On the morning of the 25th of the twelfth lunar month, Cuiju and Cuilian bid farewell to the Tao family and went into town to find Cuihua.
Over the years, searching for her younger sister had become a source of great anxiety for Cuihua. Now, upon hearing news of her fifth brother, she was so happy that she cried.
Upon learning that it was her younger sister who had found it, she was so moved that she burst into tears.
"This is our sisterly bond; it's as if some invisible force is pulling us together."
"I'll go with you on New Year's Eve."
While the three sisters were still basking in the joy of their newfound treasure, Daya, suffering from severe malnutrition and constant beatings and scoldings from Gong Honghong, fainted shortly after Xiaojiu left, before she even had a chance to eat an egg.
Gong Honghong kicked her, but she didn't react at all, and she didn't stop hurling insults at her.
"Stop pretending to be dead, you little slut! Get up right now! So many clothes haven't been washed yet. What are we going to wear for the New Year if you don't wash them?"
The person on the ground remained motionless. Only then did Gong Honghong realize something was wrong. Her sharp, triangular eyes narrowed, and she squatted down to check her breathing. After sensing a faint breath, instead of calling a doctor for her, she threw her directly into the woodshed where she lived.
Just as Gong Honghong, unusually kind, brought hot water to Daya, she suddenly heard Daya, starving and desperate, muttering about eggs. This was probably because Xiaojiu had given her two eggs, the two eggs she had been longing for. When extremely hungry, one can indeed hallucinate, but it was precisely because she murmured the word "eggs" that Gong Honghong completely snapped.
The freshly boiled water was splashed directly onto Da Ya's face.
"You good-for-nothing! How dare you steal the eggs I saved up! I was wondering why my eggs were burned. So it was you who stole them! Get up! Get up, you little bastard! You dare to steal my eggs? You've gone too far! I thought you were honest, and I even thought I misremembered. I never expected it really was you!"
The scalding hot water instantly brought Daya to her senses, and she rolled on the ground in pain. But Gong Honghong showed her no pity and instead launched an unprecedented attack on her. The commotion was so loud that the neighbors next door heard it and rushed over to break up the fight.
"Honghong, oh Honghong, stop it! If you keep hitting her, she'll die. You raised her all these years, isn't it a pity if she dies now?"
Gong Honghong was so angry her head was practically steaming. "Auntie, it's not that I wanted to fight, but she stole my eggs. Three whole eggs were missing. Who else in my family could do that besides her?"
"Oh dear, you're really wronging her. With her timid nature, how could she possibly do something like that? When did you throw the eggs? I saw your husband sitting in the yard with your son, eating a bowl of poached eggs just a few days ago. Are you talking about something that happened three days ago?"
Gong Honghong froze, turning around incredulously. "Impossible! I asked them, and they both said they hadn't seen him."
"Oh my god, wasn't he afraid to say anything because he was afraid of being disturbed by you? Look at the way you beat him! My God, what happened to his face? It's all blistered and red. I'm not trying to be mean, but you're too cruel. Look at how disfigured he is! What are you standing there for? Hurry up and take him to Uncle Zhong for a checkup! It's the New Year, how could you do this to him!"
Upon hearing this, Gong Honghong quickly grabbed her arm.
"Auntie, why send her to Uncle Zhong's house? Can they even keep her? Is that all? No need, no need. She's not getting married anyway. What's the point of having such a beautiful face? In a few years, she can give my son a son or a daughter, that'll be enough. It's okay if she's ugly, at least she won't run away."
The neighbor stared at her incredulously. Gong Honghong felt so uncomfortable under that gaze that she pushed the person away.
"Oh, poor girl, what a tragedy!" She was bought, not her own child, and they're going to treat her terribly!
Although Gong Honghong had wronged Daya, she had no intention of apologizing to her. Seeing Daya trembling and wailing, she spat in disgust.
"I won't spend a single penny on your medical treatment. If you're so capable, then you can try to survive on your own. If you make it, I'll feed you. If you don't, well, you deserve to suffer. You little bitch, I'm going to ruin your face so your dad won't look at you like you're a piece of meat in his mouth every day. Let's see if he still dares to have any wicked thoughts with your face like this, hahaha~~~"
From afternoon until evening, Daya did not appear again. She did not drink a drop of water or eat a single grain of rice all day.
That night, he developed a high fever and kept muttering in his sleep, "Water, water..."
At Niu Tie Niu's house, all that could be heard were the snoring of the father and son and the woman's occasional complaints as she turned over in bed.
The weak, feeble voice completely subsided by the early hours of the morning.
A dozen minutes later, before the body had even cooled down, the person lying motionless on the ground suddenly opened their eyes.
She stared blankly at the dark wooden ceiling of the woodshed, and after what seemed like an eternity, she let out a soft sigh.
"Don't worry, I will avenge you. But I'm sorry, I need to eat your two eggs now so I'll have the strength to fight them."
Exhausted, Da Ya could only crawl to the backyard with terrible blisters on her face. She found the two eggs, ate her fill, dug a deep hole, buried the eggs, and, parched, ignored the cold of the dead of winter. She carefully made her way to the kitchen, scooped a ladle of water from the water vat, and drank it down in large gulps.
There was nothing in the kitchen, of course, but if the burns on her face weren't treated soon, she might follow Daya to the grave.
That poor little girl died from multiple organ failure caused by burn infection, hunger, and external force.
She is still using her own body, and her current health is only temporary. Just as she was about to treat herself, she suddenly thought of something.
With a quick glance around, he sneaked into the room of those three scumbags. Seeing that the chubby boy, so big, was still sharing a bed with his parents, he felt disgusted.
He casually produced a bottle of medicine and poured it onto the white gauze. Then he covered the couple's mouths and noses, and they soon fell into a deep sleep. As for the little fat boy, he would be useful later.
She found the key under Gong Honghong's pillow, opened her cabinet, and took all the eggs, grains, peach crisps, canned goods, and money inside. Afterward, she ransacked the house, filtering through all the grains in the west room and the various vegetables in the cellar, both useful and useless.
Then she took out a match, lit a piece of rag soaked in alcohol, and threw it into the main room, the east room where they slept, the west room where they used to store grain and miscellaneous items, and the kitchen. As for the woodshed where she lived, she naturally ignored it.
Then, despite her fever, she lay down in the haystack in the woodshed and waited for things to unfold.
Unexpectedly, as she lay there, her eyelids involuntarily closed...
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