Chapter 289: This Woman Cannot Stay
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Seeing her like this, Dali uttered a low curse that Ji Nuan could not understand.
He was probably complaining that she was trouble or something.
She went to the cooking tent. Dali kicked over the kettle that had been set up outside, to tell her with his eyes to hurry. He was impatient.
She nodded at him. Most of the people here were very wicked, and she had to be careful not to offend them.
Dali looked at her coldly from outside the tent. Ji Nuan huddled inside, took a small bowl and filled it with soup “with trembling hands,” and took a careful sip.
Seeing that she was really hungry, Dali stopped looking at her and allowed her to drink, but still urged her in an impatient tone.
Ji Nuan pretended not to hear and looked out from time to time as she sipped her soup.
Ji Nuan stirred the soup in the pot quickly as Dali went to grab a cigarette from another man outside the nearby cabin. She looked at the pot filled with boiling bubbling soup, and suddenly made up her mind and overturned the pot. The hot liquid instantly spilled over her hands and wrists; she let out a scream of pain and threw herself back on the floor.
Hearing the sound, Dali rushed back in an instant, pulled back the curtain of the tent and looked in only to see the pot on the fire was overturned and the soup in it spilled all over the ground. With a look of pain, Ji Nuan sat down on the ground trembling. The back of her hand was burned with blisters that were all red and looked terrible.
Dali immediately swore at her, walked in, and brutally picked Ji Nuan up by the collar. Ji Nuan was literally dragged out of the tent.
He was about to kick her when the old woman happened to come back. She let out a shout and hurriedly came over, saving Ji Nuan from his hands while looking at Ji Nuan’s hands with worry. She kept asking her in Cambodian a tone that seemed to be either concerned or accusatory.
Ji Nuan really didn’t understand her words this time. She could only try to look particularly pitiful, innocent, and frightened. She looked at the old woman with tears in her eyes and looked frightened and aggrieved. She raised her blistered hands, pointed to her stomach and mouth, and then to the bowl that had fallen to the ground in the tent.
The old woman knew she hadn’t eaten much since she had been caught yesterday. Her hand was injured so badly that, not to mention to send food, now she wouldn’t even be able to move her hands. After the old woman had said a few words to Dali, he stared at Ji Nuan coldly, apparently without any intention of letting her go.
Aqib asked her to take food to Mr. Control, but in an instant, her hands were injured like this. Whether it was an accident or on purpose, this woman could not stay.
As the old woman continued to speak for Ji Nuan, Dali turned away with a cold face and went back to Aqib’s cabin to report what happened.
The old woman held Ji Nuan up and kept speaking Cambodian. From her tone, she seemed to feel sorry for Ji Nuan and asked her what happened. Ji Nuan didn’t speak but followed the old woman into her shabby cabin, her head hanging down.
The pain on the back of Ji Nuan’s hand was so bad that it burnt like fire. The old woman came over with a needle, grabbed her hand, and began to burst the blisters one by one. She was trembling with pain, but she bit her lips hard not to groan. This time her eyes were red not because she tried to look pitiable but because it really hurt. Her eyes were filled with tears.
She had never felt such a piercing pain during both lifetimes. Her lips were bleeding from her bite.
Then the old woman brought a gray-colored medicine, which seemed to be a kind of herbal powder exclusive to Southeast Asian countries. She sprinkled it on the back of Ji Nuan’s hand, tore a strip from the bottom of Ji Nuan’s white dress, wrapped it around the back of her hand and wrist, and patted her hand, signaling for her to rest tonight and not to go to work.
Ji Nuan nodded gratefully at the old woman. Playing on the instinct of ‘an innocent woman who had been caught,’ Ji Nuan pointed to the direction outside the forests and looked at the old woman with a longing look on her face as if asking her when she could leave.
The old woman looked at her sympathetically but shook her head.
Once a person was caught, there would only be two ways left for them, to stay here and take care of these people for the rest of his or her life or to die. There could be no third option.
Then, the old woman left the cabin. Ji Nuan sat in the room until the old woman was far away. Then she got up and moved her wrist with some difficulty. The pain made her more aware of what she was facing.
She stood at the window and looked out. Here was a camp with a lot of cabins, huts, and tents. It was located in the deepest part of the forests, surrounded by green plants, covering a large area. In the dim light of night, she couldn’t see these cabins and huts clearly but only the outlines. There was a fire in the middle clearing, around which there was a circle of people eating, drinking and laughing, and glancing sharply in the direction in which she was from time to time. It seemed that the idea they had in Aqib’s cabin of throwing her on the bed and having a good taste of her had been put on their agenda.
When Ji Nuan saw the guns at their waists, her heart sank.
This wasn’t a peaceful country at all. There was no such place in China, but this was Cambodia.
In the years to come, much of the international relief effort would be tied to the civil unrest in Cambodia. No matter if it was Mekong River or Tonlé Sap Lake, there were numerous accidents. Now, security here was worse than it would be a decade later, and the neighborhood was not as well-maintained as it would be a decade later.
If she wanted to leave, she had to find a way out for herself.
…
Outside of the forest.
Feng Ling had changed into a tighter black suit, with two silencer guns at her waist, and was crouching and tying her shoelaces, placing her glittering dagger in the scabbard beside her boots.
“What are you doing?” Just as she was finishing tying her shoelaces and getting ready to move, suddenly, a black shadow towered over her, and a pair of black leather boots stopped in front of her.
It was Nan Heng.
Feng Ling didn’t look up. She fixed the dagger beside her boots and touched the guns at her waist before she stood up and looked expressionlessly at the cold-looking man in front of her. “Ji Nuan has been gone for a day and a night. I must go and look for her.”
“How will you get in? Walking into a minefield?” Nan Heng coldly looked at her. “The dense forest is surrounded by minefields left from the war decades ago, as well as new minefields that those people have added. Before you can find her, you would have been blown into pieces! You want us to go in and collect your body?”