Chapter 21

Let time go back to that rainy day.

After they parted ways that day, Zhou An headed straight home.

The rain was indeed heavy, and her pants were basically soaked through, so she changed into a clean set of clothes as soon as she got home.

Normally, Carpenter Zhou and Zhang Caiyun weren’t home, so Zhou An usually handled dinner by herself.

Her dinners were also very simple—ninety-nine percent of the time, it was noodles.

Her plan was to eat some noodles, rest for a bit, wait for Meng Bai to find her, do some homework, and then the day would be over.

But that afternoon was unusually abnormal. While Zhou An was boiling noodles in the kitchen, Carpenter Zhou came back.

Damn it—normally, she wouldn’t see a soul at this time.

“What are you doing?” Carpenter Zhou walked into the kitchen, saw Zhou An boiling noodles, and tsked. “Eating noodles again? Didn’t your dad give you any money?”

Carpenter Zhou’s way of speaking easily pissed people off; he could light Zhou An’s fuse with just one or two sentences.

“You didn’t give me any money,” Zhou An said, pointing at the pitiful pot of noodles. “After this meal, there won’t be another one.”

“Come on, your dad will take you to town for something good to eat.”

Zhou An was also quite naive.

She really thought Carpenter Zhou had a sudden change of heart. After all, who could imagine that something like a father selling his daughter could happen to them?

So that day, she obediently got on Carpenter Zhou’s motorcycle.

She remembered that it was still raining when they set off. Carpenter Zhou sat on the motorcycle, revved it a few times with a buzz, and the moment the engine roared to life, Zhou An heard someone calling her from behind:

“Zhou An! Zhou An!! Hey!! Zhou An!!!”

Zhou An turned her head and saw Xu Zhou, drenched by the rain, standing about ten meters away behind her.

As she looked at Xu Zhou, she saw her shaking her head and waving her hands desperately, as if sending some kind of bad signal.

Get off the bike now.

That was the message Zhou An got from Xu Zhou’s body language.

But by the time she reacted, Carpenter Zhou’s motorcycle had already gone far away.

Zhou An wasn’t stupid. She didn’t think Xu Zhou would joke with her like that—if she had run all the way over here and gotten completely soaked just for a prank, it really wouldn’t make sense.

Besides, given what she knew about Xu Zhou, that was even less likely.

“Who was calling you just now?” Carpenter Zhou squinted at the rearview mirror.

“Oh, no one. Probably a classmate,” Zhou An said, shifting her body back a little and looking straight ahead.

The problem soon became apparent: they were heading in the opposite direction.

If she remembered correctly, after passing this crappy road, there would be a main road ahead, and that main road led in only one direction—the construction site.

Zhou An snapped to full awareness in an instant.

She knew that Carpenter Zhou had lost money at the construction site a few days earlier. At the time, Zhang Caiyun had a huge fight with him, and they were on the verge of divorce.

Zhou An had thought back then that it was fine if they divorced—go ahead and do it quickly, so they wouldn’t keep arguing every day.

But adults’ business was something Zhou An had never really paid much attention to. Now, though? It felt a bit off.

“Dad, what are you taking me to eat?”

“What do you want to eat?”

“I want Sandpot Rice Noodles.”

“Alright, then we’ll have Sandpot Rice Noodles.”

But the road wasn’t heading toward the Sandpot Rice Noodles place—or even the small town. Why was he going this way?

“Dad.” Zhou An furrowed her brows. “I think I drank too much water. I kinda need to pee.”

“Pee what pee? Hold it in. You can pee when we get there.”

Carpenter Zhou sped up the motorcycle a bit more.

Zhou An’s heart started racing. She had a bad feeling—eighty or ninety percent sure something was wrong. This really wasn’t the road to town.

“Dad, I can’t hold it,” Zhou An said, sucking in a breath. “My period came. I can’t hold it.”

“Which one?” Carpenter Zhou frowned, then quickly understood what she meant.

If he didn’t stop the bike at this point, he’d really be less than human.

“Fine, then hurry up.”

Zhou An got off the motorcycle and ran toward a small path on the side. That path led upward to Old Mountain.

Old Mountain was the same mountain Miao Bai and Meng Bai had searched that night.

“Got it, Dad.” Zhou An called back to Carpenter Zhou as she ran. “Don’t look at me. I’m grown up now—I’m a girl, not like when I was little.”

Carpenter Zhou sat on the bike and laughed. “Does your dad not even have that much sense?”

“By the way, Dad, why did you suddenly decide to treat me to dinner today?”

The smile on Carpenter Zhou’s face froze as he sat on the motorcycle. Clearly, that sliver of conscience was pricked. “You’re my daughter—can’t I treat you to a meal? I want to treat you, so I will. No more chit-chat. Hurry up.”

“Alright, then I won’t talk anymore. Wait for me two minutes.”

Two minutes.

For those two minutes, Zhou An really didn’t say anything, and Carpenter Zhou didn’t think much of it.

He was actually a bit conflicted, wondering what would happen if he really took Zhou An to Zhang Gou.

It seemed like something obvious.

His own daughter…

The thought made Carpenter Zhou feel uneasy, but what strong moral bottom line could a man like him have?

Clearly none. His guilt was as small as an ant—crushed with a flick of his finger.

A few more minutes passed, and Carpenter Zhou grew impatient. He shouted behind him: “Done yet? Still not finished?”

No response.

