“Damn it, it’s pitch black outside. Why hasn’t that old woman, Matchmaker Liu, arrived yet? She’s not playing us, is she?”
In the main hall, Uncle Lin Dajun’s voice sounded like a wheezing bellows, thick with impatience. Having lost money gambling, he was harboring a fire in his chest; he was counting entirely on this windfall to recoup his losses. Every extra moment of waiting felt like torture.
“Keep it down! What are you shouting for?” Li Guilan lowered her voice, snapping back sharply. “Do you want the whole village to know about this? Is the money a small matter? Do you want Lin Weiguo to come back and skin you alive?”
“I’m afraid of him?” Lin Dajun craned his neck defiantly, though his voice dropped by half. “He spends all year eating sand at the border; what the hell does he know about what’s happening at home? Besides, hasn’t Mom already come up with an excuse?”
In the corner of the woodshed, Lin Xi curled herself into the shadows of the firewood pile like a frightened little animal, making her breathing as light as possible. Her little ally, Huzi, was even more professional. It slipped silently through the crack in the woodshed door, its thin body almost merging with the ground in the darkness as it crept like a ghost beneath the window of the main hall.
Lin Xi closed her eyes, concentrating all her mental energy. A mysterious sensation connected her to Huzi. Everything Huzi saw and heard outside the window turned into blurred images and emotions that were transmitted to her mind. This was a new discovery regarding her beast-taming ability—shared vision and hearing! Though it was still fuzzy and intermittent, it was enough.
She could “see” the dim light of the kerosene lamp in the hall and “hear” the whispers of that family of demons.
“Enough arguing!” Wang Cuihua’s old, harsh voice settled the matter. “Matchmaker Liu is an old pro. She said she’d come when it’s pitch black because she’s afraid of prying eyes. Dajun, bolt the courtyard door from the inside; don’t let any busybodies drop by in the middle of the night. Guilan, go check on that dead girl. Make sure she hasn’t actually kicked the bucket, or our efforts will be for nothing.”
“Alright, on it!” Li Guilan responded.
Footsteps approached the woodshed. Lin Xi’s heart instantly leaped into her throat. She immediately severed the connection with Huzi, held her breath, and lay motionless on the cold ground, continuing to play the role of the “delirious, fever-stricken” wretch.
The woodshed’s door creaked open just a crack as Li Guilan poked her head in, bringing with her the greasy scent of cooked food. She squinted into the darkness, and seeing Lin Xi still lying in the same spot, she spat impatiently.
“Still playing dead, I see. She’s not going to kick the bucket,” she muttered, pulling the door shut again. The sound of her footsteps faded into the distance.
Only then did Lin Xi breathe a sigh of relief, her back already drenched in a cold sweat. She re-established her sensory link with Huzi. Right at that moment, a series of extremely soft, furtive knocks came from the courtyard gate—sounding like a rat scratching at the wood.
“Who is it?” Lin Dajun asked warily.
“It’s me, from the Liu family,” a woman’s voice whispered, sounding as low and harsh as a screech owl.
It was Matchmaker Liu!
Lin Dajun hurriedly slid back the door bolt. A small, shriveled old woman with darting, triangular eyes slipped inside. This was Matchmaker Liu, the very person in the village known for brokering these heartless, “lineage-ending” deals.
“Oh, my dear Brother Lin, you certainly made me wait,” Matchmaker Liu said as soon as she entered. She rubbed her hands together, her murky eyes flickering with a greedy light. “Where is she? How is she? I’ve already settled things with the buyer—I told them she’s a clever girl, which is the only reason they agreed to this price.”
Wang Cuihua sat up from the kang bed, her face wrinkling into a fake, flowery smile. “Sister Liu, rest easy. Would I ever let you down? The girl is fine; she’s just been a bit temperamental the last couple of days and hasn’t wanted to eat. You tell that family to just let her go hungry for a couple of meals once they get her back—I guarantee she’ll be more obedient than a puppy.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” Matchmaker Liu nodded, though her tone quickly shifted. “However, I need to inspect the goods first. The buyers are a wealthy family from the city and they have high standards. If she’s sickly or missing a limb, they won’t take her. If I’m stuck with her, who am I supposed to turn to?”
Hearing this, Li Guilan chimed in immediately, “She’s not sick! She’s perfectly fine! She just accidentally tripped this afternoon and scraped her hand. It’s nothing—she’s just a child, it’ll heal in two days.”
