“Auntie—Aunt Zhou—where are you?” Li Gangpao shouted as he searched most of the Niubi Mountain brigade. He hadn’t found Zhou Lanxiang, nor any sign of a wild boar, so he began yelling.
“Lanxiang, where did you run off to? Come out!” Wang Daren shouted too.
Shen Fuyao lagged behind, putting on an act as she called out, “Mom, Mom, where are you?”
She wasn’t about to give any hints—no need to make Li Gangpao suspicious.
Li Gangpao wasn’t highly educated—he’d only finished fourth grade—but he was quick-witted and very good at reading people; otherwise he wouldn’t have become the militia platoon leader. In front of him, Shen Fuyao had to be careful.
“Brigade leader, has Aunt Zhou offended anyone lately?” Li Gangpao asked.
Wang Daren thought for a moment, then shook his head. “You know my wife—she’s sharp-tongued, but only hard on family. Outside, with patients and villagers, she’s always polite.”
(“堂客,” a regional dialect, means “wife.”)
“Mm.” Li Gangpao said, “I thought at first Aunt Zhou had been hurt by a wild boar, so I searched from the warehouse along the brigade, but there wasn’t any sign—no boar, not even a single bristle. I suspect Aunt Zhou is probably nearby. I’ve heard of a condition called sleepwalking—maybe she wandered out while asleep and then went back home.”
“Come on, Brigade Leader. Let’s go to your place and see if Aunt Zhou’s back.”
“Alright.”
The three adults and two children headed toward the Wang house.
They hadn’t gone five minutes when a shrill, duck-like voice screamed, “Quack, quack, quack—let go of my mom, you animal! I’ll tell my dad—he’ll beat you to death!”
“That’s Chaomei’s voice!” Wang Daren panicked. “Is there really a wild boar? Hurry, Gangpao—get your gun and save Aunt Zhou!”
Li Gangpao quickly handed the torch to Wang Daren. “Brigade Leader, take the kids and stay back.”
With that, he raised his rifle and moved toward the sound.
The closer he got, the clearer the voices became.
“Quack—let go of my mom!”
“You ugly woman, get off me!”
“Keep yelling and I’ll smash your skull!”
Li Gangpao was startled. He’d been married for years; just from the sounds, he knew what was going on without guessing.
A bad feeling flashed through his mind. He broke into a run and burst straight into the Chen house. Zhou Lanxiang heard the commotion and turned her head.
The Chen family was poor—there wasn’t even a kerosene lamp.
By moonlight, Li Gangpao met Zhou Lanxiang’s eyes—panicked, yet with a trace of enjoyment.
After all, these past few years Wang Daren had rarely “handed in his public grain.”
Women in their forties or fifties are like wolves and tigers—those who know, know.
If her daughter hadn’t been watching, she probably wouldn’t have put up even a token resistance.
“Mom, run!” Wang Chaomei, still unmarried, was stunned by the scene and collapsed to the ground, doing nothing but cry.
“Gangpao, why aren’t you firing?” Wang Daren had waited outside for a long time without hearing a shot. He dragged the twins forward a few steps and shouted.
Li Gangpao didn’t know how to explain. He turned away, no longer looking at Zhou Lanxiang, and yelled outside, “Brigade Leader, it’s not a wild boar. You’d better come see for yourself.”
“And don’t bring the kids. It’s not good for them to see—might give them styes.”
Hearing Chaomei crying “Let go of my mom,” and then Li Gangpao saying seeing it would give styes, Wang Daren—an old hand—understood immediately.
His blood surged. His face turned liver-red, veins bulging on his forehead.
“You son of a bitch Chen Dajun—I’ll kill you today!” Wang Daren thrust the torch into Shen Fuyao’s hands, grabbed a thick piece of wood, and charged toward the thatched hut.
He’d once caught Chen Dajun with Widow Wang and knew the man was a lecher.
“You damn Chen Dajun—I’ll beat you to death!” Wang Daren rushed into the room and started swinging wildly with the club.
Dajun was so scared his butt clenched and his legs went weak—he couldn’t even run.
“Brigade Leader, that’s enough—any more and you’ll kill him,” Li Gangpao said. As militia platoon leader, it was his duty to stop a killing.
Besides, he was a man too and knew how devastating this was. He let Wang Daren vent for a minute or two before wrenching the weapon from his hands.
Niubi Mountain brigade lay in the hills; households were far apart. Despite the huge commotion, no villagers had arrived yet.
