Chapter 20

Having been scolded, Sun Yiming was stunned. He slowly stood up and said, “That’s it, I’m going to sleep. I’m going to sleep now.”

He reeked of alcohol.

Sun Yiming asked Liu to fetch him a basin of water.

Liu shouted some abuse at him, then went to fetch the water.

Sun Yixi had Sun Yiming die down on the bed. He endured the discomfort and helped Sun Yiming clean his face, hands and feet.

Sun Yiming was still shouting about how Han Qiao had hit him. “Han Qiao is a vicious woman, a shrew, a vixen”, and so on.

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He didn’t mention the divorce.

When Sun Yixi left the house, he was still cursing.

He went to the main room to look for Madam Sun.

Madam Sun waved her hand. “He’s giving me a headache. Go to bed. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

“Mother, please get some rest.”

After leaving the room, he closed the door behind him.

Lady Liu suddenly approached him. “You really aren’t going to send him back?”

“He’s lying down now. Let him sleep.”

“…”

Lady Liu licked her lips and cursed in her heart.

She had no choice but to continue working in the kitchen.

Sun Yixi pulled out a chair and sat down. He looked up at the night sky, his mind lost in his thoughts.

At the Heng house, Heng Yi was sitting under the eaves of his part of the house, which was separated from the rest by a wall.

His mind was overflowing with the words Han Qiao and Sun Yiming had been shouting back and forth at each other.

Divorce this, divorce that.

His mind was entertaining all sorts of unexplainable thoughts. He didn’t even know why.

Besides, he didn’t feel sleepy at all.

He had told Han Qiao that he’d set out at five o’clock in the morning. But at around three o’clock in the morning, the sound of movement shattered the silence.

Han Qiao got up, andSun Yi and Sun Xiu were not far behind.

The three of them went to the kitchen to knead dough and make steamed buns

They had set out the dough before they went to bed the previous night, so it had already expanded greatly.

The mother and her two daughters dozed off as they were steaming the buns. They would wait till it was five in the morning, when they would pack up the buns and give them to Heng Yi to take to Xishan Village.

They steamed sixty buns in five pots. Han Qiao set aside four for her household and six for Heng Yi. The remaining fifty were going to her mother’s house in Xishan Village.

Her mother knew how to further divide them up for her family. No need to worry about that.

Heng Yi waited until the commotion next door had calmed down before he went to fetch water to wash his face. Then, he left with his hunting tools.

He went to the Sun house and knocked on the courtyard door.

Han Qiao quickly opened the courtyard door. “Heng Yi.”

“Where are the things you wanted me to deliver for you?” Heng Yi asked.

“They’ve been prepared. Please send these two baskets to my mother’s house. Those six steamed buns are for you, as a thank-you for all the trouble.”

Han Qiao’s voice was gentle and filled with gratitude.

They gave Heng Yi a sweet feeling, as they entered his ears.

“Is that all?” He took the opportunity to ask.

“Could you ask big brother and second brother to send me some firewood,” Han Qiao hurriedly said.

“Got it,” Heng Yi answered. He grabbed the baskets and walked away.

He was tall and had long legs, so he walked extremely fast.

Han Qiao looked at his back. His figure was hard to make out clearly in the early morning.

It was almost as though she were trying to gauge his mental state at that moment.

Closing the courtyard door, she yawned and told Sun Xiu and Sun Yi to go back to sleep.

She, too, was extremely tired.

She wouldn’t have to do as much of this kind of early-morning work in the future.

It was soon daybreak.

Sun Yiming woke up very slowly. His weathered and sorrowful eyes were caught ina daze for a long time, before he finally was able to move his stiff body.

He turned his head to look at the window.

Outside, he could hear Guangzong and Yaozu reciting their morning lessons. Their voices were youthful and lively.

He slowly turned his head, which was throbbing in pain.

He raised his hand to rub his temple.

That last night he had a dream. Everything in the dream was absurd, annoying and, on top of that, terrifying.

In the dream, everything was the same as it was now. The main difference was that Han Qiao never tied him up, never beat him, nor did she force him to copy books.

In the days that followed in the dream, his older brother, father and mother convinced him to move house in order to have a better atmosphere for studying. They suggested taking Han Qiao and the kids with him to have someone to look after him.

