“I’ve got some piping hot gossip here. Do you ladies want to hear it?”
A village woman holding a chipped enamel bowl in one hand and chopsticks in the other had just swallowed a mouthful of food when she eagerly leaned over to share the freshest gossip she had just heard.
“What? What? Is your gossip really fresher than mine?” A short, plump woman holding a cucumber munched on it as she spoke with great confidence. She could guarantee that her piece of gossip was definitely the freshest in the entire area.
“Let me tell you, the widow at the entrance of the village is pregnant. How about that? Bet you’re all so shocked your jaws dropped!”
She had to give credit to her son for this piece of information. While fooling around in the county town, he had wandered into the hospital and overheard it by chance. As for why her son had gone to the hospital to fool around in the first place, she did not care. As long as he did not come home asking her for money, she had no interest in the details. All she cared about was whether the gossip was juicy enough.
The entire crowd fell silent.
“Did Widow Liu remarry?”
“When did that happen?”
“How come none of us, the most informed people in the village, knew about it?”
“Whether Widow Liu remarried or not, I don’t know, but I once saw Old Man Liu climbing over the wall into her house in the middle of the night when I got up to relieve myself.”
“Really?”
“Aunt Liu keeps such a close watch on him. How could he still get away with something like that?”
Fortunately, Aunt Liu was not here right now. Her daughter-in-law was due to give birth in the next couple of days. With Aunt Liu’s fierce temper, Old Man Liu would probably lose a layer of skin if she caught him.
In an era when there were no televisions and hardly any forms of entertainment, gossiping about other people was one of the most popular pastimes.
Seeing that everyone’s attention had been drawn to Aunt Liu, Liu Dahua was dissatisfied. She was determined to become the hottest person in the entire village.
Speaking of which, Liu Dahua and Old Man Liu were relatives from the same clan, with fewer than three households between them. Old Man Liu and Liu Dahua’s grandfather were brothers.
“Let me tell you something.”
That familiar opening made everyone quiet down for a moment.
Seeing that the reaction was not as enthusiastic as before, Liu Dahua became unhappy.
“The neighboring Mengniu Village has had four girls disappear.”
As soon as she said this, everyone immediately fell silent, and the lively atmosphere became tense.
“Really? Four girls have gone missing? That’s no small matter,” someone asked in disbelief.
Liu Dahua proudly lifted her chin. “Of course it’s true. My husband went to Mengniu Village to sell goods, and he personally saw the missing-person notices posted around the village. They were all about those missing girls.”
“That’s terrifying. Could they have been kidnapped by some criminals?”
“Maybe some wild beast from the mountains carried them away.”
Everyone began speculating among themselves, worry appearing on their faces.
Someone in the crowd lowered her voice and said, “The girls in our village had better be careful. They shouldn’t go wandering around alone.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Seeing how shocked everyone was by her news, Liu Dahua felt extremely pleased with herself and continued, “I heard that all the missing girls were young and pretty. Who knows what those criminals actually want with them?”
After hearing that, everyone felt even more uneasy. Protecting the girls in their families suddenly became a matter that needed to be taken seriously.
“The village chief of neighboring Mengniu Village reported it to the police station. Guess what happened?”
Seeing that everyone’s attention had been completely captured, Liu Dahua cleared her throat. Once she had everyone’s curiosity thoroughly whetted, she lowered her voice and continued.
“The police have come several times. They searched every household under the pretext of investigating theft, searched the mountains several times, and even searched the town, but they still haven’t found a single trace of them.”
Liu Dahua paused and looked around at everyone’s reactions.
Yes, she was definitely the hottest person in the entire village now.
Everyone fell silent after hearing this.
Although it was not their own village, Mengniu Village was only separated from them by a river and a bridge, so it was very close. Besides, most families had daughters of their own. Running away with someone or being eaten by a wild beast in the mountains were one thing, but everyone was afraid of something else…
At that moment, the families with daughters were already thinking about going home and warning their girls to be especially careful whenever they went outside, particularly to stay away from Chicken Feet Hollow.
Zhao Xiyan was also mixed in among the group of village women. With one hand holding a handful of melon seeds, she cracked them one after another while nodding along, listening with great interest.
