Abandoned Infant in a World of Ice and Snow

Suddenly hearing an infant's crying, Old Man Jiang jolted with a start and hurriedly checked the grandson in his arms, but it was not him; the crying came from the distance.

Perhaps it was someone else, similar to him earlier, hurrying along the road while carrying a child?

Yet looking at the vast expanse of white in the distance, seeing no one at all, Old Man Jiang thought again: could it be a situation similar to that of the mother and child frozen to death, only the child was not yet dead?

Thinking of this, Old Man Jiang instinctively followed the sound in search.

He did not search far before arriving at an icy lake. Upon the frozen lake surface, two naked infants were shockingly lying there!

"Ah?"

Old Man Jiang walked over with trembling steps and saw that the two infants were fair and tender, merely a foot long, seemingly as though they had just been born.

There happened to be one male infant and one female infant. The male infant closed his eyes and smacked his lips, surprisingly not even crying and making a fuss!

The female infant was comparatively normal, her eyes unable to even open as she wailed desperately. He had been lured here precisely by the girl's crying.

"Oh my..." Old Man Jiang hurried over, simultaneously looking left and right; there was no one else about.

Then where did these two infants come from? In this harsh winter, who had given birth to two children only to abandon them in the frozen wilderness?

Without bothering with so much for the moment, he immediately scooped up the two children and tucked them into his bosom.

Yet right after, he fell heavily to the ground!

He had no strength left. Old Man Jiang was already holding on by a single breath, wanting to take his grandson's corpse back home. Advancing numbly like a walking corpse, he might still have persevered, but with the tossing around just now, holding three children, he truly could not hold them anymore.

He lay right there on the icy lake, panting, not knowing what to do.

How pitiful, how long had they been born? Before even opening their eyes to take a glance at this world, they were going to freeze to death in this ice and snow.

Yet in this age, perhaps it was just like this. It was not the first time Old Man Jiang had seen abandoned infants, except those he had seen before... were all skeletal remains.

In Tea Mountain Village where he lived, almost every year there were one or two such instances of infants perishing prematurely. Some really did die untimely deaths—congenitally sickly or unable to be raised and starved to death—but others... were abandoned.

At the edge of Tea Mountain Village stood an infant tower about a foot high, which was actually a tower-shaped pile built of stones, used specifically for abandoning infants.

Some impoverished families were rather ruthless, directly drowning infants born with illnesses or unable to be raised—many before their eyes had even opened.

Old Man Jiang had once seen floating abandoned infants in the village river. Upon encountering them, he could only helplessly shout, "Whose child is this? Someone collect the corpse for the little one!"

As for certain parents who truly could not bring themselves to do it, they would send the female infant or sickly infant to that tower, never asking after them from then on and leaving them to fend for themselves. This would make those parents feel a bit better inside, because they would fantasize that a kindhearted person would take the abandoned infant home to raise properly until adulthood. Yet this was nothing more than self-deception.

Old Man Jiang had once gone to look inside the infant tower, but after seeing it once, he never dared to go again.

That scene made him unforgettable for the rest of his life. He realized that all the infants were eaten alive by mosquitoes, rats, and ants. Aside from crying, they could do nothing.

"Don't cry, Grandpa is keeping you company..." Old Man Jiang murmured.

When a person is about to die, they always fall into reminiscence.

Perhaps, this was fate... At the very end of his life, he picked up two children. Although they would both freeze to death soon, at least he could still give them some warmth.

"Wuwawa..." The female infant cried desperately, pressed close against Nuo'er's corpse and frozen purple.

Seeing this, Old Man Jiang gritted his teeth and pushed his own biological grandson's corpse out from his embrace, pressing the two little infants more tightly against his heart.

He admonished himself that the living were more important than the dead.

Just like that, he once again plunged into a hazy stupor, but immediately afterward he felt a surge of warmth.

"Cold... No, it's warm... So warm..." Old Man Jiang opened his eyes; he was still lying sideways on the icy lake.

The side pressed against the ice surface had already frozen stiff, yet the area right at his chest was piping hot!

What was going on?

Lowering his head to look, the female infant had long since stopped crying, and the male infant was sleeping soundly as always, even drooling.

Drooling? Old Man Jiang was astonished. In such bitter cold weather, he was nearly frozen stiff and his tears had turned into icicles; how was this child able to produce saliva without it freezing?

"Is my embrace this warm? No... it's this child who is warm!"

It had been a very long time since Old Man Jiang had experienced such a warm embrace; that male infant's whole body was burning hot! It was precisely this warmth that allowed this aged man to hold on once more.

