By the time Jiang Jianming brought the child he picked up from the roadside into his dilapidated house, he was barely clinging to life.
This child showed no gratitude whatsoever. As Jiang Jianming lay motionless in the corner, burning with fever, she crawled all over the small, rundown house, devouring all the food and drink like a starving ghost.
Afterwards, she glanced at the young man who had carried her on his back for a day, seriously contemplating whether she should eat him if he died.
… Many years later, when Lin Ge would personally bake small cookies for Jiang Jianming, she still sighed that someone’s luck had truly hit rock bottom.
Even in the wild areas, someone as heartless as her belonged to the worst of the worst.
Losing his mother, then encountering an old acquaintance from the White Dove Red Leaf Society who didn’t recognize him, risking his life to save a child only to be met with ingratitude… Anyone else would have cursed the heavens.
Fortunately, Jiang Jianming was tough and didn’t die. He was accustomed to illness, and both his body and subconscious had their own set of coping mechanisms.
On the second night after returning home, the young man woke from his stupor. He weakly squinted at the dirty little girl he had brought back and mumbled with a smile, “Let’s give you a name.”
The little girl had taken over his blanket, only her head visible. She glared at him warily with her good eye. “Why did you save this old lady?”
“Old lady”… Who knows where she learned to refer to herself that way. Coming from a little girl of just a few years old, it sounded incredibly out of place.
Jiang Jianming struggled to prop himself up, using his elbow to crawl a short distance. He reached into a broken jar in the corner and pulled out some pills.
Just this small action left him slightly out of breath. “… How long were you lying there?”
“Maybe three days, maybe four.”
“Did anyone pay attention to you?”
“Of course not.”
“So I did.”
The little girl couldn’t understand this. She widened her eyes, “Is your head filled with dog shit!?”
“Little children shouldn’t curse.”
“This old lady will do as she please!”
“You should refer to yourself as ‘I’.”
Jiang Jianming held the pills and glanced around. “Water… did you drink it all?”
The little girl: “Hmph.”
Jiang Jianming said nothing, silently biting the pills and swallowing them dry.
He lay down again and dozed off for a while. In his daze, he heard footsteps.
The dilapidated house was drafty on all sides. The little girl walked up to the young man. She looked down at her savior, inexpertly revealing her crystal bones.
“Tell me, do you have anything else hidden?”
The young man kept his eyes closed, seemingly too lazy to respond to her, or perhaps simply lacking the strength. “Everything’s in the house…”
The little girl bit her lip and stepped forward. “Then I’ll kill you.”
Jiang Jianming’s voice was low, mixed with a muffled sigh. “… I’m a disabled human, I pose no threat to you. Even so, do you still want to kill me?”
The little girl took another step forward.
She didn’t understand why this strange young man had saved her, why he spoke words she couldn’t comprehend.
She only knew that to survive in the wild areas, one must eliminate all threats – this was one of the most important principles.
Jiang Jianming finally opened his eyes and quietly raised his arm.
At some point, an iron-colored handgun had appeared in the young man’s grasp, its muzzle aimed at the person before him.
“!”
The little girl’s face instantly turned pale. She recognized that metal tube – it could take her life in an instant.
Why…
This guy had a gun all along, why did he only bring it out now? Why did he let her steal his food and drink without retaliating!?
After a tense five or six seconds, Jiang Jianming lowered the gun first. Immediately, the little girl leapt to the side like a rabbit, tumbling and scrambling away.
…
Two or three days later, the little girl came back.
She had no choice – she was starving.
Unable to find food, she had resorted to licking mud. Finally, she decided to try her luck again and rob that easily bullied disabled human.
Maybe he didn’t fire the gun that day because it had no bullets?
When the little girl arrived, Jiang Jianming was eating.
Before she could even reveal her crystal bones, the young man saw her and calmly broke his food in half, tossing one part outside.
After the little girl devoured the food like a hungry tiger, she looked up… to see the young man holding that iron gun again.
The little girl backed down once more, fleeing quickly.
Over the next period, this scene repeated several times.
—It must be said that compared to his mother, Jiang Jianming was more composed, with a touch of more cool decisiveness.
Having wandered the wild areas since childhood, surviving in the cracks between lords and thugs, he had figured out his own way. Besides supporting himself, he could barely manage to support one more person.
At first, the little girl thought she had controlled a slave, someone she could exploit whenever she was hungry.
It took about ten days before she realized something wasn’t quite right… it seemed like she was being kept.
Like a stray dog or cat being fed at a fixed time and place.
The shocking realization came when the young man’s face grew unusually serious one day, demanding that she take a bath, or at least wipe herself down – she was too smelly.
Then he told her. “I’ve thought of a name for you – Ge, from poetry. As for a surname… if you don’t have one, you can use mine, Jiang. Or choose one you like.”
“???”
