Autumn in northern Anhui always looked like an overturned black cauldron, suffocating and heavy.
That year, the rain poured down nonstop for a full day and night.
In a low, earthen hut at the eastern edge of Bianjiawa Village, a small kerosene lamp flickered dimly.
A woman’s stifled sob mingled with the sound of rain—so faint it was nearly imperceptible.
Bian Shoutian paced beneath the eaves.
Thirty-seven years old, he had suffered from a limp since age thirteen, when he fell from a roof beam.
His left leg dragged unevenly through the mud, leaving crooked marks that were quickly washed away by the rain.
He clenched his rough hands tightly, his fingernails stained with indelible black dirt.
He didn’t dare enter.
This was a woman’s business; as a man, he could only wait outside under the roof.
The rainwater dripped steadily from the thatch, falling one drop after another into a muddy pit beside his feet, deepening it with each impact.
He looked up at the sky—pitch-black, without a single crack.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked twice, then twice more, before finally falling silent.
All of Bianjiawa seemed to have shrunk into the downpour, leaving only this one earthen hut still lit by a feeble yellow glow.
The afternoon before, he had been squatting on a hillside digging sweet potatoes when someone shouted through the rain, calling his name—Gu Ying was about to give birth.
He dropped his hoe and ran home, tripping twice in the mud with his bad leg, half his trouser leg smeared with muck.
Along the way, his heart throbbed with both hope and dread: hope for a son who might lift the burden of his crippled family, fear of what would come if not…
“Why hasn’t she come out yet?” he muttered, rubbing his hands, his voice trembling.
From inside came Zhao Guiying’s muffled grunt, followed by a long, oppressive silence.
Guiying was mute and deaf—she couldn’t cry out, no matter how much pain she felt, her agony forced into a single breath trapped in her chest.
Aunt Wang, the midwife, pulled aside the tattered curtain, her face expressionless.
“The baby’s born.”
“A boy or a girl?” Bian Shoutian stepped forward abruptly, nearly stumbling over the threshold with his lame leg.
“A girl.”
Aunt Wang sighed, placing the swaddled infant into Guiying’s arms.
“Shoutian, your body… Guiying again… Ah.
This little girl will probably suffer just like us.”
Bian Shoutian said nothing.
He crept closer to the kang bed, extending his clumsy hands to gently lift his daughter.
The newborn’s wrinkled skin resembled that of an undersized kitten, her eyes closed tight as she wailed.
Guiying smiled weakly, tears streaming down her cheeks, each one plopping onto the pillow.
“Feifei,” Bian Shoutian suddenly said.
Aunt Wang blinked.
“What?”
“Just call her Feifei,” he said, cracking a smile that revealed teeth yellowed by tobacco smoke.
“I heard people say ‘fei’ means a pleasant fragrance, a sign of lush growth.
I wish—” He paused, his voice dropping lower.
“I wish she can leave this land someday, fly far away.”
Outside, a bolt of lightning split the sky, illuminating the room in惨 white light.
Thunder roared overhead, and the rain grew even heavier.
A hole in the roof let water seep through, trickling down the wall and dripping into a cracked clay jar near the kang bed—ding, dong, ding, dong—like a tune played for this newborn girl, one no one else could understand.
Guiying pulled the child closer to her chest, letting out a single, powerful “ah”—the loudest sound a mute woman could make.
No one knew where this tiny girl, born in the rain, whose first cry seemed so fragile, would stand twenty years later.
And no one knew that from this night onward, every step she took would be marked by mud.
In truth, the rain had already fallen long before she was born—on Bian Shoutian’s limping leg, on Zhao Guiying’s deaf ears, on every barren slope of Bianjiawa.
Villagers often said poor children’s fates are dug from the earth: if you dig hard enough, you get grain; if not, you’re left with roots.
Bian Shoutian didn’t believe that.
He held his tiny, warm, wrinkled daughter even tighter.
Outside, the rain continued to fall.
The night in Bianjiawa was so dark, not a single thread of light could be seen.
And within this darkness, a name had just fallen into the earth.
Feifei.