Chapter 65: He Who Fights With A Dragon Becomes A Dragon Himself
As for the elders whose names were revealed, Ming Chenxing and his companions, adhering to the principle of respecting the old and loving the young, only severed their limbs and did not kill them directly.
However, at their age, whether they could survive was a matter of skill.
How could the youngsters not know that these guys, who were still lustful in their seventies and eighties, must have committed all sorts of evil when they were young.
As for the remaining old men, they were all sealed with a sword through the throat.
Regardless of whether they participated in this sinful transaction when they were young, living in the same village meant they were undoubtedly guilty of harboring criminals.
However, when killing the remaining old women, Wei Jiao spoke up, “Wait.”
“She, she is a good person,” Wei Jiao said. “She let me go, can… can you not kill her?”
The old woman pointed at by Wei Jiao closed her eyes, showing no fear like the other elders, but instead a calm demeanor, as if she had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Hearing Wei Jiao’s words, she opened her eyes, and a glimmer of light seemed to flash in her turbid eyes.
This was an old woman,
An old woman who was tricked into the village and kept for over ten years, and then tamed for over forty years.
When she was first tricked into the village, she was young and beautiful like these girls, unyielding and defiant, resisting these demons.
A year later, she gave birth to a child.
An incredibly cute child.
When she was pregnant, she didn’t really want him; she spent a lot of effort trying to abort him.
She didn’t need a child born of demons.
But when she finally held the child in her arms, she suddenly felt a daze; the feeling was so strange, as if she was always meant to give birth to this child, always meant to raise this child.
The child bit her chest, and something called mother’s love overwhelmed her.
Her attitude towards that man improved a lot.
Perhaps because of the child, that man also treated her much better. Although he still hit and scolded her from time to time, her living space was no longer a dirty pigsty but a warm room, and she no longer ate leftovers but ate at the same table as the man.
However, she still wore shackles on her feet.
In the fourth year, she had another child. This time, she looked at the child and smiled repeatedly.
She suddenly felt that this man wasn’t so bad.
Even though the stick never left her side.
The man told her, “It’s natural for a man to hit a woman; otherwise, who would be willing to support you!”
She gradually accepted this statement and ignored this behavior called “domestic violence.”
In the fifth year, the man unlocked the shackles on her feet, allowing her to move freely within the house. She was so happy that she personally cooked four dishes and one soup for the man, and fed the child bite by bite in front of him.
She suddenly felt a trace of pity for the man.
In the seventh year, she became pregnant again, but this time she wasn’t so lucky; she gave birth to a baby girl.
The man threw the baby girl into the back mountain to feed the wolves. She couldn’t understand and had a huge argument with the man over it.
Having just given birth, she was beaten by the man until her face was bruised and swollen, suffered heavy bleeding, and lay in bed for half a year, permanently losing her fertility.
However, for half a year, it was the man and the child who took care of her. Her fierceness, which had surged due to the baby girl, gradually dissipated.
At that time, she forgot that while the man took care of her, he spent money to visit the neighbor’s house night after night.
Taking care of her was just in case she died, and he would have to spend money to buy another woman.
In the eighth year, the man suddenly bought her a set of clothes, clean and bright. Wearing those clothes, looking at her two children, she suddenly felt a trace of affection for the man.
A trace of terrifying affection.
She completely gave up her resistance to the man; she obediently cooked and prepared meals for the man, managed the household chores, made good shoes in the spring, and knitted cotton clothes in the winter.
In the ninth year, she could move freely in the village under the man’s gaze.
At that time, the man would take her to visit other villagers and laugh heartily while pointing at her.
And she, looking at the women in the houses, pigsties, and under the walls, the women who resisted, felt they were so ungrateful. They could have moved freely in the village like her, but they insisted on putting themselves in such a state.
She had completely fallen into the abyss.
In the tenth year, even when the man was not around, she could move freely in the village.
In the eleventh year, Zhang Yaozong from the village picked up a young woman. Everyone praised him for his good fortune, having a woman without spending money.
However, she saw the hands of the woman, who was about three to five years older than herself, trembling.
This reminded her of a few days ago when she showed off a jade she found by the river. The jade had the character “Zhi” on it, so she asked her:
“The jade you found, wasn’t it from some young woman?”
The woman retorted forcefully, “So what if it was? She’s a member of Shuangyu Village now, what’s wrong with her giving me a piece of jade?”
She heard these words and felt uncomfortable, but she didn’t know why.
In the twenty-first year, Zhang Yaozong finally had a child.
She looked at her eldest son, who was almost of age, and felt troubled: there were no women in the village, how would she find a wife for her son?
In the twenty-third year, her eldest son wanted money to spend a night in Zhang Yaozong’s room. She disagreed.
She felt that the girl who was picked up was miserable enough. Although she couldn’t stop the villagers from going, she wanted to stop her own child from going.
The man also disagreed.
Just as she was feeling sweet, thinking the man cared about her, her son suddenly roared at the man, “Why can you spend money to go to her room, but I can’t!”