The little girl’s expression cracked. She exploded in rage. “Disabled human, what do you take this old lady for!?”
At that time, the young man sat inside, calmly weaving a basket with cut bamboo strips. “Actually, the day before I picked you up, my mother passed away.”
“I had just finished cremating my mother when I suddenly wanted to raise something, to give myself a reason to live on… Do you want to be my daughter, or my sister?”
Raise something…
The little girl was completely bewildered. “Are you sick!? Is your head really filled with dog shit!?”
Jiang Jianming: “Don’t curse. Refer to yourself as ‘I’.”
After speaking, the young man lowered his head and coughed lightly. He looked pale and thin, always appearing weak and harmless at such times.
But the next moment he smiled, pressing his lips together, and said softly, “So, you don’t have a surname? Then…”
The little girl felt chills down her spine. She absolutely refused to become the sister, let alone daughter, of a sick, disabled human. “I do! This old lady has a surname!! It’s…”
She glanced at the bamboo strips in Jiang Jianming’s hands and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “Uh… Lin, yes, this old lady’s surname is Lin!”
Jiang Jianming: “Good, Lin Ge.”
The little girl: “?”
“This old lady never fucking agreed to that name!!”
Jiang Jianming ignored Lin Ge’s furious protests and said thoughtfully. “Your eye…”
Lin Ge’s left eye was getting worse. The poor in the wild areas lacked knowledge, but he knew that if the eyeball wasn’t removed soon, the infection could spread to her brain, and it would be too late.
The next day, Jiang Jianming put on his dirty cloak and went to “One-eyed Leopard’s” territory, not returning until late at night.
The following day, little Lin Ge came again.
She had actually cleaned herself up a bit, at least looking like a girl now rather than a ball of trash.
Jiang Jianming sat inside and beckoned to her. Lin Ge hopped in, arrogantly putting her hands on her hips and shouting that she was hungry.
It was then that she noticed some expensive-looking, intricate items scattered around Jiang Jianming. Lin Ge didn’t recognize what they were, but she saw a meaty bone in today’s bowl – meat!
The little girl swallowed hard, sat down, and started gnawing on it with both hands.
After only two minutes, she began to feel dizzy and collapsed to the ground with a thud.
“You… you…”
Jiang Jianming watched her fall impassively. Only then did he stand up, methodically binding the girl’s hands and feet with special restraints, and injecting her with a drug that would prevent her from releasing her crystal bones for a short time.
“What… what are you going to do…”
Lin Ge felt weak all over. She was utterly terrified, thinking to herself that she had been too careless. How could she have let her guard down completely?
This disabled human was surely going to kill her now. Where did he get these injections from…
Jiang Jianming brandished a scalpel. “I’m going to remove your eyeball.”
Lin Ge was instantly scared to tears, screaming. “Waaah!!! You pervert, no, no, release this old lady!!”
Jiang Jianming: “Do you know you were wrong? Will you still be fierce?”
The cold blade hovered above her eyeball. Lin Ge wailed even more miserably, “I know I was wrong, I won’t dare again! Please spare me—”
The blade moved an inch closer.
“Brother! Father!! Waaah I won’t dare again!! I’ll do whatever you say from now on, I’ll be your sister or daughter and take care of you for the rest of your life, serve you, support you in your old age—waaah!!!”
“Will you still use foul language?”
“No, never again—”
“Refer to yourself as ‘I’.”
“Haven’t I been using it already!?”
“No killing people randomly.”
“I’ve never killed anyone, really!!”
Suddenly, she felt a cold pain in her wrist as anesthetic was injected into her vein.
In an instant, the crying little girl’s eyes slowly rolled back, and finally, her eyes closed as she fell asleep with her head tilted to one side.
…
When Lin Ge woke up again, her diseased left eye had already been removed.
The girl didn’t yet know that the young man had done this to save her life. She only realized she wasn’t dead, and that she had only lost the eye she couldn’t see with anyway. She immediately sighed in relief as if she had survived a disaster.
Jiang Jianming was cleaning up. Seeing her awake, he said without turning around. “You’re up? If you don’t want to die, grab the bundle beside you and follow me immediately.”
His voice was colder than usual, his expression more frightening than when he had demanded she take a bath.
Lin Ge had never seen him like this before. She forgot about settling scores and stammered, clutching the bandage over her eye. “W-what are we doing?”
Jiang Jianming turned his head back, a flash of cold light in his brow, “No time to explain, let’s go first.”
That day, Lin Ge was confusedly taken away from the broken house by Jiang Jianming.
They climbed a hill at night and saw the fire below, where the lords were engaging in large-scale warfare.
The sound of bombings scared Lin Ge so much her legs went weak. The little girl clung to Jiang Jianming’s waist, her messy little head trying hard to burrow into his cloak, but after a while, she couldn’t help but peek out to look.
“It looks like One-Eyed Leopard and Black Iron are fighting. Who will win?”
