She wanted to reach out and touch, yet dared not, afraid this was another dream. The moment her hand touched her child, the child’s head would roll like a ball to her feet.
Even the light before her eyes began to blur, as hazy as a dream.
The little girl, her hair a matted mess of pig slop, saw Xu Huiqing and froze at first, as if in disbelief. Then came shock and joy. She didn’t even bother to put down the gourd ladle she used to scoop pig feed. A radiant smile lit her face as she dashed toward Xu Huiqing. Before reaching her arms, her eyes welled with aggrieved tears. She threw herself into Xu Huiqing’s embrace, hugging her tight and wailing.
Xu Huiqing cried too, but hers was a silent weeping. One hand cradled the child’s body, the other rested on the back of her head, gently. Then, as if registering the realness of the sensation, she slowly tightened her arms. Her lips quivered, unable to make a sound for a long while. After a long moment, she forced out two hoarse, distorted words from deep in her throat: “Xiaoxi…”
Hearing her mother’s call, Xiaoxi finally clung to her mother’s neck and sobbed loudly: “Mama!!!”
She hugged so tightly and fiercely that the already exhausted Xu Huiqing collapsed onto the muddy ground of the mountain hollow, her legs pinned beneath her.
The police officers behind them hurried down the slope, reaching the mother and daughter who were crying in each other’s arms. The female police officer who had come along couldn’t help but redden her eyes at the sight. She gently wrapped her arms around them both and comforted them: “The child is found, that’s all that matters. The child is found.”
At that moment, the half-closed little wooden door opened from within. Out of the stone-and-mud hut came a woman in her thirties, her face aged, dark-skinned and gaunt. She saw Xu Huiqing holding Xiaoxi and crying, took two steps forward, then spotted the police and quickly shouted back into the house: “Husband! Husband!”
Xu Huiqing heard the woman’s mountain dialect. She had wanted to beat her up, but she couldn’t bear to let go of Xiaoxi. Xiaoxi’s arms were locked tightly around her neck, refusing to loosen, and she held the child just as firmly.
She abandoned the idea of hitting the couple and instead chose to cling to her child. Afraid of any mishap, she quickly composed herself, lifted Xiaoxi up, and stood. She said to the female officer beside her: “Officer, I suspect this couple is also in the human trafficking business, helping the Zhao family move scattered goods in the mountains. I suggest we arrest them first and take them back for interrogation.”
Just as Xu Huiqing was speaking, the man inside had come out. He was also in his thirties, gaunt, with deep lines carved into his face, looking closer to forty.
Seeing the child in Xu Huiqing’s arms, his first instinct was to lunge forward and snatch her: “Who are you people? We bought this child! Give her back!”
The female officer promptly twisted the man’s arm behind his back. “The child’s mother has come looking for her. Yours?”
Xu Huiqing suppressed the urge to beat the couple senseless and instead aimed a fierce kick right at the man’s crotch!
She said to the female officer: “Officer, you heard what he said. He admitted to trafficking children. Buying and selling carry the same guilt. Take them back and interrogate them thoroughly. You might just uncover a whole nest of human traffickers in these mountains!”
According to what Xu Huiqing had investigated in her past life, this couple wasn’t actually traffickers, but the incidence of women being abducted and sold into these deep mountains was considerable.
For decades, the practice of drowning infant girls had been rampant in these remote mountains, to the point that there was a saying: “A family with a daughter is sought by a hundred suitors, yet a hundred mountain households have not a single girl.”
So where did the mountain men find wives?
They bought them from outside the mountains!
This created a breeding ground for human traffickers to abduct women.
Back then, she had been just an ordinary homemaker who had already lost her job. When searching for Xiaoxi, she had only looked based on which families in the mountains had adopted girls, not from the traffickers’ perspective. After finding her, her first thought had been to care for and soothe her daughter; she simply didn’t have the capacity to help others.
In fact, because her search had stretched on so long, everyone assumed her child had been trafficked far away, and even the police had given up.
She hadn’t even filed a report to punish this couple; she had only later found her own way to exact revenge.
This kick she delivered now stunned everyone present—they hadn’t expected that even with a child in her arms, she would still not let the middle-aged man before her off.
The man bent over, clutching his groin and screaming, a howl like a wild boar in the mountains, drawing mountain folk out from the surrounding woods and pulling Xu Huiqing’s drifting thoughts back.
Actually, the officers had already restrained the couple without Xu Huiqing even needing to say it.
As the man’s screams echoed, scattered mountain dwellers emerged from behind the trees, their figures hidden until now by the dense foliage and high weeds.
They pointed and whispered about the restrained couple: “So the girl’s parents came looking?”
“Wasn’t it said her parents sold her willingly? I knew buying local was unreliable!”
“If you really want to adopt a girl, why spend money? Just take one from any family that gives birth to a daughter. Now look—money wasted, and the child’s gone too!”
They spoke neither loud nor soft, using the local mountain dialect, all of which Xu Huiqing understood.