"Is he sick?"

In his view, this was the final burst of lucidity before freezing to death when the cold reached its extreme.

Yet what else could he do?

Old Man Jiang strained his body to move, using the warmth at his chest to gradually mobilize his stiffened limbs.

Just as he was barely managing to crawl up, a shout came from afar: "Look, there's a living person!"

Hearing this sound, Old Man Jiang was overjoyed. Could it be that these two children would be able to survive?

It was no wonder he thought this, because in this great disaster year, refugees like him could not shout with such robust voices, and even less would they care at all whether someone had collapsed in the distance.

"Are they government bailiffs? Has the imperial court provided disaster relief? That's wonderful..."

Old Man Jiang wore a knowing smile, slowly sitting up to look back.

Yet this glance startled him into a jolt.

The newcomers were not hideous in appearance; on the contrary, they were disaster victims and refugees just like him.

"Turns out to be a withered old man." A party of three had arrived, looking quite disappointed after seeing clearly.

The three were not robust, and their appearances were even somewhat honest and thick-headed, but the words they spoke were extremely ruthless: "This old man is old and withered, not much meat on him. Eating him isn't as good as picking up a frozen chunk of meat by the roadside; thaw it slowly and it can melt."

Upon hearing this, Old Man Jiang knew these three would not eat him.

"Eh? There's a child here..."

Hearing this, Old Man Jiang tightened his embrace, hunching right there in a posture of keeping himself warm.

"Sigh, it's already frozen into an ice lump." As it turned out, what this group saw was the corpse of his biological grandson that Old Man Jiang had pushed out of his bosom.

"Let's go." The leader waved a hand, and the three turned and left.

From beginning to end, they did not speak a single word to the old man, acting as if they were simply picking out meat to buy at the vegetable market.

Probably they never imagined that alongside a frozen dead child lying beside the old man, there would still be two soft infants in his arms.

"Hoo..." Old Man Jiang breathed a sigh of relief.

Yet before he had time to rejoice, the female infant in his arms started crying again. Infants like this easily woke up from the slightest movement.

"Ah?" Hearing the sound, the three refugees all turned their heads together, their expressions ecstatic.

Old Man Jiang struggled to crawl up and turned his head to run, but before he had run a few steps he tumbled down.

His legs and feet were numb, and furthermore, the icy lake was no match for roads with deep snow—it was far too slick.

"Old man, so you were still hiding one..."

"Oh my, it's two!"

They rushed over and pried the old man's hands open, revealing a male and a female infant, and were simply wild with joy.

These two little infants looked far too tender, fair, smooth, and distinctively different from the children carried by other refugees at a single glance.

"Stop!"

"Beasts! Stop!"

Anger rushed to Old Man Jiang's heart, but how could a withered old man on the verge of death contend against three strong-bodied young men with full bellies?

With the greatest of ease he was pinned to the ground, and the pair of infants was snatched away.

The female infant wailed loudly, her body trembling as she was held upside down by her ankle. The male infant still did not cry, his head clamped by a large palm!

Judging by the strength in that grip, they simply did not care if they pinched the little child to death.

Old Man Jiang's eyes were bloodshot and his eyes were about to burst as he blurted out, "Let go of my grandson! That is my grandson, you cannot eat him!"

Yet the three young men paid him no heed at all, hoisting the two infants as if carrying two blocks of meat and striding away.

Old Man Jiang crawled up once more, his stiff hands and feet limping in pursuit behind them.

Neither did the others care; it was evidently not their first time doing this, and they simply did not regard this half-dead 'dried corpse' in their eyes.

The three walked about a li and arrived at a ruin, which was probably some small village crushed flat by heavy snow.

And right within the ruins, there was actually a campfire with an iron pot set upon it, water boiling inside.

"Eh? Cook, did you really get the fire going for you?"

"The wind has stopped and the snow has stopped. If I couldn't get a fire going again, I might as well not live."

As it turned out, there were four people in total. Three had gone out to search for food while one had been left behind to tend the fire.

"How come they're so small?" The cook turned back to look at the two tender pink infants, unable to help his mind wandering.

Especially the crying female infant, whose weeping left him hesitant to speak.

"This female infant is noisy as hell, into the pot she goes first!" One of them casually made to toss the female infant into the pot.

The cook shouted instinctively, "Wait!"

The three were stunned, asking, "What is it?"

The cook took the female infant, righted her, held her in his embrace, and said, "The water hasn't boiled yet."

