Ji Xinyue hurriedly grabbed a quilt and covered the body of the young woman lying on the bed, her expression numb, weeping soundlessly. As for the man who'd been kicked aside, the moment he came to and made to hit Ji Xinyue, A-Xin sent him flying with a casual flick of her sleeve, slamming him into the wall and knocking him out cold.
The woman lying on the bed had her eyes wide open. Though she'd gone silent, tears kept sliding from the corners of her eyes, like a trickling stream, impossible to stop. Ji Xinyue took out tissues and wiped them for her several times; the tissues were soaked through.
"I can take you out of here. You won't be abused anymore," Ji Xinyue said softly, crouching beside her. "Don't cry. Cry too much and you'll turn into a crybaby—crybabies are especially annoying."
The woman froze for a moment; she sensed something was different. Her gaze finally found focus, and seeing Ji Xinyue crouched to one side, she instinctively said, "Hurry, go." After saying it, only then did it dawn on her, and she remembered what had just happened. She sat up abruptly, saw the man lying on the ground unconscious, stared blankly, then felt the coolness of her body and hurriedly wrapped herself tightly in the quilt, leaving only her head outside.
"He... what happened to him?" Even though the man was unconscious, the woman's voice still carried fear and a slight tremble, afraid he was faking, that the next second he'd leap up from the floor and slap her hard across the face a couple of times.
Ji Xinyue gently patted her shoulder and said, "He's been knocked out. He won't abuse you anymore."
"You... you're the girl Old Li bought back today?" the woman asked. Every time a girl from outside was brought into the village, these women who'd been in the village a short while would be locked into rooms; the disobedient ones, the ones who shouted and screamed, would be tied up and gagged.
If government personnel came to the door from outside, these newly arrived women would all be taken into the mountains to hide for half a day, just so they couldn't go blabbing. Many people had been sold into this place, and many wanted to escape. But to this day she'd never heard of anyone who'd truly escaped. Some who fled died on the road; some were dragged back with their legs broken; some, like her, were chained by the ankle; and some especially pretty girls would have their faces cruelly burned by these people, ruining them outright, so as to sever any thought of escape.
She didn't dare flee, and couldn't flee. The only thing she could do was resist with all her might when that man abused her—though she failed every time.
"How did you get out?" the woman asked Ji Xinyue. "Can you escape?" she asked nervously, her rough fingers gripping Ji Xinyue's arm hard, her voice lowered. "If you can escape, go quickly—I won't make a sound. Don't take the main road; those who take the main road all get caught and brought back in the end."
"How many women are there in the village like you, who keep resisting, who want to escape?" Ji Xinyue asked. When she'd first encountered such things, she would take a long time to recover. Now she was quite composed and asked about the village's situation.
"There were two who came with me at the time—one had her face ruined, one had her leg broken. I get chained by the ankle every day because that man's afraid I'll think of escaping like them," the woman said. "The women who've been here a short time all want to leave. But the ones who've been here a long time, who've borne several children, I've never seen show any sign of wanting to leave this place. Maybe they're afraid—they don't dare show it."
Ji Xinyue turned to glance at A-Xin. "How about we bring Jiang Han and the others over first? By daybreak, Yun Shao and the rest should be about here." Thinking of the situation in this kind of village, Ji Xinyue's eyes dimmed somewhat. "Actually, not many are willing to leave. Some don't dare face the outside world—they've gone numb. Some can't bear to part with their children.
Villages like this have been exposed many times before. At first they'd be condemned by netizens. People who knew the situation here indeed wouldn't come anymore. But humans are forgetful. Three or five years pass, and the village goes on living just as it did before. As long as they have a demand, traffickers can always find a way to deliver women to them."
Sometimes she even thought she might as well go all the way—slaughter the village, burn it down and be done with it. But even if she could slaughter one village, could she slaughter every cancerous village like this in the world? She'd probably have just slaughtered one before her name spread as a murderous maniac, and she'd be caught and sentenced to death.
The world wouldn't say she was doing good deeds—they'd only talk about how she was a murderous maniac who'd killed innocent villagers. Even knowing this village had done so many things to harm women, there would always be someone saying there were innocents in the village too.
Innocents? Cold-hearted, heartless ones, bystanders, more like. A village like this—since it existed, there were no innocents. They were all a pack of evildoers, especially those women who'd later joined in the wrongdoing—they were the most chilling of all.
