Xu Yanqing forcibly swallowed the sudden wave of panic and the inexplicable jealousy burning inside him.
He pounded on the window frame even harder, his voice sharp with agitation and a nameless, seething resentment: “Huo Xiangbei! You’re lower than an animal! Let her go!” “Qianqian! Wake up! Don’t give in! Fight back! You have to fight him!” “Help! Somebody come and look! Huo Xiangbei is committing a crime! He’s assaulting a female educated youth!”
With the final two sentences, he practically screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice carrying far across the village in the heat of the summer afternoon.
It was close to dusk, but the stifling heat had yet to break.
The farmwork for the day had been light, and many of the commune members were already heading home at a leisurely pace, carrying hoes over their shoulders or baskets swung over their arms. Xu Yanqing’s shouts hit the tranquil village square like a massive boulder thrown into a calm pond.
“What’s going on? Who’s shouting about an assault?” “Sounds like educated youth Xu? Over by Third Brother Huo’s place?” “Huo Third Brother? An assault? Who would he assault?” “Who else could it be? That educated youth Shen living in his house, of course!” “What? Huo Xiangbei is assaulting his own wife?”
One of the local men who had just walked up let out a loud snort of laughter. “Educated youth Xu is a scholar, all right. He sure knows how to make things interesting.” “Come on, let’s go take a look!”
Within moments, a crowd of around twenty people had gathered outside the Huo family courtyard.
People of all ages—men and women, young and old—stretched their necks, whispering among themselves with curious, excited grins. Entertainment was scarce in those days, and a spectacle like this rivaled a grand theatrical performance.
Seeing the crowd swell, Xu Yanqing felt a surge of renewed vigor, imagining himself standing proudly on the moral high ground.
He puffed out his somewhat slender chest, putting on an expression of righteous indignation and heartbreak. Pointing dramatically at Huo Xiangbei’s tightly shut doors and windows, he raised his voice for the assembled villagers to hear:
“Comrades of the commune! Brothers and sisters of the lower-middle peasants! Come look for yourselves, judge this for yourselves!” “Huo Xiangbei is a revolutionary soldier, yet in broad daylight, he forcefully dragged his partner, educated youth Shen Qianqian, inside and subjected her to violent abuse! This is a severe criminal act! It is an outright persecution of women! It is a blatant trampling of the policies governing educated youths!” “Comrade Shen Qianqian is suffering inhuman torment right inside that room! We cannot sit idly by! We must rescue her from his clutches!”
As if right on cue to punctuate his words, a short, tear-choked gasp echoed from inside the house, followed by the groaning squeak of a wooden Kang bed straining under heavy stress.
Though more restrained than the previous cry, it rang out with startling clarity in the abruptly hushed space outside the courtyard.
The expressions on the faces of the onlookers shifted brilliantly.
One older woman clapped a hand over her mouth with a sharp gasp, though her eyes danced with mirth. The men exchanged knowing smirks and low chuckles, while the younger wives blushed and turned their faces away, only to immediately perk their ears back up.
“Cough! Ahem!” The man who had laughed earlier cleared his throat, casting a sideways glance at Xu Yanqing. “Educated youth Xu, you say Huo Third Brother is forcing his wife, but from the sound of it… that doesn’t quite seem like it.” “Exactly,” chimed in a sharp-tongued matron with her hair coiled in a bun, her tone thick with heavy teasing. “A young couple closing their doors to handle private business, how can you call that an assault? Educated youth Xu, you’re a young bachelor who hasn’t taken a wife yet. You just don’t understand these things.” “How do I not understand?!”
Xu Yanqing’s face flushed a deep crimson as he eagerly argued back, “Comrade Shen Qianqian is unwilling! She’s being forced! Listen to her voice—she’s crying! She’s begging for help!”
An old man squatting by the base of the wall, slowly puffing on a long-stemmed pipe, exhaled a lazy ring of smoke and cast a cloudy, sidelong glance at Xu Yanqing.
“Young man, affairs inside a couple’s blankets are private. How would an outsider like you know if she’s willing or not? Going by the sound? That doesn’t sound like someone who’s unwilling at all. Old as I am, I’ve lived long enough to tell the difference.”
