Sold into a ghost marriage? Four-year-old and his thuggish father go on a killing spree.

When Niannian crawled out of the coffin, she was trembling uncontrollably.

It wasn't because of the cold, it was because of fear.

She was afraid to turn around and see the face of the dead person in the coffin.

She was even more afraid that the Wang family would rush out of the house and shove her back in.

The red wedding dress was soaked through, hanging heavily on her body.

Like a piece of skin that can't be torn off.

Her embroidered shoe fell off her right foot as she struggled in the coffin, and her bare foot landed on the planks of the oxcart.

It was so cold it hurt my bones.

The Wang family's courtyard was not large, consisting of three mud-brick houses surrounding a rammed earth wall.

The main room was lit, and the curtain was slightly ajar, allowing Nian Nian to see shadowy figures moving inside.

Zhao sat on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), holding a bowl, shoveling white noodles into her mouth.

The old lady of the Wang family is pouring wine.

The lame man—Wang Dachui's older brother, Wang Erzhu—leaned against the doorframe, smoking a pipe, the cigarette butt glowing intermittently.

Nobody was looking outside.

No one thought a four-year-old child could climb out of a nailed-up coffin.

Niannian slid off the oxcart, her bare right foot stepping into the snow in the yard.

The cold felt like someone was pricking the soles of her feet with needles, one by one.

She bit her lip, afraid to make a sound.

The gate was bolted from the inside. The two wooden doors were old and in disrepair, with several holes in the door panels, but she couldn't squeeze through them.

Niannian squatted down and looked around.

Her gaze fell on a dark hole at the base of the courtyard wall—a dog hole.

The Wang family kept a big yellow dog, which would usually crawl in and out of this hole.

Niannian didn't know where the dog was, but she had no other choice.

She lay down and stuck her head into the dog hole.

The entrance to the cave was small, and the ground on both sides was frozen solid, scraping her shoulders painfully.

The sleeve of her red wedding dress got caught on the broken bricks at the entrance of the cave. She pulled hard, and the sound of the fabric tearing was particularly jarring in the quiet snowy night.

Nian Nian's heart was in her throat.

She held her breath and stared intently at the direction of the main house.

The curtain didn't move, and the laughter continued.

She strained forward, her shoulders, waist, and buttocks squeezing through the dog hole inch by inch.

It finally got stuck at the hip bone—the dog hole was too narrow.

Niannian held her breath, twisted her body into an awkward angle, and tried her best to leap outward.

With a hiss, the back of her red wedding dress was completely torn open, and icy air rushed in, but her body was also thrown out of the hole.

She fell into the snow outside the courtyard wall, her mouth full of mud and snow.

But she came out.

Outside the courtyard wall was a vast expanse of white slopes, below which was a winding dirt road, and further away were dark, imposing mountains.

I don't recognize this place at all.

She was brought by Zhao two days ago, and she was delirious with fever the whole way.

All I remember is riding in an oxcart for a very, very long time.

My mother said that Chengjiawan is to the east.

Which side is to the east?

Nian Nian looked up at the sky.

The snow was falling heavily, there were no stars in the sky, and it was impossible to tell which way was which.

But she remembered one thing—her mother had taught her that in winter the wind blows from the north, and when the wind blows from behind, the direction your face is facing is south, and your left is east.

The north wind is blowing from the right.

That's to the left, which is east.

Niannian gritted her teeth and stood up. Her bare right foot was completely numb. She staggered and ran to the left.

The hem of her red wedding dress trailed on the snow, the soaked fabric frozen into a hard shell, making her stumble with every step.

Niannian ran less than twenty steps before collapsing to the ground with a "thud".

She got up, then fell down again.

Get up again, then fall down again.

When she fell for the fourth time, she heard a sound behind her.

"The coffin lid is open! Where is he?!"

It was Wang Erzhu's voice.

Then came the old lady of the Wang family's scream: "That brat ran away! After her! Catch her back—! She's worth two hundred yuan!"

The torches were lit.

The orange-red light flickered in the snowy night, illuminating the snowy ground outside the courtyard wall.

My heart was pounding in my chest.

She dared not walk any further and scrambled down the slope to the dirt road.

