! If my line ends here, none of you will have an easy day of it!”

That night, A-Sheng and I lay side by side in bed, a river between us.

He said, “You’re nothing like your parents.”

I did not answer.

He laughed low, coldness in his voice. “Two black hearts, and they raised a red one. Truly interesting.”

After a long silence, I asked softly, “A-Sheng, will you love our child?”

He did not answer.

I went on, “No one has loved me since I was small. If I have a daughter—will it be the same for her?”

He said, “What matters most for a person is self-love. To love yourself.”

My heart sank inch by inch.

I changed the subject. “We’ll live out this life together, safe and sound, won’t we?”

I knew he understood.

Just as I had always understood: he loathed this village, loathed me, loathed everything before his eyes, yet had to feign obedience.

He was waiting.

Waiting for a chance.

Recently the village gossip had grown thicker. Behind our backs, many said our family name would change before long, because I treated my bought man too preciously.

My mother’s greatest pain in life was never bearing my father a son.

They had married late; my father was fifteen years older than she, and conceiving had been desperately difficult.

In the end they could only stake all their hopes on my belly, praying I would bear a son to take my father’s place one day.

Until then, A-Sheng and I had to earn the family enough face and secure its reputation; we absolutely could not become a laughingstock.

My mother rarely sought A-Sheng out herself. Now she softened her tone. “Now that there is a child, we are truly one family. From now on you must mix more with the villagers and bring honor to our house. Understand?”

A-Sheng lowered his eyes and nodded firmly. “Yes.”

He was strong at work and clever with it; after finishing our own chores he often helped other households, and the villagers’ opinion of him grew better and better.

My parents’ faces grew brighter by the day.

My father said more than once: those five thousand yuan had been money well spent!

When I was seven months pregnant, he made a point of buying a jin of pork and telling my mother to cook it for me.

In all my life, it was the first thing my father had ever personally bought me.

Even though it was bought for the “son” in my belly.

At the dinner table, he piled all the lean meat into my bowl, smiling. “After the child is born, you’ll take your mother’s place at the school and run the village’s education. When the boy grows, he’ll take my place as chief. Generation after generation, the whole village stays in our family’s grip.”

He looked at A-Sheng. “After the first is born, the two of you keep at it. Many sons, many blessings.”

A-Sheng bowed his head and smiled, docile and obedient, without a single fault to pick at.

Yet for no reason I could name, a thread of cold ran up the back of my neck.

After the meal, A-Sheng walked with me toward the village entrance.

Passing Erniu’s pigsty, we both stopped at once.

A woman was clutching the iron bars, hands and feet bound, hair matted, a deep scar running across her forehead.

She alternated between weeping and laughing, drool running down, her body twisting beyond her control.

A-Sheng took a step forward; I wrenched him back.

“Don’t go over. Erniu’s new wife. Last time she went mad she bit a chunk of flesh from Erniu’s arm—they nearly beat her to death.”

A-Sheng stopped, his gaze locked on the woman’s face. In standard Mandarin he said, “Here, only the obedient have an easy time. Don’t fight yourself. Stay alive—only the living have hope.”

The woman stilled. Her muddy eyes snapped to A-Sheng.

Then suddenly she stopped moving entirely.

All her strength seemed to gather into one last sentence.

“I used to weigh 130 jin, always trying to lose weight and never could. Tell me—now that I’m thin, am I pretty?”

With that, she fell rigidly backward and made no more sound.

The next morning the news spread: Erniu’s new wife was dead. She hadn’t eaten for four or five days, people said—starved to death.

When A-Sheng came home, he embraced me the moment he stepped through the door, trembling all over.

After that, something in him went quiet. He often stared blankly into the distance and did not smile again for a long time.

Time passed quickly, and soon the day of my delivery came.

Before dawn, sudden cramps tore through my abdomen. My mother rushed in to look, then immediately called the midwife and several experienced aunties.

The room was packed with people, noisy and chaotic, laced with my cries of pain.

A-Sheng stood outside the door, watching in silence.

