Now that it was confirmed that this was the man who tricked Ruizhu away, the crowd immediately became agitated and began to berate him.

The man's face flushed red from the insults, and he struggled to escape the pointing fingers of the crowd. The old man held him tightly, his eyes wide with anger, and said, "Tell me, where did you take Ruizhu to?"

The young man avoided eye contact and remained silent. The old man, enraged, slapped him hard on the back of the head and raised his voice: "Hurry up and confess! Ruizhu is a great benefactor of our village. She even paid for your grandparents' funeral expenses last year. How dare you do such a heinous thing! Are you even human?!"

He was knocked off balance by the slap, cried out in pain, and clutched his head. His face contorted in anger at the words, and he launched into a tirade against the old man: "What's it to you, you old codger! My grandparents are dead, they're dead. We can just bury them anywhere on the mountain. Why does she have to pretend to be kind? She just looks down on me, looks down on poor people, and thinks that if she gives me a little favor, I have to be grateful to her—"

Before he could finish speaking, everyone saw a figure flash by, followed by three crisp and loud slaps.

The young man was slapped to the ground, and one of his cheeks quickly swelled up, looking just like a monkey's bottom.

He glared angrily at the person who had slapped him, but his face turned pale the moment he recognized Diao Yu, and he lowered his head timidly, not daring to look at him.

Nan Xian stood aside, coldly glancing at him.

"The first slap is because you have no respect for your elders, you speak recklessly to them, and even insult them; the second slap is because you have no filial piety, you should bury your deceased relatives properly, but you said such nonsense as 'just bury them anywhere'; the third slap is because you don't know how to be grateful, Ruizhu kindly helped you, but you not only didn't appreciate it, you also acted like a heartless ingrate."

Her words immediately extinguished the anger of the young man, who had been somewhat indignant, and he collapsed to the ground like a wilted eggplant.

"I...I just wanted to make some money...I didn't know they would take Ruizhu away..." He covered his head, shaking it frantically. "I really didn't mean to! I didn't want to hurt her!"

Nan Xian gestured for Diao Yu to pull him up from the ground. "I'm asking you, who are these 'them' you're talking about, and what exactly happened?"

He was already sneezing, and with his swollen face from being slapped, he was even more unbearable to look at. The villagers watching couldn't help but let out a collective "Ugh!" in disgust.

He covered his face in shame, and facing Nan Xian's questioning, he stammered out the whole story—

He was born deaf in his right ear. Because of this disability, he was abandoned not long after birth. He was adopted by an elderly couple in the village who had no children. They always treated him as their own grandson and even named him "Ping An" (meaning "Peace") in the hope that he would live a peaceful life.

As Ping An grew older, the difference in appearance between him and the elderly couple became more and more obvious. Coupled with the gossip of others, he learned that he was not their biological son, and gradually became estranged from the elderly couple.

The elderly couple were not wealthy and managed to send Ping An to an ordinary high school. However, after entering adolescence, he became increasingly rebellious. In particular, after learning that he was an abandoned orphan, he became self-destructive and associated with some hooligans in society. He skipped school and fought every day. In the end, he was expelled from school for injuring a classmate and became a real hooligan, often not returning home for ten days or half a month.

The elderly couple were heartbroken for him. Once, when he hadn't returned for a month, they worried that something had happened to him. The two nearly seventy-year-olds helped each other into the city, searching for him in the streets and alleys during the day and sleeping in a bridge hole at night using cardboard boxes as mats.

Later, Ping An was released from the detention center, but the old couple died, frozen to death in the cold winter night.