Chapter 96 You Have to Give Us a Big, Healthy Son
Her heart softened, and she nodded: "Okay."
Le Yunyun frowned as she watched Jiang Wanqiu bend down. Although she wanted to help, she swallowed her words and stood far away with a look of disgust.
Seeing this, the burly man picked up a tattered sack from the side and handed it to the two men.
The two of them hurriedly stuffed all the still-jumping fish into the container, which was quite heavy, weighing more than 20 kilograms.
The two of them, one pulling from the front and the other pushing from behind, exerted tremendous effort to drag the large bag of fish to the riverbank slope away from the crowd.
The location is remote, with a bustling fishing ground behind it and a quiet dirt road in front.
"Big sister, thank you so much!" Xiao Cui said gratefully, wiping the sweat and tears from her face. "Wait here for me a moment, don't go anywhere! I'll come pick you up in the donkey cart right away, my husband is right here!"
After saying that, she hurriedly ran to the other side, her figure quickly disappearing down the slope.
For a moment, Jiang Wanqiu was the only one left on the slope.
A cold wind swirled around, carrying snowflakes that stung her cheeks. She pulled the thick scarf Zhao Wenchang had wrapped around her tighter, burying half her face in it, leaving only her bright, moist almond-shaped eyes visible.
It was very quiet around, with only faint cheers coming from afar and the occasional "plop" of fish struggling in their death throes in the sacks beside me.
Jiang Wanqiu gently exhaled a breath of white air, which instantly condensed into a cloud of white mist in the cold air, before it could even dissipate...
"Bang--"
A sudden, indescribable pain shot through the back of my head, as if I had been struck hard by a heavy club.
Jiang Wanqiu's eyes widened instantly, and all sounds and sights seemed to vanish from her at that moment.
Everything went black before her eyes. Before she could even utter a cry, she collapsed limply to the ground, instantly losing all consciousness.
...
Zhao Wenchang was in a good mood.
He had just snatched a pair of ice skates from the logistics soldiers.
The shoes were old, with some cracks in the leather, but the two skates on the bottom were polished to a shine, gleaming with a cold white light in the sunlight.
His family member, who came from the south, had definitely never seen such a rare thing before.
Just imagining Jiang Wanqiu wearing ice skates, being carefully led by him as she glides on the ice, her face showing both surprise and joy, makes Zhao Wenchang feel a sense of satisfaction.
He carried his ice skates and strode back, calling out from afar, "Wanqiu! Wanqiu! Look what good stuff I brought you!"
However, he searched the vicinity but couldn't find the woman.
Le Yunyun was impatiently stamping her feet to warm herself a short distance away, asking the guard next to her when she could go back.
"Comrade Yunyun!" He strode over, "Have you seen Jiang Wanqiu?"
Le Yunyun was sniffling from the cold when she saw him arrive. She raised her chin irritably and pointed to the dirt road by the river in the distance: "He went to help someone carry fish. There weren't many fish, and it's been so long. He's still not back. He's so slow!"
She complained, completely unaware that Zhao Wenchang's expression had turned rather unpleasant.
Carrying fish?
Zhao Wenchang's ominous premonition exploded instantly.
Wanqiu is kind-hearted, but she is by no means a person without a sense of propriety. It is impossible for her to leave for so long without even saying goodbye!
Without saying a word, he shoved the ice skates in his hand into Le Yunyun's arms and ran wildly towards the dirt road.
"Hey! What are you doing..." Le Yunyun stumbled from the impact, and before she could finish speaking, Zhao Wenchang had already rushed dozens of meters away.
When he rushed up the slope, the scene before him made his pupils shrink suddenly.
A tattered burlap sack lay overturned by the roadside, its contents of fish frozen stiff, resembling grayish-white stones. Beside the sack, several sets of footprints of varying depths and irregular patterns stretched haphazardly across the snow to the edge of the dirt road.
The snow was trampled into a mess, as if someone had been forcibly dragged onto something.
Jiang Wanqiu has disappeared!
Zhao Wenchang immediately realized that the woman must have been trafficked.
Judging from their modus operandi, they should be a group of repeat offenders.
He immediately turned to the guard who had followed him and said, "Xiao Wang! Return to the camp immediately! Notify the guard company as quickly as possible to block all the downhill roads leading to the outside world! Check all vehicles and personnel entering and leaving the area, and don't let a single one escape!"
"Yes, sir!" The guard had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and he took the order and ran back.
"Men of the First Battalion, follow me!" Zhao Wenchang shouted back at the men on the river, then looked at the clear donkey cart tracks in the snow, his teeth grinding together. "Chase!"
...
Jiang Wanqiu didn't know whether she was awakened by the pain in the back of her head or by the harsh scolding and beating in her ears.
"You bitch! You dare to run away! I'll break your legs!" It was a man's crude curse.
Then came the woman's suppressed sobs and pleas for mercy: "Big brother, it was a promise... you promised that if you tricked her into coming here, you would let me go... you broke your promise... sob sob sob... you lied to me!"
