“Sang Wenxuan?” Two female police officers knocked lightly and stepped into the hospital room.
Hearing them enter, the woman on the bed flinched visibly, a wave of anxiety washing over her sallow face.
Seeing this, the leading officer quickly offered a comforting word. “Don’t be nervous. We just want to ask a few simple questions. We won’t arrest anyone who did nothing wrong, but we will make sure those who broke the law are severely punished.”
The officer’s voice was warm yet firm. Sang Wenxuan clutched the thin blanket on her bed, her tension easing slightly. After a few more words of reassurance, seeing that Sang Wenxuan was no longer acting fearful or resistant, the officer directly turned to the main topic.
“From what we understand, you have been married to Luo Qifeng for sixteen years. When did his violent behavior toward you begin?”
Sang Wenxuan stared blankly at the blanket. “I can’t remember clearly. He was good to me before we got married. But after the wedding, I found out he gambled. Whenever he lost too much money, he would hit me.”
The officer frowned. “The first time he laid a hand on you, did you ever think about calling the police or asking for help?”
A look of confusion flickered in Sang Wenxuan’s eyes. “Call the police? Wasn’t that just a family matter? Do the police even get involved in family matters?”
The officer’s expression turned instantly serious. “Of course we do! A ‘family matter’ is not a shield for domestic abuse. There is no such thing as legal violence. Physical abuse is a crime!”
Looking at the officer’s resolute gaze, Sang Wenxuan’s eyes welled with tears. She wiped her face, her voice heavy with pure exhaustion. “I didn’t know. No one ever told me. Luo Qifeng said nobody would care about what happens behind closed doors. Besides, he went around borrowing money from everyone and never paid it back. I was too ashamed to face anyone else.”
The officer studied her with a heavy heart, then glanced down at the case file in her hands. “According to our information, you kept in frequent touch with your younger brother before he and his wife passed away. Did you ever tell him about your situation?”
At the mention of her brother, tears spilled over. “Our parents passed away suddenly. We didn’t get a single cent of accident compensation, and we were left with a mountain of debt. At least I had my parents around until I became an adult, but he was still so young when he was put into the orphanage. Every time I went to see him, he looked thinner. Once, someone had scratched a bloody, deep gash across his face—that scar stayed with him forever. He suffered for so long before finally getting a few good years of life. How could I burden him with my miserable troubles?”
The officer looked sympathetic. “Did you ever try to end this marriage with your husband?”
A tear rolled down Sang Wenxuan’s cheek, her gaze turning hollow once more. “I have no parents, no education, and I’m not smart. When I married Luo Qifeng, I had just finished paying off the debts my parents left behind, so I didn’t have a single cent in savings. Luo Qifeng even threatened that if I divorced him, he would slash my face too. Even if I did leave him, where could I go? I’ve never set foot outside Xianxi Town my entire life. If I stayed in town, would he ever leave me alone? My life.”
Unable to hold it in, she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. “I just couldn’t see a future for myself anymore.”
Watching Sang Wenxuan weep silently into her blanket, both officers felt their eyes grow red.
The officer who had been speaking stepped forward, embracing Sang Wenxuan and patting her back gently. “No one is ever truly stuck without a future. Luo Qifeng’s crimes have been exposed to the public, and he will face strict legal punishment. You will be able to start a new life very soon. Before coming here, we spoke to your neighbors. They all said you are a very good person—hardworking and honest. Once you are rid of Luo Qifeng, your life will definitely get better.”
Sang Wenxuan looked at the officer through her tears, as if clutching a lifeline. “Officer, will it really get better?”
The officer nodded. “As long as you want it and are willing to work for it, I promise you, it will get better and better.”
Once Sang Wenxuan calmed down, the officer continued with her questions. “This incident also involves another person: your nephew, Sang Xiaoshi. During the year he lived with you, did Luo Qifeng subject him to physical violence as well?”
Sang Wenxuan’s expression turned pained once more. Unable to voice her answer, she simply covered her face and nodded.
The officer’s expression darkened. “Did he ever force Sang Xiaoshi to get money for him?”
