Chapter 8
Panicking, I tried to walk faster.
The middle-aged man behind me kicked me to the ground.
The villagers tied me up and took me into the village.
They gathered around an outdated smartphone, staring at it as if they’d never seen one before.
“See? It’s him!”
“He forced his own sister to entertain other men. And just recently, he raped and murdered a young woman!”
“She and her grandmother only had each other. She was taking food to her paralyzed grandmother when he got her!”
“Her grandmother still doesn’t know her granddaughter died so brutally!”
They kept reciting my crimes.
Every one of them stared at me like a hungry wolf.
I managed a smile. I was tired too.
I couldn’t run anymore.
“What can you do to me? Judging me is the law’s business. Arresting me is the police’s job. Hah.”
“You bastard!”
The man who’d beaten me rushed forward and punched me hard in the stomach.
I spat blood and laughed even louder.
“If you’d got here just a little later, I’d have had a taste of that pregnant woman. Ha ha ha!”
The moment I said it, I regretted it.
He pulled a black cloth over my head.
Then they subjected me to unspeakable treatment.
They threw shit in my face and pissed on me.
They discussed making it look like an accident. As soon as two of them agreed, they broke both my legs with sticks.
Then they drove iron nails through both my palms.
I screamed shrilly.
It earned me no sympathy at all.
Next, with precise blows of a hammer, they broke every one of my ribs.
I heard those sick bastards cheering.
The applause never stopped.
I thought they must be almost done. They might as well kill me with a knife instead of torturing me like this.
But I’d underestimated the cruelty of the savages in this miserable backwater.
The middle-aged man pulled the cloth off my face. With a vicious expression and a thorn branch in his fist, he made me watch as he drove it into my right eye.
The pain finally made me pass out.
When I woke again, I was in a hospital.
Police surrounded me.
Outside, reporters from all sorts of media outlets kept photographing me.
I thought I was finished for good this time.
Just then, the police brought my sister in.
She looked coldly at my battered body and actually laughed.
“Zhou Nan, I knew you wouldn’t get away.”
“As soon as the villagers caught you, it was posted online.”
“I was the one… who begged people online not to have you arrested yet.”
I struggled to sit up.
But the pain through my whole body kept me from moving at all.
Gritting my teeth, I demanded of the police,
“Aren’t you going to do anything about those bastards torturing me?”
“When my whereabouts were posted online, why didn’t you come and arrest me?”
They didn’t answer. They turned their backs.
Only then did I truly understand. I’d become the enemy of the whole of society.
I spent six months in the hospital recovering.
Then I was taken straight to court.
As soon as I stepped out of the car at the courthouse, furious people threw garbage at me and spat on me.
With heavy shackles dragging at my feet and the police holding me, I couldn’t even get out of the way.
In the end, I was sentenced to death.
Once I was locked up in prison,
my ordeal began again.
When those bastard inmates heard about my case, they beat me within an inch of my life.
I thought, I’m on death row. What have I got to fear from you?
So I fought back.
All it earned me was an even more brutal group beating.
Because of me, two sworn enemies actually made peace and joined forces to beat me.
They knocked out five of my teeth and tore my tongue halfway through.
After I’d recovered from my injuries again, I was shocked to find myself being escorted straight to the execution ground.
Those bastard guards must have been afraid I’d be beaten to death, so they’d brought my execution forward!
The instant the cold bullet passed through my skull,
I fell heavily to the ground.
And lost consciousness for good.