The labor lasted more than ten hours. I was soaked through, my strength nearly spent. My parents sweated in terror lest their precious grandson meet with any mishap.

Suddenly A-Sheng turned and vanished without a sound beyond the courtyard.

He walked fast, nearly at a run, charging toward the village entrance.

Five or six flashlight beams struck his face at once, so bright he could not open his eyes.

The patrol stopped him.

When they marched him back with his arms twisted behind him, I was spending my last ounce of strength to bring the child into the world.

It was a son.

My parents were beside themselves with joy. On the spot they named him Cheng Gaoyao, praying he would grow tall and bring glory to the family.

Seeing A-Sheng dragged back, my father snatched the wooden club from the corner and charged. “You dog! You dared run again? I’ll break your legs today!”

My mother shrieked along with him: “Outsiders—every last one an ungrateful white-eyed wolf!”

The club struck A-Sheng’s legs hard. He grunted and dropped to his knees.

My father raised the club and struck dozens more blows in a row.

Consciousness slowly returned to me. Hearing the noise outside, I struggled off the bed, stumbled over, and threw myself in front of A-Sheng.

“Dad! For the child’s sake, spare him this once—I swear it! Within two months, we’ll give you another grandson!”

At the word grandson, my father finally stopped.

He looked at me, then at the child, and threw down the club.

A-Sheng was locked in the firewood shed.

When they let him out again, he was lame.

He gave our son a milk name: A-Fu—Blessing.

He said he wanted to pray for the woman at Erniu’s house—and to pray for every trafficked person.

Half a month later, my mother called me to the school and took a cloth bundle from deep inside a wooden cabinet.

Layer by layer she opened it. Inside was a filthy, tattered book.

“This is the only book in the whole village; I’ve used it for twenty years. The children all use hand-copied texts. You must treasure it well; one day it can be passed down to your descendants.”

I received it solemnly.

I had known since childhood that I was different from the other village girls: I could read, and the village’s educational work for the next decades would fall on me alone.

I took my mother’s place and officially became the village school’s teacher.

Perhaps because of my small stature, or perhaps because I looked gentler than my mother, the children all loved to crowd around me.

Since A-Sheng’s failed escape, my parents watched him even more closely.

And he seemed to have accepted his fate entirely: he worked harder than ever and obeyed my parents in everything.

Once, my father went to clear ground on the back hill, only for a boulder to roll suddenly down the slope. A-Sheng lunged forward to shove him aside and took the full weight of that stone himself.

Another time my father was bitten by a snake in the fields. Lame as he was, A-Sheng carried him home on his back, hobbling; he fell twice on the road and bloodied his knees, but never let go.

That evening, holding A-Fu, my father suddenly said to me, “Since you want more children, get on with it. If the next one is a son too, I’ll pass the village chief’s seat to you and have your man assist you.”

I was stunned.

Whether making me chief or making A-Sheng my assistant—neither would have been so much as imaginable before.

Could my father be dying?

The thought surfaced in my mind.

From then on, my parents truly did treat A-Sheng with a measure of genuine kindness.

A-Sheng grew more and more like a local: transplanting rice, harvesting, splitting wood, lighting fires—skilled at all of it. Not yet twenty, weathered by wind and sun, he looked haggard as a man past thirty.

The days flowed on, calm as stream water.

New people were still brought into the village from time to time.

A-Sheng took the initiative to counsel them, sit and talk with them, help them adapt.

Some listened; some cursed him. The worst time, a newly arrived woman raked several bloody furrows across his face with her nails.

My mother went straight to that woman’s house, had her tied up and hung from a tree, and lashed her with a vine for over an hour.

Standing beneath the tree, her voice carried across half the village: “Here—whoever touches one of the Cheng family gets exactly this.”

After that, no one dared say a word against A-Sheng.

He truly seemed to have become one of our family.

Until one day two unfamiliar faces arrived, well-dressed, utterly out of place among the villagers.

They walked straight into our house, talked with my mother inside for a long while, and left.

A-Sheng stared after their backs the whole time, then asked me quietly, “They aren’t villagers, and they aren’t bought goods—why are they free to come and go?”

I started.

