Flip the table and divide the family property! Take his wife and daughter into the mountains and eat

"This is your brother Lai Zi. In a couple of days, you'll marry him quietly."

Li Cuihua's casual remark struck Zhao Xiaoyu like a blow to the head.

"I won't marry him!"

Zhao Xiaoyu sprang up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, retreating in terror until her back pressed against the cold earthen wall, her whole body trembling like a leaf: "Mom! I don't want to marry him!"

The smile on Li Cuihua's face vanished instantly.

She slammed her hand on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed) and stood up abruptly, pointing at Zhao Xiaoyu's nose and cursing, "You wretched girl, why shouldn't you want me? I've raised you with such hardship, fed you and clothed you, and now you're just sitting at home eating for free? Do you want to be an old maid forever?!"

"Mom, I want to go to school! I want to go to university!"

Tears welled up in Zhao Xiaoyu's eyes as she desperately clung to this last straw, shaking her head frantically: "I don't want to get married so soon!"

"Going to college?"

Li Cuihua rolled her eyes sarcastically, as if she had heard the funniest joke in the world, almost spitting on Zhao Xiaoyu's face: "Where's the money? Who's going to pay for it?! Me, your third brother lying on the kang (heated brick bed), or your heartless, beastly eldest brother Zhao Shanhe?!"

Li Cuihua gave a disdainful sneer: "Supporting you all the way to high school is already a miracle for the Zhao family! Instead of thanking our Zhao family, you're just daydreaming!"

Driven to the brink, Zhao Xiaoyu completely snapped.

With red eyes, she blurted out the heartbreaking truth: "The money for my high school education wasn't from you at all! It was from my older brother... it was from Zhao Shanhe who went out into the deep forest in the dead of winter to hunt, risking his life against wild animals to earn money for my education! And you all vehemently opposed it back then!"

Li Cuihua's face instantly turned extremely ferocious, as if her most painful, festering wound had been stepped on.

She rushed forward, raised her withered hand, and delivered a vicious slap to Zhao Xiaoyu's face.

"Snapped!"

"You heartless little beast!"

Li Cuihua trembled with rage, pointing at Zhao Xiaoyu who had fallen to the ground and shouting, "You're still thinking about that shameless ingrate?! He lives a life of luxury while we live on?!"

Zhao Xiaoyu screamed and was knocked to the cold, muddy ground. She covered her swollen cheek and cried in despair.

Seeing this, Zhao Laizi, who was sitting on the edge of the kang, quickly pretended to be distressed.

He bent over and got off the kang (a heated brick bed), quickly walked to Zhao Xiaoyu's side, and reached out to help her.

Those rough, calloused hands, worn from years of handling dead leather, took advantage of the act of helping her up to give Zhao Xiaoyu's thin shoulders and waist a very lewd pinch.

"Oh dear, Auntie, what are you doing? Why are you starting such a big fire?"

Zhao Laizi feigned concern and turned to comfort Li Cuihua, but his cloudy eyes were fixed on Zhao Xiaoyu's tear-streaked face: "Xiaoyu is still young and doesn't understand. Once she marries into my family, I will definitely treat her well and never let her suffer any injustice."

Li Cuihua seized the opportunity and immediately put on a fawning face, saying, "Laizi, your aunt is just disappointed in you. Now that you've married our Xiaoyu, you'll have to help out the Zhao family a lot. Your third brother's future depends on you."

Zhao Laizi thumped his chest loudly, his face beaming with pride: "Auntie, don't worry, it's all just a matter of a word!"

Listening to the two of them complete the human trafficking so naturally, Zhao Xiaoyu looked at the nearly forty-year-old bachelor with a mouthful of yellow teeth and completely broke down.

She shoved away Zhao Laizi's groping, dirty hands, scrambled to Li Cuihua's feet, clung tightly to her mother's leg, and screamed pitifully, begging for mercy.

"He's forty years old! Mom, you're pushing me into a fire pit!"

Zhao Xiaoyu, her face covered in mud from crying, banged her head on the ground repeatedly: "Mom, I beg you... I won't go to school anymore! I'll work myself to the bone in the fields every day, I'll clean up after my third brother for the rest of my life! Please don't make me marry him! I despise him!"

The word "disdain" instantly stung Zhao Laizi's extremely sensitive and insecure self-esteem, a nouveau riche.

The feigned kindness on Zhao Laizi's face vanished instantly, replaced by extreme ferocity and tyranny.

"Snapped!"

Zhao Laizi suddenly stepped forward and delivered an extremely vicious slap, sending Zhao Xiaoyu sprawling on the ground, her mouth instantly splitting open and bleeding.

"You filthy bitch!"

Zhao Laizi, like a mad dog, pointed at Zhao Xiaoyu on the ground and cursed, "You bastard, a plucked pheasant, a poor beggar who can't even afford to eat, and you dare to look down on me?! The fact that I even looked at you is because your ancestors accumulated eight generations of good karma!"

Not satisfied with just cursing, Zhao Laizi raised his foot, clad in cheap leather shoes, and kicked Zhao Xiaoyu hard in the stomach, causing her to curl up on the ground and dry heave in pain.

Faced with this extremely cruel violence, Li Cuihua stood coldly to the side, her hands tucked into her sleeves, without uttering a single word, as if the one being beaten on the ground was not her own daughter at all.

Zhao Shanlin, who was lying paralyzed on the kang (a heated brick bed), stared wide-eyed at his sinister eyes.

He watched with extreme pleasure as his younger sister was beaten and rolled on the ground in agony, a twisted and cruel smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

Zhao Laizi, panting heavily, then disgustedly shook the mud off his shoes and straightened his cheap suit.

He pulled out a thick wad of ten-yuan notes from his inner pocket, a full eighty yuan, and slammed them heavily onto the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed).

"Auntie, this is eighty yuan as a bride price."

Zhao Laizi grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva: "Every day after dark, I borrow that hand-operated tractor at the edge of the village to pick her up. Tell her to get herself cleaned up properly, and not to come looking like a grumbling devil and bring me bad luck!"

Li Cuihua stared at the eighty silver dollars, her cloudy old eyes instantly gleaming with a wolfish green light. She trembled with excitement, her hands shaking, and she repeatedly nodded and bowed, saying, "Oh, Lai Zi, don't worry! I'll make sure you get everything sorted out tomorrow night!"

Zhao Laizi snorted coldly, turned around arrogantly, and slammed the door shut as he left.

Li Cuihua tucked the eighty yuan into her bosom, turned her head, and the fawning expression on her face instantly transformed into an extremely cold-blooded ferocity.

She dragged the barely alive Zhao Xiaoyu by the hair on the ground like a dead dog, all the way to the dilapidated woodshed in the backyard that was drafty on all sides.

"Bang!"

The dilapidated wooden door of the woodshed was slammed shut, followed by the crisp "click" of a large iron lock locking itself.

In the cold, biting darkness, Zhao Xiaoyu huddled like a tattered sack in a pile of dusty hay.

Her whole body ached as if it were falling apart, and blood kept seeping from the corner of her mouth.

Extreme despair and regret turned into scalding tears, which fell silently onto the dirty mud.

"Big brother, save me..."