Zhao Erjie had told the police everything she knew in exact detail and claimed that Zhao’s parents had forced her to sell the child. But the testimony from Zhao’s parents was completely different.
Unlike Zhao Erjie, who confessed everything during the first interrogation, Zhao’s father had been a Red Guard in his youth. His mental resilience was many times stronger than Zhao Erjie’s. No matter how the police questioned him, the man in his sixties stubbornly insisted, “I don’t know! It’s not my business. I never sold Xiaoxi! I’m not short on money! You want to know where she went? Go ask Zhao Daidi! That damned girl did it all by herself!”
“I raised five daughters, and still can’t even support one granddaughter? Do you think the Zhao family is so desperate for money that we’d sell our own granddaughter?”
The old man waved his hand impatiently. “Anyway, I didn’t sell her!”
After Zhao’s father finally spoke up, it was clear he left everything to be handled between Zhao’s mother and Zhao Erjie. He himself was never involved.
No matter how much they tried to get him to admit it, this matter had nothing to do with him.
“Xiaoxi was cared for by my wife. How would I know? She was busy to death every day with the shop’s business!”
The police turned to interrogate Zhao’s mother.
Although Zhao’s mother had been weak and pitiful since she was young, facing the police interrogation, her mental resilience surprisingly matched Zhao’s father’s. Her testimony was basically consistent with his, shifting all responsibility onto Zhao Erjie. While crying and cursing, she said, “How could one person take care of three? I just asked my second daughter to help look after her for a few days temporarily. Who would’ve thought that girl’s heart would turn black and sell Xiaoxi!”
“Xiaoxi was raised by me alone. I even washed her diapers when she was a child. She was truly my heart and soul, how could I bear to sell her?”
“She’s the only granddaughter in the family. I love her more than anything!”
“If we really valued sons over daughters, we wouldn’t have raised and married off five daughters properly. Those were tough times, when baby girls were drowned every day in the Bamboo River. If we were really cruel, would we have bothered to raise these five daughters at all?”
There was no denying that Zhao’s mother’s words were quite convincing.
In reality, the Zhao family had no land left from their ancestors. Before the chaotic years began, their forebears had squandered everything on opium, leaving the family completely ruined—like a broken boat held together by three nails. Though the Zhao family had fallen on hard times, their assets were still better than an average household’s, enough to support the first two daughters.
Later, Zhao’s father joined the Red Guards and followed the Revolutionary Committee in raiding and denouncing others, secretly hiding a lot of family wealth. Naturally, they managed to raise all their daughters.
But the way the Zhao family raised daughters was little different from raising pigs or dogs. The daughters were never seen as people, but as objects exchanged for dowries to support their brothers.
If it weren’t for the strict enforcement of family planning and the Zhao family’s tradition of giving birth to many daughters, along with Xu Huiqing’s refusal to go to the countryside to give birth or raise daughters there, Zhao’s father wouldn’t have feared that Xu Huiqing’s earlier daughters might take the household registration slot reserved for his eldest grandson.
When Xu Huiqing was pregnant again, the family planning office forcibly aborted the eldest grandson, which prompted Zhao’s father to devise a plan: he would give away all previously born daughters so they wouldn’t occupy the household registration spot reserved for his eldest grandson.
He really never thought about selling the granddaughter. Like Zhao’s father himself said, he wasn’t short of money.
Selling Xiaoxi was purely Zhao Erjie’s selfish decision. She sold her for five yuan, pocketing the money herself.
So when Zhao’s father said he didn’t sell his granddaughter, he said it with absolute conviction!
After learning that the Zhao family’s eldest granddaughter had truly been sold, the police temporarily detained Zhao Erjie, Zhao’s father and mother, as well as Zhao Zongbao, before going to speak with Xu Huiqing.
“The issue of the Zhao family being a trafficking nest still requires further investigation. Once we get precise information on your daughter’s whereabouts from Zhao Daidi, we suggest you bring your eldest daughter back first. We’ll continue to investigate the Zhao family afterwards.”
Although the Zhao family’s trafficking nest was reported by their own daughter-in-law Xu Huiqing, and the preliminary investigation showed only their eldest granddaughter was sold, the police officers in the Public Security Bureau were not taking things lightly. After all, the family’s wealth and history were unclear.
Zhao’s father’s time as a Red Guard had ended more than twenty years ago. Back then, life expectancy barely reached forty. Many elderly people of his generation, including those he had persecuted, were long gone. Very few knew the details of how he had raided and denounced people during his time with the Revolutionary Committee.
Zhao’s father himself wouldn’t speak of it either. After all, many Revolutionary Committee members who led those efforts had been executed or imprisoned and had not been released to this day.
He stuck to his claim that the family had no ancestral land and that all their belongings were inherited from ancestors.
