The End

Chapter 74

Yang Laowu refused to confess, but with both witness testimony and physical evidence complete, he had no way to refute the charges. Eventually, he simply stopped speaking.

However, as he was about to be taken away, Yang Laowu finally spoke up. “Officer, I want to see my wife.”

“You are already divorced. You don’t have a wife.”

“I want to see Huixiang. I have something to tell her.”

“You can tell us; we can relay the message for you.”

“She and I were husband and wife once. Now I’m going to the city to go to prison. I have to settle family matters. What can you relay for me? Can you relay where our family’s money is hidden?”

They could, but the man didn’t trust them.

Since this was ultimately a good thing for Huixiang, Yun Song went to the Reservoir to pass the message to her.

When Huixiang heard this, she was skeptical. Did their family even have any money? Every year they made a bit from selling pigs, but other than that, there wasn’t much. Yang Laowu wasn’t a hard worker, and he never took on odd jobs like helping people in the village build houses.

However, selling the pigs had indeed brought in some money.

If there really was money in the house, it would cover the eldest girl’s school fees.

She went to see Yang Laowu after all.

The moment she walked in, Yang Laowu began to cry.

“Huixiang, I’m finished this time. They’re probably going to frame me. We’ve been husband and wife for so many years and have two children. You can’t just ignore me.”

It was the first time Huixiang had seen Yang Laowu like this. She didn’t even bother arguing about whether he was being framed or not. Instead, she said, “How am I supposed to help you? Do you expect me to rescue you right under the noses of the police?”

“Go to the city and find a high-ranking official. Help me appeal my case…”

Huixiang understood. She had heard stories like that before, where a man was wrongly imprisoned by the government and his wife traveled to the capital to seek justice from the Emperor.

Huixiang looked at this pitiful man and said, “But I saw you kill Yang Laosan with my own eyes.”

Yang Laowu froze for a moment, and then he was suddenly consumed by rage.

“If you saw it with your own eyes, why didn’t you stop me?!” Yang Laowu was furious. He felt that he hadn’t intended to kill Yang Laosan; he had just lost his head in the moment.

Huixiang was right there and saw everything. Why didn’t she come out to stop him?

The more he thought about it, the more he felt something was wrong! He immediately shouted, “You did it on purpose, didn’t you? You must have planned this! No wonder you went into Laosan’s room that night!”

He had constructed a conspiracy in his own head.

“So you agreeing to the Fake Divorce and the fake marriage was a plot against me from the start! You did it on purpose! That’s why you went out that night before I was even asleep, because you knew I would follow you and discover your affair with Laosan!”

Yang Laowu stopped denying his actions and instead kept telling Yun Song that Huixiang had manipulated the brothers. He claimed she wanted them to kill each other so she could seize their land and house.

Huixiang: “…” She only wished she were as ruthless and clever as Yang Laowu described.

Wait! She quickly looked at the police.

Yun Song asked, “Are you admitting now that you killed Yang Laosan?”

Yang Laowu said, “I’m the one who did it, yes, but it was all this woman’s scheme! She went out that night specifically so I would find her! Then she hid to the side and watched us brothers kill each other.”

Huixiang almost believed she was such a calculating person.

Yun Song explained, “The reason Huixiang went to see Yang Laosan that night was because he had tried to give her sleeping pills that afternoon. Huixiang narrowly escaped, and he ended up taking the sleeping pills himself. He was groggy from the pills and fell asleep in the living room. Huixiang didn’t know they were sleeping pills; she was afraid they were poisonous and worried something might happen to him, so she went to check on him that night.”

“That is also why, even though he was larger than you, he had no strength to resist. You drowned him easily.”

“The water vat being full was also an accident. Your vat isn’t usually full, but at that time, your family had just dug a new water source.”

Yang Laowu refused to believe Yun Song’s words. He insisted that Huixiang was the real culprit and refused to tell her where the money was.

Yun Song: “…” Forget it, there was no reasoning with him.

Because of his attitude, Yun Song hurried to have him sent to the city.

Once the city authorities took over, they wouldn’t have to worry about the aftermath.

Yun Song then returned to Tonglin Town to check on Huixiang’s situation.

As soon as they arrived, they went to the Reservoir to look for her.

“Huixiang has already moved back. She has two children, and living here at the Reservoir was inconvenient,” Old Lady Yuan said cheerfully, holding a bamboo pole.

Yun Song and the other two walked down the path.

Before they had gone far, they saw Huixiang digging sweet potatoes in the field.

Huixiang first cut the sweet potato vines, then swung her hoe, digging out the sweet potatoes one by one.

