Curfew

Beneath the night sky, the city wall stood at the end of the road, its lights flickering faintly in the deep darkness.

The wooden wheels of the donkey cart rolled over the rutted dirt road, still creaking, "kee-yo, kee-yo."

But Chen Dasheng, who was driving the cart, was utterly silent.

This honest farmer, who had lived a plain and decent life, now felt as if his thoughts were a tangled mess.

It wasn't just that his eldest son, who had fallen from a roof beam in the city, was still hovering between life and death. What he had just witnessed on the night road to Xingyuan City had nearly shattered everything Chen Dasheng had ever believed.

His second son had killed someone.

Three people, in fact.

In Chen Dasheng's eyes, his second son had always been bright and sensible, and handsome, too.

He had planned to wait until Nier and the youngest were a little older and could help out at home, then send Chen Yan into the city to learn a trade and earn a living.

When Nier grew up, she would have to marry.

As for the youngest, Chen Dasheng hadn't planned to send him far away like Chen Dong or Chen Yan. He would keep him by his side to care for him in his old age.

He also planned to leave the family's old house in the village and their few acres of poor farmland to his youngest son, Chen Peng.

As for the money he had scrimped and saved throughout his life, he would split it evenly between the two brothers, his eldest and second sons.

Chen Dasheng thought he had been fair enough.

But with his eldest son gravely injured, and after seeing what his second son had just done, the honest farmer suddenly