Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Obviously, I’d walked straight into a den of thieves.
Fortunately, sedatives had little effect on my kind. While I pretended to be unconscious, Zhao Peng handed all my IDs and documents to Zhao Tianbao and instructed him,
“Take out the maximum loan from every lending app on her phone. If she refuses to be with all of us, use nude photos of her as collateral for more loans.”
Zhao Tianbao frowned. “Zhao Peng, what if she’s as stubborn as those women you brought home before? What if she’d rather die than submit?”
“Then we’ll sell her off in pieces. Don’t you know a black-market doctor? Her heart, spleen, lungs, corneas – which part of her can’t be sold for money? Her whole family’s nothing but useless women anyway.”
Judging by how practiced they sounded, there was no telling how many girls they’d already victimized.
The moment I came to, I agreed to their sharing arrangement. Zhao Peng immediately grew suspicious.
“Then why did you refuse at first?”
I gazed at him, my eyes overflowing with devotion. “Darling, I love you so much, yet you wanted to share me with other men. How could I not be heartbroken? But I’ve thought it through. Being able to stay with you forever is what matters most.”
Zhao Peng was conceited, and my words greatly satisfied his vanity. “Good. Plenty of women would kill for this kind of heaven-sent fortune. Just enjoy it.”
I gave him a good-natured smile. “It’s just that your second and third brothers are still so young. Pairing them with me would be rather unfair to them. You all know my family has far too many women and hardly any men. I also have younger sisters waiting to be married…”
The moment they saw my family photo, every man’s eyes lit up.
The women of the Kingdom of Women each possessed their own captivating allure, beautiful enough to steal a man’s soul.
When Old Man Zhao learned that my sisters would also bring dowries, he made the decision on the spot: they would visit my family to propose marriage tomorrow.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was the high-water season, so there was no shortage of water in the Mother-Child Well.
The Zhao Family was a nest of vipers, but at least they were all strong and sturdy.
With bodies so well suited to bearing children, Grandma was bound to like them.
When my mother learned we were coming home, she wrote out a list of precautions for caring for pregnant men.
These included, but were not limited to: “Make sure they get plenty of blueberry anthocyanins. Anything else? Well, it only takes three days from conception to delivery, so there won’t be any need for painkillers. They’re single-use anyway.”
As a novice, I carefully wrote down every word.
Caring for four pregnant men at once would still be stressful.
Old Man Zhao was a habitual thief with a murder on his record. He was also a geriatric expectant father who loved cured meats and pickled vegetables, so I kept the closest eye on him.
A pregnant man’s mood was important too. Throughout the drive, I laid the flattery on thick, keeping the car filled with laughter.
“She’s sensible, obedient, and not afraid of hard work. Nothing like my old woman, who threatened suicide at the slightest provocation.” Seeing how docile I was, Old Man Zhao couldn’t resist making a proposal to his eldest son. “Why don’t you let me have a share too?”
“You shameless old bastard!” Zhao Peng’s face turned livid. He dragged me out of the car and slapped me in front of everyone.
“Bitch, are you seducing my father just to provoke me? Do you think that’ll make me jealous?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Zhao Tianbao getting out of the car, so I immediately squeezed out a few tears.
“Zhao Peng, you were the one who said we’d all be one family from now on, so I’ve been doing my best to fit in. If you can’t bear to have me treat everyone fairly, why did you bring me back with you? I can’t favor one person over another!”
Zhao Tianbao was already resentful about having to make do with his eldest brother’s women. Now he grew even angrier.
“We agreed to share, so why are you getting mad, Zhao Peng? I bet those previous women only met with trouble because you never intended to share them in the first place!”
“I busted my ass luring those women in, and you’re still not satisfied when I let you have a share? If you’ve got the guts, go trick a woman yourself and see if she’ll submit to you!”
To be honest, I understood the logic behind their sharing arrangement.
After committing so many crimes together, their only way to ensure no one betrayed the others was to bind themselves into a single community of shared interests.
But could such a bond truly remain free of cracks?
I rested my head on Zhao Tianbao’s shoulder and gently urged the brothers not to let a grudge carry over to the next day, all while gazing tearfully at Zhao Peng.
He could see everything through the rearview mirror.
Zhao Peng gritted his teeth and slammed his foot on the accelerator. The car tore off the expressway, then continued along a national highway for almost an entire day. The farther we drove, the more desolate our surroundings became, until dense mountain fog obscured the road ahead.
As we passed a hill, the relatively quiet Zhao Qing pointed toward a towering ancient monument in the distance and asked,
“What does that monument say? Something Liang Kingdom? This dirt-poor backwater of yours is actually a tourist attraction?”
In an eerie voice, I told them that the inscription was written in the Ancient Xiliang Language.
It had flourished during the Tang dynasty before dying out near the end of the Yuan dynasty.
“This was once the territory of the Ancient Xiliang Kingdom. Yes, the very place Tang Monk and his disciples once passed through… the Kingdom of Women.”