Xu Huiqing had no hope of putting Zhao’s parents in prison. She knew them well; she was sure they would shift all the blame onto their second daughter, and Zhao Daidi would be pressured by her parents to take full responsibility alone.
What she was thinking was that if Zhao Daidi went to prison, she should get the harshest sentence possible. Because she knew next year would be the year of strict crackdowns, where criminals were heavily punished or ended up just “eating peanuts” (doing minimal time).
She only wanted to see Zhao Erjie behind bars eating peanuts first.
Seeing Xu Huiqing nod in agreement to fetch the child, the police at the station relaxed and let Zhao Erjie lead the way.
When Zhao Erjie was released and saw Xu Huiqing, she cried pitifully, tears and snot streaming down her face. “I really didn’t harm Xiaoxi. Xiaoxi is my eldest niece, how could I hurt her!” She cried, pleading with Xu Huiqing to intercede, “Huiqing, tell the police, I really am not a trafficker. I really didn’t want to sell Xiaoxi!”
If Xu Huiqing had a knife in her hand at that moment, she might have cut Zhao Erjie’s throat right then!
As Xu Huiqing prepared to strike again, the police quickly pulled her back, urging, “Right now, the priority is to get the child back first! Don’t you agree?”
Xu Huiqing kept her composure. Before her rebirth, Zhao Erjie had already gone through this—she had reported it once before. Xu Huiqing only wanted—
Although in the previous investigation, the couple had only begun abusing Xiaoxi after having a son, Xu Huiqing dared not gamble on human nature. She just wanted to find the child as soon as possible.
The police drove all the way to the Shimen brigade, then proceeded on foot into the narrow mountain path.
The mountain terrain was extremely complicated. Without a local guide familiar with the area, even people from Shuibu Town who had never been in the mountains before would get lost easily. Hiding someone, whether a child or a woman, was even easier. Once sold deep into the mountains, there was little chance of escape.
In her previous life, Xu Huiqing found Xiaoxi only because her Fourth Aunt Zhao Daidi pitied her for not giving up after three years and quietly asked her once, “Have you looked in the mountains?”
Xu Huiqing felt like a lightning bolt struck above her head at that moment. Because of the local tradition of drowning baby girls in the mountains, families without boys only adopted male infants. It was very rare to adopt or buy baby girls in the mountains. While searching for the child, she hadn’t thought to look there.
She grabbed onto this lifeline and desperately asked her Fourth Aunt Zhao Daidi, “Do you know anything? Whatever news you have, please tell me! Please!”
She immediately knelt before Zhao Daidi, her emotions on the verge of collapse, which frightened Zhao Daidi, who quickly glanced around and pulled her up. “Don’t kneel, don’t kneel! I only heard that in the mountains, families who can’t have children sometimes ask families who can give birth and raise kids for children to adopt. I only asked you that.”
After that, she refused to say anything more.
But to Xu Huiqing, it was as if a path suddenly lit up under a dark lamp. She frantically searched the mountains, asking if any family there without children had adopted a daughter.
The mountains were vast, so finding one little girl was no easy task.
But the mountains were also small.
Because in the mountains, baby girls were usually drowned, and families rarely adopted girls.
Thanks to repeated inquiries with her maternal relatives, within half a year, she found Xiaoxi.
When Xu Huiqing found Xiaoxi, the girl was just over seven years old but looked as if she hadn’t grown at all in the past three years. She was so thin she resembled a matchstick doll, as if if Xu Huiqing had found her any later, that fragile body wouldn’t have been able to support the frighteningly large head caused by malnutrition.
Countless times in nightmares, Xu Huiqing dreamed that Xiaoxi’s emaciated body couldn’t support her hollow head, which suddenly snapped backward at the neck and fell to the ground.
She woke up from those nightmares repeatedly, reaching out to check Xiaoxi’s breath to confirm she was still warm, that her body was warm, and that she was truly there beside her, before she could fall asleep again.
Even though she had been there once before, the complicated mountain paths still left Xu Huiqing uncertain of the exact way.
Impatient and anxious, she grabbed a bamboo stick from the road and struck Zhao Erjie across the face, shouting, “Hurry up! Where is the child? Show us quickly!”
Zhao Erjie yelped and jumped with every strike, not daring to waste a moment as she rolled and scrambled ahead, leading them through narrow, dark mountain paths and over hill after hill.
Finally, they reached the mountain hollow where Xu Huiqing had spent over half a year searching in her previous life—a house with a pig trough hidden beneath thick branches.
There she saw the small figure she had dreamed of countless times, longing to find.
Xu Huiqing stumbled forward as if waking from a beautiful dream come true, standing not far from the tiny figure, whispering in disbelief, “Xiaoxi.”