Endured Torment

"Bang!"

Li Wei grabbed the pimp by the head and slammed him hard against the floor of the shack!

Bright red blood streamed from the man's forehead. He wailed in pain. His threats and curses had turned to pleas and begging.

"Go inside, Xiao Wei. Your mother's asleep. Stay with her, and no matter what you hear outside, don't come out!"

Xiao Wei looked up and obediently nodded. Then he lifted the curtain and stumbled into the inner room. Li Wei had already carried Su Ya's body inside.

"I don't want compensation! I don't! Brother! Big brother! Please! I didn't know who I was dealing with! Let me go! Please, let me go!"

The pimp, surnamed Yan, wailed. He had finally understood the vast difference in strength between himself and Li Wei, and could only hope to save his own life.

Li Wei calmly pressed his upper body against the chopping board, drew the short sword from inside his coat, and plunged it into the wood less than five centimeters from his neck!

The pimp shuddered all over. Blood and sweat ran together across his forehead, and he lay limp as mud on the board, not daring to move.

"I'll ask one question, and you'll give one answer. If you tell a single lie, I'll cut off an ear. Once the ears are gone, I'll dig out your eyes, then your nose and fingers. Understand?"

"Yes! Yes, I understand! Ask me! I'll tell you the truth about anything I know!"

"Why was Su Ya sold to you?"

"It was that congressman's wife! She resented the maid from Yuguang for having the congressman's child—a boy, too! She wanted Su Ya to suffer a fate worse than death, and wanted the boy to spend his whole life as a slave!"

"How did Su Ya die?"

At the question, beads of sweat the size of beans dripped from the pimp's forehead. But as soon as he felt the sharp blade move closer to his ear, he cried out,

"The congressman's wife ordered that too! Su Ya was already in poor health, and because she didn't have Yaoguang citizenship, she had to rely on others to buy her medicine! The congressman's wife told me to offer to help her, then put a slow-acting poison in her medicine! She wanted Su Ya to grow weaker by the day without dying right away. She said she wanted her to live like a lowly whore and suffer endlessly!"

He didn't dare lie. He told Li Wei everything he knew.

"What about the congressman? Didn't he do anything?"

"The congressman raped Su Ya! He looked down on whores from Yuguang! He only pretended to be close to the workers so he could build a reputation as a kind, benevolent man and win his way into office! He didn't care about this illegitimate child, either. Even if he had no other heirs, he'd never let a descendant with Yuguang blood inherit everything!"

Li Wei stared coldly at the terrified pimp and asked in a low voice,

"You're just a pimp. How do you know so much about a congressman?"

His icy tone made the pimp shiver. Trembling all over, he did his best to explain.

"I—I'm an employee of Green Bamboo Human Resources Company! My boss's boss is the company's general manager, and he's very close with that congressman! The two of them run a business selling cheap prostitutes and laborers from Yuguang. My boss has been helping the congressman with dirty work because of that connection, and I'm the one who handles it all. L-like Su Ya's case!"

He clearly didn't want to die. He kept racking his brain for a way to stay alive, and after swallowing, his eyes darted from side to side.

"So I've got plenty of dirt on that congressman! If you're willing to let me go, I can give you all these secrets! You can use them to threaten him and make him pay! We could work together! We could—"

"Pfft!"

The blade sank into his back. Li Wei didn't give him the chance to finish.

He had learned everything he wanted to know. The pimp was no longer useful.

Li Wei slowly pulled the short sword from the man's heart, picked up a rag, and wiped the blood from the blade as he called into the inner room,

"Xiao Wei."

The boy lifted the curtain and came out. He neither cried nor fussed. He only looked at Li Wei, whose clothes were covered in blood, with his big, bright eyes.

"Uncle."

"Does your family have a big travel bag?"

"There's one under Mom's bed. It has the winter quilts inside."

Li Wei took off his bloodstained coat, pulled the bag out from under the bed, and emptied the bedding from it. Then he went into the inner room and placed Su Ya's body inside.

After that, he took the boy's hand in one of his and picked up the travel bag with the other.

"Let's go. You don't have any family here now. I'll take you to Yuguang. You have a great-uncle there. He'll take good care of you and your mother."

Xiao Wei seemed to understand only part of what Li Wei said, but let him take his hand and lead him out of the ramshackle shack—and away from Hongle Street. The street looked bright and glamorous, but to Li Wei it was hundreds of times filthier than Yuguang.

With Xiao Wei in a change of clothes and a baseball cap pulled low over his face, Li Wei returned to the inn.

When he came back, Feng Zi was reading. As soon as Li Wei entered, she stood up from her chair.

"It's not even dinnertime yet. Did you finish your feast already?"

The moment she finished speaking, she spotted Xiao Wei behind Li Wei, blinking at her with a curious expression.

Feng Zi's eyes widened. She clearly hadn't expected Li Wei to leave and come back with a child.

"Whose child is this?"

"He's Li Ming's grandson from the Yuguang Union. His name's Xiao Wei. Look after him for me. His mother's in this bag, so keep an eye on them both. I need to go get something else. Once I have it, I'll take the two of them away."

Feng Zi had been about to scold Li Wei for carrying the boy's mother in a travel bag. But when she saw the large stain of blood at the bottom, her face turned pale and silent.

She also guessed what Li Wei was going to do.

"Are you going to kill someone?"

"Can't really call them people. Just a den of scum."

Li Wei spoke lightly as he opened the door again. But by then, Feng Zi had hurried over to him, stumbling as she ran, and grabbed his hand.

"Take this with you."

Li Wei looked down and saw the voice recorder in his hand. When he looked back at Feng Zi, her bright blue eyes were earnest and clear.

"We're not bloodthirsty executioners, and we're not villains who kill the innocent. Even if we don't care what other people say about us, these people's crimes will have to be made public someday. Right?"