Then she quickly saw Lin Xiazhu come out and call to her, "What are you dawdling for? Come and help me."
So she was led into the dilapidated house to comfort the little girl, whose hair was disheveled and whose clothes were torn in a large piece. The little girl was huddled in a corner, hugging herself and crying.
Lin Xiazhu found a rope and tied up the two thugs. Then she carried them out, saying as she walked, "Yan Xin, take your men and follow us. We're going to the police station."
When they were still a few hundred meters away from the police station, Lin Xiazhu woke up the two men and told them to walk on their own. After all, it was quite a shocking sight to see an eight-year-old girl carrying two adults, one in each hand, and she didn't want to become famous.
…………
After the matter was resolved, they got into their car and left.
On the bus, Lin Xiazhu told Yan Xin the whole story. It turned out that the little girl's name was Zhou Ling. In her previous life, she and Lin Xiazhu were coworkers. They were ordinary workers on the same production line and lived in the same dormitory.
They had a very good relationship, and Zhou Ling was the only one who knew that Lin Xiazhu was blind in one eye, but she never mentioned it to anyone and kept it a secret.
In Lin Xiazhu's eyes, Zhou Ling was a caring older sister who often helped and took care of her. In the first few years after Lin Xiazhu left home, she was rather introverted, not good at socializing, and didn't have many friends. Zhou Ling was her only friend at that time.
Unfortunately, Zhou Ling committed suicide a few years later because she was traumatized and suffered a mental breakdown.
In fact, her mental state was always fluctuating, but Lin Xiazhu didn't take it to heart at the time. For example, Zhou Ling would often talk in her sleep and sleepwalk at night. Sometimes she would suddenly scream in the middle of the night, waking up all ten people in the dormitory.
At that time, Lin Xiazhu advised her to see a doctor, but she always smiled and said, "The doctor can't cure it. This is a problem I've had since I was a child."
At the time, Lin Xiazhu didn't understand. Later, as Zhou Ling became increasingly delirious and emaciated, one day she suddenly said to her:
"Xiaozhu, my mom wants to marry me off to a dead old man. He's almost fifty. I don't want to get married, I don't want to sleep with a man, but my mom always scolds me, saying that my 'broken body' is only fit to marry a dead old man, and that no one else would even look down on me."
"I don't need anyone's approval. Can't I just live like this on my own?"
Zhou Ling's speech was already incoherent. When she said that when she was thirteen years old, she was raped by two thugs, and those two beasts threatened her afterwards not to tell anyone, or they would kill her whole family if she dared to call the police.
She was terrified and didn't dare tell anyone, but it was no use. In the following years, she was threatened and humiliated from time to time until she suddenly became pregnant at the age of sixteen, when her mother finally found out.
Later, when the incident was exposed, the two thugs were sent to a labor camp, and Zhou Ling became famous, becoming the laughing stock of the whole city. After aborting her child, she went insane.
"Later, Zhou Ling was sent to a mental hospital for two years. After being discharged, her family arranged for her to go out to work. Actually, her illness was not completely cured at that time, and she would have relapses from time to time. I didn't know she was in such a terrible state until she died. Only then did I believe that what she told me was true and not just her crazy talk."
Lin Xiazhu wiped away her tears and choked out, "I've always regretted not being able to help her, otherwise she might not have taken her own life."
"It's not too late now, you did it." Yan Xin also silently shed tears, her heart filled with mixed emotions.
She was thinking that she had transmigrated and still had memories of her past life, but the others did not. Their life trajectories had deviated. Were they still the same people they were before?
She wasn't the only one getting stuck on this; Lin Xiazhu had also thought of this. She said dejectedly, "Zhou Ling doesn't remember her past life anymore. She'll be fine in this life, but the poor Zhou Ling from her past life is dead. My mind is so confused. I always feel like they are two different people."
For a moment, neither of them spoke, and the silence lasted until the bus stopped at the county station, where the ticket seller called out to everyone that it was time to get off.
Lin Xiazhu suddenly snapped out of her daze and quickly started grabbing her things, urging Yan Xin, "Hurry up, don't just stand there, we've missed the last bus, quickly find a ride back to town."
Hearing her say that, Yan Xin rolled her eyes. The last bus? There was only one bus from the county town to Shanhe Town. It went to the county town in the morning and returned to the town in the afternoon. It was only one round trip a day. Transportation in this era was really inconvenient.
The capital city is better; the countryside is too backward.
They were quite lucky; after waiting for about half an hour, they flagged down a tractor that was coming to the county town to pick up goods and was heading back to Shanhe Town.
The tractor was loaded with goods. Besides the driver, there was also a small shop owner. The chubby shop owner stood next to the driver, his hands tightly gripping the railing in front of the tractor's trailer, his body shaking from time to time with the tractor's bumps.
Yan Xin's face paled, and she swallowed hard. "Are we going to hang there like him? What if we fall?"
"No, I have a strong grip, I can hold it firmly." Lin Xiazhu didn't mind, she would get used to it.
"Then what should I do..." Yan Xin really wanted to say, "Your dad died in a tractor accident, don't you have any psychological trauma?"
However, she swallowed the rest of her words. Mentioning Lin Shan made her feel uneasy and strange.
"I'm holding you, don't worry, I won't let you fall," Lin Xiazhu smiled reassuringly at her. "Look, the road is dirt, the tractor moves slowly, and if anything happens, you can jump off in time."
"I don't want to, it's too damn scary. You're not allowed to leave either. We'll stay in the county town for one night and take the bus back tomorrow." Yan Xin pulled Lin Xiazhu, preventing her from getting on the tractor.
The driver and the shopkeeper were getting impatient. "Are you going to get in or not? If you don't get in soon, we're leaving."
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