Chapter 6: Let My Father Visit You in Your Dreams & What Is Mine, I Shall Not Yield to Anyone

In the distance, scattered lights flickered ahead on the slumbering highway.

Luo Xuan slowed her car as she entered the jurisdiction of Luosang County.

The Luosang Garment Factory operated during the day, while the surrounding network of medium and small workshops and cottage industries worked through the night. This complementary rhythm allowed the entire production cycle to complete within a single day—a model of exceptional efficiency.

At one in the morning, Luosang County was in the midst of its frantic peak hours. A ceaseless stream of vehicles arrived and departed, hauling cargo. The surrounding small factories were blazing with light, weaving a vast web that extended to the villages on the outskirts of the county. Like glowing capillaries, they provided a constant supply of nourishment to the Luosang Garment Factory at the center, their own survival tethered to its operations, collectively illuminating this "World Capital of Sportswear."

The surroundings were boisterous and lively.

Clustered around the busy workers were carts selling late-night snacks, stalls hawking daily necessities, phone screen protector stands, and the flashing phone charms favored by the female workers, piled glitteringly on plastic sheets.

The light washed over Luo Xuan’s face.

She mused to herself that no one would guess that the unremarkable Luosang County possessed such a bustling, all-night market, driven by the relentless cycle of the textile industry.

Following behind a cargo truck, Luo Xuan drove past the Luosang Garment Factory, the heart of the county. It took a full ten minutes to skirt around the sleeping behemoth. Once she had left the factory behind, it suddenly occurred to her that her younger sister’s boyfriend seemed to have some connection to the Luosang plant.

What was his name again?

Luo Xuan had no recollection.

On this first day after her father’s sudden death, as she slowly turned the steering wheel, she began to realize that when her younger sister claimed she knew nothing, she was right.

In truth, deep down, she had never wanted to know.

...

At the funeral home, the cycle of busyness began anew.

Perhaps it was the exhaustion that kept Lin Zhaodi from asking about the eldest sister, for which Luo Xuan felt a sense of relief.

Luo Wenbin’s cremation was rushed, lacking proper ceremonies and mired in chaotic procedures. In the short distance it took to push the body into the crematorium, Lin Zhaodi, Luo Xuan, and Luo Qi were so worn out, their faces pale and eyes vacant, that they didn't even think to cry.

It was their uncle, Lin Guodong, who reminded them, "This is the final farewell."

Only then did the grief hit Luo Xuan, and she stood there with her mother and sister, wiping away tears for a long while.

After crying for a time, Lin Zhaodi, eyes red-rimmed, directed the staff to move Luo Wenbin’s body into the cremation chamber. As the heavy doors closed, Luo Xuan noticed her mother exhale a sigh of relief that was visible to the naked eye.

A while later, a worker emerged from the cremation chamber and shouted, "The son, come in to collect the ashes."

Luo Wenbin had no son.

The worker called out again, "Is there a nephew?"

Luo Xuan walked straight toward him. The worker blocked her path. "Send your husband in, or your father won't be at peace in the afterlife."

Luo Xuan straightened her back, realizing she was taller than the worker. She couldn't be bothered to argue and simply pushed him aside. "If my father is unhappy, he can come to me in a dream and tell me himself."

"That’s not according to the rules," the worker protested.

Luo Xuan shoved him away. "I don't know the rules, but my father does. I'll have him tell you in your dreams tonight."

"Don't you dare trouble your father!" The worker, shoved to the side, spat in anger. "Let him rest in peace!"

Luo Xuan stepped into the cremation chamber and beckoned to her younger sister, who stood there stunned. "Come in and help."

...

The cremation chamber smelled of burnt remains, and the bones were still warm.

Luo Xuan and her sister used tongs to place the larger bones into the urn one by one.

Suddenly, her sister remarked, out of the blue, "Did Dad spend his whole life obsessed with having a son just for this—to have someone collect his bones?"

