After his father met with disaster while escorting a caravan, the family was left without a source of income. Zhou Heman had no choice but to follow his mother from the county town to their old home in the countryside.
Others thought the widowed mother and her son would be easy to bully. Who could have guessed that this seemingly meek and defenseless young man would have such a fierce temper?
When a neighbor stole fruit from their yard, he marched over with a rolling pin and made them pay for it.
When a thug harassed him, he went inside, grabbed a cleaver, and chased after him. The thug was so terrified that he fell to his knees, crying and apologizing profusely, before Zhou Heman finally let him go.
When a boy bullied a girl or a young man, Zhou Heman chased him from one end of the village to the other and gave each of them a kick in the rear.
Before long, Zhou Heman had become the village bully. Whenever people mentioned him, they could only shake their heads.
Just then, Zhou's mother asked a matchmaker to find Zhou Heman a spouse. No one in the village dared marry this fierce young man, and everyone hoped he would marry out and terrorize people somewhere else.
But who would have guessed that Liang Rui, the village's famous pushover, would marry Zhou Heman and bring him home?
The villagers watched, delighted at the prospect of a spectacle. The Liang family was dirt poor, and every last one of them was known for being a coward. Surely Zhou Heman would soon drive them all out, bedding and all.
But to everyone's surprise, after Zhou Heman married into the family, the Liang household prospered more and more. They built a new house and dug a new well, drove out the uncle who had clung to them instead of splitting off, and even made the greedy elder uncle return everything he had pocketed.
The whole family of cowards did whatever Zhou Heman said. Liang Rui was the worst of them all, spoiling Zhou Heman rotten. Wherever his husband went, he went too. He never argued with him, never put off anything he was asked to do, and would hit anyone his husband wanted him to hit.
With the village bully and his obedient enforcer together, who wouldn't be scared? From then on, everyone who had ever crossed that family wished they could steer clear of them.
Written on 2026.5.5
Theme: Don't bully the meek
