When Little Black returned, it was already getting dark.
At that mont, Mo Yan and Lixiu were preparing pots and ingredients in the kitchen for hot pot later in the evening, while others chatted idly by the fire in the small room separated by a wall.
Hearing the clattering of horse hooves outside the door, Mo Yan turned her head and saw Little Black’s big head poking through the doorway, a thin and unrecognizable child dangling from its mouth.
Mo Yan was shocked and hastily stepped forward to take the child from Little Black’s mouth, only to find the child extrely light. Despite looking seven or eight years old, the child weighed less than forty pounds, felt bony to the touch, with no trace of flesh.
The child was wearing only a gray, grimy single-layer garnt, tattered to the point where the indistinguishable color of the skin underneath could be seen. The hair was dry and sparse, knotted in places, covering a small face sared with gri, making it impossible to tell if the child was a boy or a girl.
"Wow, Little Black, where did you steal this child from?" Hearing the commotion in the kitchen, Xin Er, who was sitting at the doorway of the small room, was the first to run out and saw her sister taking the child from Little Black, asking in surprise.
"Hiss—hiss—" It wasn’t stealing, it was picking up.
Little Black said aggrievedly; however, to Xin Er, it only sounded like a low horse whinny, not understanding what it was trying to say.
The others in the small room, upon hearing Xin Er, couldn’t stay put and ran out to see.
Zhenzhen took a careful look and quickly discerned Little Black’s "grievance": "This child looks like a beggar, probably fainted from the cold and was found by Little Black, right?"
Little Black nodded vigorously, scared of being mislabeled as a "horse" trafficker.
"Dad, quickly move a soft couch over here, Aunt Li, go grab a cotton blanket, this child’s condition is critical."
Noticing the child’s icy temperature and increasingly weak breathing, Mo Yan didn’t bother asking where Little Black had found the child, and while carrying the child to the warr small room, she instructed her father and the others.
With life hanging in the balance, Mo Qingze and Lixiu didn’t dare delay, and with a word of agreent, they hurried to retrieve a soft couch and cotton blankets.
"Yanyan, how is the child? Is there still hope?" Seeing Mo Yan pull back her hand with a grave look on her face, Mo Qingze asked with so concern.
Mo Yan shook her head, her voice unusually subdued, "The child’s body is severely depleted; now being stricken with cold, whether she can survive the night is uncertain."
She didn’t speak too definitively. If it weren’t for her having the Space, the Spirit Spring Water, and lifesaving herbs, she would have had no confidence in curing the child.
A child of Shengsheng’s age should be growing up happy and loved under the care of their parents, yet here was one abused to this extent—abuse was the right word. The child had several broken bones, and on the exposed arms were nurous scars. These wounds weren’t inflicted over a day or two; they must have been from at least a year of suffering.
Mo Yan had observed the child’s hands, which should have been soft and tender, but the palms were covered with thick calluses, and now they were riddled with frostbite. This was clearly not from being beaten while begging. The child was abused non-stop while being forced to work, which had led to the current state.
A heavy silence fell over the room. As they watched the child lying lifeless on the bed, the adults had grim expressions, and the children’s eyes turned red. Although they were strangers, anyone with a bit of kindness would feel distressed facing such a tornted child.
"Yanyan, the water’s ready." Lixiu’s voice broke the silence in the room as she brought in freshly boiled hot water and placed it in front of the couch, ready to clean the child.
"Aunt Li, let do it." Mo Yan took the towel from Lixiu’s hands, soaked it in water, and wrung it out, carefully wiping the child’s face, which was covered in frostbite and scars.
It wasn’t just the child’s face that needed cleaning and dicine; the body was riddled with new and old wounds, and many frostbites had ford on the limbs, requiring thorough cleaning of the wounds.
After half an hour and changing the water seven or eight tis, the child was finally clean. Throughout the process, the child did not wake up.
Mo Yan carefully applied dicine to the child and then dressed her in Shengsheng’s clothes—the child was a girl, about the sa age as Shengsheng.
By the evening, when the family was ready to rest, the child had not woken up but started to run a high fever, her body burning and red, like a cooked shrimp.
The child was too weak, so Mo Yan dared not feed her even diluted Spirit Spring Water, fearing her body couldn’t handle it and moved her to her own room to take care of her personally.
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