So the family settled down in the countryside. His older brother wrote to him saying that their mother’s health was in decline, and asking for him to send Han Qiao and the kids to take care of her. Not suspicious in the slightest, Sun Yiming promptly asked Han Qiao to take the kids back to Ninghe town with her to look after his mother. However, something unexpected happened: the four of them never returned. Their whereabouts were unknown, and so was their fate.

Gradually, rumors began to spread. They said Han Qiao eloped with another man.

There were all sorts of rumors like this. His anger, however, only served to further motivate him in his studies. He eventually remarried the daughter of the Prefectural Magistrate.

Also, he was finally having success with the examination. He soared up in the official bureaucracy. He soon enjoyed life in perfect love and marital harmony with his wife, surrounded by a crowd of children and beautiful concubines. They were very happy.

But one day something strange happened.

Sun Guangzong, who had gone to the capital to take the examination, was brutally murdered. His body was chopped up into eight pieces and sent back to his eldest brother’s home in Ninghe Town. His parents immediately fainted from fright. The officials had no clue what happened to him, nor any leads on a culprit. The Suns had no enemies that they knew of.

This slowly ate away at the Sun family’s heart.

Two years later, Sun Yaozu also went to the capital to take the examination. He, too, was brutally murdered. Just like Guangzong, his body was chopped up into eight pieces and sent back to his eldest brother’s home in Ninghe Town.

His eldest brother was killed while out looking for Sun Yaozu. The MO was exactly the same. What was even more terrifying was that, a little while later, his two younger sisters’ entire families were exterminated in one night. Not a single person was spared.

His parents’ hair turned white overnight. What was worse, they had seen it happen with their own eyes.

He received the news and rushed back to Ninghe Town with his people. Before he reached home, he received the news that his wife, concubines, and children had been murdered. They, too, had been dismembered.

He was so heartbroken that he vomited blood and fainted. When he woke up again, he was tied up in the Sun family main house. There was a bewitching woman dressed in red. Though, she looked somewhat familiar.

The woman in red counted out ten the Suns had committed, in striking detail. Each sin called for tears and blood.

Only then did he find out what happened to Han Qiao and the kids. She had never eloped. Instead, they had been tricked by his brother and parents and sold off into slavery.

They had been sold to a brothel. There they were abused every day, suffering all kinds of grief. Han Qiao and Xiu were tortured to death. Yi had gone crazy. As for Ke, well, the once cute and innocent child was now the bewitching lady in front of him.

None of them had actually been killed. Only their limbs and tongues had been cut off.

He never found out where Sun Ke had gone in the end. He only heard news of the terrible things that had happened to them from Ninghe Town. Theirs was a fate worse than death. It was worse than being ravished by wolves on the roadside.

“Phew.”

Sun Yiming let out a deep breath.

He had died when winter set in, sending forth great snow. The snow froze his body and numbed his soul.

When he opened his eyes again…

“Was all that just a dream?”

He couldn’t even tell.

But suddenly an absurd thought came to him. What if Han Qiao had the same dream? Maybe that was why she had changed so drastically, to the point that she even wanted a divorce. What if it wasn’t a dream, but a prophecy?

When Sun Yiming thought of this, he hurriedly got up and ran out of the house.

“What on earth is Sun Yiming doing?” Lady Liu called out softly.

There was an unconcealable disdain in her eyes.

Sun Yiming looked at Lady Liu. Naturally, the emotions in her eyes did not fade away.

“Where is Big Brother?”

“He is cleaning up in front of the shop. Your big brother has a tough life. He isn’t a scholar, like you…”

Before Lady Liu could get the last of her words out, Sun Yiming had already disappeared.

“…”

She spat.

“What the hell are you trying to pull, you loser.”

Lady Liu’s voice was no longer soft. Sun Yiming, who was standing in the dark, heard it clearly.

He stood where he was and blinked his eyes. For a moment, his heart was filled with mixed feelings.

His heart uneasy, he walked to the grocery store. Sun Yixi had already finished his cleaning. Sun Yixi told him to sit down next to him, and he said to him, “Second Brother, you’re already in your 30s. Half of your life has passed. But if you work hard from now on, you can still have a successful future. But if you continue to mope around and spend your days drinking and playing around with your friends, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop lending you money.”

Sun Yiming’s mind exploded.