"I'd rather she were dead."
Sometimes the sky only emits ultraviolet rays, without emitting sunlight, yet it still feels dazzling.
"My sister was killed by you human traffickers, and my family was destroyed by you human traffickers!" Xiaohui's clenched fist trembled as she moved it to her chest. With eyes that looked like they could vomit blood, she stared intently at the two people in front of her, then opened her fist and pounded it against her heart.
"How much debt do you owe? Can you pay it all? Will Buddha pay it for you? Can you even repay our family?"
The short, stout man was three or four times the age of the woman in front of him, but seeing her aggressive demeanor, his subconscious action was to move his feet backward. When he came to his senses and realized his actions, he couldn't help but feel ashamed and angry, but instead became strong to maintain his virility.
He moved his heel, which had fallen into the dirt, onto the cement floor, raised his chin, and cursed at Xiaohui: "Crazy woman, if you're mentally ill, go to the hospital for treatment. Who broke up your family? Your family fell apart on its own, who can you blame? If you're crazy, go to a mental hospital. Who knows if the injury on your head was caused by your own bump?"
With her tongue pressed against her cheek, Wen Dai glanced at them and her gaze turned cold. She moved to Xiao Hui's side and put her arm around the girl's slender shoulder.
She held her shoulders and rubbed them soothingly, ignoring the gazes of the two men in front of her, yet seemingly wishing she could stuff the frost of the winter that had just passed into her.
"So desperate, huh? You might not remember me, but that doesn't matter. I've found evidence of your human trafficking. The best evidence is eyewitness testimony. Now you can try to make a last-ditch effort, go ahead..."
"However, you'd better watch your mouths. One of you looks like a fat old pig that escaped from a pigpen, and the other looks like a skinny monkey forgotten by evolution. Rather than speaking ill of these two people, you'd better go back to where you belong—the zoo will definitely not take you in, for fear of a sharp drop in revenue."
Unfortunately, the man in the buzz cut and leather jacket stopped just as he got close, glancing at the group of people gathered there, the conspicuous police car beside him, and the undeniable Cullinan. He took two steps back, wanting to run, but the opportunity was gone.
When Cai Qi and the male investigator turned around and met his eyes, the man in the leather jacket with the crew cut squeezed a smile onto his face. He raised his hand shakily and waved twice as if to greet them, "Investigator, hello."
If his legs hadn't been trembling, perhaps Cai Qi and the male investigator wouldn't have bothered with him.
But as a result, under the threat of the gun tucked into the male detective's waistband, the crew-cut man in the leather jacket spilled everything out, almost revealing that his tongue was dry from lack of water.
He swallowed hard several times, his throat parched, tears and snot streaming down his face, and said mournfully:
“I was coerced. I didn’t want to do this either, but we’re all from the same village, what can I do? The real mastermind is Pi Juan. Most of her people call her Sister Pi. Her brother is in this line of work, but he’s gone abroad now.”
The heavy breaths exhaled were from the tall, thin man. He turned his face away without looking at it, raised his hand to cover his forehead, and refused to even spare a glance.
However, Cai Qi pressed her advantage, coaxing, "As an accomplice, you can indeed have your sentence reduced, but not by much; however, if you tell us the location of those abducted people and lead us there to rescue them, then you can try to make amends for your crimes."
Both the tall, thin man and the short, fat man were seasoned veterans who knew Cai Qi's intentions perfectly well and understood that it was just a rhetoric.
But the crew-cut leather-clad man was inexperienced and cowardly. Upon hearing that he could redeem himself through merit, he immediately put on a grand performance in his mind, and even straightened his back considerably. He patted his chest and agreed: "Alright! You two officers can rest assured, I just went to the Tibetans. Come on, I'll take you there!"
Cai Qi's brows relaxed slightly. She turned to look at Wen Dai and said in a gentle tone, "Then I'll trouble you and your... partner to stay here and watch over these children and these two suspects."
When she turned her chin toward the tall, thin man and the short, fat man, even her voice turned cold.
Before leaving, she gave the two men, whose hair stood on end from her gaze, a menacing sidelong glance and warned, "Don't even think about doing anything underhanded. You yourselves just said it yourself—the net of justice is vast, and though its meshes are wide, nothing escapes it."