"What does that matter?" The three found it baffling; they had even eaten raw meat in previous meals!

The cook said stubbornly, "I started the fire, so how they're cooked is my call!"

The others didn't care either, figuring the cook's urge to cook a dish had acted up.

Before long, the water was bubbling and rolling.

Yet the cook stroked the female infant's frozen stiff face as if he didn't see it, and the three exchanged glances, preparing to drop the male infant into the pot first.

"This male infant is piping hot and doesn't even cry; is he sick?"

"Which of the meat we eat isn't sick? What is there to fear!"

"That's true!"

Just as they were speaking, a hoarse voice came from behind: "Stop! Let go of my grandson, I'll give you something to eat!"

Old Man Jiang finally limped over. Seeing the two children had not yet gone into the pot, he breathed a sigh of relief, quickly piling on a smile and pleading, "Eat me! Eat me instead!"

The cook glanced at Old Man Jiang and let out a slight sigh.

The refugee holding the male infant shook his head: "Eating you isn't as good as digging up a corpse anywhere to eat."

"You have fire, you have a pot, you don't have to kill my grandson... I'll go find some for you, I know where there are more infant corpses!" Old Man Jiang pleaded while hunching over as he approached, gripping a knife in his bosom.

The cook chimed in with a remark: "That's true too..."

Hearing this, the hand Old Man Jiang had curled into his bosom paused slightly, releasing the firewood chopper.

Yet under this hesitation, he heard a plop as the male infant was tossed into the pot.

The male infant, who had been sleeping sweetly, suddenly struggled, twisting and twitching in the boiling water before going still.

At this single sight, Old Man Jiang's mind went buzz and turned completely blank.

The refugee chuckled dryly, "This baby hasn't even been weaned; in times like this he couldn't be raised, so I might as well give him a quick release."

Upon hearing this, the other two brothers felt it made some sense. Two newborn children who seemingly hadn't even been alive for a few days probably hadn't tasted a single mouthful of milk; how could this be raised?

Rather than starving and freezing to death, it was better to let them have a good meal.

"Old man, this is your grandson, right? His meat saved our lives, so we'll give you a share too..."

The refugee was still talking when he saw a flash of blade light.

Pfft!

His head rolled to the ground, fresh blood staining the white snow.

"Ah!"

"He has a knife!"

The remaining three were terrified out of their wits and backed away repeatedly!

The cook widened his eyes, never expecting this withered, half-dead old man to be so ferocious!

That knife strike just then was too fast—so fast that by the time they reacted, the man was already dead.

They had never looked down on this old man, nor did they expect him to hide a firewood chopper. With just this broken firewood chopper, he had severed a person's head in an instant; this meant strength, speed, and even angles had all reached a certain degree. Was this old man an executioner?

He drew his blade without the slightest hesitation, and even possessed a murderous aura—he was an old soldier! The kind who had killed people on the battlefield!

That was it. The chaotic era had not ended long ago; for a commoner of such advanced age, if he had never served as a soldier, that would have been the strange thing.

"Grandson..." Old Man Jiang took a few strides to the pot, whimpering as he reached out to fish him out.

Amidst his trembling right hand, the knife actually dropped to the ground. As it turned out, that knife strike just now had already been his limit, an outburst born of raging fury; he was old after all.

Coupled with his weak body, right now his right wrist was sprained, and the joint could be seen protruding abnormally; in this state he simply could not grip a knife.

"His hand is broken, quickly subdue him!"

"I picked up the knife!"

The cook did not move, while the other two chose to pounce forward, pinning this dangerous old man to the ground and preparing to slaughter him.

The old man's left hand was scalded by the boiling water while his right hand couldn't even be raised. Pinned to the ground by two big men, he burst out crying aloud.

He had already treated the picked-up infant as his own grandson, yet once again, he had lost his kin.

"Grandfather in heaven... Grandfather in heaven!" Old Man Jiang did not know why he was still living; within his roar lay endless supplication.

"Pop!"

Abruptly, a pair of tender pink flesh hands stretched out from the pot, gripping the rim.

The next moment, a chubby head popped out, steaming with vapor and dripping with boiling water...

A pair of round, doll-like eyes darted everywhere looking around.

The gazes of all four gathered over at once, their expressions carrying extreme astonishment.

"A mo—monster!"

p.s.: Apologies. Thanks to 'Pu Wei Yi' and Luo Yan for the patrons, two extra chapters added. If one only thinks the protagonist's outburst is just pacing, then I can only say the early pacing is very slow, and I was courting death.