After the man finished speaking, he kicked the woman away.
A trace of despair and numbness flashed in the woman’s eyes.
They were powerless to resist.
The Ninth Special Zone still had slave trade, with formal slave markets, though taxes had to be paid.
The woman’s mother was bought by her father as a slave, to bear and raise children. As a child born of a slave mother, the woman had no freedom.
When she reached puberty and became an adult in this world, she was sold by her father to a wealthy businessman.
This marked the beginning of her tumultuous life as a slave.
The man was truly a good man in the past.
The two could even be considered childhood sweethearts.
To marry her, he ventured into becoming a mercenary, and upon hearing she was sold by her father, he beat her father up.
Afterwards, he found her and, holding a gun, bought her back from the businessman.
She became the man’s slave, yet she felt happiness, as if maybe their good days were approaching.
The man earned money outside, while she took care of the household and also looked for work.
As days seemed to be improving, the mercenary group where the man worked encountered an incident—a blast left him disfigured, with his limbs intact but he could no longer be a man.
To treat him, the woman was forced to sell herself, taking on underground gigs, dealing with troublesome clients.
At that time, she was also pregnant.
She finally managed to earn enough to nurse the man back to health, but the man who came back was entirely different.
The childhood sweetheart husband, Zhou Fengtai, was gone; what came back was a scumbag.
Since losing his manhood, Zhou Fengtai became increasingly irritable, especially after learning that the woman had sold herself.
It further fueled Zhou Fengtai’s anger.
Unreasonably, even though the woman sold herself to save him, he beat her severely.
The woman didn’t argue back, she understood Zhou Fengtai.
She believed time would heal everything and things would eventually turn for the better.
But his temperament became more aggressive, to the point where he’d beat their young daughter.
He suspected that the child wasn’t his, but the spawn of the woman and another man.
In his fury, several times the daughter was beaten into unconsciousness.
This was the woman’s bottom line.
She resisted a few times, only to receive another beating from Zhou Fengtai.
The woman still believed she might someday change Zhou Fengtai’s heart.
After healing Zhou Fengtai, he no longer accepted customers, took up crafting, and labor work. Even as he sunk into despair, going to the tavern every day to drink, the woman could tolerate it.
The cheap alcohol brewed from inexpensive pumpkin seemed to be the man’s only outlet. Official source is NoveI~Fire.net
As long as one day, Zhou Fengtai realized that the big shots of the Alchemy Calamity could install alchemy prosthetics, allowing him to regain his senses and become a real man.
The exorbitant price, however, made him despair.
He burdened the woman with everything again, the woman vividly remembered Zhou Fengtai kneeling at her feet, begging her to take clients to help install a prosthetic.
Because Zhou Fengtai promised, that as long as he could get a prosthetic, as long as he could become a real man again, he would rebuild their life together, he would start over!
The woman thought that because he couldn’t be a man he fell into despair, so she steeled herself and agreed to his words.
She started taking clients again, the man even actively sought clients for her. To make more money, the man even proactively lowered the price per client.
Everyone in the alley cursed the woman quite a bit.
Words like whore, slut, she lost count of how many times she’d heard them.
But she didn’t care, she just wanted to earn enough money to install a prosthetic for the man and leave this place, never to return.
After servicing each night, exhausted, she had no idea how much money she’d made; it was all taken by the man.
She didn’t mind either, surely the man wouldn’t waste the money meant for remaking himself anew, right?
That’s what she thought.
But when she asked the man after six months how much they’d saved, whether it was enough, the man said it was far from enough.
She was a bit tired, a bit desperate, but she endured.
At least the man was no longer irritable, no longer hit her or their daughter.
But once when she asked the man for money to buy some pumpkin for food for herself and her daughter, the man hesitated for a long time before giving her only half of what she asked.
Until...when the pain was unbearable and she took a break from taking clients to buy food, she passed by a casino and saw the man gambling with bloodshot eyes, saw him drawing deep puffs from illicit smokes, engulfed in clouds.
In that moment, the woman’s world collapsed.
She stormed into the casino and caused a scene, which led to both of them being severely beaten by the casino boss and thrown out.
The man angrily seized her by the throat, nearly choking her, up until now, the man didn’t care how beaten she was, but furiously said: "Goddammit, do you know how good my hand was? I was fucking this close to winning it all, and you fucked it up, you fucking bitch, can’t you just die?!"
She cried, questioning the man why?
Why not save the money, only to be answered by the man: "Do you fucking think this ruined flesh of yours can earn so much? You think you’re one of those high-class escort girls in fancy clubs, you’re fucking just a garbage street prostitute!
I need to install a prosthetic, do you know how much it costs? At least 50,000 Beta! Your fucking ruined body, completely fucked up, won’t even come close to making that kind of money!