“He only brought Xiaoshi home for the money!” The emotions Sang Wenxuan had suppressed for years finally erupted. “That animal, when he first agreed to bring Xiaoshi back, he swore to me he would raise him properly. But then, time and time again, he used discipline as an excuse to whip Xiaoshi with his leather belt. The more I tried to stop him, the harder he whipped him. He wanted me to watch—he wanted me to just stand there and watch. He wanted both Xiaoshi and me to obey him completely before he would go easy on us. Keeping Xiaoshi with us meant letting him suffer, but whenever I thought about the hardships his father went through in the orphanage, I didn’t dare send him away. It’s all because I’m useless. I’m a useless aunt.”
The injuries on Shen Siyang’s back were far more severe than the mere scrape he had claimed. After holding on out of pure willpower for the entire ride, he lost consciousness the moment the ambulance reached the hospital.
Sang Xiaoshi’s face went completely pale with fright.
He ran alongside the stretcher as it was wheeled out of the ambulance, stopping at the entrance of the emergency room, where he ran straight into Yuan Linfei, who had just driven over.
Seeing Sang Xiaoshi, Yuan Linfei paused for a brief moment before speaking quickly, “Auntie saw your aunt was awake when I came upstairs. She has been moved to a regular room now. Do you want to go see her? Auntie will stay right here with Yangyang.”
Sang Xiaoshi slowed to a halt. He looked up at Yuan Linfei, his small hand instinctively tightening around the phone Shen Siyang had given him inside his pocket. He nodded slowly.
Yuan Linfei reached out and gently ruffled his hair. “Don’t wander around looking for it by yourself. There’s a nurse on duty at the first-floor entrance. Go ask her to guide you to the inpatient ward.”
Sang Xiaoshi nodded obediently, staying rooted at the emergency room door. He only turned to leave after watching Yuan Linfei hurry into the emergency room and seeing Shen Siyang’s figure vanish completely behind the doors.
Sang Xiaoshi silently memorized the path from the emergency room to the inpatient ward. After taking some time, he successfully located the room Sang Wenxuan was in.
Just as he raised his hand to knock, he heard voices coming from inside. It was an unfamiliar female voice.
“Don’t be nervous. We just want to ask a few simple questions.”
Sang Xiaoshi froze. He stared at the doorknob for a moment, then slowly stepped back and sat down on a row of plastic chairs in the corridor.
The inpatient ward was quiet in the dead of night. The voices from the room drifted out intermittently into Sang Xiaoshi’s ears. When the conversation finally drew to a close, nothing was left but the sound of Sang Wenxuan weeping—a deep, liberating release he had never heard from her before.
Feeling a sudden sting in his palm, Sang Xiaoshi looked down and realized he had accidentally scratched open an existing scrape. He got up and walked toward the restroom to wash off the blood. As he was about to head back, he heard footsteps and a conversation in the corridor. The voices matched the officers who had just been in Sang Wenxuan’s room.
Peeking out from the restroom doorway, Sang Xiaoshi spotted the two uniformed female officers. He heard the younger officer asking her older colleague with a look of confusion:
“I still don’t understand. Even if Sang Wenxuan felt her life was hopeless in the early years and was too exhausted to fight back, shouldn’t she have stood up and fought back this past year for the sake of the child’s upbringing?”
Hearing the question, Sang Xiaoshi stopped in his tracks. He stared down at his freshly rinsed hand, his long eyelashes fluttering slightly as he stayed hidden.
The older officer’s response came quickly, accompanied by a sigh.
“An animal that has been kept in a zoo for years might not even know how to run away, even if you open the cage right in front of it. That’s why psychological manipulation is sometimes far more terrifying than physical violence. When people are hit and feel pain, their natural instinct is to resist immediately. But psychological manipulation happens silently. The abuser exploits human weaknesses to dismantle and distort the victim’s way of thinking step by step. Over time, their mindset becomes fixed. Even if they feel the pain, they no longer know how to fight back.”
The younger officer pondered her words, looking perplexed.
