Suddenly.
A loud crash came from outside the house!
Then came an angry shout.
“Stop!”
Li Shufen’s hand trembled, and the steel needle nearly slipped from her grasp.
She turned around in shock and saw a tall figure standing at the courtyard gate.
It was Lin Yan.
Following the village shop owner’s directions, he had found the third house, the one with faded red couplets hanging by the door.
He hadn’t even entered the courtyard before he heard sobbing and screams coming from the pigpen.
A terrible premonition exploded in his heart.
Lin Yan rushed over in a few strides. The sight before him nearly froze the blood in his veins.
Inside the dim, filthy pigpen,
a scrawny little girl was chained by the ankle while a woman clamped a hand tightly around her cheek.
A steel needle was poised to sew her lips together.
And the girl’s face was slowly merging with the smiling little face in the photograph.
“Panpan......”
Lin Yan’s eyes blazed with fury.
A rage powerful enough to destroy his reason erupted from his chest.
The terrifying aura radiating from Lin Yan made Li Shufen stumble back a step.
“Y-you, who are you? This is my house. Get out!”
Lin Yan’s gaze swept over her, then settled on Panpan.
“Let. Her. Go.”
Li Shufen instantly flew into a rage.
“What’s it to you? This is my child. I can discipline her however I want.”
Before she had even finished speaking,
Lin Yan had already moved.
He was impossibly fast, as if he had crossed those few meters in an instant.
Li Shufen felt a sharp pain in her wrist.
The steel needle clattered to the ground.
Then a tremendous force sent her flying. She staggered into the pigpen’s earthen wall.
Lin Yan crouched down and looked at Panpan.
Tears streaked the girl’s little face, and half the stitches remained in her lips.
Her eyes had already begun to glaze over.
The pain she had just endured had nearly drained all her strength.
Combined with days of hunger and abuse, her consciousness was rapidly fading.
Just as Lin Yan reached out to touch her, his gaze fell on the little fist clutched to her chest.
Between her grimy fingers was an old photograph, worn and curled at the edges.
He gently pried Panpan’s fingers apart.
The photograph showed several young men in old-fashioned military uniforms, grinning foolishly.
The sunlight was dazzling, their youth radiant.
On the far left, grinning the most carefree grin, was Wang Li;
right beside him, making faces, was Da Liu;
standing ramrod straight next to them was Monkey;
and on the far right, with an arm around Monkey’s neck, was Old Cat......
They were all brothers of his, Azure Wolf—men who could entrust their lives to one another.
The photo had been taken on the training grounds during Wang Li’s second year in the military, with their whole squad gathered together.
And now, Panpan’s tears had nearly soaked the photograph to pieces.
It was covered in tearstains, dried and then wetted again and again, layered one over another until the photograph was wrinkled and pale.
Beneath those layers of tearstains, Wang Li’s carefree grin had become blurred beyond recognition.
How many times had this child clutched the photograph and cried secretly in the dark?
Lin Yan reached out, carefully trying to touch her face.
“Panpan...... don’t be afraid. Uncle is here.”
Panpan’s eyelashes fluttered, and she struggled to focus her gaze.
The figure before her swayed indistinctly.
She couldn’t make out Lin Yan’s face.
She could only see a tall silhouette.
Like a mountain, it stood between her and that terrifying auntie.
Just like in her memories,
the man who would lift her high above his head and laugh as he called her “Little Panpan.”
Was it a dream?
Or had Daddy...... really come back?
Before her consciousness sank completely into darkness,
she used the last of her strength to call out:
“Dad......dy......”
Lin Yan froze.
That faint “Daddy” was like a red-hot needle, stabbing deep into his heart.
By then, Li Shufen had struggled to her feet and was running away with Fugui in her arms.
“Murder! Someone’s stealing a child! Help!”
She screamed at the top of her lungs.
Lin Yan ignored her and quickly pulled out his phone, dialing a number.
The most urgent thing now was to get Panpan to the hospital.
The call was answered almost instantly.
“Brother Yan?”
A young man’s voice came through the phone.
“I heard the Luo Family......”
Lin Yan cut him off at once. “Mufeng! Arrange for the best hospital in Jiangcheng to send an ambulance here right away! Hurry! I’m in Wang Family Village!”
