Ten years ago, Yinglong and Xiangliu, the ancient gods and demons, fought against each other in the East China Sea.

The dragons fought, overturned rivers and seas, and set off huge waves that shook the mainland of China. The vast fertile land on the southeast coast was swallowed up by the huge waves, the earth shook and the mountains shook, causing countless deaths and injuries. Tens of millions of people were displaced, and the sea was dyed red with blood.

That year, countless refugees left their homes and had to leave the fields where their ancestors had lived for generations, dragging their families with them to migrate to northwest China——

The sky is filled with snowy feathers, drifting silently. The north wind is bleak, and the sky and earth are vast.

On the vast expanse of wilderness, only dozens of small black dots were visible, forming a crooked curve that stretched toward the north.

It was an escape team formed spontaneously by the refugees. The men carried pots and pans on their backs and bowed heavily, the women held their crying children, and the old people walked tremblingly in the snow with crutches.

Walking one foot at a time, cursing the unfair God:

"What a stinking god, what a thief! Monsters and monsters are running rampant everywhere. It just rained heavily for ten days and a half, and now it's March and it's snowing so heavily. It's impossible to survive this day!"

"Demons are in power and evil spirits are rampant. Do you understand this after you have lived so long?" A tall man with thick hands and feet sighed and said, "This world has been in chaos for a long time. It has been in chaos.

!”

At this moment, a skinny old man in the team suddenly swayed and plunged into the snow, making a muffled "pop" sound. Hearing the sound, everyone around him stopped and stood where he was.

The ground was motionless, and dozens of pairs of eyes stared at the old man, with an inexplicable and complicated light flashing in their eyes.

The only middle-aged man in the team dressed as a scribe walked hard through the snow, walked to the old man, squatted down, and put two fingers under the old man's nose. After a moment, the scribe straightened up and shook his head to everyone.

In an instant, those motionless people, men, women, old and young, all rushed up in a swarm and ran towards the old man.

A woman wearing a flowered headscarf rushed the fastest. While waving her arms and hitting those who tried to pass her with her elbows, she made deep footprints in the snow one after another. She rushed

He went to the old man's body, pulled off the baggage from behind the body, quickly opened the cloth, and pulled out a dry pancake.

"Give it to me! Give it to me!" The crowd scrambled and scrambled. Those who were knocked down were knocked down and wailed in pain. All kinds of sounds spread in the snow, and were covered by the falling snow in the vast white snow.

under.

The woman with the colorful headscarf climbed onto the ground on her hands and knees, and struggled to crawl out from the rushing legs and feet of the old and young. At this time, her hair was all messy, her clothes were messy, and she looked like a crazy woman.

She didn't have time to clean up, so she hurriedly walked to the side and waved to the two figures:

"Old man, Huzi, come on, come on!"

At her greeting, a middle-aged man with a sallow complexion and a sickly look, and a young man wrapped in a blue and gray cotton-padded jacket, who looked about thirteen or fourteen years old and had a tough head, walked towards her. The three of them came together.

Making a pile, the woman broke half of the round pancake and handed it to the boy first. Then she divided the remaining half into two and ate them separately with her husband.

Compared with the women and men devouring the food, the boy named "Huzi" was a little hesitant. He lowered his head to look at the dry biscuits in his hand, then turned to look at a thin and small figure not far away, and finally whispered: "

Mom, I'm not hungry, I'll give this half to my sister..."

Before he could finish speaking, the woman slapped the pancake back in his hand. The woman stuffed half of the pancake into her arms and said, "Don't worry about that girl! Huzi, listen to my mother, girl."

My sons are all outsiders, and they will be thrown away when they get married. Only you are my mother’s darling. I’ll keep this pancake for you first, and when you’re hungry, you’ll take care of it later, ah?”

The young man lowered his eyes and thought for a moment. He raised his head and forced a smile and said, "Mom, I'd better eat it first."

"Be good." The woman rubbed the boy's head lovingly, handed him half a piece of dry biscuit, and watched him eat it with a smile. The tiger pretended to enjoy the nibbling, but secretly left the small piece and hid it in the palm of his hand.

inside.

Not long after, the team moved forward again. On the withered old man's body, only a pair of obscene trousers was left to cover his body. Not only the clothes, crutches, but also cloth shoes were taken off. The drifting snow feathers quietly covered his body.

Little by little, a piece of white clothing slowly gathered on Wen's skin. Looking from a distance, it looked like he was wearing a shroud.

Huzi deliberately slowed down his pace, and when the woman wasn't paying attention, he sneakily ran towards the end of the team, towards the thin figure.

It was an eleven or two-year-old girl with a pretty face and beautiful features, but her face was bloodless and her lips turned blue when she moved. She was wearing a single coat, shivering in the wind and snow, and kept rubbing herself.

On the two small hands on the arms, the five fingers were like carrots, red and swollen.

"Xiaojia, I brought you something to eat."

Huzi lowered his voice and handed the other person a small piece of dry biscuit that he had hidden for a long time. But the girl he called "Xiaojia" didn't appreciate it at all. She made a "pop" sound and waved heavily.

After opening the boy's hand, the sesame seed cake, which was only half the size of a palm, immediately fell into the snow.

"Who wants you to be kind? Do you think I don't know? That woman wants me to freeze to death, and she can even rip off the lower layer of fabric and sew patches on your coat."

The girl said coldly. Her beautiful willow-leaf eyebrows were now frowning into the Chinese character "Chuan" with anger and resentment. Those bright black and white eyes burst out with resentment and unwillingness.