Luo Xuan used a small shovel to scoop the warm, powdery ashes into the box. Before long, the heat of the container seeped through against her palms.

Luo Xuan thought to herself that while her father was alive, the relationship between father and daughters had been cold and distant. Now that he was dead, there was finally a sense of warmth.

Luo Qi continued, "Dad didn't even check if that bastard was actually his before deciding to leave the factory to him."

Leaving the factory to a son?

Luo Xuan’s hands froze, recalling the panic of her mother and sister when the will was being drafted, and the sigh her father gave on his deathbed.

Luo Xuan turned and stared intently at Luo Qi. "The factory... he isn't leaving any of it to us? He intended to leave it all to that boy outside?"

Luo Qi did not deny it.

The temperature in the cremation chamber was not low. Luo Qi stood before the ashes, head bowed as she shoveled, and said without hesitation, "So what if he doesn't? What is rightfully mine must be mine. I won't let anyone take it."

Luo Xuan found she wasn't even surprised; a lump simply formed in her throat, making it difficult to breathe.

She remembered her father, after a few drinks, commenting on a television drama: "They're all just women. What’s the difference between the ones outside and the ones at home? Flesh and blood from different women are all the same—they’re all your own children. The only difference is that the ones outside will leave if you don't give them money, while the ones at home will stay regardless."

Luo Xuan lowered her gaze to the silent heap of ashes.

The share of the Red Star Garment Factory she had received was not a reflection of her father’s meager love, but something her mother and sister had fought for on her behalf using less-than-honorable means.

Luo Xuan felt the words stuck in her throat, but the ashes remained silent.

Asking or not asking would change nothing. Her father was gone, and in this world, there remained only her mother and her sisters.

They shared the same bloodline; their bones were knit together by sinew.

After they finished, a fine, ghostly layer of bone dust remained at the mouth of the furnace, impossible to clean away completely. As Luo Xuan hesitated, looking for a way to gather the last of it, Luo Qi had already sealed the urn.

Luo Xuan stared at the remnants left behind. "Will Dad blame us?"

Luo Qi, her long black hair cascading to her waist, looked down and said, "Life is rarely satisfactory in all things. Who can ever have everything go their way?"

She cradled the urn and turned to walk out of the cremation chamber.

...

By the time they finished and stepped out of the funeral home, it was the dim, hazy hour of dawn, the light neither fully present nor fully absent.

Luo Xuan drove her mother and sister back.

No one spoke in the car. The three women, eyes bloodshot from exhaustion, silently stared out the windows.

The lights of the night market had been extinguished, and the crowds had dispersed. In the gray mist, scattered figures pushed carts laden with old goods, trading by the roadside.

There were workers, scrap collectors, and petty thieves moving their illicit goods.

This was known as the "Ghost Market"—a secondary trade exchange. To avoid municipal regulation, the market had no fixed location, but the workers possessed a keen instinct and always found the right spot.

The origin of the goods was never questioned. Luo Xuan watched the cardboard signs with handwritten text slowly recede into the distance: "100 Yuan Fujifilm Camera," "10 Yuan Imported Radio," "99 Yuan Russian Military Binoculars," "Second-hand Sony Ericsson"—each disappearing from view.

A few workers, without spending a cent, were trading their worn-out rubber boots for entire boxes of pirated novels and poetry collections.

A cardboard sign flashed past with bold red characters: "Thrilling! *The Lady's Lovers*."

Luo Xuan had, of course, visited the Ghost Market and had once joined the crowd to see this "thrilling" book. Its original title was *Lady Chatterley's Lover*. The workers were quite happy to accept the literary baptism of Western classics, often adding their own hand-drawn, explicit illustrations in the margins with meticulous detail.

For many workers, it was through books like this—starting with desire—that they gradually came to touch the cold, white pages of literature.

In the dim light, the Ghost Market existed as a gray zone between law and human emotion, a breath of the city’s heat exhaled directly onto the faces of the workers.