Chapter 165

Chapter 165

Hearing this, Zeng Qiao did not answer right away. Instead, she reached out with those hands that were gradually rotting away and gently stroked the decaying corpse beside her.

The sight made Ge Chuan’s scalp crawl, but he had no choice but to press on. “Zeng Qiao, your sister is already dead. There could have been a better way to resolve this case. Why choose such a cruel method?”

Zeng Qiao lowered her head and gave a cold laugh. Looking at the rotting corpse before her, she spoke in a voice so soft it made one’s hair stand on end.

“I wanted them to die in the cruelest way possible.”

“Not only will there be nothing left of their bodies, they will never be reincarnated.”

With that, she threw back her head and laughed wildly, her laughter echoing through the empty cave.

But Zeng Qiao was thinking of long ago, of the days when she and her older sister, Zeng Xiao, had lived together in the tofu shop in Yunxia Town…

She and her sister Zeng Xiao had been extremely close since childhood. Because they were twins, they often joked that looking at each other was like looking in a mirror.

The Zeng family made a living selling tofu. Business was decent, but life for the two sisters was anything but easy.

Their father was a drunken gambler, and their mother was weak and easily bullied.

The scene they saw most often was their father coming home drunk, punching and kicking their mother, then sweeping away the money they had worked so hard all day to earn selling tofu.

Because of their father, the family often had no money to buy vegetables. What they ate most was the tofu their mother racked her brains to prepare in every possible way.

The sisters survived in the cracks of that life, and from a young age, all they wanted was to escape.

They secretly saved a little money, thinking that even if they put away just one copper coin a day, by the time they grew up, it would be enough to take their mother and leave this little town.

Yet after saving with hope for half a year, their mother told their father.

Every copper coin was taken away, and the two sisters received a vicious beating from their father.

Because of that, they came to resent their mother as well.

Day after day, time passed.

They slowly grew older.

They had thought that once they came of age, they would be able to break free from that family. Little did they know their father had already made his own plans in secret.

After learning from his wife that both daughters had begun their first monthly bleeding, he started arranging marriages for them.

He called it finding them husbands, but in truth, he was selling his daughters to the highest bidder.

So when a household in Tu Family Village offered to spend two strings of cash to buy his daughter,

Father Zeng happily accepted the money, went home, and sent his eldest daughter over at once.

Just like that, Zeng Qiao was separated from her sister without any warning. That year, they were only fourteen.

Not long after her sister married, their mother fell ill.

With one less pair of hands at home, their father was no longer in a hurry to marry Zeng Qiao off. Instead, he made her stay home and manage the tofu shop.

That year, Zeng Qiao’s days were full.

Aside from grinding tofu and selling tofu during the day, she would often run to Tu Family Village at dusk to see her sister.

Whenever they met, they became just like they had been as children, playing and laughing without restraint.

In those moments, the younger sister could briefly forget the exhaustion and hardship of the day, while the older sister could forget the grievances and bitterness she suffered in her husband’s home.

Until one day, terrible news came from Tu Family Village.

Her sister was dead.

Zeng Qiao would remember that day forever.

The tofu had sold very well that day. Before it was even time to close, every last piece had been sold.

After she finished tidying up the shop, she was just about to go find her sister when someone from Tu Family Village came with the news.

They claimed her sister had quarreled with her husband’s family and, in a fit of anger, hanged herself.

Zeng Qiao could hardly believe her ears. The world spun around her, and in a daze, she followed them to Tu Family Village.

Tu Family Village was different that day from every day before.

Within the village, apart from the news of her sister’s death, all kinds of filthy rumors were spreading.
“They say she was pregnant. Barely three months along. Who knows whose bastard it was?”

“Shameless used goods. All she knew was how to seduce men.”

“I heard even her father-in-law climbed into her bed more than a few times…”

…

Those words plunged Zeng Qiao into an ice-cold abyss.

She even forgot to argue with them. All that surfaced in her mind was her sister’s smiling face.

Why was it that every time she went to see her, her sister always said she was doing well?

Her parents-in-law treated her well, her husband treated her well, and even the neighbors in Tu Family Village were kind to her.

Zeng Qiao had thought her sister had truly found a good life.

She had even thought that if she married, she might live such a good life too.

But why had it ended like this?

Zeng Qiao stared at the crowd gathered together, pointing and gossiping, their thin lips opening and closing.

Yet suddenly, she could not hear a thing.

Nor did she dare face any of it.

She hid back at home, wanting only to pretend that nothing had happened.

But when her father returned home, he beat and cursed her mother again because they had to return the betrothal money.

To them, her sister’s death was worth less than that single string of cash?

Zeng Qiao clenched her teeth, her whole body cold. Driven by some force, she went into the kitchen and took up a knife.

She crept up behind her father and, while he was caught completely off guard, chopped off his arm.

At last, he would never be able to swing his fists and feet at anyone again, nor could he go squander money in the gambling den.

Zeng Qiao stood in the pool of blood and laughed coldly, feeling a satisfaction she had never known before.

After that day, by daylight, she was still the Miss Qiao who stood before the tofu shop, gentle and smiling to all outsiders.

But once night fell, nightmares began to haunt her.

In her dreams, she became her sister, Zeng Xiao, suffering every humiliation in Tu Family Village.

It turned out that the husband who seemed honest and dull could also punch and kick her just like Father Zeng.

The father-in-law who looked so kind and simple would sneak in while she was bathing.

The men of their village always looked at her with frivolous, ill-intentioned eyes.

The women of their village only ever hurled abuse and insults at her.

They even gave her a name: “two strings of cash.”

When she died, her husband pinned her down while her mother-in-law held a cloth over her mouth and nose. Under her father-in-law’s cold gaze, she died in despair.

They had murdered her, then staged it to look like she had hanged herself!

Zeng Qiao woke in terror and despair, nauseous, grief-stricken, her heart pounding.

She could feel that those dreams were all things her sister had truly experienced.

To seek justice for her sister, she gathered her courage and went to find the town official in charge of judging cases. She had even naively believed that since he was newly appointed and eager to make his mark, perhaps he would be willing to help her.

Yet one sentence-“What this official requires is solid evidence”-shattered her hopes completely.

Her sister had been carelessly buried on the back mountain of Tu Family Village. There was no headstone, not even a coffin.

That day, rain suddenly poured down, as though even the heavens were weeping for her.

With her own hands, Zeng Qiao carved a wooden headstone. On it, she wrote: Grave of My Elder Sister, Zeng Xiao.

She thought that perhaps this was for the best. From now on, Zeng Xiao would no longer be someone’s daughter, nor someone’s wife or daughter-in-law.

She would simply be her sister.

Kneeling before the grave, Zeng Qiao felt that not even the wild wind and driving rain could wash away the hatred in her heart.

Instead, that hatred only surged higher.

It was then that a voice suddenly came through the curtain of rain.

“Since the hatred in your heart cannot be erased, why not use your own methods to avenge your sister?”