The only two investigators followed the man in the crew cut and leather jacket away, while Wen Dai, who remained behind, was still trying to calm the person in her arms.
Xiaohui covered her face and cried silently, only her trembling shoulders revealing her devastated emotions.
“I thought, I thought I could still find my sister… I was so stupid, so incredibly stupid. I went into the tiger’s den and almost couldn’t get out. I had to walk into the fire pit myself before I could accept the fact that my sister was probably dead. My sister was abducted for almost a year, and my parents got divorced.”
“I live with my mom, and every day I see her working 24/7. Sometimes I see her at night, and she's just sitting alone in a chair, lost in thought. She cries silently… My dad quit his job and is searching for my sister every day. Our family has been completely destroyed by these human traffickers. I have no sister and no home.”
She rested her head on Wen Dai's shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably, her grief embedded in every word she uttered: "If she were still alive, she would be seven years old this year. She was only six when she was abducted. We went out to celebrate her sixth birthday, but we never expected that she would disappear on that day."
After a few heavy breaths, Xiaohui softly murmured her last words, which only Wen Dai could hear clearly.
"I wish she were dead."
Wen Dai's heart skipped a beat. Her hand, which had been gently patting Xiao Hui's back, paused. She pursed her lips and lowered her gaze to the girl leaning against her chest, but unfortunately, apart from her disheveled hair, she could see nothing at all.
I understand her completely.
What can be done with a girl who was only six years old when she was abducted? What did she go through during the nearly one year she disappeared, and what will her future hold? We don't know what she went through, but 99% of it was suffering, and the remaining 1% was not luck, but survival.
It is indeed worse than death; compared to being worse off than living, it is better to die.
Xiaohui took a deep breath, lifted her tear-streaked face, and stared intently into Wen Dai's emotionally charged eyes. "Sister, do you think there really are gods and Buddhas in this world?"
Her chest was filled with incomprehensible feelings and puzzles. Wen Dai didn't want to solve any more puzzles. She closed her eyes, exhaled a breath of stale air, and truthfully confessed: "They don't exist in this world. They are not in the same world as us. Whether they want to see us or not depends entirely on their will. Even if they do see us, what difference will it make? They won't interfere in the affairs of the human world. We have to walk all the paths ourselves."
Chen Sizhe, who stood quietly behind Wen Dai, didn't utter a sound. His hands were in his pockets, and his gaze remained silently fixed on the back of the person in front of him. Perhaps because her clothes were folded too many times, she had lost her usual slender figure. Her petite body, wrapped in a floral blouse and headscarf, looked like a colorful, upright rugby ball.
But he couldn't take his eyes off it easily.
Hearing her voice felt heavy in my ears, yet it was also very soft, slow and ethereal.
The tall, thin man and the short, fat man quieted down, smoking one cigarette after another. Perhaps they didn't even have the strength to stand, so they both squatted down one after the other, and the cigarette butts on the ground gradually became more and more scattered.
Wen Weiwei bit her lip and stood quietly beside Wen Dai and Xiao Hui, holding Xuanxuan's hand.
Her legs were a little sore. Noticing the solemn atmosphere, Wen Weiwei hesitated for a moment before parting her lips and asking, "Sister Wen Dai, how did you end up being taken in by those human traffickers? How did you manage to hide so many things on your person?"
Pulling her mind away from her sorrowful situation, Wen Dai turned her head and exchanged a glance with Wen Weiwei, then instinctively glanced at the two men squatting on the ground. The two men were clearly not interested in listening to their conversation, probably feeling dejected about their tearful lives behind bars.
"Let's play along..."
If we go back to the time when she was being urged to eat and watched to drink water, Wen Dai initially didn't notice anything amiss, but their repeated urging of her to eat made her suspicious.
Her gaze swept over the dishes on the table, then glanced at the white rice in the bowl that had clearly been stirred. Several intense gazes made it impossible for her to ignore them. Even without the immortals behind her reminding her, she immediately guessed that there was most likely medicine in the food.
This is probably what it feels like to be surrounded by tigers and wolves. Wen Dai secretly prayed that her stomach wouldn't growl, or she would have to experience being forced to take medicine.
