Chapter 2
I entered the Shen residence at dusk. The broker’s part ended at the gate.
An elderly woman came to receive me.
She was Nanny Qi, the household’s steward.
I had assumed I would first be taken to pay my respects to Master Shen.
Instead, Nanny Qi led me straight to the bathing room, where I was washed, dressed, powdered, and painted.
When it was done, she stepped back. There was something in her gaze I couldn’t understand.
It did not linger.
She soon took me to Master Shen’s room.
The woman whose place I had taken had already borne a child. Since I was no maiden, Nanny Qi gave me little instruction in bedroom matters.
She only said,
“The master has hired you to bear children. You must serve him with all your heart.”
Then she withdrew.
Before long, an old man shuffled in.
This was Master Shen: Shen Shanliang, Guangling’s foremost salt merchant.
I had asked the broker about him on the way.
She said he was about fifty-five.
The man before me looked seventy.
Clad in red, leaning on a cane, he stood a short distance away and stared at me.
His gaze resembled Nanny Qi’s, but it was more intense. Tears even glimmered in his eyes.
“Yuniang.”
The name trembled out of his throat.
At that moment, I understood.
Like Nanny Qi, Shen Shanliang was looking through me at someone from the past. This Yuniang.
He approached slowly, almost holding his breath, and sat beside me.
His dry, wasted body could no longer fill the red wedding robes of his youth. The sight was deeply incongruous.
Beside him, I sat in a pure white nightdress. That made it stranger still.
Red bed curtains. A woman in white. A dead wife married once again.
Before coming here, I had seen a scene like this in a television drama.
No wonder the Shens had been willing to pay a hundred taels to lease me, and no one else.
“Yuniang, I was useless. I couldn’t protect our Xiaoqing. He was so young, not even married or established, and bandits slaughtered him.”
“The Shen estate must have an heir. Give me another child. Let Xiaoqing be reborn and return to us.”
His withered hand touched my cheek.
Ignoring my wishes, he reached out and pulled open my collar.
Soon he forced himself on me. His stale, decaying smell bore down like a collapsing mountain.
His age and brutality filled me with still greater fear and disgust.
But he did not succeed.
He was too old.
After struggling for the time it took half an incense stick to burn, he finally gave up and moved away.
He ordered,
“Come here and serve me.”
I looked at his posture and understood that he meant to force me to endure more abuse. Nanny Qi’s words flashed through my mind: “Serve him with all your heart.”
Was this what she meant?
Twenty years of education in human equality made such degrading obedience impossible for me.
Especially with a man past fifty.
I struggled off the bed and tried to flee.
But Shen Shanliang said mildly, “Servants.” The door opened at once.
Nanny Qi approached with two older maidservants and two male servants.
There was pity in her eyes. She sighed.
“Be sensible, mistress. Don’t make yourself suffer.”
“If you don’t know how to serve him, we’ll teach you.”
She and the two women advanced, seized me, and forced me back onto the bed.
The curtains fell.
Outside them, the two brawny men stood in indistinct silhouette.
Inside, the women held my limbs. I could not resist the humiliation they forced on me.
The ordeal lasted a full hour.
Just when I thought it was over,
Nanny Qi ordered them to tie my ankles to a frame, leaving me hanging with my head toward the floor, like an animal.
They said it would help me conceive.
At last, the humiliation, together with the blood rushing to my head, shattered my last scrap of reason.
My self-control gave way. I could no longer keep from crying.
None of this was supposed to happen!
Only two days ago, my application for an overseas exchange had been approved. I was going abroad to study.
My future was supposed to be bright.
Then my parents stormed into the university. They had found me a husband back home, they said, with a bride price of 188,000 yuan. I had to marry him.
I refused with everything I had.
They tried to drag me away by force, but campus security stopped them.
I thought I would be safe as long as I stayed at university.
Yet that night, while washing in the dormitory bathroom, I suddenly lost consciousness.
When I opened my eyes, the system told me my parents had sold me.
I had done nothing, and I had been swept into this grotesque, dark world.
I had to give birth, one child after another, until I had borne enough to leave. To go home.
Why?
My agonized sobbing was too loud.
It disturbed Shen Shanliang’s sleep.
He spoke.
“Either quiet her down or take her outside.”
Nanny Qi immediately pressed a handkerchief over my mouth.
She crouched before me and shook her head.
She said nothing, but I understood the word in her eyes.
Obey.
Obedience was the only road left to me.