Chunlan has no relatives left in this world; her younger brother is the person she cares about most.
The village chief was clearly using the child to threaten Chunlan. He didn't even use any despicable means; with just one sentence, he left Chunlan speechless.
Veins bulged on Xie Tuoyu's forehead. He suppressed his anger, blocked the village chief's view, and protected Chunlan and the child behind him.
"I'll skip the pleasantries and just say this: this matter with Chunlan isn't over, and you have to give me an explanation."
Xie Tuoyu used to live in the countryside, and the countryside in his time was even more backward than it is now.
The villagers, for some reason, had a very low capacity to perceive emotions; to put it more precisely, they were numb and indifferent.
A teenager came home from school one day and locked himself in his room and cried.
The family, bewildered, broke down the door and discovered that the child had been violated, and there was blood all over his genitals.
The child's mother went crazy. After finding out who did it, she rode her old bicycle to the school and banged on the principal's office door.
That beast is the principal's grandson, the school bully. Because he is the only grandson in his family, he is spoiled and lawless. He even stabbed someone before.
No one knows what the child's mother talked about with the principal, but she kept the door closed when she returned that day.
Before long, her family became the first in the village to build a tiled house.
The son, who had reached marriageable age but had remained a bachelor due to poverty, married a new bride in a grand and lively ceremony the following year.
The villagers all said with envy that his family was selling their daughter for wealth and status, and that they were utterly immoral.
Some people were envious, some people despised, but no one noticed that the lively and cheerful girl was becoming increasingly withdrawn.
She went to school as usual, keeping her head down and remaining silent under the gazes of her classmates. When she returned to the village, she was embarrassed and shed tears amidst the pointing and whispering of her uncles and aunts.
Xie Tuoyu was only ten years old at the time, but he remembers that one day, all the villagers ran to the river in the village.
It was the rice planting season, and the upstream sluice gates were opened, filling the once-dry river with rushing water.
The girl was dressed in tattered, patched clothes. Her body, swollen from being soaked in the river, was hanging from a branch. Her cheeks were so thin that there was no flesh on them.
The body was pulled out of the water. Her mother cried uncontrollably, while her usually taciturn father suddenly knelt down.
Xie Tuoyu remembered that every time the older sister came back from the market with her family, she would give him a piece of candy.
A simple candy, about the size of a fingernail, can be licked and its sweetness goes straight to your heart.
He was still young and cried sadly, but the adults around him, like breathing zombies, stood in unison on the riverbank watching.
Some people watched for a while, then left in groups.
A sound drifted into my ears; I couldn't tell if it was gloating or something else.
"This is retribution, retribution indeed."
How could anyone harbor such malice towards a teenager? How could someone be so evil?
Xie Tuoyu was confused at the time and didn't know what to blame for those adults whose faces were indistinct.
But from that moment on, he vowed in his heart that he would never live in such a place again.
The reason why people are drawn to sunny places is not necessarily because they are warm enough.
Instead, there was light there, not the oppressive darkness that made it hard to breathe.
Xie Tuoyu was unable to protect that older sister before, but now, he will absolutely not allow the tragedy to repeat itself.
Today, let alone a village chief, even if the county head or the mayor were in power, they wouldn't be able to use their authority to suppress anything.
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