“It hurts…” Su Qing’s delicate face twisted in pain. It felt as if her lower body were being split apart.
Sweat dripped from Zhou Huaijin’s face onto the woman beneath him. His voice was hoarse. “Should I slow down?”
The bowl of drug-laced water had made him feel as though a ferocious beast were trying to break out of its cage. His mind was muddled, and he couldn’t make out the face of the woman beneath him.
All he knew was that he wanted her!
Su Qing’s beautiful, peach-blossom eyes opened slightly, and she froze. Her pupils contracted sharply. Hadn’t she been hit by a car on her way home from work?
How had she ended up having sex with a man?
Zhou Huaijin saw that the woman wasn’t saying anything. The heat raging inside him swept away his remaining inhibitions, and he took her even more fiercely.
A faint whimper escaped Su Qing’s throat. She raised a hand, trying to push the man off her.
His broad, well-defined chest was like a wall of iron. She couldn’t budge him at all and could only let him do as he pleased!
……
“Waaah! Mom, they called me and my brother fatherless bastards!”
A small, soft body flung itself onto Su Qing.
She opened her eyes, wrapped one arm around her daughter, and rubbed her temple with the other.
She’d had that dream again.
For six years, she’d dreamed about it every few days.
“Tangtang, Mom’s sleeping. Don’t bother her. Your big brother will teach those bad kids a lesson.” Zhou Yunzhou came in from outside, his face bruised and swollen. His little face was set in a stern expression as he spoke with utmost seriousness.
Su Qing sat up. When she saw her son’s handsome face nearly beaten beyond recognition, rage shot straight to her head.
“Yunzhou, who hit you?”
After that man had slept with her, he’d walked away without a second thought. As a woman of the modern age, Su Qing had already had the bad luck to be hit by a car and sent to this era of scarcity—and, as soon as she arrived, she’d ended up doing that with a man.
She decided to treat it as if a dog had bitten her.
The Su family had laid down their terms: the Zhou family had to compensate them, and the Su family would decide how. This compensation was a show of sincerity for Zhou Huaijin having slept with Su Qing—and it would also serve as the bride-price!
The Zhou family cared about appearances. Zhou Huaijin had just been promoted to regimental commander, and they couldn’t let anything ruin his future, so they had no choice but to swallow their anger and accept.
Zhou Huaijin hadn’t wanted any of it. He didn’t want that village girl around, making him sick.
They could get a marriage certificate, but Su Qing had to stay in the countryside.
Just like that, the Su and Zhou families decided Su Qing’s life for her. No one asked if she was willing.
A month later, Su Qing was pregnant.
She’d originally planned to find a way to divorce Zhou Huaijin. After thinking it over for two days, she decided not to get divorced. She wanted to have the baby.
She didn’t have to wait on a man or her in-laws, and her parasitic birth family wasn’t around either. Life was hard, but she was happy in spirit.
Before she’d come to this era, Su Qing hadn’t planned to marry at all. She’d wanted to buy sperm and have a child without a father in the picture.
In this era, a woman raising two children by herself would be bullied.
Those people didn’t dare bully her, so they bullied her children behind her back instead.
How could she put up with that?
“Mom, they pinned Big Brother to the ground and beat him so hard! Waaah!” Zhou Wantang’s crying brought Su Qing back to the present.
She took both children by the hand and headed out. “Yunzhou, take Mom to the kids who hit you.”
“Mom, I’m fine!” Zhou Yunzhou stuck his little bottom out behind him. “It doesn’t hurt.”
He didn’t want his mother to make enemies by standing up for him.
People in the village said behind his mother’s back that she might seem to have it all together on the surface, but in truth she was a pitiful woman, abandoned by her husband and pining for a man who didn’t love her back.
They mocked him and Tangtang, calling them fatherless bastards.
If Mom took revenge for him, the people who insulted her behind her back would only say even worse things.
Su Qing looked down at her son and said sternly, “Zhou Yunzhou, listen to me. We don’t go looking for trouble, but we don’t fear it either. When someone bullies you, you fight back. Otherwise, they’ll only bully you even worse next time.”
“Big Brother, let Mom get revenge for us. Those people are awful. Every time they see me, they call me a bastard and a piece of trash,” Zhou Wantang said through her tears.
Su Qing’s anger flared even hotter.
She took Zhou Wantang and Zhou Yunzhou to the place where he usually played—the threshing ground.
Seven or eight boys were playing a game. When they saw Zhou Yunzhou, they pressed their index fingers to their cheeks in a mocking gesture.
“Zhou Yunzhou, you couldn’t beat us, so you went to get your mom. Shame on you!”
“You don’t have a dad. Bringing your mom won’t help!”
The boys burst out laughing. They stared at Zhou Yunzhou and Zhou Wantang with malicious glee, barely paying Su Qing any attention.
To them, Su Qing might be an adult, but she was a woman her husband didn’t want—no different from a widow.
Even if they bullied Zhou Yunzhou, there was no one who could stand up for him.
“Were these the ones who hit you?” Su Qing stared at the pack of little demons, narrowing her eyes.
“Yeah, them. They always make fun of Tangtang and me for not having a dad.” Zhou Yunzhou’s eyes were bloodshot.
He’d told them he had a dad, and that his dad was a soldier, but they didn’t believe him. They asked why, if he had a dad, they’d never seen him.
Zhou Yunzhou had never seen his dad either.
Whenever that happened, he’d lower his head in shame, and his little shoulders would droop without him even realizing it.
“You two stay right here and wait for Mom.” Su Qing released their little hands and walked toward the boys.
The boys weren’t afraid of Su Qing at all. They often heard their parents say that Su Qing had been abandoned by her man.
A woman with no support from either her husband’s family or her own, raising two children alone, wasn’t much of a threat.
“Smack! Smack! Smack!”
Su Qing broke off a branch from a tree and gave the boys a good whipping across their bottoms.
“Your parents didn’t raise you right, so I’ll do it!”
A chorus of wails erupted at once!
“Su Qing, you worthless bitch! How dare you hit me? I’m telling my grandpa!” The village chief’s grandson ran home crying.
Su Qing sneered. “Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.”
Seeing that, the other boys ran home too, each to fetch reinforcements.
“Mom, you’re amazing!” Zhou Wantang was delighted to see her mother beat the boys who usually bullied her and her brother until they all went running home in tears. She clapped excitedly.
Zhou Yunzhou glanced at Tangtang. She wouldn’t be smiling once those kids brought the adults back.
Before long, a huge crowd came pouring in.
Some were the parents of the children who’d just been beaten; others were villagers who’d come to watch.
“Su Qing, look at how swollen you’ve beaten my kid’s bottom! How could you do that? I’ve never even hit my own child like that.”
A woman in a floral short-sleeved shirt gripped her child’s arm and glared furiously at Su Qing. She looked ready to devour her alive.
“Exactly, Su Qing! We’re all from the same village. Kids bickering and roughhousing is normal, isn’t it? How can you, an adult, hit children?”
“What?” Su Qing still had the branch she’d broken off the tree clutched in her hand. She sneered. “Your kids can bully mine, but I’m not allowed to give them a taste of their own medicine?”
The middle-aged women exchanged glances.
Su Qing was pretty damn arrogant.
Arrogant enough to make their hands itch.
The women silently moved toward Su Qing, planning to gang up on her and beat some sense into her, so she’d learn her lesson and never dare hit their children again.
But before they could lay a hand on Su Qing’s face, the branch in her hand cracked against them like a whip. They all yelped in pain.