She held Xiaoxi tightly, one hand cradling the back of the child’s head, pressing Xiaoxi’s face against her shoulder so she wouldn’t see the people around or hear their voices. She murmured softly to soothe her: “Xiaoxi, be good. Xiaoxi, don’t be afraid. Mama’s here to take you home. Hold on tight. Mama will take you back to…”
She had been about to say “home,” but suddenly she thought dazedly: Where was home for her and Xiaoxi?
Her natal family’s three older brothers had long since built their own families. Her parents had been assigned to Eldest Brother’s household, living under Eldest Brother and Sister-in-law’s roof.
The Zhao family was a wolf’s den, certainly not her home.
Her teaching position at Town Central Primary School was gone too. The world was vast, yet for a moment, there was no place for mother and daughter.
But that bewilderment lasted only an instant. She quickly steeled herself again.
Right now, except for a few married-out sisters, the Zhao family were all detained at the police station. She needed to hurry back and transfer her and Xiaoxi’s household registrations out, and handle the money.
Even if she had to leave, she couldn’t do it penniless.
At the moment, the only money she had was her own salary plus the red envelopes given by relatives who came for the postpartum celebration today.
It was already getting late. Fearing that night would soon fall and the mountain roads would become treacherous, with wild beasts like wolves, tigers, and leopards lurking, the officers restrained the couple and then led Xu Huiqing out of the mountains.
On the way, the female officer worried that Xu Huiqing had just finished her postpartum confinement and had endured such a huge emotional upheaval plus hours of mountain trekking, and was now carrying a child, making walking difficult. She reached out to take Xiaoxi.
Xiaoxi’s hands were clamped around Xu Huiqing’s neck, her face buried in the crook of her neck, refusing to let go.
Xu Huiqing wouldn’t let go either, her hands clutching the child tightly, afraid that if she loosened her grip, the scene before her would vanish like an illusion, like smoke slipping through her fingers. Only by holding Xiaoxi tight could she feel a thread of reality.
The postpartum celebration had been held that morning, the family arrested before noon, interrogated by afternoon, and then they had ventured into the mountains to search.
Before they got out of the mountains, the sky had already completely darkened.
Fortunately, it was May, so dusk didn’t fall that early. Even at six or seven, there was still light in the sky, but the howls of wolves began to rise one after another.
They were a large group, so they weren’t afraid of beasts, but they feared that if they didn’t leave soon, they would have to spend the night in the mountains—far more dangerous, especially with a child barely over three years old.
Xu Huiqing had eaten only a bowl of sugared eggs that morning and had not eaten a thing since noon. By now, her limbs were weak, her body utterly exhausted. Moreover, the mountain path wasn’t flat; it climbed and descended endlessly. The late-spring vegetation had grown so lush that it completely buried the trail. Snakes kept darting across the path, and some were even coiled on tree branches, quietly flicking their tongues as they watched the group.
The snakes didn’t actively attack, but once it was fully dark, it would be easy to step on one and get bitten—something all too common.
Besides snakes, the mountains were full of venomous insects.
This was the season when toxic caterpillars crawled over every plant: red and black ones, looking as if covered with eyes, inching along branches. Some hung from invisible threads that dangled in midair. If you weren’t careful, you’d walk right into them. The moment their bristly hairs touched human skin, a rash would erupt instantly, like thousands of needles pricking you, agonizingly painful and unbearably itchy—so painful you’d want to roll on the ground, so itchy you’d want to tear that patch of flesh off.
The police officers had no choice but to walk and beat the path with sticks to startle any snakes away, while using branches to sweep the dangling toxic insects aside.
They walked for three or four hours, guided by Second Sister Zhao, who had married into the mountains, before finally emerging.
When they squeezed out from between the giant rocks of Sliver of Sky in Stone Gate Gorge, the sky was pitch-black, so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The entire group, including the officers, hadn’t eaten dinner and were so hungry their stomachs stuck to their backs. Xu Huiqing, still recently postpartum, felt dizzy and lightheaded, on the verge of fainting at any moment.
She forced herself to walk out of Stone Gate Gorge, then leaned against the damp, dark rock wall of the gorge. She called out to the female officer who had been supporting her the whole way and said with a bitter smile: “Officer, I can’t walk another step. My vision’s going black.”
The female officer tried to take Xiaoxi. Xiaoxi had been sleeping in the crook of Xu Huiqing’s neck, but her small hands still held on tightly. Whoever tried to take her would instantly wake her, and she’d start crying.
That was the case now.
She didn’t cry loudly, but softly, like a frightened little animal.
But the ground here was all rock. Xu Huiqing could clearly feel she was about to pass out. She was terrified that if she fainted and tumbled down the gorge, falling wouldn’t matter to her, but the child mustn’t be hurt.
So she gently rubbed Xiaoxi’s back, soothing her endlessly: “Xiaoxi, be good. Let the police sister hold you for a bit. Mama can’t carry you anymore. Let Mama rest a little, okay?”
A child’s emotions sometimes recover much faster than an adult’s. Hearing Xu Huiqing say this, even though Xiaoxi was still afraid and reluctant, she obediently stretched out her arms toward the female officer, allowing herself to be held. Yet her eyes never left Xu Huiqing, as if afraid she might suddenly vanish.