"Marry you?" Yingtao blinked her dewy eyes, pressing both hands against her flushed cheeks. "Oh, Lihua, you are so terribly brave! Stealing photos through poor windows at night just to volunteer for wedding duties! But shouldn't we ask if the negative matches? A paper copy can be doctored with ink and sheep fat, can't it?" Before the crowd could digest the piping innocence of her remark, a breathless boy shoved past the courtyard fence. He dropped onto his knees beside Yingtao, wheezing directly into the dirt. "Big Sis Yingtao..." he gasped, clawing at her padded cotton pants. "Daniu... they dragged Daniu behind the dry riverbed brick kiln! Black market den! He tried to snatch the photo film from scar-faced Bao, and now Bao is breaking his shins!" Lihua's lips twitched upward into an ugly, victor's sneer. "See? Her little dog tries to destroy evidence. Shen Zongyan, by tomorrow noon, your signature goes on my marriage license, or this photo lands on the county magistrate’s desk!" Zongyan did not spare Lihua a single glance. His focus remained locked entirely on Yingtao. "Stay here," he commanded softly. "I will bring the boy back." "Oh no, Mr. Shen!" Yingtao beamed, tilting her head with sweet distress. "Daniu owes me seven whole work credits for steamed bread! A good commune member must balance her accounts!" Thirty minutes later, near the abandoned kiln across the frosted county line, the smell of burnt coal and cheap pipe tobacco clogged the air. This was the district's illicit bazaar, an unruly hive of deserters, smugglers, and petty racketeers huddling between crumbling lime walls. Inside the kiln’s inner chamber, Wang Daniu hung by his wrists from an iron hook. Blood dripped from his swollen split lip onto his torn hemp jacket. In front of him stood Scar Bao, a hulking beast wrapped in greasy dog fur, swinging a lead-tipped cattle prod against his palm. "Where is the rest of the gold coin cache your little widow hoards, boy?" Bao snarled, spitting a wad of red betel nut juice onto Daniu’s boots. "Lihua said the wench sits on an overseas treasure trunk." "Pork... pork buns..." Daniu slurred defiantly, his black eye completely shut. "Big Sis... makes the crust... so soft... you dog-faced mule..." Bao raised the iron rod to fracture Daniu's knee. "Excuse me! Big brothers! Oh goodness, is this where folks buy winter firewood?" A voice bright as morning bells drifted through the drafty tunnel. Scar Bao froze. His six sentries turned their rifles toward the arched doorway. A slender slip of a girl tottered in, balancing two oversized wicker baskets on a bamboo shoulder pole. She wore patched calico trousers, twin plaits tied with red yarn, and a dimpled smile so blinding it looked clinically brainless. "Who let this stupid country hen inside?" one sentry barked, raising a cudgel. "Don't hit, don't hit!" Yingtao squealed, deliberately stumbling over her own cloth shoes. The baskets tumbled forward onto the dirt. Out rolled three dozen enormous, glistening red apples. They were the size of small melons, radiating a perfume so unnaturally sweet that every criminal in the room stopped breathing. In a winter where families chewed boiled bark and salted turnip skins, these crimson spheres looked like sculpted jade. "Ai ya! My precious fruit!" Yingtao cried, dropping to her knees and frantically polishing an apple against her apron. "My late uncle's mountain orchard grew them! I walked twenty li just to trade them for baby cough syrup! They are so crisp! Taste one, big brothers, please don't beat a poor silly girl!" Scar Bao squinted. "Fresh fruit? In the dead of January?" "So juicy!" Yingtao chirped, thrusting a two-pound scarlet globe directly under Bao’s nose. Her eyes shimmered with utter guilelessness. "Try! My uncle said if the skin tastes sweet, the ancestors bless the harvest! Here! Take one, elder brother! Take two!" Bao's stomach gave a loud, hollow growl. He snatched the fruit, sniffing it suspiciously. Pure honey fragrance. He sank his teeth into the flesh. Sweet nectar exploded across his tongue, richer than imported sugar cubes. "Mother of heaven," Bao muttered, juice dribbling down his scarred chin. He turned to his men. "Grab them! Eat!" The six lackeys swarmed the spilled baskets like starving wolves, shoving whole halves into their gullets, groaning in gluttonous bliss. Behind her lowered bangs, Yingtao's smile sharpened into cold, razor-thin satisfaction. Those