At daybreak the next morning, the convoy prepared to leave.
Before leaving Li Family Village, Su Mingfeng asked Nuannuan, whom he held in his arms, "Nuannuan, is there anything else here you want to take with you?"
He wanted this child to make a clean break with her past herself.
Nuannuan thought for a moment, then said quietly, "Yes."
"What is it?"
"It's... it's my treasure." Nuannuan's voice grew even quieter, with a trace of uncertainty, as though she feared her uncle would laugh at her.
Su Mingfeng's heart clenched again.
What treasure could a five-year-old child possibly have?
"Where is it? Uncle will go get it with you." His voice was tender enough to melt.
Nuannuan extended a little finger toward the dilapidated courtyard nearby, toward the place that had given her nightmares for five years.
"In... in the woodshed."
Su Mingfeng's gaze instantly turned cold.
The woodshed again.
Holding Nuannuan, he strode toward Liu Guifang's courtyard. Su Mingzhe and Zhang Li, the guard company commander, immediately followed. The snow leopard, Big Kitty, silently padded after them.
At the village entrance, the villagers who had risen early to head to work saw this god of slaughter return. Their legs went weak with fright, and they kept well out of his way, not daring even to breathe loudly.
The gate to Liu Guifang's courtyard was unlocked.
Su Mingfeng kicked open the rickety wooden gate and carried Nuannuan inside.
The courtyard was a mess. The traces of yesterday's digging remained, and the smashed-open cellar entrance resembled a gaping black maw waiting to devour someone.
A faint stench still lingered in the air.
Nuannuan buried her little face in her uncle's arms, afraid to look.
Su Mingfeng could feel the little girl trembling in his arms. He patted her back and headed straight for the low, dark woodshed in the corner of the courtyard.
The large, rust-covered padlock still hung on the woodshed door.
"Open it," Su Mingfeng said coldly.
Zhang Li stepped forward. Without bothering with a key, he drew the military dagger at his waist, thrust it against the lock cylinder, and forcefully pried and twisted.
Crack.
The iron lock that had imprisoned Nuannuan through countless days and nights snapped.
As the door opened, a heavy smell of mildew and rotting wood hit them.
The woodshed was dim, crammed with haphazard piles of firewood and farming tools, with only a small space left clear in the middle.
A pile of straw, already blackened and hardened, covered that space.
That was the "bed" Nuannuan had slept on for five years.
Su Mingfeng's gaze swept over the hellish woodshed, the killing intent radiating from him almost becoming tangible.
If Liu Guifang were still before him at that moment, he had no doubt he would snap her neck with his own hands.
"Uncle, over there." Nuannuan's little hand pointed to a tiny, inconspicuous crack in the corner of the wall.
Su Mingfeng carried her over and crouched down.
He saw something hidden in the gap between two bricks.
Nuannuan reached out her little hand and carefully retrieved her "treasure" from the crack.
It was a stone.
An ordinary gray stone, only half the size of a palm.
But someone had ground away its sharp edges, shaping it into a slightly uneven, clumsy heart.
Its surface had been rubbed very smooth, with a faint, mellow patina.
This was Nuannuan's only treasure.
Through countless hungry, freezing nights, she had hidden in the corner of the woodshed and slowly ground it into shape, bit by bit, with another, harder stone.
She treated it as the "golden star" her mother had left her, clutching it tightly in her palm every night she felt she could no longer hold on, drawing on that tiny bit of illusory warmth.
Nuannuan hugged the heart-shaped stone tightly to her chest, as though holding the most precious treasure in the world.
She looked up and gave Su Mingfeng a faint smile.
"Uncle, I've got it."
"Good. Let's go home."
Su Mingfeng stood up with Nuannuan in his arms, turned, and left.
He did not want Nuannuan to spend even another second in this filthy, wicked place.
Just as they stepped out of the woodshed, Big Kitty, the snow leopard that had been following them, suddenly moved.
The leopard seemed to want to follow its owner outside, but the woodshed doorway was too narrow, and its enormous body briefly got stuck.
It shook its head impatiently and "accidentally" gave a load-bearing wooden post beside the doorframe a shove with one enormous forepaw.
Termites had long since hollowed out the post, and years of damp had left it thoroughly rotten.
How could it possibly withstand this "gentle" push from the King of the Snowy Mountains?
With a sharp crack, the wooden post snapped in the middle!
What followed was like the first domino falling.
Crash!
An enormous roar!
With its support gone, the entire roof of the woodshed came crashing down!
Beams, tiles, rotten wood, decaying straw... all became a heap of rubble in an instant.
Dust billowed into the sky, choking everyone and making it impossible to keep their eyes open.
The sudden crash frightened the villagers outside the courtyard out of their wits. They screamed and scattered, clutching their heads.
"Oh my god! An earthquake!"
"The house is collapsing! Run!"
Zhang Li and several guards reacted at once, immediately surrounding Su Mingfeng and Nuannuan to protect them as they watched their surroundings warily.
Su Mingzhe was startled too, but when he saw the snow leopard responsible swishing its tail with an innocent look, circling around the rubble, and walking over to nuzzle Nuannuan, he understood at once.
How was this an accident?
This was clearly deliberate!
He glanced at his elder brother. There was not a trace of surprise on Su Mingfeng's face; not even an eyebrow had moved.
He simply reached out and brushed a little dust off Nuannuan's red padded jacket.
Then, carrying Nuannuan, he strolled past the rubble and the dumbstruck villagers.
At the courtyard gate, he stopped and looked back at the heap of woodshed rubble, now unrecognizable, then at the villagers frozen with fright.
He dusted off his hands and spoke in an utterly ordinary tone, as though remarking on the pleasant weather:
"Renovating an unsafe building. No need to thank me."
With that, he carried Nuannuan toward the jeep without looking back.
He left behind nothing but a mess and a crowd of villagers utterly bewildered in the wind.
There was no higher art of wrecking a house than this.
This was not merely demolition in the physical sense.
It also uprooted and utterly crushed the nightmare that had imprisoned five years of Nuannuan's childhood, making it vanish from the world forever.
From that day onward, nothing would ever trap his little niece again.