Chapter 85: Surrounded

(Rolling around begging for recommendation votes)

"One, two, three, four."

Half a shichen later, inside the farmhouse of the household north of the li that had a jujube tree.

Heifu counted the women sitting together and asked the li chief, who was trussed up against a pillar: "Chief Feng, in Blind Mountain Li, are these four the only women who were trafficked and sold here by slave traders?"

Feng's hair and beard were still matted with congealed chicken blood — a wretched sight. He turned his head away sullenly, refusing to answer.

The timid field clerk at the side hurriedly replied instead: "Chief of the ting, there are a few more, but they were bought long ago and no longer wish to return home..."

Heifu nodded. That was only human nature — over time, the will to leave fades. Only Ju's daughter "Yuanyuan" and the woman whom Ji Ying and the others had found locked in a pigsty and abused still had the fiercest will to resist, attempting to escape again and again.

It turned out that earlier, after Heifu and Dongmen Bao had subdued the li chief and the field clerk, they had immediately used these two as hostages, forcing the li folk who had rushed over at the news to make way all along the path, until they reached the place in the north of the li where the whistle had sounded.

Li Xian, Ji Ying, and Ju, along with one rescued woman, were being besieged by the three men of this farmhouse and their neighbors. Again it was Dongmen Bao who roared and drove them back, allowing the Huyang Ting party to finally regroup.

Heifu had the courtyard gate shut, turned this farmhouse into a temporary base, and used the li chief and the field clerk as leverage to compel the li folk outside to swiftly bring over the other trafficked women in the li!

The people of Blind Mountain Li were basically all descendants of a former Pu tribe. The li chief and the field clerk were both officials and clan elders. The li chief refused to cooperate to the death, but fortunately the field clerk did as Heifu ordered. Before long, two more women were indeed delivered over.

At that moment, Heifu had intended to take everyone and leave Blind Mountain Li quickly, but they were blocked and forced back at the li wall.

In order to regroup and rescue the trafficked victims, they had still been a step too slow. The li's number-three figure, the li gatekeeper, had already rushed over upon hearing the news and organized the li folk to surround and block them.

Under the li gatekeeper's organization, the li folk outside, originally a disorganized mob, began to gather in greater and greater numbers, each holding farming tools, tightly encircling this farmhouse. They dared not charge in, yet refused to clear a path either. Both sides were thus locked in a stalemate.

Heifu had Dongmen Bao and Li Xian stand guard outside with spear and crossbow respectively, while he and Ji Ying stayed inside to question the four women about their experiences. For now, they could not get out. Only by grasping the basic situation and understanding the crimes of the li officials and li folk of Blind Mountain Li could he plan his next move.

And so, beginning with Ju's daughter Yuanyuan, these four women who had been trafficked to Blind Mountain Li began their tearful, voice-choked accusations...

Yuanyuan was only sixteen, but the hardships of the past two years had left her somewhat haggard, not looking like a girl in the bloom of youth.

She said that two years ago, in the third month, while she was out picking mulberry leaves, an old woman passing by had greeted her. The old woman was in her fifties, with a kind and gentle face. She chatted idly with her and kept praising Yuanyuan's beauty. Then she said that a relative of hers was waiting for her behind the mulberry grove, and that she could not walk well — could Yuanyuan support her and help her over?

Yuanyuan suspected nothing, but what awaited her behind the mulberry grove were two large men, each over seven chi tall. They threw a sack over her head, choked her unconscious, and tossed her onto a cart...

The following days, she drifted in and out of consciousness, her mouth gagged, and they would not let her eat, to keep her from having the strength to flee. She was jolted all the way until she was delivered to Blind Mountain Li. When the hood was finally removed, she was already sitting in the li chief's house. The li chief said she had been sold as a bondservant concubine, and from then on, she was to be the wife of the li chief's idiot younger brother...

Life in the li chief's house, to be honest, was not terribly harsh, but Yuanyuan constantly yearned for her parents, and —

She could not bear serving that idiot "husband." So over two years, she had tried many times to flee, but every time the li chief had led men to drag her back.

As Yuanyuan spoke, she glared at the li chief, grinding her teeth. Because the li chief's idiot younger brother knew nothing of the relations between man and woman, that night the li chief had personally demonstrated, hand guiding hand, teaching him how to consummate with Yuanyuan. Afterward, he had violated her several more times.

Doted on by her parents since childhood, she had never suffered such humiliation. She once tried to hang herself to death but was saved. For two years, it was truly a living death...

At this, she threw herself into her father's arms again and wailed loudly. This girl of sixteen had already endured the greatest suffering a person can know.

Yet her experience was nothing compared to that of the woman locked in the pigsty, the one called "Yun"...

Yun, confined so long she had become somewhat deranged, had been cleaned of filth by the others' help. Heifu had even given her his own clothes to cover herself. But no matter what they asked Yun, she only giggled vacantly, then repeated phrases like "I was trafficked," "Save me," "Spare me."

So Heifu and the others could only learn of her story from the bystander accounts of the other three women.

Yuanyuan said: "She was trafficked here three years ago and sold for over a thousand qian to these three brothers north of the li, to be the wife of all of them at once..."

One wife, multiple husbands — this appalling custom that trampled human ethics was not an isolated case in Blind Mountain Li. Another woman also wept as she said that she had been made the wife of both a father and his son in one household at the same time...

Yun was the fiercest resister among the trafficked women. After all, a life of serving three brothers at once was something an ordinary person could not accept. But like Yuanyuan, every escape attempt ended in failure. Moreover, those three brothers were extremely cruel. Every time they dragged her back, they would beat her savagely and lock her in a dark room to starve for days. It was at such a time that Ji Ying had accidentally stumbled upon her.

