Chapter 3: Stealing Men
Cai Feng slurped her porridge noisily.
“This porridge is pretty good,” she said to One and Two. “Better than yesterday’s.”
One gave a reserved nod. “I improved upon the method you taught me. Millet, black beans, and peanuts have different internal structures. Adding them to boiling water at different times forms longer molecular chains, which improves the texture.”
Cai Feng didn’t understand, but she didn’t like to think, so she praised him enthusiastically. “The flavor is really nice. You’re amazing.”
Two was also drinking porridge. He could perceive the texture but couldn’t taste the flavor. He was a little envious of Cai Feng’s ability to taste and muttered under his breath, “Humans are pretty amazing too…”
Cai Feng overheard. She asked, “Humans? What does that mean?”
One shot Two a glare and tried to explain, “You know, we’re not from around here…”
“Oh, oh,” Cai Feng nodded. “That’s just what you outsiders call it.” It seemed reasonable to her. “You outsiders are different from us in a lot of ways.”
“Right?” She laughed. “Your names are so simple, too. Big Brother One, Big Brother Two.”
One and Two had introduced themselves as Hao Yi and Hao Er.
Cai Feng went back to her porridge, savoring it. She was now sitting on the bed, covered with a quilt, with a sleeping baby on either side of her. One had brought her the food.
When the babies cried, Two would even pick them up and soothe them.
As for that drunkard husband of hers, he was off somewhere again.
Pang Hua was sleeping soundly. After two days of drinking milk, her little face was now rosy. After Two finished his own meal, he went to wash the bowls and even swept the courtyard.
When his chores were done, Two looked at Pang Hua’s little face and felt quite happy.
After all, he was the one who had proposed picking up Pang Hua. The fact that Pang Hua had survived meant his proposed project had achieved a phase of success. Maybe One would think more highly of him because of it.
When the homeworld contacted them, he would discreetly hint for One to put in a good word for him.
Perhaps, long in the future, he, a Number Two, could become a Number One.
There was an old human saying that was right: Are kings and nobles destined to be so by birth? Two thought secretly. Although he had been manufactured as a Number Two, in the beginning, his every component wasn’t limited to only being a Number Two.
With this thought, Two was filled with motivation.
When Cai Feng wanted to get out of bed to wash the bedsheets, Two immediately snatched them away. “I’ll wash them.”
Cai Feng was quite embarrassed. “All I do is feed the baby. It’s no big deal.”
One comforted her thoughtfully. “Humans have to rest for a month after giving birth. You shouldn’t move. We’ll take care of these things.”
As One and Two busied themselves in the courtyard, Cai Feng was stunned. She thought for a moment and felt like she wanted to cry, but also to laugh. Her “Little Dirtball” was already four and a half months old, and she was only now getting her postpartum rest?
The day after giving birth, she had been on her feet cooking for herself.
Come to think of it, she and Pang Hua were fated. Cai Feng had also been an abandoned child. She had grown up haphazardly and married Zhao Dagang at an age when she knew nothing. She had never been cherished and didn’t know what it felt like to be loved.
This was the first time she had ever enjoyed such comfort.
A person accustomed to hardship, once they realize they have a bit of happiness, becomes uneasy. They always want to do something, afraid they don’t deserve it or won’t be able to hold onto it.
Her Little Dirtball started to stir with soft grunts. Woken by the noise, Pang Hua began to fuss as well.
Without the slightest hesitation, Cai Feng lifted her shirt and gently offered the first mouthful of milk to Pang Hua.
The village population was small, so the arrival of One and Two hadn’t attracted much attention. They lived in the abandoned house, went to Cai Feng when they needed to, and helped her in return.
After about ten days, some people started to notice their existence.
One afternoon, Cai Feng had just fed the two babies, and One and Two had cleared the pests from the vegetables they planted in the yard. The two infants were nestled beside Cai Feng, sleeping soundly.
Suddenly, a series of fierce bangs echoed from the closed main gate.
“Open up! You shameless Tang Cai Feng, stealing men while my son’s not home!”
The voice was so loud that the two soundly sleeping babies were startled and both began to wail. One and Two exchanged a look. Two asked in a low voice, “We are men right now, aren’t we?”
He was rather confused. “Stealing men? Are we the ones being stolen?”
