The village head’s roar was still echoing above the courtyard when, before the time it took to drink a cup of tea, the local magistrate-like headman Chen Fuhai strode in with his hands behind his back, brows tightly furrowed. Behind him followed several respected elders of the village.
The moment Chen Fuhai entered, his foot slipped slightly on a smear of blood. He looked down and saw the eldest branch groaning beside the millstone, then glanced at Third Uncle Chen standing there, his head covered in blood yet still rooted in place like a nailed post. Finally, his gaze landed on the scissors still tightly gripped in Li’s hand.
“This is a disgraceful mess!” Chen Fuhai struck his walking stick hard, his beard bristling with anger. “Third Brother, you’ve always been known as filial and honest. What is going on today? Are you really going to resort to violence?”
Third Uncle Chen opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Old Madam Chen was already slapping her thigh and wailing.
“Village Head Brother, you must uphold justice for us! The third branch has gone mad! Just to protect that evil little brat, he beat his own elder brother nearly to death—and even tried to kill this old bones of mine!”
She conveniently avoided mentioning anything about selling children.
Third Uncle Chen, clumsy with words, turned purple with anxiety. His throat made hoarse, wheezing sounds like a broken bellows, but he couldn’t form a coherent sentence.
Suddenly, a small icy hand reached over and grasped his trembling one.
Chen Zui looked up. Her palm-sized face was deathly pale, hollow-eyed, looking even more pitiful than a famine refugee. She did not cry. Instead, she looked straight at the village head with calm, clear eyes and spoke softly—her voice childish, but steady in a way that made people’s hearts ache.
“Grandpa Village Head, it’s not my father’s fault. Grandma said she was going to sell me to a human trafficker to get money for Big Cousin Dabao to buy meat.”
She pointed at her thin, almost paper-like clothes, still stained with dirt from the fight.
“My third sister, fourth sister, and fifth sister… they were all sold like that. Grandma said girls who bring no money don’t deserve to eat rice at home. Yesterday I fainted from hunger, and in my dream I heard the King of Hell ask me—why is the Chen family’s rice jar full, while the third branch is starving?”
Out of the mouths of babes—words that cut deepest.
The villagers erupted instantly.
“So that’s why those girls from the third branch disappeared…”
“They really sold them… how cruel!”
“Tigers don’t even eat their cubs. This is too much.”
“Look at that Sixth Girl, skin and bones… while Dabao is fat as a pig…”
The public opinion turned like a blade, slicing into Old Master Chen’s face.
He hadn’t expected this usually silent little girl to speak so sharply today.
“Shut up!” Old Master Chen slammed his pipe against the table, face dark. “Since we can’t live together, then we split! Village Head Chen, stop trying to persuade us. Write the separation document right now!”
He was determined to offload the burden. The third branch was injured, half-mad, and now had this “cursed” child. Keeping them was nothing but disaster.
A yellowed sheet of rough paper was spread over the millstone.
Old Master Chen narrowed his eyes and began dictating with cold precision:
“The old residence goes to the eldest branch. The ten acres of irrigated fields also go to them—Dabao will need them for future studies and exams. As for the third branch…”
He glanced at the battered family and sneered.
“Three thatched rooms at the west mountain foot go to you. As for land, two mu of hillside fields. Food? The household is tight lately—no grain to spare.”
The villagers gasped.
Those thatched huts had been abandoned for seven or eight years—the roof half-collapsed, walls leaking wind from all sides. And the two mu of hillside land was full of stones; even weeds struggled to grow there. No grain at all meant they were essentially being driven to death.
“Father! You’re trying to kill us!” Third Uncle Chen’s eyes cracked open, blood tears mixing as they ran down his face.
“Take it or get out!” Big Brother Chen spat viciously as he struggled to his feet.
Third Uncle Chen was about to argue again when Chen Zui gently squeezed his hand.
“Dad, agree to it.”
He looked down at her. Those deep, calm eyes carried no fear—only strange reassurance.
She turned to Old Master Chen, lips curling slightly.
“Grandfather, we accept the broken house and barren land. But I have one condition to add to the document.”
“What is it?” he frowned.
“From today on, the third branch cuts all ties with the main family. Life and death, sickness and burial—nothing to do with each other. We won’t come begging even if we starve, and you won’t come near us if you prosper.”
She paused, then raised her voice.
“And also—my sisters’ marriages, lives, and deaths will all be decided by my parents. The main family is not allowed to interfere ever again.”
Old Madam Chen immediately lit up.
How convenient. Those useless girls would have no future anyway—this saved them dowries and trouble.
“Write it! Quickly write it!” she urged, afraid they might change their minds. “Village Head Chen, did you hear that? They said it themselves—no contact after separation! Don’t bring their corpses to our doorstep when they starve!”
The village head sighed and shook his head, writing with a heavy heart.
This was a total expulsion with nothing left. They probably wouldn’t survive the winter.
“Sign it,” he said.
The red ink pad was placed on the millstone.
Old Master Chen pressed his handprint immediately, as if shaking off something filthy.
Third Uncle Chen’s hand trembled as he pressed his mark onto the paper filled with injustice. The moment his finger left the page, he felt drained—but strangely, it was as if a mountain that had crushed him for thirty years had finally collapsed.
Chen Zui carefully blew dry the ink, folded the document, and tucked it into her chest (actually into her spatial storage).
This was their lifeline—and their key to freedom.
“Pack up. We’re leaving!” Old Master Chen waved them off.
There was hardly anything to pack.
A few ragged clothes, a quilt stuffed with black cotton, and an old iron pot missing a corner. That was all Third Uncle Chen’s family had earned through a lifetime of labor.
The sun was setting, stretching their shadows long across the ground.
Third Uncle Chen carried the broken pot. His wife Li held the bundle of clothes tightly like it was the last shred of dignity.
Chen Zui walked at the back.
She stepped over the high threshold of the old house and paused to look back.
Inside the courtyard, the eldest branch was laughing and chatting with Old Master Chen as if they had just driven out pests, not family. Old Madam Chen even splashed a basin of dirty foot-washing water where they had just stood, cursing about “bad luck.”
Chen Zui did not feel anger.
She simply touched the space hidden in her chest—endless supplies, a spring that could heal all wounds, and the wisdom of two lifetimes.
A faint smile appeared on her dirty little face.
Mockery, pity—and something wild, like a tiger finally released from its cage.
“Dad, Mom, let’s go.”
She ran forward and took her father’s rough, calloused hand.
“Let’s go home.”
Back to a home that was broken—but truly theirs.
Third Uncle Chen looked down at his daughter’s bright eyes in the sunset. For the first time, a spark ignited in his dull, defeated heart.
As long as the family stayed together, as long as they no longer suffered humiliation—even begging on the streets, he would accept it.
The wind rolled dry leaves across the ground, chasing after their departing figures.
Under the old locust tree at the village entrance, a few gossiping women watched them leave and sneered.
“That broken house? You can’t live there.”
“I bet within three days, Third Uncle Chen will be back on his knees begging.”
“Those two mu of land are all stones—what can they grow?”
Their laughter drifted on the wind.
Chen Zui ignored it completely, quietly calculating in her mind:
What flavor of self-heating rice should she take out from her space tonight?
Fish-fragrant pork… or braised beef?