Jiang Zhaoye's compressed biscuits had been bought at an officially certified military supply factory outlet.
The main ingredient was Heavenly Pearl spirit rice produced in the north, with added pork floss made from Mi-pig meat and Jinlin sesame seeds, compressed until rock-hard.
Holding this right up to the mouth of someone on the verge of starving to death, the aroma of spirit rice mixed with meat drifted into their nose with an irresistible pull.
The child was as if entranced. Upon smelling the food, without even fully opening their eyes, they instinctively opened their mouth and bit down, letting out rushed, beast-like whimpers as they ate, while hands as emaciated as chicken claws reached reflexively toward the food.
Jiang Zhaoye looked at the child with a pang of sympathy.
If he hadn't pulled his hand back in time, his fingers holding the biscuit piece would have ended up in the child's mouth too.
He then couldn't help breaking off another piece of compressed biscuit and stuffing it into the hand flailing near the child's mouth.
With eyes half-open, the child groggily grabbed the food and crammed it into their mouth, devouring it greedily.
Jiang Zhaoye watched in a daze, suspecting that even if he placed a stone in the child's hand right now, they would eat it without hesitation.
He blanked out for quite a while, and by the time he snapped out of it, he suddenly realized the darned child seemed to be choking.
Looking as though they were on the verge of choking to death.
In a flurry of panic, Jiang Zhaoye fumbled for his canteen, frantically unscrewed the cap, and hurriedly poured water into the mouth of the child whose eyes were rolling back from choking.
Unexpectedly, the choking child squirmed like an eel, causing the canteen spout to miss their mouth. More than half the water poured over their face and clothes, mixing with dirt and ash to form dirty streams that ran down, leaving the poor child shivering violently in the gloomy, biting cold weather.
Jiang Zhaoye had no choice but to hold down the child's large head with one hand while jamming the canteen spout into their mouth with the other, pouring water in forcefully.
Upon touching the water, the child gulped down several big mouthfuls as if clutching at a lifeline, and only after a long while did they finally catch their breath.
“Th-Thank...” The child, looking like a mud monkey, raised their head and shuddered in fright at Jiang Zhaoye's pitch-black mask, but after a moment's pause, still insisted on expressing thanks.
“Th-Thank... thank you, my Lord, for saving my life...” The child's voice was hoarse, ending in a faint, trembling tone.
Jiang Zhaoye tilted his hooded head, not understanding a word.
However, he remained unhurried; the brilliant Young Master Jiang had long since spent money to load a language translation plugin into his AI assistant, Xiao Ling.
After entering all the text from the books and scrolls in the ice cave into the database, Jiang Zhaoye had verified it against the jade slips; Xiao Ling could now slowly but relatively accurately translate the language of this world.
Provided the language in the cave was the same as the one outside.
After a brief background sound effect of static indicating translation in progress, Xiao Ling fell silent for a moment, followed by another spell of translating static.
Although it was indeed the same language... the child was speaking slang.
Xiao Ling's overly meager vocabulary for the language of this realm was insufficient to support direct translation of local dialects.
In the painful, embarrassing silence of the AI's incompetence, Jiang Zhaoye went from full of confidence to restless anxiety in just two grueling minutes.
The big one and the small one stared at each other in silence.
Jiang Zhaoye didn't move, and the child, staring at the pitch-black lump of a weirdo opposite them, didn't dare move either.
Young Jiang stared awkwardly at the child: a huge head, a thin body, withered and small—looking like a dirty lollipop.
They don't look like us Blue Star humans at all, so ugly, definitely an alien.
As he complained internally, he saw the child's nervous, large eyes abruptly and slowly drift away.
Drifting to his hand...
Jiang Zhaoye looked down at the half-open kraft paper wrapper in his hand... and the compressed biscuits inside...
Speechless, he raised his head and met the child's eager yet fearful gaze.
Jiang Zhaoye silently handed the kraft paper wrapper over. The child's eyes lit up instantly, shining brightly, before they looked up at his face in disbelief, gaze full of hope as if looking at a high-and-mighty god.
The middle school graduate, who had never worked as a slave master, felt goosebumps all over from such a look. Not knowing why he inexplicably felt a lump in his throat, he slapped the paper wrapper forcefully into the child's arms.
The child froze for a moment, looked down at the food in their arms, licked their lips, wrapped it up carefully, and tucked it into their bosom. Then, suddenly dropping like a pouncing predator onto their knees, they knocked their head against the ground a few times with incredible speed and fluidity, murmuring a string of incomprehensible words.
So fast that Jiang Zhaoye didn't even have time to react and dodge.
When Young Jiang finally reacted, he jumped up as if his butt were on fire. His raised arms lifted his heavy cloak, making him look like a sun-blotting black bat in front of the small child curled up on the ground.
Aside from offering incense to deceased ancestors, Jiang Zhaoye had never seen such a grand gesture on any other occasion, let alone performed for him... Wouldn't this cut his life short?
Young Jiang was completely at a loss; Young Jiang even felt the child was repaying kindness with enmity.
The prostrate child trembled in the shadow he cast.
The big bat froze completely, standing silently on the spot. His flustered hands dropped, and beneath the gloomy sky, sparse sunlight passed his arm, falling softly onto the child.
The static faded, and Xiao Ling's gentle voice sounded in the bat's ear: “They seem to be expressing gratitude to you through their words.”
Like I didn't know that.
Damn idiot.
The pitch-black big bat suddenly took off the cloth pack from his back, slammed it down in front of the child, turned around, and walked away as if he had made a firm decision.
The child raised their head in surprise, staring blankly at the weirdo's back, watching him gradually walk into the distance.
They lowered their head and tentatively rummaged through the open pack.
Food, water, and several pieces of broken silver.
The child snapped their head up, those large, dark, expressive eyes—the only praise-worthy feature on their body—shining with an unsettled yet wondrous light.
Sparse sunlight filtered through the gloomy cloud layer.
Shining silently upon them.
...
...
Jiang Zhaoye found a secluded corner, confirmed there was no one around, linked mentally with Little White Cicada, and vanished from the spot with a flash, teleporting back to the ice cave.
Sitting on the cold jade bed, his mind was in a chaotic mess.
Images of starved corpses littering the countryside lingered stubbornly in his head.
Those emaciated, bony corpses, those silent old people, men, women, children... even infants. Those white bones bearing bite marks, and that starved yet terrified child were like thorns stabbing into his nerves, thrusting repeatedly time after time.
Pricking so fiercely that his veins bulged, his blood ran backward, and his temples throbbed violently.
Jiang Zhaoye tried to cultivate, but spiritual energy stumbled along his meridians, making it impossible to calm his mind.
Even wearing the jade pendant carved with the character "Han," which was said to calm the mind and soothe the spirit, proved useless.
He tried several times repeatedly before finally giving up. He rolled into his sleeping bag, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep no matter what.
The moment he closed his eyes, those horrifying scenes floated up, lingering without fading, as if vengeful souls had come to demand his life.
Furious, Jiang Zhaoye sat up abruptly. “If you want to demand lives, why come to me? I didn't do this! Go demand the lives of the people who actually harmed you!”
But where were there any vengeful souls?
And where could he find the people who had truly harmed them?
Jiang Zhaoye sighed dejectedly and decided to take a day off.
Leaving most of his gear in the ice cave, he took only the mostly emptied spatial button and teleported back to Blue Star.
Rate on N.U.
