Winter, 1988. Dalaba Town, under the jurisdiction of Ji City in Ji Province.
At five in the morning, outside the long-distance bus station, where the bitter wind cut to the bone, a girl lay curled up in a corner with her eyes closed, no one knowing whether she was alive or dead.
It was still pitch-dark. Without the light reflecting off the snow beside her, nobody would have noticed her.
Not far away, five drunken men came around the corner of a house.
They lurched as they walked, reeking of booze so badly that the smell alone was enough to make you sick.
The men were shouting boisterously. In the poor light, one of them tripped and fell.
“Damn it! Which blind bastard tripped me? I’ll knock your head clean off, I swear!”
Old Stubborn Shi grumbled as he got back to his feet. He was about to show off in front of his buddies when he spotted the girl curled up in the corner.
“Huh? Guys, looks like fortune’s smiling on us. I found a pretty young woman.”
At first, the other four had laughed at him for being so blind he’d tripped on level ground. But when they heard what he said, they hurriedly looked over. Sure enough, there was a pretty woman there.
She wore a dark gray padded coat and had her hair in a braid. The winter cold had turned her fair skin red. Her cheek rested on her knees, showing off her high nose and lovely brows and eyes.
It was hard to imagine how dazzling she would look if she opened her eyes.
But at that moment, she was curled up in the corner like a lifeless puppet.
“Tsk, tsk, this girl’s something else. You think she ran here from North Korea?”
“Even better. She’s got no papers, so even if we take her home… nobody’ll be able to track her down. Heh, heh.”
The men exchanged glances and let out lecherous laughs.
Summoning his nerve, Old Stubborn Shi held a hand under her nose. He felt the faintest breath and confirmed she hadn’t frozen to death.
Relieved, Old Stubborn Shi let out an eager, leering laugh.
As he looked at the unconscious girl, his hand—reeking of liquor and tobacco—slid along her collar and brazenly crept inside.
“How is she? How does she feel?”
The other four were worked up too, and eagerly pressed Old Stubborn Shi for a report on how she felt.
“Damn, she’s soft! Come on, hurry up and carry her back.
We can all have a good time and make her take care of us real nice.”
The girl’s soft, supple body sent Old Stubborn Shi’s lust spiraling out of control. He’d only touched her collarbone, but the sensation left him unable to stop.
The other four naturally wanted a taste too, and quickly crowded around.
One greasy hand reached straight for the girl’s full, rounded breasts.
Just as it was about to touch her, a cold hand clamped down on it like an iron vise.
The hand was so cold it felt like a corpse’s, but its grip was incredibly strong.
The veins on the back of her hand bulged as she seized the lecherous paw and twisted hard.
There was a crack, and the hand’s owner let out a scream of pain.
“Ah!!”
The man’s scream alerted the other three, but it was already too late for them to back away.
In the pitch-black night, they looked down and met a pair of vicious, icy eyes.
Zhou Shengnan’s legs were too frozen to stand, but she could still move her hands. She grabbed the trouser legs of the two men nearest her, sending them sprawling to the ground with a thud.
She snatched up a brick lying beside her and brought it down on them.
“Smack!”
The brick had been lying in the freezing cold for a long time. When it came down, it struck like a sledgehammer, drawing blood at once.
“Smack!”
Another blow, and blood and teeth flew together. They wanted to run, but couldn’t get away.
Zhou Shengnan’s face was expressionless. Even when blood splattered across her face, she didn’t stop. She hit them again and again, radiating a murderous intent that made her terrifying.
“H-Help! Help!”
The two men felt their lives were in danger and could only cry out to their companions.
The three men beside them watched Zhou Shengnan attack the pair as ruthlessly as if she were killing dogs. All they could manage was a frightened gasp.
Who could explain how this young woman, who’d been nearly frozen stiff, could be so fierce?
“What are you standing around for? Grab her! Keep this up and she’ll kill them!”
Old Stubborn Shi, the first to reach for Zhou Shengnan, finally came to his senses. He rushed at her, shouting himself hoarse.
Chen Er, the only one nearby who wasn’t injured, hurried over too. The two of them managed to haul Zhou Shengnan to her feet.
Old Stubborn Shi and Chen Er drank year-round and had run their bodies down, but they were still grown men in their prime, and they weren’t weak.
Even so, by the time they pulled Zhou Shengnan away, they were drenched in sweat.
