Xiao Xiao Taosu'er's Sixth Book

On the day Su Wanqing registered her marriage, she became the laughingstock of the machinery factory’s residential compound. They hadn’t even consummated the marriage before her husband died in a car accident.

Her greedy mother-in-law wanted to force her into the mountains to fetch a high bride price, and steal both the compensation money and the job replacement quota that belonged to her.

Just as Su Wanqing gripped a pair of scissors, ready to draw blood against her vicious in-laws, He Zheng, the feral butcher everyone in the compound avoided, kicked in the moldy wooden door.

The muscular man pinned her against the peeling wall, his rough, calloused hand gripping her trembling waist. “That short-lived bastard never even touched your hand, did he? From today on, I’ll put food on your table and take care of you.”

He shoved a wad of warm, freshly printed yuan and ration coupons valid nationwide into her arms.

Her mother-in-law rolled around, screaming for the security office to arrest him. He Zheng slammed his bloody boning knife into the doorframe. “If anyone lays a finger on her today, this knife will draw blood!”

In the opportunity-filled 1980s, Su Wanqing kicked her awful relatives to the curb and started her own business. But the fearsome man who wielded a knife and sold meat at the slaughterhouse by day would loiter in her room at night, wrap his arms around her slender waist, and demand she give him a proper title.