## Chapter 17: Exchanging Children as Food
After Lu Zhuoyuan had the delivery driver carry the five hundred catties of rice into the courtyard, he closed the main gate.
He looked around to make sure there was no one nearby, then pulled the stroller with the iron wok over to the side of the five hundred catties of rice, and pushed the bags of rice, one by one, into the iron wok.
After the ten fifty-catty bags of rice were poured into the iron wok, they gradually became transparent until they completely disappeared.
On the other side, as soon as the Shen family members saw a bag of rice appear in the iron wok, they immediately took it out and placed it into a bamboo basket.
By the time all ten bags of rice were taken out, each of the ten bamboo baskets was filled with a bag of rice.
Looking at the bamboo baskets brimming with rice, Mrs. Shen could not stop smiling from ear to ear.
First, she kissed little Guaibao in her arms, then she proceeded to open the rice bag in one of the bamboo baskets, scooped out half a bag of rice, and cooked a full pot of rice using the large iron wok.
Her family hadn’t eaten a proper meal of cooked rice in a very long time. Mrs. Shen and Old Man Shen discussed it and decided to let the whole family eat their fill of rice for once.
Even with a full meal of rice now, the remaining amount of these five hundred catties would still be more than enough for their entire family to reach Lingluo County.
Once they arrived in Lingluo County, they could look for some odd jobs there first, earn enough silver, and then set off on their journey to the capital to find their relatives.
Seeing that Mrs. Shen wasn’t adding water the way she would when cooking porridge, the rest of the Shen family guessed that she must have decided to cook a pot of rice, and they were all instantly overjoyed.
After all, they too hadn’t eaten fragrant rice in ages. Every day they only had thin porridge, and walking around felt like their stomachs were just sloshing with water-like porridge inside.
While the rice was cooking, little Guaibao suddenly grabbed the hand of her eighth brother, Shen Chang-geng, and pointed toward a nearby small grove of trees. “Eighth Brother, let’s go dig up some wild greens to eat.”
Hearing that Mrs. Shen was going to cook rice, little Guaibao instinctively thought of how back when they used to eat meals at home, there would always be a few bowls of dishes to go with the rice.
She didn’t actually know if there were wild greens in the nearby grove, but in her memory, wild greens always grew in densely wooded places.
“Guaibao, the wild greens by the roadside should have already…” Looking at his adorable little sister, Shen Chang-geng initially wanted to say that the wild greens in the woods had probably already been dug up by others.
However, seeing little Guaibao look up at him and blink her watery, big eyes, and thinking that taking a trip into the woods wouldn’t hurt anyway—who knows, maybe they really could find some wild greens that hadn’t been dug up yet—he changed his mind.
“Alright, Eighth Brother will take you into the woods to look for wild greens.” With that, he extended his hand, held little Guaibao’s hand, and walked into the small grove beside them.
By the time the rice was fully cooked, the Shen family realized that Shen Chang-geng and Shen Xihe were missing. Panic set in immediately as they searched everywhere, leaving only Shen Fu and Wang Juhua behind to guard the spot.
Yet the longer they searched, the more frightened and worried the Shen family members became.
Because they had deliberately stayed away from the crowds of refugees earlier, they hadn’t witnessed firsthand just how miserably the displaced refugees were living in order to stay alive.
Now, in their quest to find Shen Chang-geng and Shen Xihe, they finally saw those displaced refugees—almost all of them were reduced to skin and bones, with some of the younger children so emaciated that only a thin layer of skin wrapped around their bones.
Many people who could no longer walk were abandoned by their own families, left lying by the roadside to wait for death.
Worse still, some people were actually exchanging their own children with other people’s children, taking each other’s kids as… rations!
What terrified and worried the Shen family the most right now was that… Shen Chang-geng and Shen Xihe might have been snatched away by someone to be used as rations!