A thin, drawn-out sound carried far through the woods. After a while, the same sound came from far away. With Xu Huo's keen hearing, he could tell the sounds were coming from different directions. It was probably the villagers who had gone out looking for people, signaling to one another.
It was certainly a good way to do it.
"...Uncle found me. I fell asleep in a hollow tree." The little girl had already told Grandma Yi what happened. Now she looked at Xu Huo with hopeful eyes.
"Thank you for saving the child. Come in and have some tea," Grandma Yi said warmly.
Xu Huo accepted. Grandma Yi was much friendlier than she had been before. He sat down. "I didn't think we'd meet again."
"Outsiders who come here always leave again. Almost none of them ever come back a second time."
She looked at Xu Huo, her eyes glistening with the weariness of age. "Are you looking for your hidden friend?"
Xu Huo shook his head. "The real hidden friends... They should be your friends, right? I'm looking for a Player."
Grandma Yi gave a slight nod, then told him a story from her own life.
She had been thirty at the time and already had a child. Her father had died young, and though her mother was still alive, she had always been in poor health. When she became bedridden, she would sometimes grow confused and fail to recognize people, often mistaking her husband for her father.
Because of this, Grandma Yi learned some things about her parents' past and came to understand certain secret signals that only the two of them knew.
One day, when her mother could no longer eat and was surviving on a little water, she suddenly became lucid and told Grandma Yi