On the other end of the call,
Su Mufeng was startled by his urgent tone.
“All right, I’ll arrange it now! Send me your location!”
Lin Yan hung up and quickly sent his location.
He looked down at the unconscious Panpan in his arms.
The girl was deathly pale, her breathing faint.
Death was closing in on her, step by step.
Lin Yan used brute force to snap the rusted lock.
Then he carefully gathered the girl into his arms.
She was frighteningly light, her bones pressing against his arm.
She probably weighed less than twenty pounds.
For a five-year-old child, that was heartbreakingly little.
He had just reached the entrance of the pigpen
when Lin Yan stopped in his tracks.
At the courtyard gate,
Li Shufen’s screams had drawn a large crowd of neighbors.
“Shufen, what’s going on? Who’s been murdered?”
“Auntie Wang, there’s a child trafficker inside who tried to snatch a child—and he hit me!”
Li Shufen had already hidden behind the crowd, pointing at Lin Yan and shrieking.
“That’s him! He’s trying to steal my Panpan!”
“What?”
The villagers were instantly enraged.
At any time,
the words “child trafficker” were enough to light the most sensitive fuse in the countryside.
The men’s expressions darkened, and they hurried back to their homes to fetch weapons.
The women spontaneously blocked the courtyard gate, forming a human wall.
When Lin Yan emerged from the pigpen carrying Panpan, the women immediately shouted:
“Put the child down, you trafficker!”
“You dare snatch a child in broad daylight? Is there no law anymore?”
A child trafficker?
Lin Yan glanced at Li Shufen hiding behind the crowd and understood at once.
The guilty party was accusing someone else first.
He let out a cold laugh.
“She abuses the child, chains her up in the pigpen, and beats her until she’s covered in injuries. You all didn’t know?”
The women faltered, their eyes involuntarily falling on Panpan in Lin Yan’s arms.
The girl’s tiny body was wrapped in tattered clothes.
Her bare little legs were covered in old and new wounds, and a ring of bloody, raw abrasions circled her ankle.
The air fell silent for a moment.
A woman in a floral blouse was the first to react. She planted her hands on her hips and stepped forward.
“It’s her child. How she beats or scolds her is her business! Put the child down right now!”
“That’s right,”
another short, plump woman chimed in.
“She’s just a girl, not a boy. So what if she gets a few beatings? At least Shufen’s family has kept her fed and hasn’t let her starve to death.”
“Exactly, exactly. Put the child down!”
“Otherwise, once the men get here, you won’t be able to leave!”
The other women joined in, their voices growing louder and louder.
“Damn it.”
Lin Yan cursed.
“You beasts! Is a girl’s life not a life?”
He had heard about places like this before.
Favoring boys over girls.
Treating girls like weeds and boys like treasures.
He had heard a comrade-in-arms mention it once when they were chatting in the military unit.
He said that back in his hometown, when someone had a daughter, the mother-in-law could go three days without giving her a kind word.
At the time, Lin Yan had taken it as a joke.
But he had never imagined it could be this bad.
At Lin Yan’s words, the women erupted:
“Who are you calling beasts?”
“Outsider, get out!”
“Shufen, don’t be afraid of him! There are so many of us—what can he do?”
Seeing the crowd on her side, Li Shufen instantly found her courage.
She pushed through the crowd with Fugui in her arms and pointed at Lin Yan, cursing. “How I treat this little brat is none of your business! Put the child down right now, or you won’t make it out of this village today!”
The moment she finished speaking,
Lin Yan moved.
One second, he was still standing by the pigpen entrance, holding the child.
The next, he was in front of Li Shufen.
Everyone saw a blur and couldn’t make out what he had done.
Smack!
A sharp slap rang out.
Li Shufen was knocked off her feet and sent flying two or three meters backward.
Then she slammed hard into the ground, her head lolling to one side as she passed out.
Fugui was flung out of her arms too, landing nearby and bursting into tears.
It all happened so fast that everyone was stunned.
“Mom!”
Fugui was the first to react, crying as he crawled toward Li Shufen.
“Murder! He’s killed her!”
“Quick, grab him!”
“Call the police! Call the police!”
The women shrieked, and chaos erupted.