These people simply wouldn't consider buying and selling women a crime or a wrong. And they'd even think anyone who stopped them from buying women was a villain, a busybody meddling in others' affairs.
A-Xin saw the sorrow within Ji Xinyue—was she sad over the existence of a village like this?
She glanced at the man unconscious on the ground, his build burly, his skin dark, his features somewhat fierce, looking just like a wild man. She walked up to him and swept her gaze over him lightly.
Ji Xinyue saw A-Xin's movement and asked, "A-Xin, what are you going to do? Are you going to kill him?" Killing him was fine—as long as it was cleaned up properly; a man like this didn't deserve pity. But at daybreak Yun Shao and the others would come up. If the villagers found out and made a fuss, A-Xin would have trouble. These savages were good for nothing else, but they were extremely skilled at twisted logic and unreasonableness. When they broke the law, they'd claim they were legally ignorant. But the moment someone provoked them, they'd readily cite that killing was illegal, that abusing the weak ones in their village was wrong, and demand the government give them an explanation, spread the matter far and wide, and become the side that won public opinion's support.
If all else failed, they still had one shameless skill. With so many people in the village, they didn't believe the police would arrest them all. On what charge? Buying women? They'd say that since ancient times, their wives had all come this way, and no one had ever said it was wrong—how were they to know it was against the law? Besides, they and their wives were living quite well now; if they really were detained, the ones who came to bail them out in the end would even be those very women.
Ji Xinyue had experienced things like this. There were even some women who actually came to genuinely love the man who'd bought them. And some women, feeling the village was backward and that the village children had to walk far to attend school, would actually volunteer to become the village's teacher, declaring they wanted to shine and give off heat here.
"You can't kill him."
A-Xin was about to say something when the woman sitting on the bed hurriedly stopped her.
Ji Xinyue turned to look at her. The woman's cheeks were gaunt, her lips pale, and the look she gave that man was full of hatred. "You'd better hurry and go. If you kill him and alarm the villagers, you won't get away, and I probably won't survive either. I've never given up on getting out alive. If you're discovered, you'll be caught. Don't bury your wonderful lives for the sake of a piece of scum. You're all young—you should still be in school, right? Listen to me, go quickly, leave this place. If you do escape, you must expose this place. I—I'll wait for you."
Wait for them to come back with people and rescue her. It wasn't that she didn't want to go—it was that she couldn't escape. She'd already dressed herself, staring at the chain on her leg.
"Don't worry. I'm with the police. I came here specifically to rescue you. I deliberately blended in to gather evidence on the traffickers. Now the traffickers are all trapped by me on the mountain. At daybreak, the police will send people up to haul these despicable people off to eat prison food. And all of you can leave too." Ji Xinyue revealed her identity. The woman asked many questions in a row, not quite believing, only urging them to leave quickly, saying rescuing them wasn't so easy.
No matter how Ji Xinyue explained, it was no use. In the end, A-Xin couldn't bear it and walked straight over, pinched the chain on the woman's leg, gave it a gentle squeeze, and the chain turned to powder. The woman was stunned and said nothing more. How was this girl in old-style white clothes so formidable? She could crush a chain to powder with her bare hands.
"Believe it now? With my A-Xin's skills, never mind one village—even ten villages wouldn't be a match for her. Rest easy. At daybreak, you'll definitely be able to leave here."
The woman believed it and let out a breath of relief, as if released from a great weight.
While A-Xin went to find Jiang Han and the others, the two of them got to talking. The woman was called Jiang Xuan, a people's teacher. She'd been teaching only a few months when she heard that the children in some backward areas had no books to read. Her family circumstances were good; she even had storefronts and assets in her name. Becoming a teacher was only to realize her dream—to teach and nurture others. She'd joined a volunteer-teaching organization online and was ultimately assigned to this village.
How was she to know this volunteer-teaching organization was nothing but a trafficking ring, specially luring young female teachers like her who carried such dreams? As for the male teachers who joined, they really were arranged to teach in some backward areas, and no one ever discovered anything amiss.
A heart full of sincerity, exploited like this, ultimately sold to a vicious old man to be his wife.
A-Xin found the house where Jiang Han and the others were locked up. Outside the house, several fierce-looking big wolfhounds were kept. The eerie thing was, as she stood at the door, these fierce big wolfhounds were so frightened they sprawled flat on the ground, trembling, not daring to make a single sound.
"You few beasts are quite clever, then."
