Great Wilderness

Mother took the baby girl, curled up in a filthy swaddling cloth, with short silver hair and an exquisitely cute face.

Father told her that a disaster victim had left the child at their doorstep that morning. The baby had been freezing for quite some time; if she had not been found, she might have frozen to death.

The victim had probably believed they could not afford to raise the child, so they left her at the doorstep of a family they thought could.

But in reality, your family was also nearly unable to put food on the table because of this natural disaster.

After much consideration, your kind-hearted and beautiful mother decided to adopt the girl.

However, before they could even name her, they had to personally make a trip to the Oasis District to secure the disaster relief funds. Otherwise, many people in the Great Wilderness would not survive the winter.

Before they set off, Father told you that a round trip from District 86 of the Great Wilderness to the Oasis District would take no more than seven days.

The remaining grain in the rice jar and the tin of powdered milk they had bought would be enough for you and your little sister to live on for half a month. Thus, Father entrusted you with a difficult task: take good care of your sister during the seven days he was gone.

You gladly accepted the task, because in your heart, you were already a man capable of standing on his own.

After your parents set off for the Oasis District.

Bai Heng carefully imitated the way Mother cared for his little sister. Every day, he put her to sleep, told her bedtime stories, and whenever she cried from hunger, he took powdered milk from the bag, mixed it with hot water, and fed it to her little by little.

Since his parents had yet to give his sister a name, Bai Heng called the adorable baby Brownie, after Mother's favorite kind of cake.

Day after day passed. More than half the powdered milk in the tin had been used, and the agreed-upon seventh day arrived.

Early that morning, Bai Heng held Brownie in her swaddling cloth and watched warm orange sunlight fall across the snow before their door, gazing expectantly in the direction his parents had left.

Yet even when the dark-red afterglow of dusk fell across Bai Heng's face, he still saw no sign of them.

"Maybe... something happened on the road, and they'll be back later."

Bai Heng convinced himself of this, and every day afterward, he waited at the door, staring at the endless horizon of the wilderness in the distance.

But another seven days passed. When he scraped at the powdered milk tin with the copper spoon and could no longer dig out even half a spoonful, Bai Heng suddenly became afraid.

He was not afraid that his parents had abandoned them. In his heart, that was impossible.

What he feared was that the powdered milk was gone, and there was not much food left at home. If this continued, both he and Brownie would starve to death.

On the fifteenth day, Bai Heng poured hot water into the powdered milk tin and rinsed out every last bit of powder, but the milk he made was as thin as water.

He fed the watery milk to Brownie, and Brownie obediently drank it mouthful by mouthful.

Over those fifteen days, Brownie cried whenever she was hungry. But whenever he brought the milk to her, she would quietly stretch out her soft little hand, as if she wanted Bai Heng to hold it.

So Bai Heng held her little hand while feeding his sister the milk that was as thin as water.

When Brownie tasted the diluted milk, her large gray eyes clearly blinked.

She could tell that it tasted wrong, that it was very different from before, but she still drank every last drop of the thin milk with little snuffling breaths.

After she finished, she still stared at him with bright gray eyes, as though telling him she was hungry.

Seeing this, Bai Heng first soothed Brownie, then went to the kitchen and cooked the last half-bowl of rice into a little porridge.

Mother had warned him that a baby this age could not drink porridge, so Bai Heng tried feeding Brownie some rice broth instead.

Fortunately, Brownie could barely drink it.

Bai Heng did not touch the remaining porridge. He left it in the pot.

That night, Bai Heng put Brownie to sleep early, draped himself in Father's overcoat, and ran to the town Father had governed.

He went door to door explaining the situation, hoping to ask for some powdered milk or food.

Because Father had gotten along well with people, the townsfolk treated Bai Heng politely. But under the effects of the famine, few people in the Great Wilderness could even fill their own stomachs.

They truly had no surplus food to spare for Bai Heng. Even if they did, they had to keep it in case of future trouble.

However, just as Bai Heng was returning home empty-handed and dejected, one family remembered Father's kindness. They gave him a peck of rice and a bag of powdered milk that had been expired for some time.

With that food, Bai Heng managed to hold on for a while longer.

Until one day, while Bai Heng went to sleep hungry, he heard noisy shouting and cursing in his dreams, along with Brownie's crying: "Aaah—aaah—aaah!"

When Bai Heng opened his eyes, the clanging sounds became even clearer.

After getting up and soothing Brownie for a while, Bai Heng unlocked the bedroom door.

But when he saw the scene before him, he froze.