“Hahaha…” A wave of suppressed laughter rippled through the crowd.
Xu Yanqing grew frantic and angry. These ignorant country bumpkins! Their heads were full of feudal ideas! They didn’t understand the law at all! They had no concept of women’s rights!
“You’re shielding a criminal! You’re condoning violence!”
He pointed straight at the house, his voice trembling with agitation and humiliation. “Comrade Shen Qianqian just told me to my face that she wants a divorce from Huo Xiangbei! She wants to pursue true love and freedom! Huo Xiangbei is just retaliating right now! He’s using brute force to break her spirit!”
Inside the room, Shen Qianqian was pinned firmly against the Kang by Huo Xiangbei, enduring his increasingly fierce and relentless rhythm.
Every single word drifting in through the window felt like a red-hot needle piercing her ears and stabbing straight into her heart.
Xu Yanqing’s “righteous rhetoric,” the villagers’ mocking laughter and teasing, alongside the blazing, pain-filled, and obsessive gaze of the man looming over her…
The humiliation, embarrassment, heartbreak, and deep anxiety for Huo Xiangbei’s current state overwhelmed her, sending a fresh flood of hot tears streaming down her face.
“No… no more… Huo Xiangbei… stop… I’m begging you…”
She pleaded in broken fragments, her voice shaking and shattered. “There are so many people outside… listening… it’s so humiliating…”
Huo Xiangbei, however, remained entirely deaf to her pleas.
Xu Yanqing’s declarations of “divorce,” “freedom,” and “true love” acted like poisoned daggers plunged deep into the softest part of his heart, twisting violently.
So that was what she had just said to Xu Yanqing.
So, in her eyes, marriage to him was a shackle, and he was nothing more than an obstacle standing in the way of her running off to her “true love.”
His chest felt as though an icy hand had seized it, squeezing and twisting until his vision darkened and even his breath tasted of blood.
In the wake of that pain came a surging, pitch-black fury—a reckless, self-destructive kind of obsession.
He leaned down, pressing his burning lips against her tear-drenched earlobe, and poured his hoarse, scorching breath directly into her ear with a chilling mockery and deeper agony:
“Did you hear that? He says you want a divorce, you want freedom, you want to go find your ‘true love’.” “Call out to him then. Call him in here to ‘save’ you.” “Today, I’m going to make everyone outside know—and I’m going to make your ‘true love’ see clearly—whose woman you, Shen Qianqian, really are!”
Before she could draw another breath or formulate a single thought, he left her no room to escape.
His movements grew ferocious to the point of cruelty, as if he meant to smash and grind every single one of those piercing words from outside, every hurtful intention of hers, and every lingering thought of escape straight into the depths of her body.
“Ah—! Huo Xiangbei! It hurts… you jerk… mmh… ah!”
Shen Qianqian’s uncontrollable cries and broken moans, mixed with the man’s heavy, suppressed breathing and the violent, groaning squeaks of the wooden bed, carried with absolute clarity across the entire courtyard and out over the low compound wall.
The noise outside the window instantly died down.
Then— “Oh my god! This is wild!” an older woman exclaimed, slapping her thigh in amusement. “This Huo Third Brother… he’s something else! Truly lives up to his military training!” “Youth is wonderful! Plenty of stamina! Haha!” “Educated youth Xu, hear that? Doesn’t sound much like she’s being forced, does it?” “That’s right, a young couple having a minor spat. Couples fight at the head of the bed and make up at the tail end. Why is an outsider like you sticking your nose in?” “Break it up, break it up! Don’ads spoil their proper business!”
A massive wave of laughter, playful teasing, and boisterous commentary erupted all at once.
Standing in the middle of the courtyard, Xu Yanqing listened to the crimson-inducing, increasingly intense, and uninhibited sounds pouring from the house. He listened to the unvarnished mockery and jests of the surrounding villagers, his face alternating between red and white as the veins on his temples throbbed violently.
It felt as though he had been stripped naked and whipped in public; a humiliation and disgrace so profound it threatened to swallow him whole.