To prevent anyone from trying to intervene, Uncle Fang angrily drove Auntie Li and Jiu'er out of the bedroom, bolted the door shut, and ordered Fang Yi to kneel on the ground while viciously lashing him with a bullwhip.
For over a decade, the obsession with finding his older sister, Huizi, had slowly driven Uncle Fang to the brink of sanity. During those disastrous years of hardship, he had suffered the agonizing loss of all four of his older brothers. With his family shattered, the only person left was this sister—who perhaps was still alive in Jiangnan—yet her whereabouts remained a total mystery. This tormenting "magic wand" made him volatile. When he wasn't crying and laughing on the stage, he was either sullen or manic, especially when faced with this impoverished household filled with children.
Fang Yi had secretly practiced youth martial arts for six years. A beating like this was all thunder and no rain to him; though the whip cracked loudly in the air, it didn't actually harm his flesh, even though his white shirt had been torn to shreds in several places.
Chapter 27