Cao Jinhua was skilled in her business, carrying out her work with eloquent flair.

“Omnipresent risks, like the fierce storms of nature, assault our lives. What is insurance? It’s like opening a large umbrella over your head, sheltering you from wind and rain…”

Mu Dai finally found an opportunity to interject: “I don’t have money…”

“Precisely because you don’t have money, you need insurance even more. Think about it—serious illness, major disasters—rich people with wealth at their disposal might shed a bit more blood at most, but what about us poor people? The only thing we can rely on is insurance…”

Mu Dai continued to struggle: “Before, my Aunt Hong bought me insurance…”

“Insurance is a comprehensive protection system. What you bought before might not be comprehensive. Accident insurance and major illness compensation are two different types of insurance. Major illness compensation might not include hospitalization subsidy and medical care, and previous insurance designs had many loopholes…”

Yi Wansan’s rear was glued to the bench, inching outward bit by bit.

Mu Dai was still in her death throes at the storm’s center: “Um… I’m still young, perhaps in the future…”

“Precisely because you’re young, the rates are cheaper—it’s more cost-effective to buy when you’re young. Do you know that for the same coverage, a 20-year-old person and a 40-year-old person buy insurance, the former pays almost half the annual premium… And for even older people, like 60-year-olds, insurance companies won’t even let them buy…”

Mu Dai realized that with Cao Jinhua, one probably couldn’t go against her directly.

She stood up, asked for paper and pen, and with a few strokes, wrote down Cao Yanhua’s number.

She spoke sincerely: “I also think I do need insurance. But my salary is handed over to my brother. How about this—you can talk to my brother. If he gives the money, I’ll sign the policy.”

Cao Jinhua had mixed feelings.

She was happy that the girl in front of her had finally relented, and her business performance was not bad.

She was worried that this deal couldn’t be closed immediately. There was no signal in Cao Family Village, and the subsequent conversation with this girl’s brother would probably involve another verbal battle.

However, what was the usual insurance slogan?

—Customers may torment me a thousand times, but I treat each customer like a first love.

Cao Jinhua took the note in her hand and examined it carefully: “What’s your brother’s name?”

“His name is Cao…” Mu Dai started to say, then changed course. “His name is Henry.”

Yi Wansan, who had almost reached the door, turned his head, lowered his hand, and secretly gave her a thumbs up. Before he could complete the gesture, he suddenly encountered Cao Jinhua’s fiery, enthusiastic gaze.

Yi Wansan was startled and, without thinking, blurted out:

“Her brother is also my brother, the same brother!”

Is that so? Cao Jinhua looked at Yi Wansan, then at Mu Dai. Both were tall, with clear eyes and fine features. If not pointed out, one might not notice, but looking carefully, they did have a sibling-like quality.

She took out her phone, entered Henry’s number, and next to the name, added a short dash with the annotation: “One arrow, three birds.”

Yi Wansan’s rear was glued to the bench, almost at the doorway.

Qingshan’s small courtyard was extraordinarily lively. Wedding materials to be used in the coming days were piled up abundantly. Occasionally, small children would approach him with half-open mouths: “Beijing person?”

What was so special about being from Beijing? Yi Wansan truly didn’t understand—was it that rare? It’s not like he was a Peking man fossil.

Mu Dai came over and asked softly: “Do you think she’s involved?”

With his pair of poisonous eyes honed from years in the underworld, Yi Wansan concluded: “I think she is just an insurance salesperson.”

Mu Dai handed him the pen she was holding.

Yi Wansan took it, puzzled.

“When I was looking for paper and pen to write the number just now, someone in the room casually reached for a pen from the windowsill. Remember the small writing on the back of that letter? It was written with this pen.”

Yi Wansan half-squinted, his mind picturing the scene.

Perhaps in this very room, Qingshan had written the letter, folded it into the envelope, but before he could seal it, he was called away temporarily. At that moment, someone had quietly entered, picked up the pen, quickly added those two lines, then put it back as it was…

Who could that person be? The new bride?

Mu Dai looked up at Qingshan, who was walking across the courtyard: “Qingshan, when can I meet the bride?”

The children in the courtyard began to tease. Qingshan rubbed his hands, his yellowish-black face turning red.

He stopped a woman in her forties who was passing by, calling her Seventh Aunt, gesturing and speaking a few sentences. Seventh Aunt looked at Mu Dai with a smile.