In the end, they simply threw her into the pigsty. From that point on, Yun began to go mad.

By the time these women had finished speaking, before Heifu could even move, Ji Ying was already so furious that he gave the li chief several hard kicks. He had several sisters at home, around the same age as Yun and Yuanyuan — his anger was inevitable.

"Whose sisters are not sisters? Whose daughters are not daughters? How could you brutes bring yourselves to do this! As a li official, seeing such atrocities yet doing nothing to stop them, and even leading the purchases! Truly the conduct of beasts! I, Ji Ying, am no good man myself, but I could never do such a thing!"

The li chief, however, turned his head away and sneered coldly: "What else then? Blind Mountain Li has more men than women, and it's far from everywhere else. Women from other li are unwilling to marry here, and our own li's women are not enough to go around. We can only buy from outside. What other way is there!"

This was the reason Blind Mountain Li, from top to bottom, was so zealous about buying trafficked women. Originally good folk turned wicked, driven solely by the instinct to procreate.

Of course, in this age, the buying and selling of slaves was legal. They could also buy bondservant concubines, but one adult bondservant concubine cost over four thousand qian. Blind Mountain Li was poor; several households together could not scrape together that much money. It was then that the slave traders came knocking. The women they provided were not only young, but each cost only one or two thousand qian!

The li chief was arguing self-righteously, as if he actually had reason on his side. Yuanyuan, however, stormed over in fury and slapped him across the face, cursing: "Don't you dare quibble here! I heard from the old folk in the li — isn't it because back in the day, whenever a baby girl was born in Blind Mountain Li, you liked to drown her! You've brought this day upon yourselves; you deserve it! I curse your whole clan, your whole li, to extinction and the end of your line! Pei!"

She spat full in the li chief's face. Only then did Heifu have Ju pull her back.

With this, the matter of Blind Mountain Li became clear. Although the people of this li had not directly participated in the trafficking, they had knowingly bought women with questionable origins from the slave traders time and again. This had gone on for over a decade, with more than ten women in succession sold to this place by the same group.

But apart from the four before them, most of the others had accepted their fate, or felt that marrying anywhere was still marrying. Now that the hope of rescue had come, they had silently chosen to give it up.

It was also possible that, having borne and raised children here, they could no longer bear to sever those ties.

At this moment, the field clerk was already asking Heifu what crime he, who had never purchased a trafficked person, would be sentenced for.

"Whether you participated or not, anyone who knew and failed to report it will be punished! Hard labor as a wall-builder is certain. As a li official, your crime is one degree worse — add the punishment of facial tattooing!"

The li chief, however, his eyes red, recited the charges himself, then sneered: "As for us who knew full well these women came from illicit sources yet still bought them — same crime as the traffickers. Death penalty!"

"So you do know the law?"

Heifu laughed coldly. It seemed this li chief had specifically inquired and learned about it.

Indeed, under Qin law, trafficking people carried the same penalty as rape — both were punished by dismemberment, the body parts exposed in the marketplace!

Any buyer who knew beforehand shared the same crime. A buyer who did not know beforehand would be tattooed and sentenced to hard labor — wall-building for men, grain-pounding for women. Other accomplices who helped conceal the crime would have their feet cut off and be sentenced to hard labor...

In Qin, the punishments were this severe, the crimes weighed this heavily! They were utterly incomparable to the lenient statutes of later ages: "Whoever buys an abducted and trafficked woman or child shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention, or public surveillance," and "Where the buyer commits no abuse against the bought child and does not obstruct rescue efforts, criminal liability may be waived."

This harsh punishment for trafficking, while it gave Heifu a sense of grim satisfaction, also posed a problem: if the criminals knew they faced certain death, they would resist to the bitter end...

"It's going to be a bit difficult for us to walk out of Blind Mountain Li safely today..."

Heifu opened the window. Outside the wattle fence of this farmhouse, the area was already so tightly packed that not a drop of water could seep through. The entire li, over two hundred people, men and women, young and old, had nearly all gathered here. They held farming tools, their faces dark, and in those equally dark eyes was nothing but malice.

Over two thousand years of history had come full circle, always converging suddenly at some moment or on some matter. This scene felt eerily familiar...

PS:

"If one has trafficked a person, whether the sale is completed or not; if one fraudulently poses as an official; if one, posing as an official, commits robbery — all shall be dismembered. One who knowingly buys a trafficked person shares the same crime. For selling a person who ought not to be sold without authorization, the seller shall be tattooed and sentenced to wall-building or grain-pounding; if the buyer knew the circumstances, he shares the same crime." — Zhangjiashan Han Bamboo Slips, Statutes on Robbery

"For fugitives, abducted wives, trafficked persons, rapists, and forgers of seals — for each criminal exposed to public execution, a reward of ten liang of gold." — Zhangjiashan Han Bamboo Slips, Statutes on Arrest

As long as the act of "trafficking" has occurred, regardless of whether the sale has been completed, the punishment is "dismemberment" (execution and dismemberment of the corpse); a buyer who knowingly purchases "shares the same crime"; a buyer who did not know and resellers are "tattooed and sentenced to wall-building or grain-pounding" (after disfigurement, male convicts perform wall-building labor, female convicts perform grain-pounding hard labor); if a buyer later learns the truth, they receive the same punishment. Anyone who can report a "trafficking" crime will be rewarded by the government with ten liang of gold.

However, if after "trafficking" someone, the perpetrator forcibly marries the victim himself, this is considered a lesser degree of harm and is therefore stipulated in the Miscellaneous Statutes: the criminal shall have "the left foot cut off and then serve as a wall-builder" (after amputating the front part of the left foot, perform wall-building hard labor).

The laws of Qin were identical in content to those of Han, and perhaps even harsher.

(End of chapter)