Seeing this, the veteran officer explained, “Sang Wenxuan’s experience is a textbook example. To put it simply: when Luo Qifeng beat her and she resisted, he would hit her even harder. When she didn’t resist, he would stop, and sometimes he would even offer her small rewards. Over time, when she gets beaten again, do you think she will resist, or will she just submissively take it?”
The younger officer felt a pang of distress. “But like you said, people naturally resist when it hurts. Before her mindset became completely fixed in the beginning, she must have fought back, right?”
The older officer offered a bitter smile. “That’s why I said it was just a simple example. I’ve seen many cases like this over the years. The most terrifying thing about psychological manipulation is that the abusers don’t reveal their true colors right at the start. Normally, we all know that everyone has flaws—that’s just human nature. We might occasionally feel bad about our flaws, but that distress is usually balanced out by the happiness our strengths bring us. That’s a normal emotional cycle.
However, malicious abusers will find every way to magnify your flaws, keeping you trapped in a constant state of misery and self-doubt. Over time, your psychological defenses drop lower and lower, until you can no longer judge right from wrong on your own. When they start feeding you their ideas at that point, do you think it’s easy or hard to brainwash you?”
The younger officer felt her skin crawl.
The older officer flipped through the file regarding Sang Wenxuan’s family. “This kind of manipulation is even easier to pull off when it targets an area completely unfamiliar to the victim. We see it a lot with young couples, where one person tricks the other into giving up their heart, soul, and money, leaving them suicidal. It also happens frequently in dysfunctional families. Look.”
Finding the page she wanted, the older officer pointed it out to her colleague. “Our precinct actually has a prior report filed by Sang Xiaoshi. But by the time he reported it, too much time had passed since the injury occurred, making it impossible to perform a medical forensic evaluation. On top of that, Luo Qifeng claimed the boy had simply been naughty and fell out of a tree, so the report led nowhere.”
The veteran officer closed the file. “The reason Sang Xiaoshi knew to call the police is because he grew up in a very healthy, loving home. He knows exactly what a normal, good family looks like, so he could clearly recognize Luo Qifeng’s actions as wrong and fight back. Sang Wenxuan, on the other hand, has only ever known her marriage to Luo Qifeng. Plus, I believe Luo Qifeng intentionally ruined her social relationships in this town by borrowing money from everyone.
Isolated and without any reference for what a normal marriage looks like, she was systematically and completely manipulated step by step.”
The younger officer rubbed her arms, which were covered in goosebumps. “Captain, the way you describe it makes me scared to interact with strangers.”
The older officer chuckled, tapping her colleague’s head lightly with the folder. “There’s no need to be afraid. Human instinct provides danger warnings. Just like standing on a rooftop and looking down—because you’re afraid of falling, you naturally take two steps back. When a relationship starts draining your happiness, lowering your confidence, weakening your social ties, and causing your life to spiral downward, that is your biggest warning sign. Recognize the reality early, clear up the relationship, re-center yourself, and keep your guard up. You’ll be just fine.”
Sang Xiaoshi only half-understood the conversation. He listened quietly until the two officers left before walking back toward Sang Wenxuan’s room.
Inside the room, Sang Wenxuan’s weeping continued unabated.
Sang Xiaoshi knocked lightly on the door, but there was no response. Guessing that she simply hadn’t heard him, he thought it over for a moment before pushing the door open and stepping inside.
Even the sound of the door opening failed to draw Sang Wenxuan’s attention. It was only when Sang Xiaoshi reached the side of the bed and spoke in a soft voice that she noticed him. “Auntie.”
Sang Wenxuan snapped her head up. Once she realized it was Sang Xiaoshi, her hands—which had been clutching the blanket tightly raised and lowered several times in hesitation. In the end, she still couldn’t bring herself to rest them on him. She simply covered her face, choking out through her sobs, “Auntie is so sorry. I failed you. I failed you.”
The harsh fluorescent light of the hospital room clearly illuminated the streaks of gray running through the woman’s tangled dark hair, as well as the weathered skin beneath that looked far older than her actual years.
Sang Xiaoshi watched her quietly for a long moment. Then, he reached out, placed his hand on Sang Wenxuan’s back, and began to soothe her with slow, gentle pats.