Chapter 106
The days passed uneventfully.
On this day, Chen Shengqing was conducting a training session in the barracks when he suddenly heard a guard report that his son had something urgent to discuss with him.
This was the first time that Chen Tianyou, since he grew up, had returned to the military barracks to look for Chen Shengqing.
Chen Shengqing hurried to the barracks gate and saw Chen Tianyou walking back and forth at the gate. He walked over and asked, "What happened? Why did you come to me without even studying?"
It is already March and high school has been in session for over a month. Today is Monday and Chen Tianyou should be in school.
Chen Tianyou said, "Dad, there's something urgent. Xu Tao and her sister didn't come to school today. I felt something was wrong, so I ran back to her house and looked around, but I didn't see them. I went to the place where they usually washed dishes, but I didn't see them either. I suspect they were kidnapped."
Chen Shengqing's face darkened. "Didn't they go home last night?"
"I went out to play with Li Dadan and the others last night. I didn't notice whether they came home or not." Chen Tianyou felt very guilty when he said this, and he touched his nose absentmindedly.
Last night, Li Dadan said he would take him to a black bar in town to broaden his horizons, but the bar kicked them out because they were too young.
Li Dadan refused to accept the result and started a fire in the backyard of the black bar. He was seen by the thugs in the backyard and they chased him for several blocks.
They ran to the Gobi Desert outside the town and hid there for most of the night before returning home. Chen Tianyou never even thought about going to see if the Xu Tao sisters had returned home.
Chen Shengqing walked towards the family compound without saying a word.
Chen Tianyou followed him and asked, "Dad, where are you going?"
"Go find Xu Tao's father, Captain Xu, and ask him to save his daughter." He said, then turned around and said, "Go back to school, and don't spread the news that Sister Xu Tao is missing."
"Dad, can I go with you to look for Xu Tao and the others?" Chen Tianyou said thoughtfully, "It's all my fault that I played too much yesterday and didn't complete the task you assigned to me. I didn't notice whether they went home or not. I am also responsible for their disappearance. If I don't find them, I can't concentrate on my studies."
He thought Chen Shengqing would refuse, but unexpectedly Chen Shengqing looked at him deeply and said, "You can go if you want, but it's the same old saying. You must obey orders and not act on your own, let alone yell and cause trouble for others."
"Yes, sir!" Chen Tianyou stood at attention, chest out, and raised his hand to salute him.
The father and son hurried to Xu's house, and Xu Tai was still sleeping in the house.
He had a rare day off today and thought he could have a good sleep, but who knew that early in the morning, his wife was throwing things and swearing in the house. She was scolding her two daughters for being lazy, not coming home all day, not helping with housework, and hanging out with the town's hooligans, saying they were shameless.
Then she scolded him for being useless. After so many years, he still couldn't get promoted to the position of company commander, which made her a laughing stock and suffer with him...
He was fed up with what he heard, so he got up and beat Fan Yinliu up. The house was immediately clean, and he lay back on his bed and went to sleep happily.
But just as he was falling asleep, he heard someone outside calling his name. He was so angry that he jumped up from the bed, clenched his fists and rushed out with great momentum, "Which bastard is calling my soul?"
As soon as he saw the tall and stern Chen Shengqing standing outside the courtyard, he immediately got angry and asked politely, "Deputy Head Chen, what do you want to talk to me about?"
In the courtyard where he lived, the wives of soldiers from the other three families were washing clothes by the pond in the courtyard, all of them pricked up their ears to listen to gossip.
"Let's talk inside." Chen Shengqing noticed the gossipy looks of the military wives and spoke up.
"Okay, please come in, Deputy Captain Chen." Xu Tai smiled and led the person into the house.
The room was in a mess, with pots, pans, clothes, shoes and socks scattered on the floor. When he beat Fan Yinliu in the morning, Fan Yinliu had resisted and fought back. Now she was wiping her tears in the small living room separated by a large open space.
