In the second year after my husband took a mistress, I heard a voice:
“A man who won’t behave? Break his legs, and won’t he behave then?”
I had spent two years in the Buddhist shrine, chanting sutras day after day, trying to cleanse myself of my sins.
But I could never understand what my sins were.
Everyone in the Ling Family blamed me for being unable to keep my husband.
Being childless was a sin. Being jealous was a sin.
That voice had to be guidance from heaven.
At last, I understood. If his legs were broken, he would no longer be able to leave.
So when Ling Xu came to the Buddhist shrine once again to ask whether I agreed to let his mistress enter the household,
I snapped the candle off the candlestick and drove the copper spike into his leg.