With a plot this juicy, Shen Fuyao felt the whole brigade deserved to see it.
“Wang Zhuo’er, take your sister to find Grandpa. I’ve got something to do.” Leaving that line, Shen Fuyao ran off.
Wang Zhuo’er’s body was that of a four-year-old now, instinctively afraid of the dark. Once Shen Fuyao left, he took Wang Caifeng’s hand and headed toward the Chen house.
Shen Fuyao ran fast, knocking door to door. “Uncle Wang, the brigade leader’s about to beat Chen Dajun to death—go have a look!”
“Aunt Zhang, my mother-in-law disappeared in the middle of the night and was found at Chen Dajun’s place. The Chen house is in chaos—go help talk them down!”
She knew men and women latched onto different things: when a man opened the door, she said Wang Daren was beating someone; when a woman opened, she hinted vaguely that Zhou Lanxiang had been having an affair.
The effect was excellent. In less than ten minutes, twenty or thirty people—some with torches, some with kerosene lamps—were converging on the scene.
Shen Fuyao had called on the backbone of the “brigade rumor mill.” Whatever they knew would spread through the entire Niubi Mountain brigade—甚至 the Peach Blossom Spring Commune—within three days, with plenty of embellishment.
Everyone’s appetite for gossip was urgent; they walked so fast they could’ve competed in race-walking.
Following behind the crowd, Shen Fuyao soon reached the Chen house.
“Damn you, Chen Dajun—I’ll take your dog life today!” From inside the thatched hut came Wang Daren’s hoarse roar, along with children wailing.
Curiosity spiked. People raised their torches and craned their necks to look inside.
A dozen torches lit up the night, and the scene inside the hut was laid bare.
“My heavens—this is too… ay, filthy!”
“Tsk—unmarried comrades, cover your eyes. If you should go home, go home. Don’t look, don’t look. Tsk, tsk.”
“Old Wang, don’t be angry yet—quick, hand me that army coat,” Zhou Lanxiang pleaded.
Only then did Wang Daren come to his senses. He hurriedly took off his military coat and threw it to Zhou Lanxiang.
Whether the drug’s effects hadn’t worn off or he’d been beaten senseless, Chen Dajun remained dazed.
Now, illuminated by the torches and stared at by dozens of eyes, he suddenly seemed to wake up and tried to climb off the bed to pick up his clothes.
But just as he was about to get down, Zhou Lanxiang let out a cry of pain.
Shen Fuyao had studied medicine and knew this was due to excessive fright—things were stuck.
The solution was simple: go somewhere quiet, relax, and wait an hour or so.
An elder in the crowd spoke up. “Dajun, you may be a bachelor, but you can’t do something like this. What kind of behavior is this? Hurry up and come down.”
“Uncle, I can’t,” Chen Dajun said, his face flushed.
“Pfft.” Someone in the crowd couldn’t help laughing—truly a first, seeing something like this in all one’s years.
Wang Daren’s head buzzed. He roared, “No laughing! My wife was forced. I’ve suffered a monstrous humiliation tonight—I will send this beast to face a firing squad!”
With that, he reached to drag Chen Dajun off.
“Old Wang, stop. Have everyone move away first. Wait an hour or so and they’ll separate on their own,” Zhou Lanxiang said. She was a doctor too. Though such cases were rare, she had indeed studied them.
When she’d read that page back then, she’d thought she’d never encounter such a case in her life.
She never imagined she’d experience it herself.
“Mom—an hour?” Wang Chaomei cried. “You mean for more than sixty minutes—three thousand six hundred seconds—you’ll stay like this together?”
Shen Fuyao snorted. She meant to avenge a childhood friend and feigned shock. “Even if you’re not tired, Dad won’t be able to save face. He just said you were forced—now you’re saying this, it sounds like you’re quite willing.”
Zhou Lanxiang took a deep breath. She still couldn’t figure out how she’d suddenly fainted and ended up on Chen Dajun’s bed, but her intuition told her Shen Fuyao might be involved.
Yet she had no evidence. Could she tell everyone that Wang Chaomei had planned to drug Shen Fuyao and send her to Chen Dajun, only for it to backfire on herself?
Zhou Lanxiang shook her head. No one would believe that, and it would drag Wang Chaomei into it. All she could do was glare at Shen Fuyao in impotent rage, grind her teeth, and say, “Then cut it off.”