Chapter 1
On my first day in this world, my husband, Qiu Bingzhong, was already preparing to lease me out.
He had failed the examinations so often that he had exhausted the family’s savings.
Now he cast aside his scholar’s pride, pulled our son Qiu Yan down beside him, and knelt before me.
“Yunniang, please. Go to the Shens! Master Shen is the richest man in Guangling, its foremost salt merchant. He won’t mistreat you.”
“In three years, I’ll pass the provincial examination. Then I’ll redeem you, and you’ll be an official’s wife.”
I ignored his pleading and looked at the table.
On it lay the contract the Shen household had sent.
“The term shall be three full years; the sum paid for the wife’s person shall be one hundred taels of refined silver.”
“During this term, the wife, née Zhou and married to Qiu, shall faithfully perform her wifely duties and bear offspring. A son shall earn a reward of one hundred taels, with which she may redeem herself. A daughter shall earn no reward.”
Everything came with a price plainly marked.
I rested a fingertip on the words “one hundred taels” and laughed coldly.
Wasn’t this simply selling me to the Shens at an exorbitant price? If I couldn’t produce a son, I could forget ever coming back.
Once the three years were up, Qiu Bingzhong certainly wouldn’t pay a hundred taels to redeem me.
My stomach turned.
Inwardly, I cursed both this wretched system and the wretched novel called The Leased Wife.
Then my three-year-old son, Qiu Yan, spoke.
His little voice delivered the coldest words.
“Mother, go for Father and me. All you have to do is have a baby.”
“If you go, Father and I can eat our fill and wear padded coats.”
Qiu Yan’s big, blinking eyes shone with an innocence that came close to cruelty.
A rotten father and a rotten son.
Bad seed bore bad fruit.
Yet however unwilling I was, the system’s compulsory mission hung over my head. I had to swallow my revulsion.
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingerprint onto the contract.
I tried to comfort myself.
Treat it as a game in another world. Clear it, and you can go home.
But I knew perfectly well that this was no game. It was a noose that would take my life if I failed.
The contract was soon signed.
Money in one hand, goods in the other.
Naturally, I was the goods.
As the woman broker led me out of the Qius’ ramshackle thatched hut,
Qiu Bingzhong was busy counting his hundred taels.
Qiu Yan hugged his father’s leg and wheedled for roast chicken.
Neither father nor son thought to take one last look at me.
I felt sick at heart for the novel’s original heroine.
Why degrade herself into a leased wife for a husband and son so utterly heartless?
The encounter left me dispirited. With a long face, I climbed into the small sedan chair the Shens had provided.
The broker walking beside it seemed to sense my mood. Her words were half comfort, half advice.
“Mistress Qiu, while we’re still on the road, look as miserable as you like. Let it all out.”
“But once you reach the Shens’, you can’t look that way. Smile. Look pleased. If you anger Master Shen, you’ll be the one who suffers.”
I sighed and murmured my agreement.
I accepted the kindness in her warning.
The journey to the Shen residence was long. Halfway there, we came upon a disturbance in the street.
The bearers had to stop.
I lifted the curtain and looked out.
A woman knelt on the ground, a baby in her arms, begging through tears.
“Please, let me nurse her until she’s a month old before you lease me out. She’s too little. She needs me!”
The man snatched the baby from her arms and hurled her to the ground.
The baby’s crying stopped.
Only the man’s curses remained.
“A worthless girl! Why feed her? Let her die!”
“I need the ten taels from leasing you to pay my debt. If I don’t pay, they’ll break my legs. Are you trying to ruin me?”
He swung his arm and slapped the woman twice.
She stopped struggling and crying. She simply stared at the bloody remains on the ground as they dragged her away.
The road was clear again.
The bearers walked on as though nothing had happened.
Except that they took such a wide stride over the bloody little heap that the jolt nearly made me vomit.
The broker sighed.
“Mistress Qiu, you’re one of the lucky ones.”
“The Shens are generous. A hundred taels! You’ll have gold and silver to wear, and fine food to eat.”
“Your husband, Scholar Qiu, is a kindly man, too. He didn’t lease you out straight after you gave birth. He even begged and pleaded instead of beating you.”
“Look around. What other wife has your good fortune?”
“Ah, these are hard times. Every family has to lease its wife or sell its daughters just to survive. Who knows when it will end…”
Her words gradually faded beyond my hearing.
Perhaps the bearers hadn’t cleared that bloody heap after all. The smell of blood clung to my nose.
At last, it forced two dry heaves out of me.
Involuntary tears spilled with the retching, rolled down my cheeks, and fell onto the sedan chair’s red carpet,
soaking it a darker red, like bloodstains.
I stared at that piercing red, as though a bloody mist had settled over my eyes.
The woman leased out just after giving birth, and the newborn girl reduced to a mangled heap,
became thousands upon thousands of women and girls.
Then all of them became me.
Their fate might very well be my own.
The broker called me lucky. But luck would not last forever. One day, mine would run out.
As long as this damned institution existed, women in this world would never escape a fate like livestock bred for offspring.
I clenched my fists.
My determination to climb into power and destroy this injustice
grew stronger in that moment.