“Oh, heavens above! We’ve been robbed!”
Miao Cuihua’s scream was shrill and piercing.
It was so loud that even the sparrows perched in the trees, just about to take flight, were startled into tumbling straight to the ground.
She collapsed onto the muddy kitchen floor, kicking her legs and wailing, with snot and tears streaming down her face.
“My big iron pot! My precious eight-yin iron pot!”
“You cursed thieves! You even carried off the firewood from our stove!”
“That was a pot I had just polished!”
Miao Cuihua slapped her thighs, her sobs filled with utter despair.
With trembling hands, she touched the now-empty earthen stove. All that remained was a huge, bare hole.
Cold. Black.
It seemed to be mocking her stupidity.
Beside it, the wooden cupboard that should have been filled with pots, bowls, and plates was now so empty that a pig could have been stuffed inside.
Forget the white flour and rice.
The thieves hadn’t even left behind a rusty piece of iron or a single chipped bamboo chopstick.
Never mind her most treasured jars of pork fat and bottles of soy sauce.
Apart from a few bare yellow-earth walls, the kitchen was so spotless that it looked like a newly built, unfinished house that had never been occupied.
“What happened? Mom! What’s going on?!”
From the side room, Li Chunhua came rushing out wearing a pair of patched long underwear, her upper body completely bare.
Half her face was still swollen high, making her look like an enormous steamed bun that had risen too much.
Old Man Li also hurried into the courtyard, clutching his trousers and shuffling along in his cloth shoes.
“You old hag, are you mourning someone’s death? Why are you screaming so early in the morning?”
But the moment Old Man Li entered the kitchen and caught sight of the enormous black hole in the stove, he froze as well.
His trousers nearly slipped all the way down to his ankles.
“The pot… Where’s the pot?”
Old Man Li rubbed his eyes, thinking he must still be dreaming.
“The thieves took the pot! They even took the chopsticks!”
Miao Cuihua wailed in utter anguish. Then, suddenly, she seemed to remember something.
“The cellar! My cellar!”
With a shriek, she sprang to her feet and scrambled toward the backyard, stumbling and nearly crawling in her haste.
Li Chunhua and Old Man Li were so frightened that their faces turned deathly pale. They scrambled after her.
In the corner of the backyard, the neatly stacked pile of dried grass was now scattered all over the ground.
The heavy bluestone slab had been pushed aside long ago.
The copper-colored padlock that had hung from it was snapped in two, lying forlornly in the mud.
“It’s over… It’s all over…”
Miao Cuihua trembled uncontrollably. Her vision went black, and she nearly fell headfirst into the cellar.
With shaking hands, Old Man Li struck a match and leaned forward to peer inside.
The moment he looked—
The match fell straight from his hand onto the ground.
It was empty.
Completely empty.
Forget the cured pork, polished rice, and fine flour.
Even the half-basket of rotten sweet potatoes and the sack of dried shiitake mushrooms in the corner had vanished without a trace.
And worse still—
The little metal biscuit tin Miao Cuihua had hidden at the very back to store her secret savings was gone, too.
“My retirement money! My silver dollars!”
Miao Cuihua let out a heart-wrenching howl.
Her cry was ten times more miserable than if her own father had died.
The cellar was so empty that her voice even produced faint echoes.
“Old hag… I don’t think they left behind even a single mouse dropping in there.”
Old Man Li’s voice trembled.
Miao Cuihua clutched her chest, feeling a surge of blood rush straight to her head.
Her eyes rolled back, and white foam spilled from her mouth.
Her body toppled backward, stiff as a board, before she began convulsing violently on the muddy ground.
“Mom! Mom, don’t scare me!”
Li Chunhua screamed in terror and hurriedly crouched down to pinch the philtrum beneath Miao Cuihua’s nose.
“Dad! Hurry and check the chicken coop! Are the chickens still there?!”
Li Chunhua continued pinching her mother’s philtrum while crying out.
Old Man Li scrambled over to the chicken coop.
He peered inside.