Her younger daughter was right beside her.

The child was standing inside a large basket. The rim of the basket had been wrapped in cloth, and a hole had been dug in the ground beneath it. With the basket placed in the hole, it wouldn’t tip over no matter how much the child moved.

Huixiang saw Yun Song and Tong Jin. “Officers, is there another problem with Yang Laowu’s case?”

“No, we just came up to see how you’re doing.”

Huixiang said, “What’s there to see?”

Remembering the things Yang Laowu had said, she felt a bit worried. “It’s not that Yang Laowu has been talking nonsense again, is it?”

Yun Song said, “It’s not about that. We’re just here to see if you’re adjusting to your current life and if you’re facing any difficulties.”

“I think life is much better now,” Huixiang said. “I took the children and moved into Yang Laosan’s house. Yang Laowu and I raised four pigs; I sold two of them and kept the money for the children’s schooling.”

The Yang Family had been reluctant at first, but Huixiang didn’t indulge them.

“Yang Laosan and I were married. The two children and I are on the same Hukou as him. We are a family. Now that he’s dead, you want to kick me out? There’s no sense in that!”

“Even though Yang Laowu divorced me, we raised those pigs together. I was entitled to half of them anyway. Plus, he killed my man and left me a widow. So the other half should go to me too!” Talking nonsense was actually quite fun.

The Yang family had not yet recovered from the death of Yang Laosan and the arrests of Old Man Yang, Yang Lao’er, and Yang Laowu. Being subjected to this kind of turmoil now made them flush with rage, their necks thick with tension.

Yang Laoda took a single step forward.

Huixiang immediately bolted outside, shouting as she ran, “The Yang family is going to kill someone again! The Yang family is going to kill someone again!”

“I married into your Yang family when I was eighteen! You said Yang Laosan couldn’t find a wife and forced me to marry him! Yang Laosan and I just wanted to live a good life, but then Yang Laowu killed him. Now I’m left with two children, and you want to kick us out…”

The villagers rushed over instantly and began advising the Yang family that they couldn’t keep hounding people toward death.

“You need to build up some moral merit¹. If you really drive someone else to their grave, what will happen to your future generations?”

The Yang family was well aware that the villagers were currently treating their family like a laughingstock.

And so, Huixiang got her wish and moved into Yang Laosan’s house.

Now, as Huixiang spoke of these matters, her entire being seemed to glow.

She had suffered for half her life, and now she had finally developed a new and effective way of handling the world.

This method made her feel as if everyone around her had changed.

“I thought they would keep fighting over it, but they stopped.”

“When the village school opens in the second half of the year, my eldest daughter will be able to go to school too.”

Yun Song asked, “What will you do with the younger child then?”

“I’ll manage just like this,” Huixiang said. “When my eldest was little, no one helped me look after her either. I raised her on my own.” Her mother-in-law had many grandsons and granddaughters; if she helped one son with his children, the other sons would be unhappy, so naturally, she helped no one.

Huixiang insisted that the three of them stay for a meal, but Yun Song declined, saying they had business back in town.

“If you have any problems later, come find us in town.”

With her child on her back, Huixiang insisted on seeing them off. When the group reached the top of the slope, Huixiang continued to thank them repeatedly.

Yun Song felt a pang of unease. She felt as though she hadn’t done anything extraordinary; she had simply done what a police officer was supposed to do.

Even after they had walked a long distance away, Huixiang remained on the hillside, watching them go.

A year later, Tonglin Town established a police station.

Yun Song became the station chief. The Tonglin Town Police Station recruited fifteen auxiliary police officers², but only two were stationed in the town itself. The rest were recruited from the villages, maintaining one auxiliary police officer per village.

That year, as more and more people headed into the cities for work, ordinary households began installing telephones by the end of the year.

The closed society formed by mountain after mountain was finally broken by the popularization of the telephone.

Yun Song didn’t know when the legal infrastructure of Tonglin Town would finally catch up with the cities.

But that year, she and the Tonglin Town Police Station behind her became a permanent part of the town.

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Translator’s Notes

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1. moral merit: Refers to ‘jide’ (积德), the act of accumulating virtuous deeds to ensure good fortune for oneself and one’s descendants. The villagers’ warning implies that mistreating a widow will bring karmic retribution or ‘bad luck’ to the family’s future lineage. ↩
2. auxiliary police officers: Known as ‘fujing’ (辅警), these are non-commissioned personnel who assist regular police. In rural contexts, they often serve as the primary bridge between formal law enforcement and village-level mediation. ↩