Matchmaker Liu’s triangular eyes narrowed instantly. “A scrape? That won’t do! If it leaves a scar and someone figures out she was kidnapped, that’s a life-and-death matter! We’re going to have to renegotiate the price.”
“Hey! What kind of talk is that!” Lin Dajun snapped anxiously. “She’s just a brat—”
“Two hundred yuan and you still think it’s too expensive? People in the city earn money so easily, why would they care about this much?”
“That’s not how it works,” Matchmaker Liu said, counting on her fingers with an air of practiced composure. “This girl is the offspring of Lin Weiguo—the government official—so she’s naturally good-looking, a real beauty in the making. Otherwise, she wouldn’t fetch this price. But now that she’s injured, the risk is much higher. Tell you what: one hundred and eighty, final offer! If you agree, I’ll have the people outside come in, give you the money, and take her away right now. If not, consider this deal dead, and you can find someone else.”
One hundred and eighty!
Wang Cuihua, Lin Dajun, and Li Guilan exchanged looks, seeing the same reluctance and heartache in each other’s eyes. Twenty yuan less—that was a massive sum of money!
“Sister Liu, look…” Wang Cuihua still wanted to haggle.
“No room for discussion!” Matchmaker Liu’s tone was firm. “You know as well as I do that the crackdowns are tight lately. Those of us in this business are risking our necks. It’s not worth it for just one girl. Just say it: are you selling or not?”
Silence. A deathly silence.
In the woodshed, Lin Xi watched everything clearly through Huzi’s “eyes.” Her heart felt colder than this late autumn night. So, her entire value was being pulled back and forth over a twenty-yuan price difference. They weren’t selling a living human being—their own granddaughter and niece—they were calculating how much to discount a piece of “damaged goods.”
“Sell!” Finally, Wang Cuihua gritted her teeth, forcing the word out. To her, one hundred and eighty was better than nothing. “But the money has to be given to us first!”
“Naturally.” A triumphant smile spread across Matchmaker Liu’s face. “Payment upon delivery—that’s the rule.”
She walked to the door and signaled to those outside. Two men, dressed in bulky clothes with shifty, rat-like eyes, walked in. One of them was carrying a burlap sack.
“The person is in the woodshed over there. She’s asleep. Be quick about it and just carry her off,” Li Guilan said, pointing toward the woodshed, her voice trembling with impatient excitement.
One of the men pulled a thick stack of bills tied with a cloth strip from his coat and handed it to Lin Dajun. Lin Dajun took it and began counting the notes one by one under the light of the kerosene lamp, his face full of greed—The sight of their greedy faces made Lin Xi want to rush out and slit their throats with the porcelain shard in her hand.
“Are you done counting?” Mother Liu, the matchmaker, urged. “Then hurry up. We need to leave the village under the cover of night.”
“Done, done.” Lin Dajun stuffed the money into his robe, his face blooming with a joyful grin.
Wang Cuihua didn’t forget to give one final warning: “Once you take her away, make sure you go far. Don’t ever come back! If anyone asks later, we’ll just say the girl was playing around, fell into the river, and got swept away. It has nothing to do with us!”
“Rest easy, old sister,” Mother Liu replied with a sinister smile. “We know the rules better than you do. Once she steps out of this door, whether the girl lives or dies has absolutely nothing to do with the Lin family. Just act as if you never had this granddaughter!”
“Yes, yes, exactly! As if she were never born!” Wang Cuihua nodded repeatedly. There wasn’t a hint of reluctance on her face—only the relief of shedding a burden and the wild joy of a sudden windfall.
Has nothing to do with them anymore…
Those words were like a red-hot iron, searing themselves into Lin Xi’s heart.
Fine! “Nothing to do with us”—you said it!
She gripped the broken porcelain shard tightly. The sharp edges dug deep into her palm, and blood began to flow once more, but she felt no pain. Compared to the hatred in her heart, what did this small amount of pain matter?
Through Huzi’s eyes, she saw the two men walking toward the woodshed. Their footsteps grew closer, heavy as if they were treading directly on her heart.
Time was up.
Before they pushed that door open, she had to completely sever these blood ties and shatter these wicked chains!
A look of coldness and resolve, utterly mismatched with her young age, appeared on her small face. She glanced at Hu-zi beside her and whispered in a voice barely audible, “Huzi, are you ready?”
A low growl vibrated in Huzi’s throat, his emerald eyes glowing startlingly bright in the darkness.
Lin Xi took a deep breath, hesitating no longer.
She knew that outside the door were predatory human traffickers.
And in the courtyard, there was also a vicious dog they had specifically unleashed to prevent her from escaping!