"What does 'sharing a wife' mean?" Chunyan, the youngest in the carriage, asked the others in confusion.
“Sharing a wife means that all the brothers in a family are poor and only marry one wife.” When others didn’t know how to say it, Wen Nuan said it directly.
"One wife with multiple husbands!" Chunyan exclaimed in surprise.
"Yes. Not only in Yan, but also in some remote mountainous areas of our country, there are many families who practice communal marriage."
One of my older sisters from my hometown village was married into that kind of family through a marriage exchange. From the moment she married into that family, she kept having children for the brothers.
She had eight children in ten years, and died from severe bleeding during her ninth delivery. A person in the carriage recounted what had happened to them.
"No, no, I don't want to be a shared wife!" Chunyan screamed in fright.
Thump, thump.
The person outside the carriage tapped the carriage wall twice with a stick.
"What are you yelling about? Behave yourself."
The people inside the carriage trembled at the loud shouts outside.
"You might not even make it to the Yan Kingdom." Wen Nuan's words startled everyone in the carriage once again.
"They'll kill us?"
"The further you go into the border regions, the more unstable it becomes. Bandits and robbers are likely to come. Of course, these are not the most terrifying things." Wen Nuan paused here.
What's the scariest thing?
"Naturally, it was about how they smuggled themselves into the Yan Kingdom."
Our country does not allow human trafficking to other countries. There are daily patrols and inspections at the border.
To transport people there, traffickers would hide us in secret compartments, which were completely airtight.
Of the 60 people transported in one batch of the caravan, only 20 survived to reach the State of Yan.
"Forty people died!"
"It's better to die, so as to avoid suffering." Some people believe that death is a relief.
"You think death is liberation? Dream on, your corpse will be eaten like beef or mutton."
"eat!?"
"The state of Yan has a tradition of cannibalism," Wen Nuan replied affirmatively.
"The Yan Kingdom eats people!"
"That's terrifying."
"I don't want to be eaten. Mother, I want to go home." Chunyan couldn't hold back her tears.
Some of the other people in the car also began to sob quietly.
"Are you really not with human traffickers?" Wen Nuan knew too much.
“These are not secrets. Some scholars who went to the Yan Kingdom recorded in their travelogues that the Yan Kingdom practiced cannibalism,” a quiet woman said.
"If we aren't bought, will we end up on someone's dinner table?" Ye Yunniang asked.
"That's a very good question. If we can't be sold, the traffickers will sell us like livestock so they don't lose money."
"Going to the State of Yan would be a terrible fate for us, whether we live or die."
"I would rather die than go to the State of Yan," the quiet woman said again.
"That's not up to you. We're like fish on a chopping board now." Wen Nuan's words were harsh, but they were the truth.
"We will definitely find a way."
"We need to escape."
"Aren't there troops patrolling the border? Let's ask them for help."
"Looking for them is less desirable than waiting to die."
Some patrol officers are even colluding with human traffickers.
Nuanwen knew a lot. Even Ye Yunniang, who hadn't suspected anything at first, started to have doubts after hearing this. She wondered if Nuanwen was in cahoots with the human traffickers.
The carriage stopped and the door opened.
"Get down," a scarred man with a knife in his hand shouted to the people inside the carriage.
With her feet on the ground, Ye Yunniang moved her body and felt that she had no strength.
Taking advantage of the event, Ye Yunniang looked around.
Two horse-drawn carriages, seven or eight tall human traffickers, about twenty abducted women and girls, but no children.
"What are you standing there for? Go get to work!" a man shouted, shooing Ye Yunniang and seven or eight other women away to gather firewood.
Ye Yunniang and the others were gathering firewood ahead. Behind them were two men, one holding a knife and the other a bow and arrow.
Snap!
"Hurry up and get to work, stop dawdling." The man with the knife lashed out with a whip.
The sound of the whip ringing in her ear startled Ye Yunniang. She quickened her pace to gather firewood.
"Ah—" A scream interrupted Ye Yunniang's exertion.
Looking towards the source of the sound, a woman with an arrow in her back collapsed.
"How could you kill him?" The man with the knife was furious that the man with the arrow had killed him directly.
"I haven't had any taste in my mouth these past two days." The archer said, slung his bow and arrows over his shoulder, walked toward the woman, grabbed one foot, and headed toward the camp.
Ye Yunniang was the closest and heard what he said.
"The state of Yan has a tradition of cannibalism."
Ye Yunniang recalled what Wen Nuan had said and felt a wave of nausea.
Suppressing his nausea, he focused all his energy on gathering firewood.
Ye Yunniang found a bundle of firewood, which pleased the trafficker, and she was spared a beating.
Two didn't have any, not many were picked up, and the one that was beaten was rolling on the ground.
"This is what happens if you don't work honestly."
This tactic of making an example of someone to deter others was very effective; the women became much more efficient with their hands.
At night, the women huddled together to keep warm.
The traffickers provided food: a bowl of meat soup and a cornbread for each person.
Ye Yunniang looked at the meat soup and began to gag.
"Not drinking?"
"I get carsick and can't stand the smell of meat," Ye Yunniang explained.
"You worthless life," the trafficker cursed, handing the meat soup from Ye Yunniang's hand to someone nearby.
Ye Yunniang held the cornbread and ate it dry.
“I’m cooking, I’m watching. It’s pheasant soup, not that,” Wen Nuan said, sitting down next to Ye Yunniang with a bowl in hand.
"I can't drink it." Ye Yunniang felt nauseous just thinking about what that person had said. She wouldn't be eating meat for a while.
"If you don't want meat, eat more cornbread." Wen Nuan broke off half of a cornbread and gave it to Ye Yunniang.
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