It felt less like dragging a person and more like hauling an elephant.
Zhou Shengnan stood upright and slowly flexed her still-numb legs. She’d been wondering how she’d get up; now that problem was solved.
A smile of satisfaction tugged at her lips. She grabbed the hands Old Stubborn Shi and Chen Er had on her, then slowly turned to look at them.
“Thanks for coming over on your own. Saves me the trouble of chasing you down.”
Old Stubborn Shi and Chen Er felt the pressure on their wrists growing stronger and finally realized they’d walked right into a trap.
But it was too late to run. There were two sharp cracks.
Before either man could scream, Zhou Shengnan turned around, grabbed their heads, and smashed them together like eggs.
Old Stubborn Shi and Chen Er were in their thirties or forties, and this was the first time they’d kissed another man.
On top of that, the tremendous force of the collision made their vision go black in waves, golden stars filling the world around them.
But Zhou Shengnan wasn’t done yet. Now that she had control of this body, she naturally had to settle the score for what they’d just done.
“Y-You’re a girl! You can’t be this vicious! We were just passing by. We only wanted to take you somewhere warm out of kindness!”
Old Stubborn Shi sensed the terrifying aura coming off Zhou Shengnan. Clutching his broken hand, he kept backing away.
The next second, Zhou Shengnan kicked him to the ground.
“So I’m a girl? Damn, I thought I was a beast.
You sure have a fancy way of describing sexual assault. How many fathers did it take to raise a liar like you?”
Zhou Shengnan had woken up as soon as those five men approached. But her memories were a mess, and she hadn’t fully merged with this body yet, so she hadn’t moved.
She was an orphan. In her previous life, she’d entered the workforce early, struggled to get by, and eventually ended up doing all kinds of dirty, illegal work as a “cleaner.”
In the end, her boss had her tied to a rock and sunk into the sea because she knew too much.
She’d just died a painful death, her heart full of resentment.
Then she’d wound up in the body of a woman who’d been cheated out of her money and feelings by a scumbag. Even a dog would’ve taken a couple of slaps from the resentment pouring off her.
The memories of her two lives tangled together, splitting Zhou Shengnan’s head with pain and making her temper flare even worse.
She unleashed a barrage of punches and kicks on Old Stubborn Shi and Chen Er. Their screams rang through the dark, deserted street.
She didn’t know how long she kept beating them. Only when her whole body felt warm did Zhou Shengnan finally let out a long breath and stop.
By then, all but one had swollen faces and lay sprawled on the ground. The man with the injured wrist had escaped.
“Comrade, please, please let us go! We won’t ever do it again! Sob, sob…”
The four grown men, all in their late thirties or around forty, had been beaten to tears by Zhou Shengnan.
Zhou Shengnan had actually wanted to kill all four of them. After all, she’d done plenty of dirty work in her previous life.
But the original owner had been an innocent young woman, as her memories showed, and Zhou Shengnan had finally gained a new identity.
She absolutely couldn’t let it be ruined by these four pieces of human filth.
Since she’d come this far, she might as well follow the rule that a thief never leaves empty-handed. Zhou Shengnan thoroughly searched the four men lying on the ground.
They’d tried to carry her off while she was unconscious just now. A little compensation for emotional distress was hardly unreasonable, right?
Looking at the twelve yuan and eighty fen in small bills in her hand, Zhou Shengnan frowned in disdain.
That’s all? What was this, a handout for a beggar?
If they weren’t going to pay up, she’d have to find another way to vent her anger.
“Heh, it’s the middle of winter. How can we skip the classic ‘lick the iron’ activity?”
Grinning, Zhou Shengnan reached out toward the four lecherous men as they stared at her in terror.
Five minutes later, four brand-new human ornaments—half-naked men with their trousers stripped off—hung from the big iron gate beside the bus station.
Their tongues were all stuck to the freezing gate. Even the slightest tug brought a searing pain.
Zhou Shengnan tossed their pants aside and whistled at their bare, snowy-white backsides.
“People say winter iron tastes sweet. Look how kind I am.
Go on, have a good taste, you greedy little gluttons!”
As soon as she finished speaking, Zhou Shengnan heard someone calling out from a coach not far away. A sharp glint flashed across her eyes.
The scumbag had literally angered the original owner to death. Well, a little shit-stirrer was about to come flying his way~