Seeing him leading Chen Shengqing in, Fan Yinliu snorted coldly, stood up and called out "Deputy Head Chen", then continued to sit in the small living room and wipe her tears.
Xu Taiye glared at her fiercely, then smiled and said to Chen Shengqing, "The house is a mess and I haven't had time to clean it up. Deputy Head Chen, please don't blame me. Find a place to sit."
"I won't sit down anymore. I came here today to ask you, do you know that your daughter is working illegally in town?" Chen Shengqing asked.
Xu Tai's face darkened. "What kind of illegal work? Those two little girls eloped with the town's hooligans before they even had enough hair. It's not right at all. I'm very busy every day and don't have time to beat them up. So, what trouble did they cause that you have to take care of them?"
"Your daughter didn't elope with the gangsters. They went to the town to work illegally to earn some money for their high school tuition. If you are in financial difficulty and can't afford to send your children to school, you can ask the army for help. The army will find a way to send your children to school instead of blindly ignoring them or even using them as tools to vent their anger. Now, they are missing and may have been kidnapped by the gangsters in town. As a father, no matter how much you dislike them, you have to save them."
Chen Shengqing had never seen anyone who looked down upon his own children so much, and he was very unhappy, but he spoke fairly.
Chen Tianyou echoed, "Uncle Xu, Xu Tao and her sister both have good grades. Xu Tao is in the top ten in our class. She knows you won't support her through high school, so she's trying to make money on her own. Stop scolding them, go save them."
Xu Tai's face turned blue and red after hearing what the father and son said. In the end, he said nothing and followed Chen Shengqing and his son out.
Because they were not sure where Xu Tao and her sisters were trafficked to, Chen Shengqing and his team rode their horses to the black restaurant in the town where Xu Tao and her sister disappeared while washing dishes yesterday. In a noisy alley, they caught a few thugs and forced them to tell them the whereabouts of Xu Tao and her sister.
The thugs refused to speak at first, but Xu Tai got so angry that he started a fight with them, and they finally behaved themselves.
A thug with long hair and untidy beard, who looked no more than 18 years old, said, "Xu Tao is in the Muyisi Mountain area, in the home of a Uyghur nomad named Muzepal."
Chen Tianyou thought he looked very familiar. After thinking for a while, he suddenly shouted, "Liu Dabao, it's you. You are not dead!"
Liu Dabao didn't expect that he would be recognized. He deliberately made himself look like this because he didn't want to be recognized by people who knew him before.
He turned around and tried to run, but Chen Shengqing kicked him back to where he was. "Behave yourself and take us to the place you said."
Yang Qiujin was working at the farm when she suddenly received a call from Yu Cong, who had taken the phone line before he left. It was now a shared phone for the farm office. Yang Qiujin picked up the phone and heard a middle-aged male voice saying, "Hello, is this the parent of classmate Chen Tianyou? I am the head teacher of Class 1, Grade 1, Tianli Middle School. Chen Tianyou did not come to school today. Do you know where he went?"
It is common for children to skip school these days, and responsible teachers will ask the parents about it.
Chen Tianyou's academic performance was among the best. One of his parents was a military officer, and the other was a cadre. The teacher was even more cautious and would always use the internal line to transfer his questions when making a phone call.
"You're not in school? Don't worry, Mr. Zeng. I'll call and ask."
Chen Tianyou had not skipped school for many years. Yang Qiujin had a hunch that he had something to do and that was why he did not go to school. She called the military barracks and after many transfers, she learned that the Xu Tao sisters were missing. Chen Shengqing took Chen Tianyou to look for the two sisters.
Yang Qiujin called the school's internal line again and explained to the class teacher. As soon as she hung up the phone, she saw Li Xiu'e, who came to the office with little Tianxing in her arms and was about to let her breastfeed, asking, "What happened? I just heard you say that Tianyou didn't go to school?"