His entire body went numb.
The wooden gate of the chicken coop stood wide open.
Forget the three laying hens and two roosters.
The feed trough, the shabby little water bowl, and even the straw covering the ground were all gone.
Even the chicken droppings had disappeared, leaving the floor so clean that it looked as though someone had carefully wiped it with a rag.
What kind of thief was this?
Did they have obsessive-compulsive disorder?!
“Dad… Where are the chickens?”
Li Chunhua asked in a trembling voice, her swollen face contorted with disbelief.
“The chickens… They flew away. Not even a single feather remains.”
Old Man Li collapsed onto the ground, looking as though he had aged ten years in an instant.
“May those cursed thieves be struck down by heaven! They’re trying to drive our entire Li family to our deaths!”
Looking at the empty courtyard, Li Chunhua burst into loud sobs.
Her new clothes, her chance to secure the substitute-teacher position, and her dream of moving to the city to enjoy a comfortable life—
In that instant, every one of them shattered along with the sight of their completely emptied home.
“Old man… H-hurry and report this to the public security bureau!”
Miao Cuihua slowly regained consciousness after Li Chunhua pinched her philtrum. Lying on the ground, she wailed weakly, barely able to catch her breath.
“Right! We’ll report it! We’ll catch those thieves!”
Old Man Li jolted to attention and was just about to run outside when he suddenly slapped his thigh.
“Wait! What about that dead girl, Yu Qinghuan?”
“Could the thieves have taken her away, too?”
If the bride had been kidnapped by thieves on the eve of her wedding, the Li family would truly become the laughingstock of the entire Hongqi Production Brigade.
The family hurriedly rushed toward the dilapidated woodshed.
The wooden door had been smashed into splinters.
Inside, the light was extremely dim.
Yu Qinghuan was curled up in a corner, wrapped in a tattered old cotton quilt.
She had both hands clasped over her head, her body trembling violently.
“Don’t hit me… Please don’t take my things…”
“I’m begging you, don’t take me away…”
Yu Qinghuan’s voice trembled uncontrollably, thick with sobs.
A few smudges of black stove ash were still visible on her delicate little face.
She looked utterly pitiful.
Completely helpless.
“Qinghuan! What on earth happened last night?”
Old Man Li rushed over and questioned her anxiously.
Yu Qinghuan raised her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her voice quivered.
“Last night… There were so many tall, burly men…”
“They were carrying iron bars. Sob… They were even smoking those foreign cigarettes with filters…”
“They kicked the door open and knocked me unconscious. They said they were going to take everything valuable…”
“I was so scared. I didn’t dare say a single word…”
As Yu Qinghuan cried, she secretly gave herself a thumbs-up in her heart.
This acting.
This expression.
If she didn’t win an Academy Award for Best Actress, all the stove ash she had deliberately smeared on her face inside her dimensional space would have gone to waste!
Watching Yu Qinghuan cower in terror, Li Chunhua felt no sympathy whatsoever.
Instead, an intensely twisted jealousy rose inside her.
Why?!
Why had all the family’s possessions been stolen, and why had she herself been beaten until her face looked like a pig’s head—
Yet this wretched Yu Qinghuan had suffered nothing more than a little ash on her face?
She didn’t even have a single scrape on her body!
With Li Chunhua supporting her, Miao Cuihua staggered over.
She looked at Yu Qinghuan, who was curled up in the corner, crying.
Then she glanced at the wedding-gift table she had seen smashed to pieces.
Suddenly, a thought flashed through her mind.
Something was wrong.
The whole situation was extremely suspicious.
Why had the family been robbed immediately after Yu Qinghuan went on a rampage the previous night?
And the thieves had even cleaned up every last chicken dropping. That was absolutely not something ordinary burglars would do!
Miao Cuihua abruptly turned around and glared fiercely at Yu Qinghuan.
Her bloodshot eyes, swollen with rage, blazed with vicious suspicion.
“It was YOU!”
“It must have been you, you jinx! You stole everything from our family!”