Huzi looked helplessly at his biological sister in front of him. He touched the cotton-padded jacket on his body uneasily, and then secretly glanced at his sister's ragged and thin clothes. He muttered and defended in a low voice: "I...I didn't want to either...

"

"Ha, you don't want to?" The girl sneered, her shrill voice cut through the wind and snow, appearing indescribably harsh:

"Yes, you don't want to! Of course you don't want to! My little sister was born just three months ago. My parents and you didn't even give her a name. I only held her and called her Xiaoxue, because it was snowing heavily on the day she was born.

...Do you know that that woman snatched my little girl from my arms and sold her to a trafficker just to exchange for your cotton-padded clothes?"

Huzi was stunned. He took a step back, waved his hands in panic, and defended: "I don't know... I really don't know..."

"Of course you don't know! As long as you have food to eat and clothes to wear, how can you care about others?" The girl stamped her foot bitterly and said bitterly, "But have you never thought about it? Why do you have new clothes?

And my little sister is missing?"

"I...I..." Huzi hesitated, but was speechless: naturally, his mother never told him these things, but he felt vaguely uneasy in his heart...

Speaking of sadness, a line of clear tears fell down the girl's cheek, and she asked in a trembling voice with her teeth chattering from the cold:

"My little sister is just three months old and she doesn't even have a name. She was sold for your coat just because she is a girl?"

"We are all born to one father and one mother. Why can you be well fed and clothed while I can only starve, freeze and suffer, just because I am a girl?"

"Why can you follow your parents, who love and take care of you, but I don't know when I will be sold for a few pitiful copper coins, just because I am a girl?"

The questions one after another were like hammers, hitting Huzi's heart hard. He looked at his sister at a loss, looking at the pale, thin and small girl with unyielding eyes.

The bright girl raised her thin and slender arms, wiped her eyes fiercely with the back of her hands, and then said coldly:

"Take your cake and get out! Whether I, Zhong Xijia, am dead or alive, you don't have to worry about!"

Although he was two years older than the other person, the young man couldn't even say a word of questioning. He just picked up the small piece of cake in a panic and ran out as if he was running away, never daring to look at the other person again.

After that, Huzi never spoke to his sister again. He would occasionally look at the end of the team from a distance, watching the thin figure stumbling through the snow. She would fight for it like her mother did.

She would snatch the deceased's clothes and food, and then devour them. Sometimes if there was no food for several days, she would use her little hands covered with frostbite to pick up a handful of snow and stuff it into her mouth haphazardly...

But one day, that thin figure was no longer visible. Instead, his mother held two hot steamed buns and said to him with a smile: "Huzi, eat quickly, eat quickly! It's still hot!"

"

The young man was stunned, his mind went blank, and he could only stare blankly at the two steaming buns in front of him. Suddenly, his stomach was churning, and acid water couldn't help but rush up his throat.

He vomited it out with a "vomit" sound. He vomited so much that nothing was left in his stomach. Then he weakly grabbed the woman's sleeve, shook it desperately and asked:

"Where's Xiaojia? Where's Xiaojia!"

The woman looked away unnaturally and whispered: "I...how do I know..."

The young man no longer showed his usual cowardice, and a blazing flame ignited in his chest. He felt that even his heart was burning, and it made his heart sting. It was so hot that he shouted at the top of his lungs:

"Where's Xiaojia? Where's my sister? Who did you sell her to? Where did you sell her to? Tell me! Tell me!"

The woman seemed frightened by his appearance. She could only raise her hand in a panic and point to the west: "Sold to three...three men..."

Huzi pushed the woman away and rushed out like crazy, running all the way to the west. He didn't know how far he ran or how long he ran. There were only two things left in his mind.

Character:

younger sister.

Sister, that is his blood sister! For more than ten years, he has not been able to take care of her for a day. He has never been able to fulfill his responsibility as an elder brother. However, she was sold in exchange for two steamed buns to feed him.

belly...

At dusk, when the setting sun slanted over the abandoned hilltop, Huzi finally saw his sister.

It was a mass grave. Bodies were lying scattered in the field. Not to mention tombstones, there was not even a wooden sign.

Right next to the messy pile of corpses, he saw that thin body.

The clothes were not covering the body, and the lower body was covered with stains.

She fell next to a big stone. The stone was covered with blood. The blood drew tangled lines on the stone and dripped on the grass.

The young man's hands and feet were trembling. He walked towards the thin body tremblingly step by step. He squatted beside her, took off his clothes, carefully covered her body, and then held her tightly in his arms.

There was no longer the usual anger on that beautiful face. Her eyes were closed tightly, and there was a huge bloody hole on her forehead. The blood flowed on her cheeks, making her skin extremely pale.

"Xiaojia... Xiaojia... wake up, you get up and scold me... It's my fault, it's my fault... You get up and beat me, okay..."

The boy called his sister's name over and over again, but he still couldn't wake up his closed eyes. Finally, the boy looked up to the sky and let out a sad cry:

"ah--"

A hoarse voice pierced the sky, like a beast that had lost its cubs, howling loudly in the wilderness.

The last ray of sunlight gradually faded away.

The night was gloomy, crows were chirping, and a gust of evil wind blew over the mass graves, chilling people's bones. A low and hoarse whimpering sound came from nowhere, as if a ghost was crying at night. But the young man did not show any signs of it.

He didn't feel afraid. He even expected that the person in his arms would turn into a ghost and come out to claim his life. In this way, he could say a word to her and say "I'm sorry."

Suddenly, the mass grave lit up with fireflies. The young man raised his head suddenly and saw a tall and thin figure standing not far away.
To be continued...