Yang Qiujin told her everything and said at the end: "Mom, don't worry, Shengqing will find them and bring them back safely."
Li Xiu'e sighed: "Alas, Xu Tao is so stubborn. We have advised her sisters not to work illegally, but she refused to listen. She is lucky and thinks she can handle it. How can she, a half-grown girl, be a match for those hooligans! If they disappear for one night, the nomadic people who kidnapped them will rape them and their lives will be ruined."
Many nomadic peoples in mountainous areas are poor and have many brothers and sisters. They usually exchange their sisters for wives to find themselves a new wife.
If there were no sisters exchanging marriages, then they would rely on deception, robbery, or buying a woman to live at home, and then several brothers would share the birth of children. I don't know how much torture such women would have to endure.
Yang Qiujin was thinking about this and was worried about the Xu Tao sisters. It happened that Xiao Tianxing didn't suckle properly and bit her. She immediately let go of Xiao Tianxing's mouth in pain and glared at her and said, "You bit your mother again. It seems that you have to be weaned."
In two days, Xiao Tianxing would be one year old. Yang Qiujin was determined to wean her on the night of her first birthday. That way, she wouldn't have to feed her from morning to night, and her mother-in-law wouldn't have to take her with her to work every day, which made everyone exhausted.
Little Tianxing didn't know what was about to happen to her. She felt that her mother was angry, so she kept calling her mother and pulling at Yang Qiujin's shoulders with her little hands, as if asking her not to be angry.
She can now clearly call dad, mom, grandma and brother, and occasionally she can utter a few single words to express herself.
Yang Qiujin's anger immediately subsided. She handed the children to Li Xiu'e's arms and asked them to go to the staff dormitory to play and not to disturb others at work in the office.
Long Yanli, who was sitting opposite her, said with great envy: "Your mother-in-law is such a nice person. She is willing to help you take care of your child and is willing to bring the child to work with you."
"I have no choice but to trouble her to work harder. Fortunately, the child is about to be weaned and I am almost out of it. When the child is older and can go to school without help, I will compensate my mother-in-law and take her to various parts of the country to play." Yang Qiujin said while sorting out a document.
Long Yanli envied their mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship, "I don't know when I can get through this."
Although Long Yanli's parents were rehabilitated, they both worked in their original city and could not come to the border. After she gave birth to her child, she spent half of her salary to hire a nanny to take care of the child, and her life was very tight.
Yang Qiujin knew her situation and advised her, "You can bring your child to the office. When you are too busy, we can help you take care of the child when we are free. There is no need to spend extra money to hire someone to help you."
Women these days basically come here like this. Since they have to work to support their families and take care of their children, many women will take their children to work without the help of their parents-in-law. Everyone understands and helps out as much as possible in their spare time.
Long Yanli shook her head and said, "Thank you for your kindness. It's not that I don't want to take my child to work, but my son is too annoying and I don't know how to take care of him. I can't make ends meet without a nanny."
Before she came to the border, she had never done any housework. Her parents doted on her and there was a nanny at home to take care of her eating, drinking, defecating and urinating. She didn't have to do anything.
Later, her family encountered misfortune and she came to the frontier in order to survive, and gritted her teeth and did rough work that she had never dared to think about before.
Now she is the deputy director, with a salary of about 40 yuan. She has great ambitions and needs to go out to work anytime and anywhere. It is really inconvenient to take care of a child, so she can only grit her teeth and hire a nanny.
On the other hand, Chen Shengqing and four town police officers in charge of trafficking of women, children and children, as well as Xu Tai, Chen Tianyou and Liu Dabao, drove two jeeps for nearly three hours before arriving at the Muyis Mountain area.
There are overlapping hills, flat grasslands, and a tributary of the Tianshan River, which nourishes all living things in the entire mountain area.
In March, the snow and ice in the Muyis Mountain area in northern Xinjiang have shown signs of melting, and the large trees growing in the mountains are gradually revealing their lush green appearance.