The earthenware jars in the house had all been smashed open. A group of people wielded mallets and iron hammers, pounding away at Bai Heng's home as though searching for something.

Bai Heng stood there silently, watching their every move. These people seemed to choose to ignore him as they continued rummaging through cabinets and boxes.

Until the sofa, cupboards, tea table, and every piece of furniture had been overturned and the glass smashed, they still found nothing.

At last, the man leading them noticed Bai Heng standing in the corner, as well as the final room that had not yet been searched.

With a cheap cigarette clamped between his lips, he swaggered up to Bai Heng and made a threatening gesture as if he were about to burn him with the cigarette butt.

But Bai Heng did not dodge. He merely stood there in silence and asked, "What are you doing?"

The leader saw that he had failed to scare Bai Heng. He took a drag from his cigarette, ignored Bai Heng's question, and asked directly, "Hey, brat, where did your family hide the food and money?"

"Food? Money?" Bai Heng asked back in a low voice.

The leader shoved Bai Heng, his tone arrogant. "Brat, quit playing dumb! We people were really blind to have elected your father as our executive officer. But look at him—he stuffed all the disaster relief money from above into his own pockets."

"If he hadn't gone to the Oasis District a month ago to sell off the loot and gotten caught by the higher-ups, we'd have spent our whole lives treating him as some great benefactor worthy of our gratitude! He sure ran off easily enough. He and that young lady from the Oasis District were both arrested, and last week, they killed themselves in prison out of guilt. They left us disaster victims here to freeze and starve! What a fucking beast!"

"Killed... themselves?" In that instant, bone-deep cold spread through Bai Heng's body. His eyes went blank as he repeated those words in a daze.

The man still seemed unsatisfied. He pressed the cigarette butt against Bai Heng's shoulder through his clothes and said, "Brat, the Oasis District will send over a new administrator this afternoon. I'm here to confiscate the stolen goods, so get out of my way!"

With that, he tried to force his way in.

Bai Heng was only around six years old. Naturally, he could not stop a large adult man, so he said softly, "You can search if you want. You can even tear the whole house apart. Just let my sister and me leave first."

The man glanced at the crying baby in the crib and snorted. "Get the fuck out of here already!"

On the surface, Bai Heng remained exceptionally calm. He silently returned to the room, picked up Brownie, who was crying because of the noise, carried her outside, and numbly soothed the little sister in his arms.

After they left, Bai Heng stood outside the house.

The snow season in the Great Wilderness had not yet passed. Bai Heng wrapped his sister inside his cotton coat, keeping the snow from falling on her as he waited in silence.

But after searching for a long time, one of the men finally said, "Boss, we only found a small bag of... powdered milk. It's expired, too. And it looks like there isn't any rice left in the jar."

As he said this, Bai Heng, standing outside, asked the leader, "Do you still think my family pocketed all the disaster relief money?"

At those words, the leader's body visibly twitched, and the others around him also sensed that something was wrong.

But the next moment, the leader continued cursing, "Who the fuck knows whether they hid the money and food somewhere else... As for you, maybe you're the bastard child of that young lady who's been ridden by a thousand men and pressed beneath ten thousand—"

Before he could finish.

The man suddenly heard the sound of a wall cracking behind him. With a thunderous crash, one wall abruptly split apart, and cement and wooden stakes fell onto him, crushing him to the ground.

"Ahhh—"

As he fell, he noticed Bai Heng lightly tapping a data panel with his fingers.

He recognized the thing—an Aetherium Chip. But how could such a small child possibly...

Bai Heng ignored his screams. He merely walked nearby and gently placed Brownie on the steps before the door.

Then he operated the Aetherium Chip and entered a command:

"Heavy Pressure."

The man pinned beneath the stone wall suddenly felt a crushing force pressing down on him. His arms lost all strength.

At that moment, Bai Heng stepped forward, picked up a mallet from the ground, and found it somewhat heavy...

Then he picked up an iron nail that had rolled onto the ground.

He aimed it at the man's hand.

Seeing that Bai Heng was serious, the man's pupils shrank. "Brat, think this through! Deliberately injuring someone in the Great Wilderness is—"

Bai Heng showed no expression. He simply interrupted him flatly. "Next time, clean up your mouth."

As soon as the words fell, a dull hammer blow rang out. The iron nail pierced flesh, and blood splattered across the boy's tender face.

The Oasis District, Great Wilderness, and Scrap Mountain are all landmarks from Silver Wolf's character profile. Try to keep the references as close to the original as possible, without forcing too many references.