As for the two little ones, when they saw their Little Sister enjoying the gossip so much, they patted their bottoms and ran off to play with their friends. Every now and then, they would still look up to make sure their Little Sister was there.
Who could understand their situation?
Usually, adults were the ones watching over children while they played, but their family was different. Here, the children were the ones watching over their Little Sister.
Their family had long since gotten used to this kind of situation. After all, their Little Sister was delicate and completely incapable of taking care of herself.
When Zhao Xiyan heard about the missing girls, she paused for a moment. Remembering how she had been struck on the head before, she reached up and touched her hair, and suddenly felt a chill run down the back of her head.
Just then, a young man hurried past the group of village women.
Zhao Xiyan glanced at him.
Was he heading to her house?
After all, there was only her house in that direction. Surely he could not be going to the cowshed.
Not long afterward, the young man came stumbling back. As he passed beneath the big tree, his face was filled with disappointment.
Suddenly, he changed direction and rushed into another household, dragging an elderly man out with him. When he saw that the old man could not run fast enough, he grew anxious, hoisted him onto his back, and took off running.
Those two legs of his were moving surprisingly fast.
“Hey, isn’t that Aunt Liu’s son? Is his wife, Zhao Di, about to give birth?”
“Come on, let’s go take a look. I just saw quite a few people heading toward his house too.”
“Hurry, hurry! Let’s go see what’s happening.”
“Come on, come on.”
Along the way, they encountered groups of two or three people, all heading over to watch the excitement.
The closer they got to the Liu family’s house, the louder the crying and wailing became.
The sounds came in waves, sometimes stopping and sometimes starting again.
By the time everyone reached the Liu family’s entrance, the place was already packed three layers deep.
That did not dampen their enthusiasm for watching the excitement in the slightest. Wherever they saw an opening, they immediately rushed over to claim a spot.
At that moment, a heart-wrenching voice filled the house, cursing and screaming.
At the same time, inside the main room, a woman about to give birth was lying on the bed, cursing at the top of her lungs.
The midwife was carefully feeling the woman’s abdomen. Her name was Granny Ma, a very famous midwife in the surrounding villages. She had inherited the family trade, which was passed down from mother to daughter and never to sons. By Granny Ma’s generation, it had already been passed down for five generations.
After examining the woman, Granny Ma turned to the elderly woman standing beside the bed and said solemnly, “The baby is in the wrong position, and it hasn’t entered the pelvis yet. You’d better hurry and take her to the hospital. Don’t delay any longer.”
“Granny Ma, look at her. She’s just giving birth to a baby. Women in our village have never gone to the hospital to give birth before. There’s no need to be so delicate.”
“Mother, I think I’ve wet myself.”
The woman on the bed suddenly stopped screaming, as if the pain had eased. She strained to feel what was happening, but just after she spoke, wave after wave of dense pain struck her, far more intense than before.
The pain was so severe that her voice trembled.
Blood slowly began to flow down between her legs, and more and more of it came out.
The pain in her abdomen became increasingly frequent. Sweat covered the woman’s forehead, and soon her entire body was drenched.
“Mother, please, take me to the hospital!”
“Mother, I can’t give birth. It hurts so much!”
“Mother, please, Mother!”
“You little wench, it’s just giving birth to a baby. Why are you acting so delicate and insisting on going to the hospital? I gave birth to eight children, and didn’t a single one of them come out at home? I was still working before giving birth. Besides, won’t going to the hospital cost money?”
“Granny Ma, look at this…”
Outside the house, Liu Caogen, the woman’s husband, was pacing back and forth anxiously, sweat dripping from the corners of his eyes.
When he heard his wife crying for help inside, he rushed into Aunt Liu’s room without hesitation and began rummaging through everything.
At the very bottom of a cabinet, he found a tin box. Opening it, he took out fifteen yuan, stuffed the money into his pocket, and immediately ran outside to find the village chief.
The moment he turned around, he was startled by the crowd gathered outside. Then he spotted the village chief among them and immediately rushed over, pulling him away from the crowd.
“Uncle, please help me! My wife can’t give birth. Please help me get her to the hospital. I’m begging you, Uncle!”
As he spoke, he was about to kneel.
“What’s the big deal? Wait here. I’ll have Little Five bring the tractor over. I just brought the educated youths here, and the ox cart hasn’t even been parked for long.”