Li Yao was having a dream; she was like an observer, watching a girl's tragic life unfold.
Before the age of 15, this girl was happy. She had loving parents, a good family background, and her father was a railway policeman and her mother was a hospital doctor.
My maternal grandparents were professors in Kyoto, and my paternal grandparents were veteran revolutionary martyrs. Although my second uncle and aunt's family lived in the countryside, they would send some grain over every year. During the Spring Festival, the whole family would be together, happy and lively.
But in the summer of her 15th year, not long after she started high school, her father was shot and killed on a train while arresting human traffickers. Her mother was hit by a car on her way to the hospital after hearing the bad news. At the hospital, she heard that her maternal grandparents had been sent to the countryside and cut off their relationship with her. A few days later, they passed away.
Her maternal grandparents, having suffered inhumane torture at the Revolutionary Committee and upon learning of their daughter and son-in-law's deaths, both suffered strokes and passed away a few days later.
This girl, devastated by the deaths of her parents and grandparents, fell ill for a month. Her second uncle's family, who came from the countryside, "kindly took care of" her. They moved into her house, received compensation and job opportunities from the railway bureau and hospital, and took all the savings and jewelry left by her parents, all under the guise of "taking care of her."
They did indeed "take care" of her. At first, her cousins from her second uncle's family would come into the house to bring her food and take her to the hospital. But later, I don't know when it started, she was the one doing all the housework.
Later, her cousin took all her clothes and shoes, and she could only wear the clothes they brought from the countryside.
She was always hungry. Her second aunt would only give her thin porridge with hardly any rice at each meal and would scold her as a burden and a money-loser.
She was moved to the storage room, and the originally spacious bedroom became her cousin's room.
She resisted, saying she wasn't a worthless piece of trash and that this was her home, but she was beaten in return. She was pinched in the chest and whipped with a belt, but there were no marks on her face or neck.
She was asked to stay away from the neighbors, just because the neighbor's grandmother gave her a small piece of steamed bun. Her second aunt stripped her naked and hung her from the roof beam to whip her.
She became increasingly timid and hesitant, afraid to speak loudly or look at others. She knew she had no parents or family anymore, and all she wanted was to live to 16, go to the countryside, and escape from here.
But things didn't go as she expected. On the day she received her high school diploma, her cousin snatched it away, and her aunt covered her mouth and nose with a handkerchief.
When she woke up, she was already in a remote mountain valley. A man in his thirties with big yellow teeth said that she was the wife he had bought.
She suffered all kinds of inhuman torture and attempted suicide, but failed. She was stripped naked and tied to the bed until her first child was born, at which point she was released and able to move around the house.
She escaped, but was caught and tortured for three days and three nights. In the end, her leg was broken, and she began to accept her fate.
It wasn't until 1982 that she saw a news report on the village television about an overseas Chinese who had returned to Beijing to reunite with his relatives and was investing in the construction of a large shopping mall. The person being reunited with in the news was none other than her cousin. The family that was reuniting with her was surnamed Cui, and they said that her cousin was the granddaughter of his younger sister.
The girl was struck dumb at that moment. Her maternal grandmother's surname was Cui. When she was little, her mother told her that all of her grandmother's relatives were abroad, and that only her family were left. So she had to make her grandmother happy, because she was her grandmother's source of joy.
My grandmother once gave my mother a jade key, which my mother later gave to her. But after my mother passed away, she was in a daze and was sick for a month. She couldn't find the jade key anywhere, but now it was on my cousin's neck.
The girl went mad. She was filled with hatred. Why did these people who harmed her get to live a life of wealth and luxury, while she was stuck in this remote mountain village serving that old man with yellow teeth? That was her life! She should have been a princess, wearing a gown, riding in a luxury car, and being loved by her family.
Filled with boundless hatred, she eventually seduced an old bachelor from the same village, obtaining a packet of rat poison from him. She then poisoned his food, sending the entire family of the man who had bought her to their deaths, including her three illegitimate children. Finally, she set fire to the entire house, including herself.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com