“One-Eyed Leopard.”
“How do you know?”
“I made the battle plan.”
Lin Ge jumped three feet high in shock. “!!?”
Jiang Jianming: “I said I had a way to help them swallow Black Iron’s territory, wanting to exchange it for surgical equipment and some medicine. After hearing my plan, they probably thought it was feasible, so they gave me the things.”
The youth’s face was illuminated by the alternating light and dark of the fire below. Jiang Jianming’s tone was too calm, making Lin Ge unsure of what expression to make.
She hesitated for a long time before asking, “Really… really?”
“If you’re that amazing, haven’t you become One-Eyed Leopard’s great contributor? Why are we running?”
Jiang Jianming shook his head. “These lords are not good people. I don’t want to join them.”
“But if I refuse to join, One-Eyed Leopard will definitely worry that I might be recruited by other lords in the future, becoming a threat to them instead… Since they can’t have me, they’ll choose to kill me.”
Lin Ge’s eyes widened, holding her breath in tension.
The next moment, her head was ruffled twice.
The youth turned around, the night wind blowing up a corner of his cloak illuminated by the firelight.
“While they’re fighting, let’s leave this place and live somewhere else.”
“Wait, that’s not right. The lords want to kill you, what does that have to do with me!?”
By the time Lin Ge realized this, it was about four days later.
The youth had taken the little girl across half of the Z2 wild area, moving from the northeast corner to the southwest corner.
Taking this migration as an opportunity, Jiang Jianming changed his name.
The people of the White Dove Red Leaf Society knew his original name. If someone defected, then the empire would also know — Helga’s child was called Jiang Jianming, a disabled human.
He told Lin Ge that from now on, he should be called Dawn Aslan.
A somewhat strange name, Lin Ge thought secretly. People in the wild area rarely had proper names, usually going by things like “Old Wang Head”, “Blind Dog”, “Third Liu” and the like.
However, Aslan’s constitution was truly poor. The long journey had exhausted his strength, and then he fell ill with a fever.
The long night dragged on, with biting cold winds. Lin Ge lit a fire and sat hugging her knees beside it, staring at the youth’s sleeping face. She couldn’t understand how such a fragile disabled human had managed to survive in the wild area until now.
If she were to snatch away the food, water, and medicine and run away now, this guy would probably really die.
The youth suddenly furrowed his brow tightly, gasping and moaning urgently.
Lin Ge was startled. “What’s wrong with you!?”
She frantically propped up the upper half of the youth’s body, letting him lean on her shoulder, rubbing his chest to help him breathe.
Jiang Jianming opened his eyes hazily, his gaze taking a long time to focus. He looked at her, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
“Forget it…” Lin Ge thought glumly. This disabled human was quite clever and skilled. And she had crystal bones. If the two of them became partners, they would surely be able to get lots of food and never go hungry again.
Hmm, just partners… only partners!
She definitely wasn’t being adopted!
The youth and the little girl lived together.
When Jiang Jianming’s condition improved, the two of them built a new small house together.
Just as Lin Ge had imagined, their “partnership” went smoothly. By the end of the first month, they had even caught wild game and eaten meat.
This wasn’t meat picked up from garbage, gnawed on by nobles, or expired and stinking! It was fresh meat!
Lin Ge cheered jubilantly.
She acted like a big sister, puffing out her chest and patting Jiang Jianming. “Life will only get better from now on. We have so much food, as long as we eat our fill every day, you won’t get sick again.”
“In a few years, we can go check out the city area. You’re so educated, if we get lucky, maybe some city people would be willing to take us in as servants.”
“Dawn, you really need to thank this ol-… uh, thank me, you know.”
Jiang Jianming looked at Lin Ge with a smile.
But in his heart, he thought this might not be so good.
Losing his mother had already taught him how empty and distant the dream of hoping for better days was. He didn’t want to give Lin Ge unrealistic fantasies.
This girl had also been used to a miserable life in the wild area since childhood, so accepting reality shouldn’t be a problem.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said.
“What is it?” The little girl turned back, her face beaming with a brilliant smile, stars seemingly twinkling in her remaining eye.
…This is how people should live, Jiang Jianming thought in a daze.
They should have light in their hearts and yearn for the future; even if they’re in poverty, they should firmly believe that effort will be rewarded. Only then can one be considered truly alive, living like a human.
“I’m a chronic crystal disorder patient.”
The youth lowered his gaze and curved his brow, speaking softly. “I might not be able to accompany you for three to five years. You should make your own plans early.”
“…”
The smile on the little girl’s face was still hanging in her dimples.
The stars in her eye withered.
“Wh-what?”
Jiang Jianming patted her head. “It’s nothing, it’s still early. I’m just telling you in advance, be careful not to get too close when I have an episode, so you don’t get infected.”
“After I die, will you go see the dawn for me and tell me what ‘good days’ look like… okay?”