Her heart skipped a beat.
Her man slammed his chopsticks down with a deafening clatter, “If you have the ability, then don’t spend your old man’s money! My money is only for myself!”
From then on, her overgrown son finally learned to earn money himself.
She felt something was wrong, but seeing her eldest son chopping wood on the mountain and buying medicine on the way down, diligently earning money, she cast these thoughts aside.
In the twenty-fifth year, her eldest son suddenly asked her for money, saying he wanted to buy a wife.
She was both shocked and angry. She picked up a broom and beat her eldest son, scolding him:
“Do you know how your old mother got here! How dare you buy a wife!”
To her surprise, her eldest son laid hands on her.
By then, she was middle-aged, and her body was no longer what it used to be. In front of a grown man, she had no resistance.
She was crippled in one leg by the son she raised with her own hands.
When the man returned, he symbolically scolded their son, but was retorted by the son:
“Didn’t you say it’s natural for men to hit women! This old woman won’t give me money to find a wife, what’s wrong with me hitting her! Haven’t you hit her enough!”
The man said, “You crippled her, who will do our laundry and cooking, who will clean the house for us?”
She was stunned.
So, as long as she had no use, she deserved to be beaten, right?
No, even when she did these things, the man still beat her.
He scolded his son because his son hit her; she was his appendage.
The man did not allow his son to offend his authority.
She suddenly awakened again, but her back was already gradually bending.
Bending so much that she no longer had the ability to straighten up.
She also lost the motivation to escape.
In the thirtieth year, the man left. She felt very sad, yet inexplicably felt a sense of liberation.
But she didn’t expect that after the man left, neither of her two sons, whom she had painstakingly raised for thirty years, respected or cherished her.
Her back completely bent over.
Like a completely tamed wild beast.
In the thirty-second year, the girl who was picked up gave birth to a daughter, who was also thrown into the mountain forest. The girl’s hair turned white, and she lost her sanity.
Although she felt it was a pity, she only treated it as a topic of conversation after meals.
After all, in the village, every year daughters were thrown into the forest to feed the wolves, and many women lost their sanity; none of these were strange.
In the thirty-fifth year, the son of the woman she was familiar with bought a wife, but that woman clutched the jade pendant she found and dared not sleep all night.
The woman cried and said to her, “We have also become demons.”
We have long been demons.
She thought that after she repeatedly colluded with the men in the village to capture the women who escaped, and after she softened her heart for the first time and decided to raise children and stay in this village forever, she had already become a demon.
In the thirty-eighth year, her eldest and second sons pooled money to buy a wife. She still disagreed.
“I spent my own money to buy her, what business is it of yours, you old hag.”
They slapped her so hard that her ears rang, and her mind went blank.
“Do you know that when your father died, he told us two to throw you directly into the back mountain to feed the wolves! If it weren’t for the fact that you were still somewhat useful, we two would not have kept you until now.”
She had always believed that the man loved her.
Even though he threw their children into the back mountain to feed the wolves.
In the forty-first year, the woman she was familiar with was about to die. She wanted to visit her, but found her barely clinging to life, unlocking the chains of her daughter-in-law and telling her to run, run far away!
The woman still remembered the jade pendant from back then. She stuffed it into her daughter-in-law’s embrace and said to her:
“Give this jade pendant to the Ao Tian Sect… you must give it to the Ao Tian Sect…”
Also, stay far away from this place.
Never come back.
She was so scared that she returned directly to her old home and paced back and forth in the room.
At that time, her brain was in extreme chaos. She didn’t know what she was thinking about all day, only feeling that her whole body was boiling.
Yes, boiling.
She was nearly sixty years old, and her body had long been withering away like decaying old wood, but at this moment, she was like a pot of boiling water, restless, hot and burning.
It wasn’t until two hours later that she received the news that the woman had been beaten to death by her own son.
It was like a basin of cold water poured over her.
She went to her own pigsty. The girl inside was still so young, so beautiful. She was even very clever and knew how to use her pregnant body to trick her two sons into letting their guard down, escaping once.
However, she was quickly caught again and beaten by the two brothers, losing her child and being unable to bear children again.
This reminded her of herself back then.
She looked at the girl, then at Wei Jiao, and a surge of courage suddenly arose in her heart.
One day, two days… nearly four months later, she finally seized an opportunity. While her two sons were away, she used the key she had stolen from her second son to unlock the chains that confined Wei Jiao.
She looked at Wei Jiao, then as if looking at her former self, and pointed to a path that was not easily discovered, saying:
“Run, I’ll give you only a quarter of an hour to get out.”
Wei Jiao did not hesitate at all. From the beginning, she ran at her fastest speed.
She watched Wei Jiao’s receding figure and suddenly felt that her pale and boring life seemed to have meaning.
After a quarter of an hour, she yelled, “Eldest son, second son! Your wife has run away! Hurry back!”
“Villagers! My son Zhang Xiaoman’s wife has run away! Help me catch her!”