“According to custom, the bride shouldn’t see outsiders before the ceremony, especially men. As for this…”

She gestured with her mouth toward Yi Wansan: “This young brother definitely can’t see her. But Qingshan says you’re a girl, and from Beijing…”

She beckoned to Mu Dai: “Come, come, follow me in.”

Mu Dai winked at Yi Wansan, skipping over to Seventh Aunt’s side in two or three steps, lowering her head with a smile, displaying pure excitement about meeting the bride.

Passing through the main hall, as soon as the door closed, the back courtyard was peaceful—a complete contrast to the front courtyard, like two different worlds.

Seventh Aunt chatted casually with Mu Dai, speaking about the bride. The bride’s family didn’t have many people; the wedding guests were all relatives and connections of Cao Family Village. The bride had initially been working in the county town and hadn’t been with Qingshan for long, but Qingshan was getting older—in rural areas, most twenty-five or twenty-six-year-olds were already fathers…

At the door, she knocked: “Ya Feng?”

She pushed the door open.

In the room, on the large bed, someone who had been sitting there seemed to quickly shrink into the corner at the moment the door was pushed open, pulling the blanket over herself, revealing only half her face and a pair of startled, uncertain eyes.

She seemed very frightened, afraid of strangers and also of this Seventh Aunt.

Seventh Aunt said, “What’s wrong, Ya Feng? Even if you’re shy, you shouldn’t be this frightened.”

As she spoke, she went over. Ya Feng cowered, raised her eyes to look at Seventh Aunt’s expression, then slowly emerged from under the blanket.

Mu Dai’s heart pounded.

Ya Feng looked very young, seemingly only eighteen or nineteen, small in stature, with very white skin—a delicate whiteness. Her gaze was timid; whenever her eyes met Mu Dai’s, she quickly looked away. Her hand at her side constantly fidgeted with the hem of her clothes.

Seventh Aunt turned to Mu Dai with a smile: “This child is acting strangely today.”

Mu Dai also smiled: “The bride is shy.”

She noticed that when Seventh Aunt said, “This is a guest from Beijing,” Ya Feng’s eyes suddenly lit up with surprise and joy.

But she didn’t speak to Mu Dai. She only kept her head down. Occasionally, when Mu Dai asked her a question, she habitually looked at Seventh Aunt’s face first. Only after Seventh Aunt repeated the question with a smile would she answer in a small voice.

Her answers were simple, either “Yes” or “Mm-hmm.”

Then, Seventh Aunt smiled and said: “Now that you’ve seen her, let’s go out.”

Indeed, according to custom, the bride shouldn’t see outsiders before the ceremony.

Mu Dai followed Seventh Aunt out. At the doorway, driven by some instinct, she quickly glanced back.

Ya Feng had been watching her, seemingly waiting for this moment. Mu Dai saw her quickly roll up her sleeve toward her.

On her fair arm were bruises and purple marks, line after line, like whip lashes.

Mu Dai’s mind buzzed, but her steps didn’t falter. She maintained a normal expression as she followed Seventh Aunt out.

The sun was about to set. The essence of nightfall was already rising from behind the surrounding mountains, like curtains being drawn on all four sides of a night theater stage.

Seventh Aunt frowned as she explained to Mu Dai.

Ya Feng wasn’t usually like this. Perhaps we often told her that seeing outsiders before the ceremony was inauspicious, so when she saw an unfamiliar face, she quickly hid…

Mu Dai said, “It’s my fault. I knew about the village custom, but still insisted on seeing the bride.”

Seventh Aunt said, “You big city girls are truly polite.”

That night, Mu Dai and Yi Wansan stayed in Qingshan’s side room. The side room was divided into two small chambers separated by a cloth curtain. Mu Dai slept in the inner chamber, Yi Wansan in the outer one.

Neither could sleep. What Mu Dai had seen in the evening was truly revolutionary information—originally, they had been certain that the trafficking story was fabricated, but suddenly, Qingshan, Seventh Aunt, Cao Jinhua, and the villagers all became untrustworthy.

After eleven at night, the dog next door barked a few times, and after that, the entire village fell silent.

Mu Dai lifted the small floral curtain covering the window and looked outside. It was pitch black.

She got out of bed, put on her shoes, slipped her phone into her pocket, and took out a pocket flashlight from her luggage.

Walking to the outer chamber, Yi Wansan poked his head out from under the blanket: “Are you going out?”