If they were going to bark, she'd surely snap their necks before they could.
The big wolfhounds seemed to understand her words, front legs sprawled on the ground, gazing at her pitifully, as if to say they really wouldn't bark, not a single sound, they'd seen nothing—please don't kill them.
A-Xin gently pushed the door open. Going in, she saw four girls crouched in a corner, huddled together, watching her warily. Seeing it was her, they clearly froze for a moment.
"Were you tricked into the village too?" Jiang Han asked, her eyes sweeping over A-Xin's face. So pretty—this girl must have wanted to come to the village to take photos in Han-style clothing, which was why she'd been tricked in. Traffickers really were detestable.
A-Xin glanced at them. "No. I'm not stupid."
Jiang Han: "..."
Xu Feifei's eyes were red and swollen, clearly from crying a long time. She couldn't speak now; she'd shouted all afternoon and her throat had gone hoarse, and she hadn't eaten all day. She leaned against the wall, gave A-Xin a weak glance, then lowered her head and made no sound. The other two girls had also lost their voices from shouting; earlier, when they'd tried to escape, they'd been slapped a few times, their faces swollen.
"Let's go," A-Xin said.
Go?
All four lifted their heads in unison, gazing expectantly toward the doorway, where moonlight shone in. Never before had they longed for freedom as they did today. Once, they'd yearned for beautiful mountains and waters; now, they only felt how wonderful a noisy street was.
"Go... go where?"
A-Xin: "Whether you come along, decide for yourselves."
A-Xin turned and walked out, leaving the door unclosed. Jiang Han hesitated, then said to those beside her, "She could come in so quietly without being discovered—she has a chance to take us out. She doesn't look like a bad person. Let's follow her."
They longed too badly to get out; they didn't want to lose this chance. Even with no food all day and too much exertion, weak all over, they still propped each other up and followed out the door. When they reached the doorway and saw those fierce big wolfhounds actually lying obediently on the ground, they were astonished but didn't probe further.
A-Xin led them into another house. Seeing the unconscious man and Ji Xinyue, their hearts all eased. They didn't dare speak loudly, afraid of drawing the villagers' attention.
"None of you have eaten, right?" The room was very quiet; it was Jiang Xuan who broke it. Seeing the few of them bloodless in the face, she remembered that newly arrived girls who resisted fiercely would be locked in the dark room and starved for several days. "Let me get you something to eat."
In the meantime, Ji Xinyue also revealed her identity to them. Hearing that early the next morning the police would come up the mountain to take them out, the few girls hugged each other and cried. Even crying, they cried without a sound. They really were too frightened—afraid of being trapped here forever.
At the first light of day, the police all arrived.
There were quite a few of them, surrounding the entire village tightly. As for Mei Ya and the others, they'd already been taken into the vehicles.
Yun Shao, seeing Ji Xinyue safe and sound, let out a breath of relief. "This time was too dangerous. Xinyue, your cover's been blown. Don't do this anymore from now on."
"If I don't do it, will anyone else?"
Yun Shao fell silent. No.
Not a single person could reach Ji Xinyue's level. And no woman, like Ji Xinyue, could do this so perfectly—with skills, with strategy, able to guarantee her own safe retreat. They couldn't afford to gamble; the other young girls couldn't afford to gamble either—one slip, and they'd be ruined for life.
"What happened to their legs?" Yun Shao changed the subject. The few who'd been brought down seemed to have broken legs, though it didn't look like they'd been beaten. When Ji Xinyue beat people, she hit the stomach—hit them and you couldn't even find a mark; she'd absolutely never shatter someone's kneecaps directly.
Ji Xinyue pursed her lips. "They did too much evil. They fell on their own."
"Who's he?"
A-Xin had already sensed that the look in Yun Shao's eyes when he looked at Ji Xinyue wasn't right, and came to her side, her gaze full of scrutiny toward Yun Shao. Yun Shao felt his hair stand on end under the look—this beauty in old-style clothes, why was her gaze so terrifying?
Ji Xinyue was amused and hurried to say, "A colleague—a very righteous police officer. Over the years, he's saved quite a few women."
"Also, Ji Xinyue's suitor," Yun Shao said instinctively. He didn't think there was anything wrong with saying so, but for some reason, after the words left his mouth, he felt a chill all over.
A-Xin gave him a light glance. "Give it up sooner rather than later. You won't succeed." Though the tone was bland, Yun Shao heard a trace of disdain in it.