One Step Away

Chapter 38

Wang Xia was abducted and brought here eight years ago. The human traffickers gave her a name, but she couldn’t remember it herself.

She had been muddled and confused back then, locked away in a cattle pen. In those days, she only did three things –

Throw cow dung at people passing by.

Throw cow dung at sheep passing by.

Throw cow dung at dogs passing by.

Every time she hit a target, she would giggle and laugh as if it were the most joyful thing in the world.

Later, Ming Wen arrived. Ming Wen cleaned her wounds and gave her clean clothes. Sha Niu spent every day chanting about the Immortal Lady, and Wang Xia followed her lead in worshipping the Immortal Lady.

Ming Wen began giving her medicine. The more she took, the clearer Wang Xia’s mind became, until she grew sober enough to realize exactly what her situation was.

Wang Xia was different from Sha Niu and Sha Niu’s Mother. She was educated and had attended high school. In her moments of clarity, she knew Ming Wen was not a god.

Because there were no gods in this world.

Not long after, Ming Wen escaped. Wang Xia was happy for her.

It was good that she ran.

One less person to die in this place. She never expected Ming Wen to return.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. She listened to the breathing of the others in the room, and the more she listened, the more agitated she felt.

After an unknown amount of time, there was a sudden knock at the door.

“Who is it?” she heard her man ask.

The person outside said, “It’s me.”

It was the Village Chief’s voice. Her man got up to open the door.

She listened to the commotion but didn’t take it too seriously.

Until the moment the door swung open, and the sound of countless footsteps suddenly flooded inside.

Soon, she heard a familiar voice –

“Wang Xia, where are you?”

It was Ming Wen’s voice.

Wang Xia crawled out from under the bed. The first thing she saw were police officers in the room, already pinning the man down.

She froze for a moment, wanting to retreat back into hiding, but then she remembered that they were here to save her.

When Wang Xia was a child, people wearing these same uniforms had come to take her mother away.

The people around her kept telling her that her mother had killed someone and was going to prison.

Small children rarely think about the specifics of murder or prison; they only know it is something deeply shameful and terrifying.

Every time people spoke of it, her heart would tighten, filled with that shame and fear.

Her grandmother hated her mother, and she hated Wang Xia too.

Whenever her grandmother was in a bad mood, she would come home and beat her, cursing that she was exactly like her murderer mother.

If Wang Xia so much as glanced at her, the grandmother would claim she was trying to gouge her with her eyes, asking if she intended to kill her too.

Terrified into silence, Wang Xia wouldn’t speak, which only led her grandmother to say she truly intended to kill just like her mother.

Her grandmother would wail and make a scene until the neighbors gathered, forcing Wang Xia to apologize to her.

She wanted so badly to tell everyone that she wouldn’t kill anyone, that she wouldn’t go to prison.

Once, after going two days without food, she mingled with a large crowd of people buying breakfast. While everyone was busy, she reached out and stole two steamed buns.

The owner seemed to look at her, yet seemed not to.

At that moment, she felt she was finished, that she would be dragged off to prison.

But the owner said nothing.

She hurried away and crouched in a corner, crying as she ate the buns.

Later, her grandmother died.

She died of illness.

Wang Xia was so frightened then, because only she and her grandmother had been home.

She feared others would think she had killed her grandmother. She even dreamed of being caught by the police while everyone accused her of the murder.

But she really hadn’t. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t kill anyone. She was truly a good person.

Fortunately, people didn’t say such things.

After her grandmother died, a distant aunt took pity on her, saying it was just a matter of an extra pair of chopsticks at the table, and took her away.

There was a pig-slaughtering stall near her aunt’s house. Every time she passed it, she would run as fast as she could, because… because…

Every time she saw a pig being slaughtered, seeing the red blade go in and the white blade come out¹, a secret sense of pleasure would rise in her heart. Meanwhile, other children would cry because the pigs were being killed.

She was too young to understand that it was because her life was too oppressive; such bloody violence provided a degree of relief from that suppression.

She only felt it was because she also wanted to kill. She feared that what the adults said was true. That there really was something wrong with her, and perhaps she really would grow up to be a murderer.

She became even stricter with herself, refusing to allow herself to become that kind of person.

That was how she grew up.

Until that day, after her high school evening study session ended, she encountered an old woman. The woman had fallen and was lying on the ground, groaning about her aching back.

The woman kept calling her a kind-hearted girl. Wang Xia helped her home, but as soon as she entered the house, everything went black. When she woke up, she was in a strange place where she knew no one.

Back then, she couldn’t accept that her life would end like this, locked away and bearing children like livestock.

She came up with a plan. At first, she pretended she had no intention of escaping. Eventually, she found an opportunity and ran to the town.

When she went to buy a ticket, the people there kept saying there were no seats and wouldn’t let her board the bus.

“Wait for the next one.”

She truly believed there were no seats, never imagining that the station staff were also in league with the traffickers.

She had been lucky; an old nurse was at the station heading to the city for training, and Wang Xia managed to stuff a note into her hand.

Soon, the police arrived. The man had grabbed the child first, threatening to die with the child, and ultimately the villagers had banded together to drive the police out.

But now, two police officers pinned the man to the ground, giving him no such opportunity.

The police had known about this before arriving, so they naturally held him down.

In the room, the two children began to cry. The two elderly people tried to save their son, but the police had already hauled him out.

She kept thinking, how could it be this easy? Had the other villagers not come?

Perhaps because she had exhausted every effort in the past and failed to escape, she felt a sense of unreality in this moment.

Her mind felt numb, and she could only follow Ming Wen out of the house.

They had just reached the doorway when a sharp cry rang out from behind them.

The police had already apprehended the two men of the household inside. The remaining old woman was not only elderly but also appeared thin and frail, making the officers reluctant to restrain her.