“As agreed, I need to call Luo Ren.”

When they landed in Chongqing, she had spoken with Luo Ren, who was worried that once they entered the “no signal zone” of Cao Family Village, they wouldn’t be able to contact anyone in time if something happened. Mu Dai had said: “It’s just Cao Family Village that has no signal. I’ll just run out a bit. As I run, the signal will come back.”

She would run every day. If one day they couldn’t connect, it would mean something had happened.

Yi Wansan said, “Boss Lady, it’s about ten to twenty li round trip, isn’t it?”

“I’ll consider it training. I practice lightness kung fu, so I’m fast. When my master made me train, I ran more than this every day.”

Yi Wansan said, “I admire you.”

He retreated back under the blanket, wrapping himself up, looking like a plump green caterpillar laid out on the bed.

Mu Dai couldn’t stand it and poked his waist through the blanket: “Aren’t you going to be polite and offer to go instead? Letting a woman run mountain paths in the middle of the night?”

Yi Wansan was righteous, his voice coming through the blanket: “I’m not as skilled as you, I run slower, I’m timid, and I’m afraid of the dark!”

Mu Dai laughed dryly: “Yi Wansan, there’s a ghost in the room.”

She wore small cowhide boots, their soles tapping on the blue brick floor—tap, tap, tap—as she went out.

Yi Wansan thought to himself: Venomous woman.

The mountains were truly dark, and because of this, the stars above were exceptionally bright.

Mu Dai passed through the village’s small alleyways and ran full speed on the mountain path. The night wind tousled her hair, and she surprisingly enjoyed it, recklessly shaking her head to complement it.

If her master saw this, she would say: “Hmm, Mu Dai is like a little madwoman.”

She climbed the mountain, taking shortcuts.

Before sleeping, she had confirmed with Qingshan that the regular path was a detour. Climbing the mountain would be much shorter. The “ten to twenty li” was just to fool Yi Wansan.

But this mountain was formed by perennial mudslides and landslides, making it particularly unstable. When children climbed it, stones would tumble down from above.

In other words, this mountain was like a snow-covered mountain in Tibet, too fragile to be touched. A slightly loud sound could trigger an avalanche.

But she was different; she knew lightness kung fu.

Using both hands and feet, she climbed the mountain almost with the vigor of a wall-climbing gecko—step by step, leap by leap, springing upward. She couldn’t see herself, but she felt that her posture must be particularly elegant and unrestrained.

Her master would probably praise her.

But her master had also said: “Mu Dai, no matter how you train, you’ll never reach my level from those days.”

Her senior martial brother Zheng Mingshan had told her about the master’s past. It was said that twelve eggs would be placed in a straight row on the ground, a red silk ribbon thrown into the air. As the ribbon floated in the air, the master would draw her sword, step on the eggs, moving across them, with twelve dazzling sword flashes.

Then she would land, not a single egg broken, and on the ground, thirteen segments of red silk would slowly float down, one piece to the left, one to the right, in a soft posture.

However, Mu Dai had never witnessed this remarkable skill firsthand, because the first time she saw her master, the master was already sitting in a wheelchair.

An old woman with a head of white hair, of elegant temperament, with countless stories in her eyes, living alone, guarding a deep mansion gate.

Because Mu Dai had become her disciple, Huo Zihong had met her master once, bringing “tuition fees” wrapped in red paper. When leaving, holding Mu Dai’s hand, she had said: “Your master, when she was young, must have been incredibly beautiful.”

…

Mu Dai climbed to the top of the mountain.

Looking down, in the valley, perhaps due to ground vapor rising, there seemed to be a thin mist spreading.

Mu Dai lowered her head and asked the valley below: “Who are you?”

Then answered herself: “I’m Mu Dai.”

Listening carefully, there was no expected echo; the sound was just a bit more resonant than usual.

She dusted off her hands, preparing to continue on her way.

Just at that moment, a fluttering sound suddenly came from above. Looking toward the sound, she recognized bats, one after another, spreading their umbrella-like wings, diving in circles, emitting harsh, grating sounds.

Mu Dai turned and took two steps, then suddenly stopped. After a moment, she closed her eyes, carefully discerning every trace of sound emanating from above, through the air.

It was like a human voice desperately trying to break through an obstruction, or like a muffled crash.

She turned on her flashlight, shining it toward the mountain above. The light hesitantly scanned the area, slowly stopping at one spot.

The bats had flown out from there.