Farewell to Li Qingqing

Chapter 39

Wang Xia needed to be taken away and could not remain here any longer. The rescue team quickly began escorting her out.

Yun Song actually wanted to soothe the woman’s emotions, but upon closer observation, she realized that Wang Xia was more stable than she was.

Perhaps it was because Wang Xia felt certain that she would finally be taken out of this place.

Yun Song had guessed correctly. For Wang Xia, it was an unalterable law that killing someone meant being caught and locked up.

Her heart was calm. Being locked up by the police and suffering in prison—could it possibly be harder than living here?

The Guangcheng police were responsible for handling the aftermath at this household.

By the time Yun Song came out, the other officers had successively completed their rescues and arrests. No one else had encountered a situation like the one at Wang Xia’s house. After all, it was three or four in the morning, and everyone was still groggy, their minds not yet fully awake.

By the time these people were led by the police from their rooms to the drying field at the village entrance, it was already early morning.

The darkness that had shrouded Xinghua Village dissipated.

Li Qingqing was also in the crowd. Although she and Wu Jie were not the ones the police had come to arrest, they had naturally woken up given the massive commotion.

She was utterly bewildered by everything, but compared to the others in the village who could not understand Mandarin, she had her own advantage.

She could speak Mandarin.

She heard the Mandarin-speaking police officers questioning the trafficked brides in the village.

A vague thought began to form in her mind, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was.

Soon, she saw Ming Wen. Ming Wen was being pulled by members of the Zhang Family, who were red-faced with desperation. “Where is the child in your belly? Where is the child?”

“Go ahead, let the police beat me to death! Even if they kill me, I’m going to ask—where did my grandson go?”

Before Yun Song could say anything, the police had already pulled the man away.

The officers actually assumed the child Yun Song had carried out was her own.

Naturally, they also assumed the child the Zhang Family wanted was that same child.

Yun Song also thought of that child. On her way back, she had been dwelling on the same question.

She didn’t see Xingzi in the crowd—the biological mother of the child she had carried out.

She would always remember Xingzi coming to find her that afternoon. At that time, the heavily pregnant Xingzi truly believed she was the Immortal Lady and had wept to her about the pain of losing her second child.

And now, for Xingzi, it meant losing two children in a row.

But would telling Xingzi the truth be a good thing for that child?

Yun Song felt a genuine sense of torment in her heart.

It was at this moment that Li Qingqing walked up to Yun Song.

Li Qingqing looked at the Immortal Lady before her. She still believed Ming Wen was the Immortal Lady; she even felt the police were heavenly soldiers and generals¹ who had simply disguised themselves as police because it was inconvenient to show their true forms while capturing people in the mortal realm.

She had actually been happy when Ming Wen ran away before. Since the Immortal Lady was here, the Village Chief’s interference would surely prevent her from ascending. If she ran away, she would find a way to ascend and return to the heavens.

In Li Qingqing’s mind, the Immortal Lady belonged in the heavens, where no one could bully her.

But now, the Immortal Lady had brought many police officers to arrest the people of their village.

Why… was this happening? If it was a matter of holding a grudge, Madman Zhang, who had beaten her before, was already dead.

Li Qingqing didn’t understand.

When Li Qingqing’s parents were also seized, she understood even less.

“Qingqing, Qingqing, go find Ming Wen quickly. We even made boiled eggs for her; she can’t arrest us. It’s not like we were the ones who bought her, she can’t retaliate against us like this.”

“Qingqing, go talk to her.”

Li Qingqing could only approach Ming Wen, though she didn’t know how to speak to her.

Because the Immortal Lady had once saved her, Sha Niu had always felt the Immortal Lady loved her most. At that time, Sha Niu was too young to remember things, so she relied entirely on her mother’s memories.

Li Qingqing was different. The pain from her burns had been like her body and soul being roasted over a flame together, with no escape for even a moment.

At that time, the Immortal Lady appeared. She chased away the pain and saved her.

Later, the Immortal Lady was very kind to her. In the entire village, aside from Sha Niu and Sha Niu’s Mother, the Immortal Lady was closest to her.

Li Qingqing hadn’t received much love or attention from her own parents; the Immortal Lady had filled that void.

But now, the Immortal Lady seemed to no longer like her.

The Immortal Lady stood on the other side with the “heavenly soldiers,” while she stood among the crowd of Xinghua Village, no different from the rest.

She didn’t actually want to step forward; she was afraid to. But she couldn’t help herself. She had a faint feeling that the Immortal Lady would soon ascend, and perhaps they would never see each other again.

Yun Song turned her head and saw Li Qingqing. Tears were falling from the girl’s eyes, which were filled with a sense of grievance and a plea for help.

Yun Song’s feelings toward Li Qingqing were complicated. Li Qingqing herself was a very kind girl. When she had saved her back then, Li Qingqing’s family had given the reward to the Zhang Family without even telling her.

