Chapter 2 The Heavens Have Taken Notice
The year was 1627, the seventh year of the Tianqi reign, deep within the Great Ming Dynasty. Specifically, in Gao Family Village, Chengcheng County, Shaanxi Province.
It was summer, and the outdoor temperature relentlessly climbed toward 40 degrees Celsius.
For years, Shaanxi had suffered without rain; vegetation withered to dust, and yellow sand stretched endlessly across the land.
Gao Yiye had not eaten her fill for a very long time.
She was a child of misfortune, having lost her father at a young age. She and her mother relied on each other for survival. Their impoverished life had made Gao Yiye sensible from an early age; she helped her mother with all sorts of farm work. United, mother and daughter managed to scrape by, though barely.
However, over the past two years, life for the two of them had grown increasingly difficult.
As the drought worsened day by day, the small river beside the village had dried up. The well water was barely enough for drinking, let alone irrigating fields, and not a single crop could be sown in the parched earth.
Gao Yiye had no choice but to leave the village every day, searching for wild vegetables to sustain them.
Later, even the wild vegetables withered and died. Mother and daughter were reduced to stripping bark from trees and digging up grass roots. They had reached a point where survival was a desperate struggle, with no path to life visible anywhere.
Even with life so impossibly difficult, bandits still came to plunder them.
Gao Yiye collapsed onto the freshly slain body of her mother, weeping inconsolably.
The bandit wore a cruel smile. The middle-aged woman he'd just killed could feed his brothers for two or three days. And if he chopped up this little girl too, that would be another two or three days' rations. He chuckled darkly.
He raised his rusty saber, aimed for the nape of the girl's neck, and brought it down.
Just then...
The sky convulsed!
From within the clouds, a colossal hand suddenly emerged. It descended with incredible speed, and in a flash, it reached the bandit and Gao Yiye.
Gao Yiye felt something eclipse the sun, and she looked up in astonishment.
Then, she witnessed a sight she would never forget.
The colossal hand, reaching from the clouds above her, flexed its index finger. With a sudden, resounding "thwack!", the bandit bringing his saber down was sent flying.
He flew fast, and he flew far. He launched from beside Gao Yiye, streaked across the sky, soaring over the entire village, flying, flying like a red dragonfly against the blue sky. He continued until he reached the yellow sand outside the village, where he crashed to the ground with a sickening thud. Upon impact, every bone in his body shattered, his neck twisted grotesquely to one side, leaving him irrevocably dead.
From the sky, faint sounds of wind and thunder rumbled, and a majestic yet furious voice echoed, uttering a single curse: “Despicable bandit!”
Then, with a whoosh, the hand retracted back into the clouds and vanished.
Gao Yiye forgot how to cry, staring blankly at the sky.
“What just happened?!” another bandit, not far away, cried out loudly. “Why did he suddenly fly away? He flew so far!”
“I don’t know either!” another bandit yelled. “I just saw him suddenly shoot off!”
“Damn it, what hit him? To send him flying so far?!”
“Was it this little girl?!”
All the remaining bandits began to surround Gao Yiye.
Gao Yiye sat on the ground, mournfully clutching her mother’s body. Her gaze, filled with bewilderment, fell upon the dozens of bandits surrounding her. She didn’t think of fleeing, nor of resisting. She simply couldn’t understand: such a massive hand had appeared, flicking away the bandit – how could they not have seen it? Why did they suspect her? What power did she possess to do such a thing?
The bandit leader demanded fiercely, “Little girl, what did you just do?!”
Gao Yiye shook her head blankly.
“You won’t speak?” the bandit leader roared in anger. “I have plenty of ways to make you talk.”
He took a large stride forward and raised the rusty saber in his hand.
Gao Yiye sadly awaited death...
However, just then, with another whoosh, a colossal hand emerged from the clouds again. With the exact same movement as before, it flexed a finger. The bandit leader screamed, and flew backward for dozens of yards. He crashed heavily to the ground, every bone in his body shattered. He was irrevocably dead.
The remaining bandits were aghast. “What happened?!”
“Why did our leader suddenly fly backward and then die?!”
“It was that little girl again!”
“Sorcery! It must be sorcery!”
“You... what kind of sorcery did you use?!”
The group exploded in fury, shouting wildly at Gao Yiye. Their shouts were laced with anger, panic, and terror.
This time, Gao Yiye understood. They couldn’t see the colossal hand. Only she could.
She looked up at the clouds in the sky. Through a parting in the clouds, she could vaguely discern a man’s face, hovering in mid-air, like a deity gazing down upon the mortal world.
She gently lowered her mother’s body, then knelt, prostrating herself toward the sky. “Great Heavenly Lord, please save us!”
——————
Li Daoxuan’s brows furrowed deeply.
He had intervened twice, helping the plastic figurine of the girl and twice flicking away and "broken" bandit figurines. He was secretly scolding himself for being immature, a living man getting angry at plastic toys. Suddenly, he saw the plastic figurine of the girl actually look up at the sky. In that instant, he even felt his gaze meet hers.
The plastic girl’s eyes were complex, filled with emotion!
She gracefully knelt down and prostrated herself, pleading with Li Daoxuan, “Great Heavenly Lord, please save us!”
Li Daoxuan felt the softest part of his heart struck by this tiny figure.
“Life is already so difficult, why must you cruelly murder them?!” Li Daoxuan vented the displeasure in his chest out onto the remaining bandit figurines. “You don’t deserve to be human! You don’t even deserve to be plastic figures! All of you, die!”
He slammed his palm down onto the bandit figurines in the diorama box!
——————-
The bandits stared blankly, completely unaware of what was happening.
They had just witnessed their leader flying away, so far, and irrevocably dead upon impact. Then, they saw the girl prostrate herself on the ground, seemingly crying out to Heaven for salvation.
In the very next instant, sounds of wind and thunder suddenly rumbled in the sky. It seemed as though something was plummeting from above, descending rapidly, creating an immense, unparalleled gust of wind that sent the yellow sand on the ground swirling, transforming it into a furiously swirling sandstorm. Yet, when they looked up at the sky, they saw nothing.
“CRUSH!”
One bandit was suddenly flattened.
Crushed by an invisible heavy object from above, he was flattened into a gruesome, indistinguishable mass of pulpy flesh, blood splattering everywhere.
The nearby bandits were scared out of their wits and screamed in terror, “What happened?!”
“How did he die?!”
“What’s going on?!”
“CRUSH!”
Another bandit was flattened into a pulp, stuck fast to the ground.
“CRUSH!”
Then another bandit...
“CRUSH!”
“CRUSH!”
An invisible, crushing weight relentlessly pressed the bandits, one after another, into gruesome patties of flesh.
The remaining bandits fled in panic in all directions, but it was utterly useless. CRUSH, CRUSH, CRUSH... One after another, one after another, all the bandits were flattened into pulpy messes, their blood staining the sandy ground of the village red.
Gao Yiye gently re-embraced her mother’s body and wept, “Mother, the Heavens have taken notice! They have avenged you.”
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