“Someone with quite a background,” Miao Qingyuan replied after taking a sip of the tea.

  “By the way, you have nothing to worry about regarding him.”


  “I haven’t seen you for years. How did you get here?”


  “How?” Miao Qingyuan lowered his head and looked at the steaming tea on the table.

  “When I left the village all those years ago, I thought of going somewhere far away to distance myself from the village and never keeping in touch with anyone from there. I especially thought about getting myself away from Miao Xihe,” Miao Qingyuan said. “I went to the north and the west, but I didn’t have much money with me. I eventually settled in the nearby He County. I thought of just settling down there and building a family. I figured I’d just live an uneventful life. I would have been nowhere near getting rich, but I would have had no huge troubles to deal with. But hell, with all that is happening with He County lately, as well as the village getting involved, Miao Qingfeng came looking for us.”


  “Are you guys considered the main family?”


  “Main family? Hmph, everyone in the village has the Miao surname,” Miao Qingyuan replied. “Our ancestors were family to begin with! But Miao Qingfeng didn’t care for any of that. He is nothing but scum, just like Miao Xihe!”


  “Do you still think about revenge?”


  “I sure do,” Miao Qingyuan said. “How about you?”


  “I do too.”


  “Me and you, we’re different though. You thought about it and you did something. I stopped at thinking and did nothing else.” Miao Qingyuan chuckled. His smile looked rather bitter.

  “I know what I’m made of,” Miao Qingyuan said. “If I stay out here any longer, I’ll end up dead soon. In truth, the very reason Miao Xihe let the likes of us live all these years was that he didn’t think of us as threats. So, he just didn’t bother dealing with us. That’s about it.” He knew at least that much about himself.

  “Do you have kids now?”


  “A boy.”


  “How old?”


  “He’s four years old now.” Miao Qingyuan’s expression softened when he talked about his son.

  “Good for you,” Miao Chengtang said. He felt a little envious.

  Miao Chengtang was 30 years old. He wanted to have a family too. However, he never did anything about those thoughts back in the village because he knew of what was happening in the village, as well as all those hidden dark secrets. He laid low. He thought that even if he were unable to take revenge for his parents, he would never want his children to live a life like his.

  Things were different now. He had escaped. The conversation he had with Miao Qingyuan made him think that he should change his lifestyle. He wanted to find a normal girl and have two children. The best scenario was to have a boy and a girl. His children would not have to be very smart or excel in their studies. Just having healthy children was enough for him.

  “I’m still worried,” Miao Chengtang said.

  “Are you worried that Miao Xihe is going to come for you?”


  “Yeah. The more I know, the more terrifying I find him to be.”


  “This is Tianjin. How is he going to find you in such a huge city?”


  “He will be able to if he really wants to.”


  “Still worried, eh?”


  “Truth be told, I just want to live a normal life.”


  “A normal life?”


  “I have bad dreams whenever I sleep lately,” Miao Chengtang said. He was unable to sleep well, which was not a life that he was after.

  “To tell you the truth, I was just like you when I first escaped the village. I was unable to sleep and kept feeling like someone was on my tail. That will pass after a while.”


  “Things are different now,” Miao Chengtang said. “Both He and Qushan counties are in trouble, and many people have died. Miao Xihe is really, really pissed now.”


  “Did Tianchuan really do all that?”


  “It was him alright. He will do anything to get his revenge.”


  “Why did you leave him?”


  “I didn’t kill anyone, not in the village or outside of it, yet I was treated like a criminal all the same,” Miao Chengtang said. “I was being hunted all over the country like some rat. I had to hide all the time from both the village people and the national authorities. Miao Tianchuan has really changed. He is insanely dangerous. There is no telling when he would have made a move against his own people.”


  “Did you come all the way here just to get some good sleep before thinking of something else?”


  “Yeah.” Miao Chengtang nodded.

  After saying goodbye to Miao Qingyuan, he went to his place in Tianjin. It was a rented house. While it was not a really high-class place, it still looked cozy. The rental was fully furnished.

  He laid on the bed and closed his eyes. He quickly fell asleep. It was the first time he had been able to sleep soundly since he had escaped the village.

  In a village, thousands of miles away……

  A patient with a special case came to Wang Yao’s clinic.

  She was a woman in her 20s. She had a huge bluish-black birthmark on the right side of her face, which made her rather pretty face look terrifying. As such, she styled her hair in a way that hid the birthmark.

  “Dr. Wang, do you think you could do something to get rid of her birthmark?” A woman in her fifties had come with the young woman. She was the young woman’s mother. Her daughter was at an ideal age to get married, but no man wanted to marry a woman with such a huge birthmark on her face. Furthermore, the birthmark robbed her of her confidence. Also, going to the hospital would have been costly. Both of them heard about the village doctor having medical skills unlike any other, so they visited him.

  “Sit down and let me have a look,” Wang Yao said.

  The young woman sat down. Wang Yao checked her birthmark.

  “Yeah, it’s something that you could be rid of.”


  “Really?” The older woman gasped in surprise.

  “Really,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

  “Umm, how should we get rid of it?”


  “Well, the birthmark seems to be just on the surface. It doesn’t go too deep,” Wang Yao said. “First, I could entirely remove the mark.”


  “Remove the mark entirely? Do you mean cutting out the whole thing?”


  “Yeah, that is what I mean.”


  “What?” The woman was dumbfounded hearing that suggestion.

  “But it’s on her face. Won’t it leave a huge scar if you just cut the whole thing out? Won’t it look uglier?”


  “I could return her face to normal after the surgery.”


  “Oh hell, I’m not buying this!” The young woman immediately refused.

  “Let’s go. We’ll do something somewhere else.” The mother took her daughter and went outside.

  Wang Yao smiled and shook his head.

  “Mom.”


  “If he were to give you meds to see if that worked, I’d have no problem with that. But surgery? I can’t believe such a young man turned out to be a fraud!” The older woman got increasingly angry as she talked.

  “Well, we didn’t agree to it, right?” the daughter replied with a smile.

  “Let’s go. I’ll take you to a hospital instead.”


  “There’s no need for that. Just leave it as it is,” the young woman said. She knew what kind of situation her family was in. They couldn’t afford the cost of doing it at a hospital. Furthermore, she had a little brother who was attending university. After he finished, he intended to find a job and buy a house in the city. All of that was going to cost a fortune, so her family was saving all their money for her little brother.

  “Master,” Jia Zizai came into the clinic. “Were the mother and daughter here for treatment?”


  “Yeah.”


  “That girl’s birthmark sure is frightening. I guess she doesn’t need to be afraid of bad guys when she goes out at night.”


  “Don’t make fun of other people’s shortcomings,” Wang Yao said with a stern tone.

  “Well, alright, my bad,” Jia Zizai immediately said.

  “So, what brings you here?”


  “I caught a big fish in the river today, so I’m thinking of inviting you to my place to have fish soup.”


  “A big fish in this weather?”


  “Yeah, just by the side of the river.”


  “Alright, sure.” Wang Yao smiled and nodded.

  “Couldn’t you do something about the girl’s birthmark?”


  “I can, but they are not buying it,” Wang Yao said.

  “Well, it’s their loss.”


  “A birthmark like that isn’t actually all that difficult to treat. It’s just on the surface of the skin, so it would be fine to just cut it out.”


  “Cut it out? Together with the skin? Wouldn’t that hurt a lot?!” Jia Zizai asked.

  “It wouldn’t hurt that much, and I’d give her medicine to deal with the pain,” Wang Yao said.

  “I think that girl would look stunning if she were to be able to get rid of that birthmark.”