One nodded, agreeing with Two’s assessment. “She’s talking about us, but we have not been stolen.”
And so, he opened the door and politely explained to the people outside, “Hello, we have not been stolen…”
But before he could finish, several people rushed in aggressively. The old woman at the front stared viciously at One. “So you did steal a man!”
The old woman turned her head, saw Two, and became utterly enraged. “You even stole two!”
She immediately tried to rush into the house. “I’ll beat you to death, you slut!”
One could no longer follow the old woman’s train of thought and was still mechanically explaining, “We have not been stolen…”
Two’s intellectual disadvantage and physical advantage became apparent. He quickly stood in the doorway, blocking anyone from entering the room. His Pang Hua was in there.
The old woman threw herself at Two, clawing at him frantically.
Two felt no pain and let the old woman go wild.
“Slut,” another person cursed. “Dagang should have just beaten you to death. Who knows if that thing you gave birth to is even Dagang’s kid.”
The courtyard was in chaos; Cai Feng’s death sentence had already been decided.
Cai Feng soothed the two crying babies, then walked out.
“Pah!” she spat. Like a warrior, she stood with her hands on her hips, majestically cursing at the people in the yard. “Just because your wife cheats on you, you think everyone else is cheating too!”
“Where’s Zhao Dagang? Get his ass out here and tell us what’s going on! And you, you petty thief, you dare come to my house and cause trouble? Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell everyone about your dirty deeds? Weren’t you the one caught stealing money and beaten at the village entrance, you dog?!”
A man chimed in, shouting loudly, “You’re a cheater!”
Cai Feng shouted back even louder, “Your wife fed you shit!”
“You’re a cheater!”
“You eat shit!”
Because Two was blocking the crowd, Cai Feng stood in a safe zone and cursed to her heart’s content. One against many, she didn’t lose.
One couldn’t follow their logic. He was anxious but couldn’t get a word in, unable to explain that he and Two really weren’t the ones being stolen. But after listening for a while, he had a sudden epiphany.
This was a war of human language, the main point of which was to be completely off-topic and give irrelevant answers.
One had not yet mastered this skill and could only retreat from the battlefield. He went into the room to look after the two babies. Pang Hua and Little Dirtball had finished crying and were now looking around with wide, curious eyes.
Little Dirtball could already lift his head and was craning his neck to look outside.
Pang Hua, pitifully, had weak neck muscles and a limited range of motion, so she could only stare at the ceiling.
One ignored them both. He didn’t want to touch the too-soft Pang Hua and was repulsed by Little Dirtball’s drool, so he just stood to the side, making sure they didn’t roll off the bed.
Outside, chaos reigned; inside, it was peaceful.
Cai Feng had been resting well recently, so she had plenty of energy to keep up the shouting match for a long time.
The old woman’s side grew angrier. Someone ran out and returned with a thick stick, swinging it directly at Cai Feng.
Two stuck out his arm, blocking the blow.
The force of the attack was immense, and the stick broke directly over Two’s arm. The loud crack stunned everyone into silence.
Cai Feng cried out in alarm, “Big Brother Two!”
Such a powerful blow would have obviously broken a bone. The old woman and her group spat vicious threats. “Just wait ’til my son gets back from the city, he’ll beat you to death, you slut!”
As they hurled threats, they quickly retreated from the courtyard.
Cai Feng was extremely worried. “How’s your arm?”
Two was a bit bewildered, not quite understanding what Cai Feng was asking. Fortunately, One came out of the room.
Two asked One with difficulty, “…What am I supposed to do?”
One made a show of feeling Two’s arm and then turned to tell Cai Feng, “It was broken, but I’ve set it for him.”
“Huh?” Cai Feng stared at them, dumbfounded.
For a moment, One tensed up. He thought this was it, they were finished. There was no way Cai Feng wouldn’t have noticed such an obvious flaw.
But, a moment later, Cai Feng laughed with genuine sincerity. “You outsiders really are amazing!”
After that, their lives became inconvenient. One and Two were now being watched. Cai Feng’s in-laws were always trying to rush in and beat the “adulterers,” so they were constantly lurking nearby, waiting for One and Two to leave.
One and Two, who could have originally returned to their own place, no longer dared to leave.