In this beautiful place, there are tents scattered every few hundred meters in the distance. Next to the tents are pens with some cattle and sheep raised in them, and there are also many large guard dogs wandering outside the tents.
Xu Tai put the pistol he was wearing against Liu Dabao's head and asked, "Which tent are my two daughters in?"
"The older one is at the house on the slope, and the younger one is in the tent by the river. Muzepal is from the family by the river. He has three brothers and none of them can get married, so they spent money to buy a wife from our eldest brother. The older family is their cousin's family. He has five sons, all of whom are bachelors. Each one looks more ferocious than the other, and they all have guns. If you go looking for them with so few people, I'm afraid you won't be able to defeat them." Liu Dabao raised his hands and said in surrender.
Xu Tai gritted his teeth and said, "If I can't rob them, I'll just kill them all. If anything happens to my two daughters, the first thing I'll do when I get back is kill you!"
He said this and got out of the car.
Most of the mountain herdsmen far away from the town are tough and live together in tribes or clans.
They cannot marry wives, so they spend money to buy women, or swindle and rob women, and then think that women are their private property. Even if the police and border defense soldiers come to them, they will never hand them over. This has always been a headache for the border police of the border defense department.
If you want to rescue the Xu Tao sisters, you can either go find them quietly or use force to rob them.
Nomadic people all keep several guard dogs at home to protect their homes, so it is obviously unrealistic for them to rescue people quietly.
Chen Shengqing and four police officers loaded their guns and prepared for a fierce battle.
Before Chen Shengqing got out of the car, he asked Chen Tianyou to sit in the driver's seat of the jeep and taught him step by step: "This is the clutch, this is the brake, step on this, the car will move forward, step on the accelerator, the car will run very fast, you turn the steering wheel, you can change the direction. You are a smart child, you can understand what your father is saying, if the situation is not right later, you can drive the car to save us, don't be afraid."
As he spoke, he took out another pistol and put it in Chen Tianyou's arms, "Dad has loaded the gun with five bullets. I gave it to you just in case, so you can protect yourself or save others. You can't shoot randomly, because one bullet can kill someone. If Liu Dabao has bad intentions and wants to escape, you can just break his legs with a bullet."
Liu Dabao raised his hand again after just putting it down, "No, Uncle PLA, I will stay in the car and not go anywhere."
Just kidding, that kid Chen Tianyou has had a grudge against him since childhood, he is so upset that he wants to provoke him.
Chen Shengqing gave him a warning look and got out of the car carrying a rifle.
There are many hooligans like Liu Dabao in Ava who are about 17 or 18 years old, unwilling to study, lazy to go to work, like to steal, and whose parents cannot discipline them.
They are used to hanging out outside, and they just want to live one day at a time. No matter how their parents beat and scold them, or how the police arrest them for questioning and put them in jail, they don't kill or burn people, so they just do what they want, do those shameful things, act like scoundrels, and get out after a few days in jail. No one can do anything about it.
Chen Tianyou was still young, but every year he would take Yang Qiujin's gas and gun to the Gobi Desert to hunt. He picked up the pistol without the slightest fear.
He pointed the gun at Liu Dabao and asked, "How did you, a gang of hooligans, find the Xu Tao sisters and kidnap them under the pretext of making them wash dishes to earn money?"
Liu Dabao raised his hand and said, "How can we find them? We hang around the town every day. When we see good-looking female students who don't have parents to pick them up, we find excuses to get close to them and ask about their family background. As long as their parents favor boys over girls and don't value them, and they are not living a happy life, we take advantage of their lack of love and set traps for them, and they will fall for it."
"Liu Dabao, you are such a beast. You actually did such a heartless thing! You'd better pray that Xu Tao and her sisters are okay. Otherwise, if Uncle Xu doesn't kill you, I will too." Chen Tianyou said with itchy teeth, "Let's settle all the new and old grudges together."
