Chapter 1977: For some, just living consumes all their strength and dignity

Hearing this, the old farmer's face was full of bitterness.

He looked at Gao Changwen's young, angry, flushed face reflected in the firelight and asked hoarsely: "Noble person, if he didn't send her, what else could he do?"

His gaze seemed to pierce through time and space, returning to that desperate winter: "Two days before Wang Laosan gritted his teeth and sent his daughter to the county, the family of three at the east end of the village was gone without a sound."

"They hadn't come out for two days, so the neighbors felt something was wrong and pushed the door open. The family of three was lying stiffly on the cold earthen kang, their eyes wide open, their bodies as hard as frozen stones, and in the corner... there was still a small bundle of firewood they couldn't bear to burn."

The old farmer paused, as if he could still smell the cold breath mixed with death and despair, and said with a sigh: "The wind that year was like a knife, it could blow the broken tiles off the roof at night! If you didn't get up to light a fire, you would really be frozen to death!"

"Before long, the villagers surrounded them. At first, they were just watching the excitement and sighing, but as they watched, the taste gradually changed."

The old farmer's voice carried a sorrow that saw through human nature, "Someone secretly moved away that bundle of firewood in the corner..."

"This suddenly opened the floodgates of human evil. Those moving firewood, those taking pots, those dismantling the beams of the house—in the end, they even stripped off the tattered cotton jacket on the dead person that had been passed down for three generations and was as hard as an iron plate!"

The old farmer's description unfolded like a cold picture, bloody and raw before everyone: "Those who came early had things tucked in their arms, unable to hide the smiles on their faces; those who came late were beating their chests and stamping their feet, cursing. Wang Laosan also squeezed in and grabbed a small bundle of firewood, feeling happy in his heart."

Gao Changwen was completely stunned.

A cold chill rushed from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, and his stomach churned.

The person was dead, and even the last bit of clothing to cover their shame and the broken house to shelter them were divided up!

Was this watching the excitement? It was clearly a naked plunder happening in broad daylight!

But it was so real!

This sentence ruthlessly crushed all the naive fantasies in his heart!

The old farmer looked at Gao Changwen's lost appearance and instead pulled out a "carefree" smile that was almost numb: "Noble person, you might think this isn't something a human would do? But this is reality, a bloody, cold reality."

"When it gets cold, which year doesn't have people frozen to death on the roadside, in ditches, or in ruined temples? Those homeless refugees are the truly miserable ones! After a night of wind and snow, who knows how many are gone without a sound, just like a wild dog on the roadside that no one cares about. Who would care?"

He patted his thin chest with his withered hand, his tone as flat as if he were talking about someone else's fate: "If you don't have food, you'll starve. If you don't have clothes, if you don't have a roof to block the wind, you'll freeze to death. If your body can't take it and you get sick, if you don't have money to treat it, you'll still die. But this is the fate... of grass-roots people like us!"

"Wang Laosan's daughter was already shivering from the cold and starting to cough!"

"The firewood at home was running out, and the rice jar was almost empty. If this ghostly weather dragged on, maybe the next ones lying on the kang with their eyes wide open, waiting to be stripped, would be the father and daughter!"

"Sending her to that old wealthy man of over sixty as a concubine, at least there's a way to survive, right? At least... she can survive that winter."

When the old farmer said this, his tone was neither indignant nor resentful, only the calm of acceptance.

This light "isn't it" was like a rusty, dull knife, repeatedly cutting into Gao Changwen's heart.

His chest felt suffocated, and his lips trembled violently.

He wanted to say something, wanted to rebuke the injustice of the world, wanted to curse Wang Laosan for being cowardly!

But he couldn't say it. He found that any language in the face of such naked, unadorned survival logic seemed exceptionally pale, weak, and ridiculous.

He had lived in luxury since he was a child, worrying only about money for brothels and wine. How had he ever truly touched the abyss beneath the ice, named "living"?

"What happened later?" ===== CHAPTER 1979 =====