As the old man went into the small kitchen to get water, she subtly activated the power of her third eye chakra to observe his movements, and what she saw was exactly as she had expected.
When the old man, who had to walk with a cane, put medicine into the water in his cup, his hand trembled and he poured in almost half a bag, with a little bit still clinging to the rim of the cup.
When she received the cup, Wen Dai ignored the white powder on the rim. She tilted her head back and took a sip from the powder-free area, but the water only touched her lips; she swallowed dryly.
Just in case, after entering the room, she washed her mouth with water at the sink in the outer room, turning the water flow to the lowest setting to reduce the noise.
She even wiped down the sink and flushed the pop-up drain back to its horizontal position before finally entering the inner room. She stuffed all the important items from her backpack into her clothes, then pretended to be drugged and collapsed onto the bed.
Still holding her phone, she found her chat page with Chen Sizhe and typed rapidly on the screen with her fingers like a massage gun.
I'm about to delve deeper into the tiger's den. Neither of these aunts and uncles are reliable. I guessed my other aunt and uncle would change, but I really didn't expect them to change so quickly…
They drugged me, and now I'm pretending to be drugged. They'll probably take me to the place where trafficked people are kept. I'll think about it and see if there's any way I can escape with them if things go smoothly.
You absolutely must get there as soon as possible, otherwise your partner will become one of the trafficked women.
Chen Sizhe's instant reply began with a rather sour tone—
Chen Sizhe: ?
[Chen Sizhe: Like a lamb entering a tiger's den? You're going to do something you're not sure you can handle? Can't you be a little less confident? Your most important task isn't putting yourself in danger, but protecting yourself.]
Chen Sizhe: You're crazy!
Chen Sizhe: I will get there as soon as possible.
After using the phone, which had served its purpose, it was stuffed back inside her clothes. Wen Dai closed her eyes, channeling her inner Oscar-winning actress, and began to perform a Sleeping Beauty act on her own.
She recounted the process in detail.
Wen Dai's hand continued to pat Xiao Hui intermittently. She tilted her chin slightly and said with a smirk, "My method isn't universally applicable. If they're going to be forceful and don't even pretend, then I'm doomed. If they search my backpack or my body, then I'm helpless. In the end, it all comes down to gambling."
“I think Sister Wen Dai is very brave and amazing. When I grow up, I want to be like you.” Wen Weiwei gazed at the woman in front of her.
Outwardly speaking, Wen Dai's current appearance is far from beautiful, but for no reason, she felt that Wen Dai possessed a kind of resolute beauty that attracted her.
“I don’t know how to describe that feeling, it’s just… I feel that you are very resilient, but not as resilient as a tree. When you talk to Xiaohui, there is also a gentle feeling.”
Suddenly being looked at with such adoration by the little girl, Wen Dai began to feel uncomfortable.
She pursed her lips and smiled, then said softly, "Do you know 'ru'? It means 'to eat raw meat and drink blood,' but the original meaning of 'ru' was quite rich. One of its meanings is that plants are tender and edible."
"Actually, I don't think that flowers and grasses are any worse than trees. They each have their own advantages. I think I am a very ordinary grass. I like my appearance, I like my ordinariness, and I also like the special thing about my ordinariness."
Xiao Hui, nestled in Wen Dai's arms, raised her chin and slowly straightened up. Looking into Wen Dai's eyes, she tucked a corner of her teeth into her lower lip.
She mustered her courage and opened her mouth: "I also like you very much, sister. Although we have only met for the first time and have not spent much time together, if I could... I would also like to become someone like you, sister."
The hand that was resting on Xiaohui's back was turned by Wendai to cup her face.
In the brief moment their eyes met, she smiled and said gently, "You already are, you're already very brave, and you're gentle too. You don't need to become anyone else, or to be like anyone else. You will always be yourself. Just be yourself."
One car after another sped by, the sound of wheels rolling on the ground drawing the attention of the group. Two cars pulled up with a bus.
The investigators who got out of the car were probably from a small town. Their expressions weren't good. Among the investigators was a slightly overweight man who glanced coldly at the two men squatting on the ground.
The tall, thin man who inadvertently raised his eyes met that gaze. His hand, which was about to put the cigarette in his mouth, froze in mid-air. He lowered his forehead to avoid the gazes of the investigators.
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