Chapter 001: To Live

In the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Emperor Chengde, in the month of July.

After a month of continuous heavy rain, the Cang River burst its banks, and the flood submerged more than a dozen towns surrounding Lin'an.

The Prefect of Lin'an fortified the city and refused to release grain, delaying the report of the disaster. The court's relief efforts were inadequate, leading to a surge of refugees from Lin'an and widespread starvation.

Amidst the chaos, Chen Cao took advantage of the situation and launched a rebellion, swiftly capturing three areas: Qiuzhou, Lu'an, and Tianfeng, encircling Lin'an. Chen Cao used the pretext of the emperor's lack of benevolence to incite and drive out the refugees, causing the disaster to spread towards the prosperous areas near the capital.

On this night, the rain poured down, and dozens of refugees who had fled from Lin'an huddled in a dilapidated temple thirty miles outside the capital.

The flickering fire seemed on the verge of extinguishing with each gust of night wind, while the people sat, expressionless, gazing at the curtain of rain outside the temple. Despite it being midsummer, it felt like the depths of winter.

Feng Qiao curled up in a corner, covered in tattered clothes, her dark little face flushed, her small body trembling incessantly.

A weathered hand cautiously touched her forehead, feeling the feverish warmth. The woman felt a pang of compassion.

"If we keep burning like this, this child may not survive."

"Can we find a way to get a doctor for her?"

"Get a doctor? How can we? Setting aside whether we have the money, with the current chaos outside, all the officials have sealed off the cities. In these desolate areas, which doctor would come?"

"But... she's so young..."

The woman listened to the slightly choked voice opposite her, thinking of the people who had died around her in recent days, and of her own child who had starved to death in her arms. She looked at Feng Qiao on the ground, filled with sorrow.

"So what if she's young? It's her misfortune not to be born into a good family."

It was better to die in such a state than to starve to death with them.

At least she wouldn't have to endure hunger and count the days she had left to live.

The temple offered no shelter from the rain, and the downpour dripped incessantly through the broken tiles.

There were no dividing walls in the temple, and the two women's voices, though not loud, were particularly clear in the dark night.

As they heard that someone was on the verge of death, some people showed pity, some looked on coldly, but most just clung tightly to their own legs, drawing the only warmth from the fire, their eyes vacant, their faces numb from habit.

Beside the fire, a gaunt man, his eyes blurred from hunger, turned to look at Feng Qiao curled up on the ground. His gaze fell on her small, pale leg.

For some reason, the man's eyes, bloodshot and filled with struggle, suddenly turned to a fierce, greedy look. When a rumble came from his stomach, his unease and struggle were replaced by a cruel, greedy desire.

The man suddenly stood up, strode to the corner, and reached for Feng Qiao on the ground, bypassing the two women.

The women were startled, and one of them stood in front of Feng Qiao, urgently saying, "What are you doing?"

"What am I doing? Of course, I'm looking for something to eat!"

"What are you looking to eat? This child has been with us the whole way, where would she have anything to eat..."

The woman hurriedly spoke, but the man showed no signs of cooling down. On the contrary, his eyes grew even more frenzied.

His cracked lips revealed a fierce smile, and even from close by, one could hear him swallowing saliva as he stared at Feng Qiao.

The woman's scalp tingled, frightened by the madness in the man's eyes. Her eyes widened in horror as she said, "You... you're not going to eat her, are you?"

The man's eyes gleamed with a bloodthirsty light.

"Why not? She's going to die anyway. What's the difference between her and a pig or a cow? I haven't eaten anything for four days. If I don't eat something soon, I'll die. I don't want to die. I want to live. I'm so hungry... eating her will keep me alive, and I won't have to starve to death!"

The man seemed to be trying to convince the woman, or perhaps himself, as he spoke with longing and distortion in his eyes.

The gazes of the refugees in the temple, who had initially been shocked to hear about eating a person, gradually changed.

They turned to look at Feng Qiao, who was curled up on the ground, and the burning, maddening pain of prolonged hunger surged through their stomachs.

These people were skin and bones, their faces waxen and devoid of color, their hair like dry straw, scattered on their heads. Their eyes were gradually consumed by a kind of released desire and madness.

They knew that if they didn't have something to eat soon, they would starve to death, just like the others who had died of hunger, abandoned in the wilderness, their bodies devoured by vultures, without even a shroud to cover them.

Seeing the people closing in, the two women were clearly panicked. They felt that these people had all gone mad, they were all mad!

They reached out to stop them, but were violently pushed aside by the man.

"If you try to stop me, I'll eat you all together. Eating one person is the same as eating two or three!"

The people around them brightened. That's right, there were more than twenty of them, and that little girl was so thin and small, how could she be enough for everyone?

The two women, their faces ashen, trembled as they crawled back to the other corner, leaving Feng Qiao exposed to everyone's eyes.

Without any obstruction, the fire in the man's eyes burned even more fiercely. He swallowed hard and loudly ordered the person behind him to fetch rainwater with the missing-footed incense burner from the temple, put it on the fire, and then grabbed Feng Qiao from the ground as if dragging meat to be slaughtered. His eyes gleamed, and his saliva flowed faster.

The water in the burner gradually boiled, and the man somehow dragged out a rusty chopping knife.

The cold light on the knife stunned everyone, and they all looked at the "meat" on the ground with greedy eyes.

When Feng Qiao woke up in a daze, she felt a gust of cold wind on her head, and a man in front of her was swinging a large cleaver mercilessly towards her legs.

Feng Qiao, still feeling dizzy, was startled awake and without thinking, she quickly rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the cleaver.

The knife grazed her leg and fell to the ground with a loud clang, cutting a nearby branch in half. Seizing the opportunity while the man was stunned by his missed strike, Feng Qiao picked up the sharpened end of the branch from the ground, crawled to his side, and stabbed it into his neck.

Blood gushed out, and the man screamed in agony as the knife fell to the ground with a thud.

He looked terrified, trying to cover his neck with his hand, making gurgling sounds as he swallowed blood.

The people around were initially startled, expecting to see the scene of the slender body being cooked in a pot, but instead, it was the man with the knife who was taken down.

At that moment, a young child held the half of the branch still in the man's neck, and with a fierce look in his eyes, he glared at them, his eyes cold and dark, frightening everyone from approaching.

Feng Qiao glanced at the broken temple, the man she had subdued, the bubbling cauldron filled with water not far away, and the emaciated refugees in front of her. The distant memories suddenly became vivid in her mind.

The boiling cauldron, the broken temple, the refugees.

The skin cracking inch by inch in boiling water, the screams of agony when changing skin for medicine to survive.

Her father's unjust death, her grandmother's blindness, the beginning of a lifetime of hardships...

The year 34 of the Republic of China!

She had actually returned!