"No, I have been cooperating with you guys and selling the seller's information. If our boss knew about it, I don't know how he would deal with me. Don't scare me."
To be honest, Liu Dabao didn't believe that Chen Tianyou had the courage to shoot him, and was thinking about how to escape.
Chen Tianyou sensed his contempt and said with a fake smile, "My dad didn't lock the car door. You could have opened it and slipped away from the back."
He said, his finger on the trigger: "Let's go."
Liu Dabao stopped moving. He remembered that when he was on the farm, he took a group of kids to beat this kid. They were beaten so badly that they were pissing and shitting. They were no match for him. This kid was braver than he had imagined. Now this kid had a gun in his hand. If he really slipped away, he would surely die.
In Muzepal's tent, Xu Tao huddled in the corner, shivering.
She never thought that she was just working as an illegal worker, so she kept on guard against the gangster who called himself Brother Yao and asked her to wash dishes because she had no parents to support her. She never thought that he would join forces with the owner of an illegal restaurant to drug her and her sister in the water they drank and abducted them to this family named Muzepal.
That Muzepal was tall, ugly and busty. She woke up in the middle of the night and found him touching her breasts. She was so scared that she bit his hand until it bled. He slapped her on the head, causing it to buzz, and still wanted to force himself on her.
Later, the woman of the family came in to stop him, saying that she looked only eleven or twelve years old, her hair had not yet fully grown, and she could not have a baby. He wanted to raise her for two more years and wait until she developed before consummating the marriage. Only then did Muzepal leave angrily.
It was at that moment that she finally realized that she had been sold to this old bachelor from a nomadic tribe by those thugs. No matter how she cried and begged for mercy or how she ran away, she could not escape from the tent because Muzepal's other two brothers were outside the tent, eyeing her covetously.
She cried all night, and after daybreak she was tired of crying. She hid behind a wooden table in the tent with lifeless eyes. She regretted not listening to the advice of Chen Tianyou and the others. She was deceived by temporary interests and now was sold to an unknown place. She could neither live nor die, and she had also implicated her sister.
She didn't know what to do. She wanted to run, but she couldn't. She wanted to die, but she didn't have the courage. She didn't find her sister, so even if she died, she would not be able to close her eyes.
The tent was opened, and a thin middle-aged woman wearing Uyghur clothing came in with a bowl of goat milk and a naan bigger than her face. She placed them in front of her and said to her in stiff Chinese: "Little girl, eat something."
"I don't want to eat." Xu Tao looked at the woman warily.
"Eat it. Only by eating can you have the strength to work and survive." The woman advised: "This will be your home from now on. If you keep resisting and not cooperating, the three brothers Muzepal will beat you to death."
Xu Tao knelt in front of the woman and said, "Auntie, please be kind and let me go. How much money do you want? I will raise it for you later, okay? I just turned twelve years old. I am still a child. I can't have children yet."
The woman said, "They bought you, so you are their daughter-in-law. No amount of money will change you. It doesn't matter that you are young. In two years, when you grow up a little, you will be able to have children."
"You are illegally trafficking women and children. Aren't you afraid that the police and the People's Liberation Army will catch you and shoot you?" Xu Tao stood up and said angrily.
The woman thought it was very funny. "Little girl, we are nomadic people, we make a living by herding. We have guns, and the police can't control us. Who would shoot us?"
Xu Tao was suddenly in despair. She went crazy and threw the food the woman had brought to the ground. She screamed, "You're dreaming about letting me stay in your house and have children for those stinky men! I would rather die than do that!"
The woman just looked at her madness coldly, and left the tent without saying a word.
As soon as she left, the tent became eerily quiet.
Xu Tao cried and hugged her arms. She ran out of the tent more than ten times last night. Every time there was a man standing outside. He beat her to death as soon as she ran. She was covered with bruises. She was so scared that she dared not run away again and could only hide in the tent and cry.
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