This was the village secret, not to be told to outsiders.

But looking into his eyes, I told him the truth anyway. “They’re the ones who sell people to us.”

His throat worked. “Then—how does Mother contact them?”

“They left a mobile phone. When a household needs to ‘restock,’ Mother calls that number to let them know.”

A-Sheng froze, as if nailed to the spot.

He suddenly seized my wrist, his voice trembling. “Then—could you let me make one call? Just to hear my parents’ voices. I want them to know I’m still alive...”

I wrenched my hand back and shook my head, hardening my heart.

“Don’t even think it. The phone is locked in an iron box in Mother’s cabinet, and she never lets the key leave her. They won’t agree.”

The light in his eyes darkened at once.

After that, everything went on as before.

On my grandfather’s seventieth birthday, my mother gave instructions before leaving.

“We won’t be back tonight. Look after the child yourselves.”

“Yes.”

Only A-Sheng, A-Fu, and I remained in the house.

He held the baby and tossed him high in the courtyard, laughter spilling out. My heart warmed; for no reason I felt happy.

Suddenly he set A-Fu down and turned to me.

“Take the sheets and bedding to wash.”

I stared. “Huh? The sun has already set...”

A-Sheng said, “Wash them and put on fresh ones. Tonight, we make a child.”

At that I smiled, my whole heart set alight.

Carrying a bucket of sheets and bedding, I fairly floated toward the river.

Half an hour later I hurried home, brimming with excitement.

I pushed open the door. No baby’s cries, no trace of A-Sheng—the house was terrifyingly still.

My heart clenched. I strode inside.

Aunt Fang from next door burst in, clutching A-Fu in a panic, her face white. “Your man—he fell into a trap on the back hill!”

My head went numb with a buzz.

He had run again.

His talk of making a child with me had been a lie.

My heart felt as if it had been torn.

Aunt Fang tugged hard at my arm. “Go save him, quickly—if anyone finds him, he’s dead!”

Dead.

In a trance I thought of my first man, the horrific sight of him beaten to death.

No.

I could not let A-Sheng die.

I rushed inside, grabbed my father’s tools, and ran like mad for the back hill.

A-Sheng lay at the bottom of the deep pit, covered in blood.

With every ounce of strength I dragged him up.

I stared at him. “You planned this all along, didn’t you?”

He panted, his gaze frighteningly hard.

“Yes.”

“I’m getting out of this godforsaken place!”

“Every single day, all I think about is how to escape!”

I stood frozen, ice-cold all over, as if doused with a basin of freezing water.

“Haven’t I been good enough to you? Why won’t you live an honest life with me?”

He sneered.

“Because I don’t belong here at all.”

“An eagle that has seen the world will never live as a rat in the gutter.”

“Do you know why I was willing to have a child with you? Because that day while you were eating your congee... my hand found a notebook under the bed plank. Your first man must have hidden it.”

I went rigid.

He said the notebook recorded in detail every member of my family’s temperament and habits...

It even held a hand-drawn map of the village and a charted escape route.

I had slept in that bed for so long and never known a thing.

Gasping for breath, A-Sheng asked, “That man—in the end, did he get out?”

I bowed my head and did not answer directly. “No one escapes here alive.”

He wept.

I had not seen him weep in a very long time.

He said, “You’re all devils. Every person in your village deserves to burn in hell.”

After that night, neither of us ever mentioned his escape again.

Later I found Aunt Fang privately.

“Why did you save him?”

We both knew perfectly well: if A-Sheng were caught this time, he was certain to die.

Aunt Fang smiled, the rims of her eyes red.

“In this village, who’s collected more tip-off reward money than me?”

“With the rewards I bought my son six wives.”

“...and caused the deaths of more than thirty girls.”

Her throat caught, as if something had closed around it.

“But what could I do? A widow like me—the fastest way to money was informing.”

“Child, you’re still young; you don’t know. I was sold in here myself, all those years ago—more than thirty now. I can’t even remember where my hometown is anymore.”

“I ran so many times back then. The first baby I carried—its father beat it out of me because I tried to escape.”