The foot that lost its embroidered shoe stepped on the gravel, and the sharp pain almost made her cry out.

She didn't call out.

She bit her lip until it bled, and the rusty taste filled her mouth.

The dirt road leads in two directions: one side is flat fields, and the other side is dense bushes and a small ditch.

Niannian chose the bushes.

The fields were open and exposed, and the footprints in the snow were clearly visible.

Bushes can hide people.

She crawled into a thicket of waist-high dead branches, thorns piercing her face, arms, and bare shoulders.

The red wedding dress was torn into strips and hung on the thorns like red silk for the New Year.

The torches behind them were getting closer and closer.

Wang Erzhu's cursing echoed intermittently in the wind: "...There are footprints in the snow...they ran that way..."

Nian Nian desperately tried to burrow deeper, and at the end of the bushes was the small ditch.

The ditch was not wide, but it was frozen over, with a thin layer of snow covering the ice.

Niannian slid down the slope of the ditch and fell onto the ice, hitting her forehead on a protruding icicle.

Blood gushed out suddenly, flowing over her eyes; it was warm and slippery, just like the blood her mother coughed up when she was dying.

She covered her forehead, curled up into a ball, and hid behind a clump of withered reeds at the bottom of the ditch.

The light of the torch swept overhead.

"Did you see clearly? Which way did it go?"

"The footprints stopped at the bushes... In this cold weather, a four-year-old girl couldn't run very far; she'd freeze to death!"

Old Mrs. Wang's voice came from upstairs, filled with vicious resentment: "We still have to find her! Bring her back, dead or alive! If that brat escapes, our two hundred yuan will be wasted!"

Niannian buried her face in the withered reeds, not daring to even breathe.

She could see the torchlight filtering through the reeds, casting dancing shadows on the ice.

Someone walked to the edge of the ditch and looked down into it.

Nian Nian suddenly stopped.

"The ice in the ditch is completely frozen solid; there are no footprints. They probably ran towards the fields."

"Let's go look over by the fields!"

The footsteps gradually faded into the distance.

The firelight disappeared.

Nian Nian remained unmoved.

She dared not move.

She lay on the ice, feeling her body heat slowly draining away from her body.

First, my feet—I lost all feeling in both feet, as if they didn't exist.

Then the calves, knees, and fingers.

She felt herself turning into a block of ice.

I don't know how much time has passed.

It might be half an hour, or it might be an hour.

The Wang family's torches never returned; only the north wind howled above the ditch.

Niannian forced herself to crawl out of the reeds.

Her body was as stiff as a log, and every joint was screaming in agony.

But she can't stay here.

Staying here means death.

She climbed eastward along the ditch for a while, then stood up and walked when she couldn't climb anymore, and continued climbing when she couldn't walk anymore.

The red wedding dress was completely tattered, with only a few scraps of cloth hanging on her body.

Blood was still seeping from her forehead, and the blood was flowing into her eyes, blurring her vision.

She didn't know how long she had walked, nor how far she had gone.

It was so dark, the snow was so heavy, and everything was the same white and black all around.

Several times she felt like she was going to collapse and never get up again.

But every time, she would remember her mother's words.

"Niannian...go find your father...Chengjiawan...Gu Yanqiu..."

She gritted her teeth and moved forward step by step.

I don't know how much time passed, but the snow lessened and the wind wasn't so strong anymore.

A sliver of grayish-white light appeared on the horizon.

It was getting light.

Niannian staggered over a dirt embankment and saw a highway.

It wasn't a dirt road in the village, but a real highway—the kind paved with gravel, with utility poles standing on both sides.

Her legs went completely limp.

He collapsed onto the snow-covered ground by the roadside, like a burnt-out candle.

Her consciousness began to fade.

My vision kept changing from bright to dark, and I had a buzzing sound in my ears.

She smelled the mixture of earth and snow, cool and clean.

It smells a million times better than the stench of a coffin.

A deep rumble came from afar.

That's the sound of a car engine.

Closer and closer.

He tried to open his mouth and shout for help, but no sound came out.

Her last thought was:

Dad... I haven't found you yet...

Then everything went completely black.