“Hah… damn right. I finally made it back.”
Ethan Blackwell stood on the gravel road leading to the mouth of Qianhuai Village and let out a long, bitter breath. His clothes were torn to rags, his hair hung in filthy knots, and a thick tree branch in his hand served as a crutch more than a walking stick.
His hands were split. His face was split. Even his feet were cracked open by the cold. Every little move tugged at the wounds. Even the slightest change in expression made pain shoot through him so hard his mouth twisted.
Ethan had always been just a young farmer from Qianhuai Village.
Three years ago, after the old man who had raised him passed away, he had been left with nobody but his dog, Zephyr. Man and dog, depending on each other, getting through one day at a time.
Qianhuai Village was a remote mountain village, shut in from the world and poor as old dust. Most of the grown men in the village spent the year away, working odd jobs or trying to scrape out some business elsewhere.
A young, strong fellow like Ethan, still staying behind to till fields and plant crops, was a rare sight. The only one, really.
Because of that, the villagers often laughed at him behind his back, and sometimes right to his face.
“No drive.”
“No ambition.”
“Just a lazy bum waiting to rot.”
Ethan had heard it all.
Still, he lived off the mu of farmland and the seven fen of earth his grandfather had left him. He rose with the sun, worked when it was light, slept when it was dark. A plain life. Hard, but steady.
When he had spare time, he would take Zephyr wandering around the village, fish by the water, tease silly Daisy next door, and joke around with the lonely young wives left behind in the village.
He was not rich. Not even close.
But one man and one dog, feeding themselves, minding their own business—that had counted as freedom to him. He had lived loose and easy enough.
The only thorn in his heart was money.
More exactly, the lack of it.
Without money, he could not get a wife.
Without real money, he sure as hell could not get a pretty wife.
Then, a little over a month ago, the life of that carefree bachelor was smashed apart by one bit of news from Derek Whitmore, a man from the same village.
Derek had told him, “I’ve got relatives in the provincial capital. There’s a real good job there. Food and lodging covered. Five thousand a month. If you want in, go now.”
Five thousand a month.
Those words had hit Ethan right in the chest.
To earn money. To marry a pretty wife. To stop being looked down on.
In the end, he entrusted his beloved Zephyr to Daisy, gathered up every coin he had to his name, and set out on the road to work away from home.
What he never saw coming was this—
Derek Whitmore had played him for a fool.
The so-called job was nothing but an illegal fraud den.
The moment Ethan got there, the few thousand yuan he carried was taken clean off him. On the very first day, they beat him so hard he nearly spat blood.
But Ethan had one strange bit of luck.
Back when he was in school, he had been the sort who got sleepy the moment a teacher opened his mouth. The minute somebody started lecturing, his eyelids would droop. So when those people in the den tried their brainwashing tricks on him day after day, it barely sank in at all. Their words slid off him like water off a rock.
On a night thick with driving snow, while everyone else slept like the dead, Ethan seized his chance and ran.
Ran for his life.
He had no money on him. Not a single copper.
So he begged all the way back, one village after another, one frozen road after another. It took him more than half a month, but he had finally made it home.
And on that road back, beneath the killing cold and bitter wind, Ethan had suffered like a dog.
If it hadn’t been for Zephyr, if it hadn’t been for the hatred he was holding down for Derek Whitmore, if it hadn’t been for that stubborn dream of one day marrying a pretty wife, Ethan Blackwell might really have dropped dead on the road.
The first thing he meant to do after getting home was settle the score with that bastard Derek Whitmore.
It was already the end of the twelfth month. The men of the village had all come back for the New Year. Derek, who worked in town as a foreman under Bruno Mercer, the village tyrant, had to be back too.
Leaning on a tree branch, Ethan limped along the gravel path toward the entrance of Qianhuai Village.
When he passed a patch of fir woods, his gut suddenly started churning and growling. He hurried in at once to relieve himself.
He was still squatting there when a man and a woman slipped into the woods hand in hand, sticking close like they had honey on them.
The trees were thick, packed tight, and neither of them noticed Ethan crouched nearby.
Constance Mercer? Derek Whitmore?!
Those two actually...
The moment Ethan saw their faces, his eyes went wide.
Then he saw Derek clearly, and the fire in his chest shot up at once. His jaw clenched so hard it almost cracked. He wanted nothing more than to rush out and tear into him.
But not now.
He could not show himself here.