He got off the motorcycle, glanced at the small path, but there was no sign of Zhou An.

“Damn it, where the hell did she hide!!!”

Carpenter Zhou panicked. He bolted up the mountain, trying to find Zhou An. The path was slippery with mud everywhere, and he tried to track her by footprints.

But Zhou An was too clever. She had stepped only on the grassy areas, and with the grass so dense, there was no way to tell where it had been trampled. Carpenter Zhou followed for a bit but soon lost all sense of direction.

Old Mountain was huge.

Huge enough that there were no directions—roads everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

It was inevitably desolate, and with the rain pouring especially hard that day, the whole world was misty. Every bush and clump of grass looked the same. If she had really hidden, she would be impossible to find.

Carpenter Zhou searched for nearly an hour to no avail. In the end, he concluded that Zhou An had escaped. With no choice, he rode off on his motorcycle…

*

“That’s how it happened that day.” Zhou An sat on Xu Qin’s bed and told the whole story to Meng Bai.

“What happened after that? How did you end up here?”

“After that…” Zhou An lowered her head, looking a bit sad. “The stuff that came after… that’s a long story. Let’s take it one thing at a time.”

That day, Zhou An hid in a thicket for several hours to escape Carpenter Zhou’s pursuit.

Thank goodness for the rain—it kept poisonous creatures at bay.

Still, the mountains weren’t safe to linger in, especially at night. She had to leave eventually.

So Zhou An chose to set out under cover of darkness, figuring it would lower her chances of being spotted.

On the way back down the familiar path, she had no idea where to go.

Her first instinct was Meng Bai’s place, but the route there passed right by her own home. Terrified of running into Carpenter Zhou, she picked somewhere else instead: the school.

At first, she had no intention of seeking out Teacher Xu Qin.

That night, Zhou An headed straight for the classroom.

Why the classroom? She had her reasons. For one, the school felt safe—familiar territory, shelter from the elements. Most importantly, she could hole up there until the wee hours, when everyone was asleep, then slip away to Meng Bai’s without a hitch.

And so, that night, Zhou An made a beeline for the school.

Township schools weren’t like those in the city; they had hardly any security.

Just one old man manning the gate.

That evening, he was glued to the TV in the guardroom, so Zhou An slipped in without a fuss.

Drenched from the rain, she was freezing to the bone.

She hurried to the classroom, remembering an old jacket stuffed in her desk from last semester. But when she got there, the jacket was nowhere in sight.

What she found instead was Ye Hong.

“My dear Ye Hong,” Zhou An called her when recounting the story later.

Ye Hong was right there in the classroom that night. Zhou An nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw her.

But Ye Hong was kindhearted, always ready to help—a girl as warm as sunlight. Even in later years, whenever Zhou An thought back on her, regret gnawed at her heart.

Yes, regret. She hadn’t noticed the sorrow lurking beneath Ye Hong’s smile.

“I was pretty shocked to see her there in the classroom,” Zhou An said. “But she just smiled and told me she was picking up some homework.”

“The room was pitch black that night. Moonlight was all I had, and even then, I could vaguely make out a wound on her pale wrist.”

“I asked about it, and she said she’d taken a fall. God, I was so naive—I actually believed her.”

They talked for a bit.

Ye Hong even handed over her own jacket.

“Here, put this on quick,” Ye Hong said. “You’re gonna catch your death of cold. What are you doing in the classroom at this hour, anyway?”

Zhou An took the jacket gratefully. She was so cold, she shrugged it on right there in front of Ye Hong. But the next moment, she froze, unsure how to answer the question.

Why was she creeping into the classroom in the dead of night?

Because she suspected her own father might sell her off?

The thought hit hard—even someone as tough as her couldn’t hold back the tears.

That night, perched on a desk, Zhou An poured out everything that had happened that afternoon.

Strangely, though Zhou An was the one talking, it was Ye Hong who broke down crying.

“Zhou An,” she sobbed softly, “I don’t know when it started, but the whole world feels so twisted to me now.”

In the end, their roles reversed, and Zhou An found herself comforting Ye Hong.

Ye Hong even warned her: “Zhou An, don’t go home. Whatever you do, don’t go home. He’ll sell you off. Those men are like rabid dogs—they’ll lunge at you, and you won’t get away. You absolutely won’t.”

The more Zhou An heard, the more alarmed she grew. She grabbed Ye Hong’s wrist and saw the ring of angry red swelling.

“Ye Hong, what happened to you?” That was the moment Zhou An truly went speechless with fear.

“I—” Ye Hong yanked her hand back. “I don’t even know how much longer I can hold on.”

“Did someone do something to you?” Zhou An was furious, on the verge of hysteria. She wanted answers, the whole story. “Tell me. We’ll go to the police together.”

“They haven’t done anything to me yet,” Ye Hong said, staring straight at her. “But I think it’s coming. Do you believe there are still good people in this world?”

“I…” Zhou An choked up. “I still do.”

“But I don’t anymore.” Ye Hong’s voice was barely a whisper. “The stupidest thing I’ve ever done is accept someone’s kindness, thinking free lunches really fall from the sky.”

“Spell it out for me. Please?”

“Okay.”

And so Ye Hong laid it all out.

That night, she talked at length, but the line that stuck with Zhou An the most was this: They didn’t truly want to sponsor us through college—at least, not those men. They’re devils hiding in the shadows, determined to crush every budding flower in the forest.

Crush them all.