"Who are you? What are you doing holding me down?"
Niu Er lay on the ground and struggled desperately. When he was knocked down, his cigarette fell to the ground and burned his arm.
Niu Er retracted his hand, raised his head slightly, and glared at everyone fiercely with his bull eyes.
"You naturally don't know who we are, but I do know that your name is Niu Er, and that you bought a little girl named Ye Wei from Wang Shi five years ago."
When Niu Er heard the familiar yet unfamiliar name Ye Wei, he was stunned for a moment, and then his pupils shrank.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know this person! Wang Shi, Ye Wei, I don't know any of them!"
Wang Shi flatly denied it, and Gu Yan sneered.
"As long as you can bear it, you can continue to be stubborn!"
He stepped on Niu Er's back and crushed him hard. Niu Er was sweating profusely from the pain, and soon all the veins on his forehead burst.
He first bit his lower lip hard, but when the pain became unbearable, he screamed.
However, Gu Yan did not give him a chance. Just as he was about to scream, he kicked him in the mouth.
"If you scream, I'll kick you. I want to see whether you scream better or I kick better."
Niu Er's mouth was swollen from being kicked and a tooth was knocked out. He spat out a mouthful of blood and groaned in pain but dared not scream.
Gu Yan started by doing it himself, and then called on everyone to do it together.
Niu Er received a severe beating, and the pain made his whole body twitch. Only then did he finally behave himself.
"Let me ask you again, where did you send Ye Wei, the little girl Wang Shi brought to you?"
Gu Yan didn't even ask him whether he knew these two people, but directly asked for a result.
I didn’t expect that this bull was still so stubborn. He refused to say anything even after being beaten all over his body.
He thought he had hidden it well, but in fact, Gu Yan had seen through everything long ago.
Gu Yan will not let this matter go until there is a conclusion.
"Someone, go into the house and bring me a basin of water."
As soon as Gu Yan opened his mouth, someone immediately did as he was told. Gu Yan pressed Niu Er's head into the freezing cold water.
Niu Er didn't have time to hold his breath, so he gulped down a few gulps of cold water.
The air in his chest was almost sucked out, and he kept coughing because of choking. Only then did Gu Yan finally let him go.
"Look up. Let me ask you this: will you tell me or not?"
Niu Er pursed his lips and said nothing. Gu Yan cut many bamboo strips and tied them into two small frames.
He clamped the simple torture device he made on Niu Er's hand, and with a little force, Niu Er grimaced in pain.
He ordered a few of his younger brothers to continue to torture Niu Er until he could no longer bear it and begged for mercy, only then did they stop.
"I'm saying, I'm saying, please don't torture me anymore!"
Niu Er was crying and snotting in pain. Gu Yan looked down at him with his leg raised high, ready to kick him at any time.
A young man quickly took a small stool and placed it under his feet: "It's quite uncomfortable to keep your legs like this. It's better to stand here to be more comfortable."
Gu Yan gave him a look, and the other party cheered with joy.
"If you want to say something, just say it now. My patience is limited. If you keep dithering like this, I'll have to take action again."
Niu Er shuddered with fear, then quickly spoke as if coming to his senses, "Wang, Wang Shi used to like a girl in our village. He often came to our village to play, and we became familiar with each other."
"Later, one of his relatives came to him and asked him to help deal with two little girls. Somehow, only one came. That girl was only 8 years old when she came. I forgot her name. Anyway, she was very thin and small, and her eyes looked at me pitifully. So I have a very deep impression of her."
"In fact, this is the only bad thing I've done in all these years. Wang Shi asked me to sell this girl, the farther the better, so I sold her to the north."
It took two days and one night to travel from the warm south to the far north by train.
It was winter at that time, and the cold wind was blowing. The little girl had just got off the train and her thin body was almost blown away by the wind.
"She looked at me timidly, calling me uncle in a low voice, begging me to let her go. But I spent so much money to bring her out. If I don't sell her, I won't even have enough money for the bus fare back home."
"The most important thing is that I'm an old bachelor who hasn't even married, let alone taken care of the children. I can't possibly keep her, right?"
Niu Er said these words originally to gain sympathy and to alleviate his guilt for selling Ye Wei.
But Gu Yan didn't give him a chance at all: "So, you sold her out without mercy? Even if she begged you, even if she called you uncle, you still turned a deaf ear to her. How can you be so cruel?"
Niu Er shuddered violently, and continued in a trembling voice, "I had no choice. I later sold her to the north. She wasn't worth much, so I only got a little over 100 yuan. Adding the transportation fee, there wasn't much left."
Niu Er was still pretending to be pitiful, but Gu Yan was already getting impatient.
"Just tell me now, to which province, city, village, and family did you sell Ye Wei?"
"So many years have passed. The girl has grown up and her appearance has changed. Besides, the family was working there at the time and didn't settle there permanently. They might have moved away by now."
Niu Er's words made Gu Yan even more annoyed. What he said was all true, but precisely because it was true, it made people even more annoyed.
He had been tracking this matter for so long and finally found a definite clue.
Are we going to give up on this matter just because of the difficulties ahead?
Gu Yan always completes what he starts and never gives up halfway.
No matter how difficult things are, since we have come to this step, we must take a brave step forward.
"You just need to tell me the detailed address, and you don't have to worry about anything else."
Niu Er has now become a fish on the chopping board. Even if he doesn't want to write anymore, he has no choice but to give in.
Gu Yan took him into the room and watched him write down Ye Wei's detailed address in his childish handwriting, stroke by stroke.
Before meeting the person, I still felt uneasy. This Niu Er was so tough at the beginning. Although he has compromised now, it is possible that he deliberately gave a false address.
"Keep an eye on him. Don't let him get away before I find him."
Gu Yan paid everyone their wages and then left with the address.
It is the Chinese New Year period now, and many trains have stopped running. Even if there are a few trains passing by occasionally, tickets are no longer available.
Gu Yan was thinking about spending the New Year with Ye Jin, so after thinking about it, he decided to go back first.
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