After Being Offered as a Sacrifice for My Virginity

"Huff, hey, huff, hey!" A deafening sound comes from every direction. Everyone's face is alight with excitement and hope as they shout in unison.

Before them stands a raised platform, with eight bronze drums packed tightly along either side. Their dense arrangement gives a powerful sense of confinement, silently telling him, "There's no escape!"

"Escape?" The word flashes through his mind, jolting Tong Xin back to his senses. He struggles instinctively, only to realize he has no strength left at all.

Suddenly, the surroundings go so quiet that even the wind falls silent. On the platform, a strange man crosses his hands over his chest and murmurs an incantation.

"They're going to burn me alive!"

"This is... this is... the scene from Grandpa's notebook!"

This is a sacrificial ritual, and he's the virgin boy!

Feel free to comment and bookmark. You can also check out my completed novel, "The Educated Youths Sent to a Factory in the Sixties."

"My whole life has been tied to this factory!"

A woman gazes ahead with a sorrowful expression. She wears a black floral dress and carries a bag over one arm. She is an elegant, middle-aged woman, but the hand stroking a tree on the wall gives away her age. Thin and yellowed, with veins showing, it is rough enough to reveal every crease in her palm. She is already in her fifties.

The tree has climbed over the top of the wall. Uprooted back then, it managed to grow new shoots, and now its branches cover the entire wall. The tree has stubbornly thrived, but the factory is about to shut down.

"This factory is my whole life!" She gently strokes a branch again and murmurs.

Why did she come here? Because of this factory!

She worked here for twenty years, started a family here, and left from here...

No! She can't let the factory go under like this. There is joy in struggle against Heaven! Just as she did when she boarded the southbound train all those years ago, she rekindles her fighting spirit, though she's now nearing retirement age.

This is the story of a group of educated youths sent to the border regions.

They were "sent to support the border regions," not "sent-down youths": a group of educated young people sent to the frontier. They receive little attention, yet each has a story to tell.

Theme: Humanity can triumph over fate