“After the second was born, I gave up completely. In this life I would never get out.”

“Last year I fainted in the fields and my own son abandoned me and walked off. It was your A-Sheng who saved me—and finished all my work besides.”

“Worthless as I am, I have to repay that debt.”

“Don’t worry. What he did—I’ll take it to my grave.”

With Aunt Fang’s promise, my hanging heart finally settled.

I repeated every word to A-Sheng, expecting his thanks.

But he said, “If I’d known she made a living eating blood-soaked buns off other people’s suffering, I wouldn’t have saved her. I’d have watched her die in that field.”

Furious, I kicked his leg and turned and walked away.

From then on an invisible wall of ice rose between us; we often went a whole day without exchanging a single word.

My mother thought I had grown tired of him.

She tapped the edge of her bowl and smiled at me in front of A-Sheng. “Shall I buy you a new man, then?”

“A-Sheng is quite in demand in the village now. Resell him, and we’d certainly turn another profit.”

The air instantly congealed.

I set down my bowl, my voice low and fierce. “A-Sheng is my man. In this life he can only be mine.”

My mother glared at me, her tone ruthless. “Then hurry up and bear children! This family must add another male—either you bear one, or I buy one!”

The next morning, the bedroom door was slammed open.

My father charged in and snatched A-Fu from the middle of the bed. “When you’re pregnant, you get the child back. If you don’t conceive, don’t expect to lay eyes on this child again.”

A-Sheng’s eyes reddened instantly; he lunged to grab the baby. “Give me my son!”

My mother met him with a slap that drew blood at the corner of his mouth. “You bought breeding stock—how dare you shout at us!”

A-Sheng clutched A-Fu and refused to let go, like a cornered beast driven to the edge.

My father called a crew of the village’s able-bodied men. They swarmed him with fists and kicks.

He curled on the ground and took it on his back; blood mixed with the dust, but he shielded A-Fu without a scratch.

I charged in wielding the kitchen knife, shoved those men aside, and held him tight.

“Whoever touches my man again—I’ll take his life!”

Only then did they retreat.

Inside the room, I wiped A-Sheng’s wounds.

He said hoarsely, “I’m like livestock—bred and put to work every day. I truly have had enough.”

After a long while he spoke again. “Why are you so good to me?”

I did not answer, only smiled.

I simply could not bear to see the one light in my dark life go out.

He kissed A-Fu’s forehead, then touched my hair, very lightly.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was pressed extremely low, like a last feeble struggle.

A week later, the village suddenly descended into chaos.

“Three households dead in a single night! What is the meaning of this!”

“Chief, you owe us an explanation!”

“Is it a curse? Has retribution come?”

Before dawn, our courtyard was packed solid with a dark mass of villagers.

My parents were surrounded in the middle, their faces dreadful.

In the end my mother smashed a bowl and barely brought the crowd under control. “Stop your shouting! Anyone afraid of dying—crowd into my house tonight! If there’s no room to sleep, make beds for yourselves in the yard.”

The crowd quieted for the moment.

That night, the whole village crowded into our house.

The next day, the whole village was dead.

Except for me, and a dozen or so nursing infants.

A-Sheng was dead too.

I held his cold body and saw that his hand gripped two small wooden carvings; the corner of his mouth even held a trace of a smile.

In the end, he had taken this road after all.

A-Fu’s crying jolted me awake.

I stumbled to my feet, went over, and picked A-Fu up. A letter fell from A-Sheng’s breast.

Every day I wake and tell myself: this too shall pass.

But I have endured too long. I have no strength left. I accept it.

You said that no one who enters this village escapes alive. Then I will destroy it—so no one will ever be brought in again, and no one will ever be harmed again.

If you can, please take A-Fu to see my parents, and go to Qingbei University to see a girl named Li Yating.

If you can, help the police catch those traffickers.

Finally, forget everything that happened here. Go somewhere new and begin your life again.

May you be reborn.

Xin Sheng, in final words

I stood transfixed, my tears bursting through.

I suddenly remembered the night before: I had asked for water, and he had violently knocked my cup away.

