The first hand must have belonged to the blind madman himself. He had dragged Gao Ming into the depths of the Black Pit, and into the shadows of his own memories.
The second pair of hands belonged to a married couple, likely the blind man's biological parents. These hands kept beating him, forcing him to leave.
The third pair of hands most likely belonged to a human trafficker, who might have intended to turn the blind man, still a child then, into a roadside beggar.
The owner of the fourth pair of hands had given the blind man a sense of security. It seemed he had been raised by these last hands.
She had cooked for him and taught him all sorts of everyday skills. She probably wasn't related to him by blood; perhaps she had acted purely out of kindness.
In this world without sound or color, those hands were like the last straw a drowning person could grasp.
As he learned to weave bamboo baskets and mats, Gao Ming kept imagining what she looked like. This kind person who had helped the madman had never appeared in the Dog Pit Case.
What happened afterward?
The hands patted his shoulder sternly, urging Gao Ming to learn faster. Their owner seemed worried about something.
Gao Ming also had a terrible feeling. He tried to identify the faint, unpleasant odor.
It wasn't strong, and it definitely wasn't the smell of a corpse or body odor. It smelled vaguely like ammonia.
A possibility occurred to Gao Ming. Some patients with kidney disease couldn't properly expel waste because of kidney failure. The water-soluble toxins retained in their bodies circulated through their blood, causing them to give off a faint ammonia smell when they sweated or breathed through their mouths.
*Her illness might be