“This is inconvenient,” One said seriously. “They are constantly observing our movements. They’ll spot our flaws sooner or later.”
“You mean,” Two asked slowly, “we have to leave?”
Together, they looked at the sleeping Pang Hua on the bed.
To be honest, Pang Hua was a relatively easy baby to care for, especially compared to Little Dirtball. Little Dirtball was always cooing and gurgling, a string of sticky, transparent secretion always hanging from the corner of his mouth. Pang Hua was much quieter, always sleeping, her mouth clean.
But Cai Feng had told them that when Pang Hua got a little older, she would start making noise just like Little Dirtball. On this point, One remained temporarily optimistic.
Pang Hua’s condition was much better than when they first found her. She was a little rounder, a little chubbier, and a little cuter.
Two couldn’t understand or describe the feeling of “cute.” He could only vaguely articulate his own feeling: “She looks much farther from death.”
In that case, they could consider leaving.
But Pang Hua still needed to be breastfed.
So, One turned and asked Cai Feng, “Do you want to leave with us?”
Cai Feng was stunned. “Go where?”
One thought for a moment. “To a place that isn’t a village. A place with more people.” As for where exactly, he hadn’t decided yet.
Cai Feng instinctively shook her head. “I’ve lived here my whole life. My home is here.”
“And I have Little Dirtball.”
One replied, “Bring Little Dirtball with you.”
Cai Feng was resistant to the idea and continued to shake her head. “My husband is here too.”
“But he’s not good to you,” Two interjected. “He didn’t let you rest after childbirth.” Two grew proud. “He’s not as good as us.”
Cai Feng finally stopped shaking her head. She stared blankly ahead, not sure what she was clinging to, but also not knowing where she should go.
Her entire life up to this point had been lived here. She stammered, “I’ve never been anywhere else…”
One recited data in a flat, formal tone. “The surface area of this planet, Earth, is 510 million square kilometers. The village we are in is 3 square kilometers.”
“Therefore,” One told her, “you have only seen one-170,000,000th of this planet.”
“Excluding the oceans, Earth still has 148.9 million square kilometers of land, and you—you have only seen 3 square kilometers of it.”
One’s eyes were a pure, deep black. He gazed at Cai Feng, genuinely feeling a sense of pity for her.
And Cai Feng, hearing this string of numbers, felt dizzy.
Two said quietly, “If we leave, there will be no one to cook for you or sweep for you.”
These two keywords finally brought Cai Feng to her senses. The matter of the Earth was too distant for her; cooking was much closer to home. She grasped the useful information. “If I go with you, will you feed me?”
Not forever. One and Two exchanged a glance. When their homeworld contacted them and it was time for action, they wouldn’t be able to take care of her.
So, One promised, “As long as Pang Hua drinks milk, we will cook for you.”
Cai Feng had gotten smarter. The nursing period for a child could last a long time. As long as she couldn’t support herself, she could support herself by feeding Pang Hua.
Although the atmosphere she lived in made her feel she couldn’t leave the useless Zhao Dagang, she was, after all, a child who had been abandoned and had managed to survive on her own through trial and error.
Two’s words had ultimately tempted her.
Her life here was not good.
She rationally realized that if she missed this chance, no one would ever ask her if she wanted to leave this place again in her entire life.
Compared to Zhao Dagang’s slaps, the insults of her mother-in-law’s family, and a future where Little Dirtball would visibly be rolling in the mud, Cai Feng was ready to take a gamble.
“I’ve begged for food before,” she muttered to herself. “Even if I have to beg in the future, the food in the city must be better than in the village. And I know how to farm, I can do a lot of work. I can definitely earn money.”
“Deal,” she agreed.
Then she placed Little Dirtball in Two’s arms, turned around, and started packing. “I don’t have many things, I’ll be ready in a minute.”
“When are we leaving?” she asked as she packed. “This afternoon? Then I need to make a few flatbreads.”
One was looking up information. “I will help you handle the divorce certificate…”
Cai Feng waved her hand. “What certificate.” She laughed heartily. “I never even got a marriage certificate.”
By the time Zhao Dagang’s mother found a drunk Zhao Dagang in the city, gathered a group of people, and returned in a grand procession, the house was completely empty.
No Cai Feng, no Little Dirtball, and no strange men.