That look in his eyes had not been irritation—it had been farewell.

He had planned it all along.

In the most resolute way possible: settling everything at a single stroke, ending all the evil.

I had always known perfectly well that A-Sheng and I were people of two different worlds.

But this time, he wanted me to go and see his world.

I went to my mother’s body and took a key from her pocket.

In my parents’ bedroom I opened the iron box and the mobile phone A-Sheng had longed for so long, and dialed his parents’ number.

“Hello. I am Xin Sheng’s wife...”

Hours later, it was police cars that carried me out of that village.

And as A-Sheng had wished, I brought A-Fu to his parents.

Only when we met did I learn that in the years since his disappearance his parents had searched the entire country; his mother had sunk into severe depression and nearly died several times; his father was worn down to a skeleton. Had it not been for my call that day, they might already have swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills.

I stayed with them for a month.

When I left, I gave A-Fu to them.

He was A-Sheng’s flesh and blood—and the support that would let his parents go on living.

I also went to see the girl named Li Yating.

Just as I had imagined: beautiful, clever, tall.

She was doing well—except that at the sound of A-Sheng’s name she could not stop herself from crying.

I gave her the little wooden carving on which A-Sheng had cut her name.

She said, “I have been waiting for him all along.”

I began working with all my strength to help the police track down the traffickers.

With my mother’s phone, the police followed the vine to the melon and quickly smashed the den that had long supplied our village with people.

But their superiors were clever; the moment they caught wind of trouble, they vanished without a trace.

The police decided to select two female undercover operatives to infiltrate the trafficking ring. I volunteered. “Let me go.”

What more suitable trafficking target could there be than me?

I had only to stand there, and it seemed a sentence was stamped across my forehead: Easy mark! Kidnap her! One hundred percent success rate!

The police plan was complex and meticulously prepared.

A young policewoman who also looked delicate and I were dressed as factory girls fresh to the city and “left alone” at the target station.

At once a man and a woman closed in, like hyenas scenting blood.

“Sisters, looking for work? High wages at our place, room and board included.”

We meekly climbed into their van.

The door slammed shut; a pungent wet towel pressed over mouth and nose.

Darkness swallowed everything.

Soon we were thrown into their temporary den.

A twenty-square-meter basement crammed with more than thirty girls.

Every day greeted us with whips, hunger, and filthy abuse; the traffickers used every means to “tame” us.

I thought of how A-Sheng had looked when I first saw him.

Not a single patch of good flesh on him either.

Only after living through it myself did I truly understand him...

Understand his obsession.

He hated us. He hated the traffickers.

Because this was how he had been crushed, inch by inch.

Beatings, imprisonment, waiting.

We were examined like goods, yet because “the heat was on,” we could not be successfully “moved” for a long time.

The days became a tormenting loop.

Until the Mid-Autumn Festival, when another batch of new girls was brought in.

Fair skin, two faint dimples when they smiled, soft, gentle voices.

The young policewoman bit her lip until blood ran down with her tears, able only to watch helplessly as those scum committed their beastly acts.

One girl, on the verge of being assaulted, struggled with everything she had.

“Damn it! Shame when you’re given face!”

The trafficker flew into a rage, whipped out a dagger, and drove the raised point straight at the girl’s heart.

Without a single extra thought, I threw my whole weight into him.

Shluk—

The dull, piercing sound of a sharp blade slicing through flesh.

It... hurt.

Ten million times more than I had imagined.

Warm blood spattered out. I crumpled to the floor, and the police outside poured in.

My vision began to blur.

In my last awareness, all the noise rapidly receded, and the world grew very still, very cold.

A-Sheng... this time, I think I’ve... truly touched your world...

I lay on the cold, filthy ground, trying with all my might to tug up a smile.

Like A-Sheng’s.

I could not manage it.

It hurt too much.

A week later, the enormous trafficking ring spanning fourteen provinces and involving 102 people was uprooted entirely and destroyed.

The good news: thanks to the prompt rescue, I survived.

The bad news: my body was left with permanent wounds.

But I do not regret it.

Because I was truly reborn.

（The End）