Chapter 149

From the woman’s condition, one could roughly guess her situation.

Pei Jian turned his head toward Nianxi and said, “She ran away from home.”

Nianxi naturally noticed the woman’s unusual behavior. However, this woman’s crime and why she fled her home remained unknown.

Lan Zhi brought some cotton clothing for the woman to wear.

During the New Year season, seeing her all alone, Nianxi couldn’t bear it. She asked Xing Yue to give the woman some copper coins, saying, “If you’re hungry, you can buy some food.”

The woman quietly reached out to take them.

As Nianxi prepared to get into the carriage, Pei Jian naturally extended his hand to help her, but Nianxi glanced at him, making him withdraw his hand.

Unexpectedly, at that moment, the woman suddenly lunged forward.

If not for Pei Jian’s quick reflexes and swift kick to push the person away, she might have knocked Nianxi off the carriage shaft.

Even after being kicked to the ground, the woman didn’t cry out in pain. Instead, she crawled forward a few steps, knelt beside Nianxi’s carriage, and desperately kowtowed, pleading, “Miss, please save me! They will kill me. I beg you, have mercy, save me…”

Pei Jian had always despised people or matters unrelated to him causing him trouble, especially since this woman had nearly harmed Nianxi just moments ago. For someone like him, simply letting her off would already be considered an act of grace.

But Nianxi was different—she had a kind and soft heart.

Seeing the woman’s forehead swollen and reddened from repeated kowtowing, Pei Jian realized that Nianxi’s compassion had been stirred.

Sure enough, the next moment, she asked, “Who wants to kill you?”

“The men in the village!”

“They will kill me. Last year, during the ‘Pai Xi’ ritual, I didn’t give birth to a son. This year, they will definitely kill me…”

She spoke incoherently, almost as if possessed, repeating over and over, “They will kill me.”

Nianxi, not understanding the situation, softened her voice and asked, “Don’t be afraid. Take your time and explain. Why do they want to kill you?”

“Because I can’t give birth to a son!” the woman shouted angrily, covering her face with her hands and sobbing.

“In the town, there is a custom called ‘Pai Xi.’ Every year, at the rooster’s first crow on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the men in the village come to the homes of women who haven’t conceived that year. They beat them with bamboo sticks, brooms, and wooden rods. Last year, they almost beat me to death.”

“I was in so much pain that I hid in the temple, but the men chased after me. They even took the opportunity to tear at my clothes, pulling at my pants… Sister Qin was seen by those men, and out of shame and anger, she threw herself into the river!”

Nianxi was almost stunned as she listened, and the two maids behind her also looked deeply distressed.

Pei Jian, who had never heard of such a barbaric custom before, asked in a low voice, “Where was your husband?”

The woman, after crying for a while, gradually calmed down and said, “Those men dragged me out of the house, beating me around the manure pile while shouting, ‘Will you give birth? Will you give birth?'”

“My husband just stood there watching. It wasn’t until I was nearly beaten to death that he scattered peanuts and dates from a winnowing basket, thanking the men who beat me, saying that I was already pregnant.”

“But I still didn’t conceive this year. I overheard my mother-in-law telling my husband that I’m like a hen who can’t lay eggs. She said this year they should let those men beat me to death so he can marry someone who can bear children. I was terrified, so I escaped before the New Year.”

She knelt again, kowtowing to Nianxi. “Miss, you are a kind person. Please help me. I don’t want to go back ever again.”

Nianxi had never known that such heartless practices existed in the world. A woman unable to bear children would be humiliated and beaten by the entire village.

Some even lost their lives because of it.

She stepped forward, gently helping the woman up from the ground, and softly asked, “What is your name?”

The woman timidly replied, “Cui Lian.”

Having just cried, Cui Lian’s tears had washed away the deliberately applied dirt on her face, leaving streaks that revealed her fair skin underneath.

“Cui Lian, you are very brave.”

She had used up all her courage just to escape.

