Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Stories that are half true and half false are always the most moving.

The things I told Uncle Xiong were four parts true, three parts false, and three parts left unsaid.

It was true that my mother abandoned her husband and daughter.

But she had been an abducted college student.

It was true that she ran off with a photographer.

But that wandering photographer who took free family portraits for people in the mountains was my own uncle.

He was an older brother who had been searching for his little sister all along.

My mother and my uncle were both ruthless people.

Half a year after they escaped, the two of them disguised themselves and went back to the village. Under the pretense of recruiting workers, they helped more than half of the abducted women in the village get away.

Apparently, some mothers-in-law wanted their daughters-in-law to earn money but still didn’t trust them, so they went along to keep an eye on them at all times.

And what happened?

The mothers-in-law ran too. Neither of them came back.

Because of that, the villagers took their anger out on my father. He could no longer stay there, so he took me to the city and drifted from job to job, scraping out a living.

Some people advised my father to sell me while I was still young and use the money to marry another wife.

My father refused.

He always felt that as long as I was there, he and my mother were still husband and wife.

To be honest, that was wishful thinking on his part.

The first time she escaped, my mother had no chance to take me with her.

The second time, she saved even women who had nothing to do with her, yet she didn’t so much as glance at me. Clearly, she had made up her mind that she didn’t want me.

When I was little, my father cursed my mother every day, and I hated her and resented her too.

But as I slowly grew up and came to understand more of the world, I actually began to admire her.

I admired how cleanly and decisively she left.

Later, my father died in an accident, my cousin-uncle swallowed up our family property, and I was forced to marry an old scoundrel. All of that was true.

But my aunt did not save me.

She had long been dissatisfied that my cousin-uncle had seized my family’s assets and wanted a share for herself.

But where we came from, a daughter who had married out and then returned to her maiden family to fight for money and land would be condemned by everyone.

That night, she quietly opened the door to the abandoned house and said she would take me to find my mother. Then she turned around and sold me to human traffickers.

After being passed from hand to hand, I was sold to Golden Sand Beach Club.

To suffer less physical torment, I didn’t cry, didn’t make a scene, and didn’t resist.

No matter what they asked me, I nodded and said I was willing.

Even so, I still couldn’t avoid a round of “initiation punishment.” I was locked in a pitch-black room.

No food, no water, no sleep.

There was only a projector in the room, playing videos of girls on an endless loop.

They were beaten and abused, cut open alive, dismembered, ground to dust until nothing remained.

If you didn’t behave, your body would be sold in another way.

The only difference was whether you were sold alive or dead, whole or in pieces.

Only if my intact body was worth more than my dismantled body could I keep the organs inside me.

Only if my living body was worth more than my corpse did I deserve to breathe.

Once I understood that, I became even more obedient.

I only wanted to live.

As for chastity?

Forget it.

That was just a label assigned by the “users,” like judging the wear and tear on a product.

To the “used,” it meant nothing.