It was this very old woman who had suddenly seized the two children.

Wang Xia stared at the old woman, who was screaming that if the police took her daughter-in-law away, she would take the children with her to the grave.

A sense of “as expected” washed over her; she knew it wouldn’t be so easy to be rescued.

At this moment, she was incredibly calm, even surprising herself with her own tranquility.

Her heart beat very slowly, and only one thought remained in her mind.

Just as she had done so many times in the past, she began to walk back with a numb expression.

“I’m not leaving. You don’t have to kill them,” she said.

The others had not expected the victim to stop cooperating.

This… this was going to be a problem.

In the process of a rescue, the most feared obstacle isn’t the resistance of the perpetrator, but the victim siding with them.

Yun Song didn’t know much about Wang Xia, and she couldn’t understand why the woman had suddenly turned back.

Yun Song pulled at her, wanting to tell her that based on her knowledge of the villagers, the old woman wouldn’t actually go through with it.

But Wang Xia didn’t look back. She simply kept walking, as if she had already made a choice for her life.

She had accepted her fate.

Seeing her walk back, the man grew smug and immediately demanded the two officers release him.

“She said it herself, she’s not leaving. Why are you holding me?”

Hearing his words, Wang Xia seemed to remember something. She turned to the police and said, “Let him go.”

This was the situation police feared most. If the victim refused to press charges, the matter became extremely difficult to handle.

The man grew even more arrogant. She was already married into the family and had given him two children; could the police really interfere? They had no right.

The last time the police came, they had only said a few words before leaving. This time would be no different.

As the old saying goes, even an upright official finds it hard to settle family disputes². He was determined to crush any hope she had left.

Never mind the police; even if the King of Heaven himself came down, there was no reason to take away the wife he had bought!

However, knowing the police were still present, the man was willing to take a step back.

“Don’t think about running away anymore. We’ll live our lives properly from now on.”

“If you won’t consider me, you at least have to think about the two children you gave birth to.”

The man spoke as he walked toward her.

Yun Song was already planning in her mind whether she could secretly take the woman away tonight without alerting the family.

She had to get her out, but it would require a gentler approach. Having been here so long, Yun Song knew that while they threatened to kill the children now, they would never actually kill their own grandsons if the woman were truly gone.

However, Wang Xia didn’t say a word. She had surrendered; she had accepted her lot in life.

The man reached Wang Xia, and she nodded to him.

It was as if she were looking at him clearly for the first time.

The man saw what looked like a smile of relief on her face, as if she had finally accepted everything. He felt triumphant; it should have been like this all along.

But in the next second, a cold blade plunged into his chest.

It happened too fast. The woman had appeared so calm that it caught everyone off guard. After a brief, stunned silence, the air filled with screams.

The woman turned around, blood dripping from her hands.

She remained perfectly composed, as if this were a trivial matter, as if she had rehearsed it a thousand times in her mind.

She looked toward the police.

“Arrest me. You can execute me or put me in prison, it doesn’t matter.”

The two mountains that had been crushing her seemed to have vanished.

Things she had once been terrified of felt different in this moment.

She accepted her fate calmly, and a sensation of finally being alive surged through her heart.

The old woman who had been threatening to kill her grandsons dropped them and rushed forward.

The police quickly intercepted her, preventing her from committing another act of violence.

The old woman’s curses, the children’s wailing, and the man’s pained whimpers on the ground created a chaotic scene.

It was very loud.

Wang Xia watched it all with a detached air. There was warm blood on her face, but her heartbeat remained slow. Like an outsider, she wondered to herself: they probably wouldn’t execute her here; they would likely take her back to the city.

She began to think that once she was back in the city, she wanted a bowl of tofu pudding. She wondered if that would be allowed.

Yun Song was also terrified. She hurried forward with the others to check on the man.

The blade had struck his heart directly. Now, even if the Immortal Lady herself descended, he could not be saved.

The Village Chief had originally been called to help. Seeing so many police officers, he knew the situation was irreversible, which was why he had finally called for the door to be opened.

He had been standing on the periphery, and as he watched the scene unfold, he felt it was all retribution. A perfectly fine family had been ruined like this.

Seeing the crying children, he quickly stepped forward to plead.

“Officers, please, can you not take her away yet? Look at this family, the old are elderly and the young are so small…”

With the father gone and the mother taken away, how would the two children survive?

The police had already brought the situation under control. The woman would definitely have to be taken away.

Yun Song’s heart grew increasingly heavy.

She was only twenty years old. During her hardest and most bitter times, she had forced herself to stay calm, forced herself to be as composed as a powerful immortal.

Back then, what kept her going was the vision of what would happen after she succeeded.

She had imagined it countless times: she would succeed, save everyone, and everyone would have a happy ending. That happy ending certainly didn’t involve being arrested for murder.

They were only one step away. Wang Xia had been only one step away from starting a new life.

But things had come to this, and grief was useless now.

Yun Song pulled herself out of her emotions and began to think. Was there still a way to save her?

She began to recall legal cases she had read about in the past. In a situation like Wang Xia’s, there might still be hope.

I’ll find a lawyer to ask about this after I get back.

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Translator’s Notes

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1. red blade go in and the white blade come out: A literal translation of a Chinese idiom (hóng dāozi jìn, bái dāozi chū) describing a stabbing or slaughter. It refers to the clean steel of a knife entering a body and emerging covered in blood. ↩
2. even an upright official finds it hard to settle family disputes: A translation of the proverb ‘清官难断家务事’ (qīngguān nán duàn jiāwùshì). It reflects a traditional Chinese social norm where domestic issues, including domestic violence or ‘purchased’ wives, were viewed as private matters beyond the jurisdiction of the law, often complicating modern legal intervention. ↩