glossy orbs hadn't just grown in her fertile dimensional plot; she had spent twenty minutes steeping their cores in concentrated essence of Thousand-Mile Purgative Root—a wild botanical she had cultivated specifically for eradicating stubborn intestinal parasites in livestock. Human dosage: half a drop. Each piece contained three ounces. "Delicious, isn't it?" Yingtao asked sweetly, rising to her feet and dusting off her knees. Her bumbling stoop vanished instantly. Her spine snapped straight. Scar Bao paused mid-bite, his forehead suddenly beading with cold, greasy sweat. A noise echoed from the depths of his belly—not a normal rumble, but a violent, churning roar like a broken tractor engine grinding through wet gravel. "What... what did you..." Bao gasped, dropping the half-eaten core. Beside him, a sentry dropped his cudgel and clamped both hands over his rear end, his complexion turning an alarming shade of sulfur yellow. "Boss! My guts!" the man wailed, legs clamping together in a desperate, trembling bow. "It feels like boiling river mud!" "Bitch!" Bao roared, lunging forward. He took one step. A wet, thunderous blast ripped from the seat of his trousers. The sheer acoustic violence of the eruption shook the soot from the ceiling. Bao's eyes bugged out, his knees buckling under the sheer horror of total bowel betrayal. Around him, the chamber erupted into pure, unadulterated pandemonium. Six grown men dropped their weapons, clawing at their belts, emitting desperate, squelching shrieks as their lower digestive tracts detonated in rapid, merciless succession. "The latrine! Where is the ditch!" "Move, curse you, my pants are full!" They trampled one another toward the doorway like panicked swine, sobbing and leaking foulness across the frozen mud. Bao reached out a trembling, sweaty hand for Daniu's throat, groaning through clenched teeth to hold back the next cataclysmic wave. "I'll... kill you..." A heavy leather boot descended, shattering Bao’s wrist against the stones. Shen Zongyan stepped out of the shadows behind the kiln archway, his dark wool coat pristine, his expression pure frost. Without breaking stride, he kicked Bao squarely under the chin. The bandit leader flew backward, crashing into a pile of loose bricks and slumping unconscious, his involuntary evacuations painting the debris behind him. Zongyan pulled a pocketknife from his lapel, slicing Daniu’s bonds in one clean stroke. Yingtao caught the boy before he hit the ground, propping his limp frame against her shoulder. "Big Sis..." Daniu blubbered through his swollen face. "They smelled... like onions... but your buns smell better..." "Quiet, idiot," Yingtao scolded fondly, stuffing a clean medicinal peach from her sleeve into his mouth. "Eat this before you faint." Zongyan kicked aside Bao's discarded jacket, kneeling beside a locked iron lockbox hidden behind the furnace. With a single strike of an iron bar, he snapped the brass latch and flipped the lid open. Inside sat stacks of ration coupons, several rolls of illicit banknotes, and the original photographic negatives. "Found it," Zongyan said, his deep voice slicing through the remaining stench of the room. He handed the strip of film to Yingtao, then pulled out a thick, cloth-bound notebook from the bottom of the chest. "And this. Bao’s master ledger of all local contacts." Yingtao pocketed the negatives and flipped open the notebook under the lantern light. "Let's see who is funding our dear cousin's little empire—" Her breath locked behind her teeth. The handwriting on the first thirty pages did not belong to Scar Bao. It was Lihua’s meticulous, thin script. But it wasn't a record of grain sales. It was a chronological timeline, written in simplified modern characters that no 1970s peasant could possibly recognize. Dates stretched across the next five years: *1977: National College Entrance Examination reinstated.* *1978: Shen Zongyan purchases southern port factories, becomes industrial magnate.* *1979: Wei Yingtao dies of pneumonia in commune storage shed; her twin children sold to Shanxi coal boss.* *Objective: Replace Yingtao, marry Shen Zongyan, secure Southern Trade Empire before Winter Inspection.* Yingtao's fingers tightened until the aged paper tore beneath her nails. Lihua wasn't just a bitter relative. She was a transmigrator who had come here specifically to harvest Yingtao’s stolen fate.

The Black Market Sting