"Pah! So what if I lied to you? You think you can leave once you've entered our house? Dream on! Stay put!" With that, he kicked Xiao Cui hard in the stomach.
The little girl was kicked away quite a distance like a rag doll, and curled up on the ground in pain, clutching her stomach.
Jiang Wanqiu's eyelids felt as heavy as if they were filled with lead, and she struggled to open them even a crack.
The burly man who was selling fish to them on the ice was kicking Xiao Cui, who was crying on the ground, away.
Blood was trickling from the corner of Xiao Cui's mouth, and snot was streaming down her face.
She found herself lying on a cold earthen bed, with tattered bedding beneath her emitting an indescribable stench.
It was a dilapidated and filthy mud-brick house, the walls blackened by soot, and cobwebs clinging to the corners. Inside, besides the burly man and Xiao Cui, was an old woman with a wrinkled face, smoking a pipe, squinting at her with her cloudy eyes.
At the other end of the earthen bed sat a man who looked to be in his early twenties.
He was wearing an ill-fitting, tattered cotton-padded coat, grinning, staring blankly at himself, with glistening drool hanging from the corner of his mouth.
She instantly realized she had stumbled into a human trafficking den! And that pitiful Xiao Cui wasn't a newlywed woman suffering from domestic violence at all; she was just bait!
Just then, a familiar figure walked in from outside, shouting, "Where are you? Where are the goods I brought? Is the money ready?"
Jiang Wanqiu looked closely and recognized the person as the plump woman who had claimed to be her fellow villager at the county department store a few days ago.
As soon as the old woman entered the room, she saw Jiang Wanqiu on the kang (a heated brick bed). She walked over in a few steps, stretched out her rough hand, and grabbed Jiang Wanqiu's small chin. She looked her over from side to side as if she were examining livestock, scrutinizing her beautiful face that had lost its color due to weakness.
"Tsk tsk tsk," the middle-aged woman nodded in satisfaction, then turned to the old woman smoking her pipe and said, "Auntie, look at this girl, isn't she amazing? From the south, fair skin and tender flesh, that face, that figure, she's guaranteed to give birth to a son! One price, two hundred yuan, no lower!"
Upon hearing this, the old woman tapped her pipe on the sole of her shoe, spat out a glob of phlegm, and slowly said, "Two hundred? Why don't you just rob someone? In our poor mountain village, the most you can buy a woman to carry on the family line is fifty yuan! No matter how pretty she is, can she lay golden eggs?"
The plump woman was displeased and immediately raised her voice: "Fifty? Auntie, are you trying to fob me off? This is an educated woman from the city! Look at her skin, it's as smooth as a peeled egg. Can she compare to those dark-skinned, skinny girls you've found? Children born to women like this are all smart! Two hundred yuan, you won't lose out! Besides, we've been doing business for so long, the goods I've picked out for you are countless times better than the missing limbs from other shops!"
"Pah! What's the use of a woman being educated? She's still just a baby-maker." The old woman rolled her eyes. "One hundred! Not a penny more! That's all the money we have. Take it or leave it!"
"One hundred? You're cutting my price in half! No way!" The plump woman waved her hands anxiously. "I went through so much trouble to get her here! I even have to split the money with those two helpers! One hundred and eighty! That's the lowest I can go! If you don't want her, I'll sell her to someone else! The Du family already told me about it, and I only thought of your family first because we're so close!"
One hundred and one hundred!
"One hundred and seventy!"
The two argued fiercely over Jiang Wanqiu's price, much like buying and selling a head of cabbage at a market.
The plump woman naturally didn't dare reveal that the other woman was a military family member; she just wanted to make one last quick buck and run. Whether her entire family would be tracked down and executed by the soldiers was none of her concern.
It would be best if he were shot.
Finally, the arguing stopped. The plump woman took a wad of crumpled bills from the old woman, counted them carefully twice, and then put them in her pocket with satisfaction. Before leaving, she glared at Xiao Cui in the corner and cursed her as a "worthless good-for-nothing."
The woman they sold couldn't conceive after six months, almost ruining her reputation. The family demanded a refund, and when they realized they couldn't get their money back, they even started fighting with them.
In the end, she had to return twenty yuan as compensation before the family was willing to let the matter rest.
The fat woman had long disliked this stingy family who even tried to take money from her pocket.
Once she left, the room became quiet.
The old woman walked step by step to the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), her eyes scanning Jiang Wanqiu back and forth. Finally, she stretched out her hand, which looked like withered tree bark, and patted Jiang Wanqiu's smooth face.
"Alright, from now on you're my third son's wife." She said, half-coaxing and half-threatening. "Give my family a big, healthy son, and you'll have plenty to eat and drink."
As she spoke, she pointed to the other end of the kang (a heated brick bed), where her son was still drooling and grinning foolishly.
Jiang Wanqiu followed her finger and looked into those dull yet lustful eyes. An overwhelming sense of nausea surged up from her stomach, making her want to vomit.
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