Nianxi knew that under such barbaric customs, many other women were also being persecuted. She had no great power to rescue those women, but she could do her small part to give Cui Lian a way to survive.

“Go wash up in the hall; I still have questions for you.”

The group proceeded to the Liuji Pavilion.

Pei Jian followed behind and asked Nianxi, “How do you plan to help her?”

Nianxi shook her head, as she hadn’t yet decided. She countered with a question, “What about you? If it were you, how would you help her?”

For Pei Jian, in this lifetime, he would never have heard of the so-called “Pai Xi custom,” and he wouldn’t have listened to such stories from women at all. He was not a good man by any means. Deep down, he was still selfish. What he was willing to do was merely to protect himself and those close to him.

“Divorce,” Pei Jian said after a brief moment of thought.

It was the most straightforward solution.

Nianxi suddenly gave him a peculiar look. Pei Jian couldn’t guess what she was thinking, but terms like “childless” and “divorce” would inevitably evoke some unpleasant associations. Now, he was willing to accompany her in doing whatever she wanted to do. He had come to understand the significance of “being there.”

He didn’t want to let go and cherished this rare opportunity. “At the very least, I am a court official, so naturally, I must serve the people!” he declared seriously, though it sounded somewhat amusingly pompous.

Pei Jian spoke some righteous-sounding but empty words in a serious manner, which was somewhat amusing.

Nianxi understood his thoughts and knew he was changing the subject. She then said softly, in a voice only the two of them could hear, “Then I must thank you for sparing my life.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she remembered that she had also died unjustly, making the so-called “mercy of sparing her life” irrelevant.

She fell silent.

Pei Jian was well aware of how much hate he had garnered in his past life. At this point, saying more was pointless, so he remained quiet as well, believing silence to be better than a thousand words.

Cui Lian soon returned after washing her face. She was delicate and refined in appearance, with fair skin. The most striking feature was her eyes—long and full of charm, with slightly upturned corners that gave her an alluring look.

Cui Lian entered the room and knelt solemnly in the center, bowing her head respectfully. “Miss, please save my life. I am willing to toil as a servant to repay your life-saving kindness.”

Nianxi told her to rise. “Where are your parents?”

Cui Lian shook her head sadly. “My family is poor. They sold me to my husband’s family for five taels of silver to afford a wife for my brother. They won’t care about what happens to me.”

Misfortune always seems to strike the most vulnerable.

Nianxi had already guessed that Cui Lian’s family wouldn’t intervene, so she asked, “Do you still want to live with your husband?”

“No, I don’t! My husband is impotent. Even if I were beaten every year, it’s impossible for me to have children! He has humiliated and mistreated me day and night—I’ve long considered ending it with one strike of the knife!”

The entire room fell silent.

Nianxi cleared her throat softly and then asked, “How do you want me to help you?”

Cui Lian cautiously suggested, “I’ve already escaped and don’t want to return. Miss, could you take me in? I’m willing to be a servant and do any kind of work!”

Nianxi replied, “I do not keep people of unknown origin around me.”

Cui Lian panicked, her knees going weak, and she was about to kneel again and kowtow, but Nianxi continued, “I will send you back so that you can divorce your husband.”

Cui Lian trembled uncontrollably at the mere mention of being sent back. She knew the lady before her was kind-hearted and dared not defy her, but she knelt and pleaded: “My husband’s family is one of the wealthiest in the village. If I go back, I’ll have no way to survive. If they don’t beat me to death, they’ll drown me in a pond or put me in a pig cage! Miss, I trust you, but I’m just so scared.”

Cui Lian did not understand what Nianxi meant, but Pei Jian had already grasped her intention.

Regardless of how tyrannical Cui Lian’s husband was in the village, as long as Cui Lian could divorce him, it would give the persecuted women in that village a glimmer of hope and encouragement. If they no longer wished to endure persecution, they could stand up for themselves. Cui Lian would become their example.