"If you don't want to talk about it, then don't. You'll gradually forget about it."

“I want to talk about it. I’ve been keeping it inside for so long, not wanting to recall it. My brother was also afraid of upsetting me, so he avoided the topic. But I know that if I don’t say it and keep it in my heart, it will always be there and I’ll never get better.”

Yu Yin got up and poured Zhong Ling a cup of hot tea.

After taking a couple of sips of tea, Zhong Ling's mood calmed down a bit.

“I don’t know why, but the village secretary’s son, who had gone mad, liked to follow me around and kept asking me to be his wife. How could I agree to that? Later, the village secretary withheld all the letters I sent out and the letters my brother sent to me. I couldn’t contact my brother, and the other educated youth didn’t dare to help me.”

Zhong Ling took another sip of water and clenched her fist.

"Later, they looked after me for half a year, but my brother never came to see me. So they forced me to marry into their family and held a banquet, saying that I was marrying their son. I cried and shouted, but they were from the same village, and the village secretary only had one son. They all sided with the village secretary."

Yu Yin pulled Zhong Ling into her arms. The child was trembling violently and cried silently in her arms. Yu Yin felt a chill on her shoulder.

“The village secretary’s son is mentally challenged. He doesn’t know much about relationships between men and women. They tied me to the bed, and the village secretary’s wife helped by letting her son harm me. At that moment, I wanted to die. I even bit my tongue until it bled. When they found out, they gagged me.”

"Waaah..."

Zhong Ling's cries sounded like a small animal's; this was probably the first time she had spoken about what happened since the incident.

"Later, fearing I would commit suicide, they wouldn't let me go to work, tied me up at home, and forced me to eat. More than a month later, when they confirmed I wasn't pregnant and tried to do the same thing again, my brother came. He was insane and beat the village chief's family half to death, almost killing them."

Thinking of her brother with red eyes, Zhong Ling found courage and stopped resisting so much.

"Later, the village party secretary and his wife were sentenced to prison, and their mentally challenged son was left to fend for himself. They all got what they deserved. But my brother, my brother's future was ruined. He could have been doing what he loved in the army and rising through the ranks step by step, but because of the assault, he had to be discharged."

Yu Yin knew that Zhong Ling's emotions had reached their limit today, so she took her back to her room and told her to calm down and talk about it tomorrow. After watching her fall asleep, she asked Aunt Hu to keep an eye on her that night before returning to her room.