Li Qingqing had come to find her in private, secretly giving her money to thank her for the rescue and saying her parents were wrong to give the money to the Zhang Family.

This girl also liked to visit her often. Every time she came, she either helped with farm work or assisted with cooking and laundry.

Yun Song herself was mediocre at farm work, and Sha Niu would get a headache if she tried. Li Qingqing never criticized them; whenever there was something good to eat, she would secretly bring it to her and Sha Niu.

And now, this girl looked at her timidly, asking cautiously, “Immortal Lady… my parents…”

Yun Song said, “Do you know that you were supposed to have two younger sisters?”

Li Qingqing didn’t understand. “Sisters?”

“They were killed.” Right after they were born.

Li Qingqing said, “You must have it wrong. My mom told me many times that our family was too poor back then. We couldn’t even put food on the table; they truly couldn’t afford to raise them. They had no choice.”

“At that time, our family could only afford to drink corn gruel² for a year. My parents were so hungry at night they could only gnaw on tree bark. You can’t blame them entirely for what happened to my sisters; they often cry about it too.”

How could she cry? Should they tell her that the family was so poor that her two younger sisters were killed, yet she was kept alive? Was this comparison meant to make her feel grateful to her parents? This single bout of weeping could make the eldest daughter more obedient while simultaneously venting the parents’ lingering guilt.

Yun Song looked at her and asked, “You have a younger brother. If things were so poor, why did they keep having children?”

“It’s not the same. You’re from the city, you don’t understand how it is here. A family can’t survive without a son. Even for me, if I get married and don’t have a brother to back me up³, no one would care if I was beaten to death by my in-laws.”

The young woman before her looked like an adult, but in reality, the words coming out of her mouth were merely the echoes of others.

She was trying desperately to prove something, to prove that the people in the village weren’t that bad, to prove that her parents weren’t so vicious and terrifying.

But why?

Yun Song did not know what the future held for this young woman, but she did the last thing she could for her.

“You don’t need to make excuses for them,” Yun Song said. “You are you. They are they.” Subconsciously, the young girl before her felt like she was one with the village. When the villagers were being judged, she felt as though she were being judged as well.

“Qingqing, I understand that you’ve been here since birth. Perhaps in your eyes, they are all family and friends, and everything they do is natural. Even if it’s wrong, you think they have their reasons, so you accept it all and feel the need to speak up for them.”

Yun Song led Li Qingqing back, making her look at the middle-aged and elderly women in the village.

One by one, they wailed and lamented, feeling entirely justified as if they had done nothing wrong. After all, this was how everyone did things.

But Yun Song knew they weren’t born this way. They were once little girls too. Perhaps they once felt sad when their brothers got an extra fried egg in their bowls, and perhaps they once fantasized about what life would be like when they grew up and took charge of their own lives.

Li Qingqing listened to the cries of the villagers. Her best friend was gone, and her Immortal Lady seemed to have grown distant from her.

The weight of everything made it hard for her to breathe.

At that moment, her Immortal Lady stopped. Behind them were the weeping women of the village, the generation that came before Li Qingqing.

“Perhaps one day in the future, you will also be controlled by this sense of ‘how things should be.’ Everyone will tell you that you are wrong, that you have a problem, and that you should be like everyone else.”

“At that time, you will feel isolated and helpless. You will doubt yourself and wonder if you’ve made a mistake.”

“In that moment, you will desperately wish for someone to tell you whether there really is something wrong with you. But Sha Niu and I won’t be by your side then. We won’t be able to support your thoughts like we used to.”

Li Qingqing remembered the happy times the three of them had shared, and she was suddenly drawn into Yun Song’s words.

“I… I…” She had no idea what to say, staring blankly at her Immortal Lady.

“When that time comes, I hope you can remember Sha Niu and me. We believe you are right. We hope you will always be Li Qingqing, not a version of your mother, and not a version of your grandmother.”

Li Qingqing only half-understood, but it felt as though she had returned to the days when she and Sha Niu followed the Immortal Lady through the mountains, listening to her speak.

In her youth, she committed every word the Immortal Lady said to memory, even though she felt she would always be Li Qingqing and would never become like her mother.

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Translator’s Notes

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1. heavenly soldiers and generals: Translation of ‘Tianbing Tianjiang’ (天兵天将). In Chinese mythology, these are the divine military forces of the Jade Emperor. Li Qingqing uses this term to rationalize the presence of the police within her folk-religious worldview. ↩
2. corn gruel: A symbol of extreme poverty. In mid-20th century rural China, corn was a coarse staple grain; relying solely on ‘maize paste’ (yumi huhu) indicates a household struggling for basic survival. ↩
3. brother to back me up: Refers to the traditional patriarchal structure in rural China where a woman’s status in her husband’s family depends on the strength of her natal family, specifically her brothers (niangjia ren), who act as protectors against domestic abuse. ↩