Zhao Xiaobao didn’t know, but Old Man Zhao directly understood her words as: “very magical, able to cure illness.”
Don’t ask him why he interpreted it that way—if you asked, the answer would just be that he didn’t know. In any case, Xiaobao was the reincarnation of a fairy. Whatever a fairy said must have its own reasoning. Even if she herself couldn’t explain it clearly, it didn’t matter. If she wanted to give it, then they would give it.
In the middle of the night, the father and daughter secretly huddled in the shelter cutting the peach. They didn’t even peel the skin. As they sliced it, the juice that flowed out was dabbed again and again by Zhao Xiaobao with her fingers and sucked noisily into her mouth.
That peach tree had only borne three peaches in total. Last time, Old Man Zhao had almost been unable to walk away because of the fragrance—it had been a scent between ripeness and greenness. Now, holding this “immortal peach,” he thought to himself that it was indeed so. It hadn’t fully ripened yet before Xiaobao picked it.
The knife used to cut the peach had been handed over by the eldest son after returning—it was taken from a thug who tried to steal medicine in town. Old Man Zhao had just rubbed it with snow outside to clean it. Now the blade gleamed coldly, extremely sharp—perfect for slicing the peach, smooth and effortless.
Their family had fourteen people in total. Adding the portions Xiaobao wanted to give to Erlai, Chun Ya, and Sister Li, there were seventeen slices altogether… There should have been one more for Granny Wu, who liked Xiaobao very much and would secretly give her candy, but she hadn’t survived this disaster.
Old Man Zhao sighed while using his years of wood-chopping experience. With one downward cut, the slices came out evenly thick and thin, incredibly uniform.
Outside, it was pitch dark. Several fires burned outside the shelter. Under the dim yellow light, the neatly arranged peach slices looked crystal clear, giving off a faint fragrance.
“Xiaobao…” Old Man Zhao swallowed and turned to look at his daughter’s tender face, as if asking for her approval.
Zhao Xiaobao was also swallowing her saliva repeatedly. Although she had taken a bite earlier, she had swallowed it too quickly to taste it and was now craving more.
“Mm!” She reached out her small hand and shook Wang Shi’s body. “Mother, wake up and eat some peach!”
Wang Shi had worked all day and was sleeping deeply. She vaguely heard her daughter calling her and instinctively patted her to soothe her back to sleep without even opening her eyes.
After a while, a cool slice of peach was slipped between her lips. She subconsciously opened her mouth, and a sweet, refreshing taste flowed in. She smacked her lips twice, briefly became aware, then fell back into deep sleep.
She simply thought it was a strange dream.
Zhao Xiaobao repeated the same method, going from one brother and sister-in-law to another. But they were all exhausted from the day’s work. They thought their little sister was playing with them in their dreams, murmuring softly without opening their eyes. In the end, only a lingering fragrance remained in their mouths.
Only the five boys woke up instantly at the mention of eating peaches. Three generations of the family squatted in a circle on the ground, each holding a slice. They pressed their tongues over and over, even sucking the juice from their fingers clean, yet still felt unsatisfied.
In the end, three slices remained. Old Man Zhao went out for a while, and when he returned, only one slice was left.
“I went to check on Erlai and Chun Ya. I avoided others and secretly fed them,” Old Man Zhao whispered to Xiaobao, looking slightly awkward. “As for your Aunt Li… I couldn’t go. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
Zhao Xiaobao wrapped herself up like a little silkworm beside her mother. Hearing this, she nodded seriously, speaking in a mature tone, “I understand. Aunt Li doesn’t have a man at home. It wouldn’t be proper for you to go. People would gossip.”
After saying that, she stretched a small hand out from under the blanket.
Old Man Zhao, quick to understand, handed her the last slice of peach in a chipped bowl. Right in front of him, Zhao Xiaobao performed a “disappearing bowl trick,” leaving him completely stunned.
This time, Old Man Zhao truly saw the broken bowl vanish right before his eyes. His lips trembled. “My dear, what kind of magical ability is this? Did you just learn it?”
“Father, what is a magical ability?” Zhao Xiaobao asked, her little face full of confusion.
“It’s what you just did—this move!” Old Man Zhao imitated her actions, stretching out one hand and using the other as if holding a bowl, clapping them together and pulling back. He even made sound effects: “Like this—whoosh! The bowl appears. And then whoosh! It disappears. That’s the move, that’s the magical ability!”
Zhao Xiaobao copied him. With a “whoosh,” a broken bowl appeared in her palm. Then with another “whoosh,” it disappeared.
After finishing, she glanced at her father proudly, snorted lightly, and ignored his excited expression. Wrapping herself in her blanket, she burrowed into her mother’s arms and went to sleep obediently.
The next day.
At dawn, the three Zhao brothers got up full of energy, bringing along their equally spirited wives to visit their in-laws. They didn’t take the children, only instructing them to stay in the village and look after the home.
The children didn’t insist on going either. Though they worried about their grandparents and relatives, with both parents gone, only their grandfather remained as the sole adult man at home. They needed to stay behind to protect their grandmother and their little aunt.
Zhu and Luo were both from Hekou Village, so they could travel together. Sun’s family was in Luoshi Village, farther away—it would take more than two hours of mountain walking to get there.
After leaving the village, they reached a fork in the road, exchanged a few words of reminder, and then parted ways in different directions.
…
Today, they stopped building shelters. Instead, they needed to set up a mourning hall for the villagers who had died, so their bodies wouldn’t be left exposed in the wilderness.
The site was chosen in another open area some distance from the drying ground. The living could not stay close to the dead every day—this was something the village elders were particular about.
The mourning hall had to be sturdy. The men were even more careful building it than the shelters for the living. They laid a foundation, used thick wood, and for the roof, instead of straw, they used undamaged tiles collected from the village.
When the twenty-one bodies were neatly laid out in the makeshift mourning hall, the villagers standing around felt a shock so deep that no one could make a sound.
A deathly silence filled the air.
Before, they had only heard things like whose father had died, whose mother had passed, whose daughter had been dug out already lifeless, whose family had suffered terrible misfortune and lost two sons… and so on.
At the time, they only sighed. Their own situations weren’t much better—who had the heart to mourn others?
But now, seeing all those who had died in this disaster laid out together, their once-lively faces turned pale and stiff, their bodies rigid like frozen sticks—every word was stuck in their throats.
No one spoke.
Then someone began to cry.
Soon, waves of wailing echoed through the remote mountain village, as if it had been forgotten by the world.
They cried for loved ones lost suddenly, for the hardship of surviving in such times, for their homes reduced to ruins… and for the fear that came too late.
Heaven would not let them live, and the government did not care for them. After suffering such a disaster, the officials had gone to rescue others, leaving them to fend for themselves.
The villagers of Wanxia Village fell into deep confusion. Especially when they looked at their ancestral homes, now gone. Those few mud houses, passed down for generations—so valuable that brothers would fight over them during inheritance—were now completely gone.
Gone overnight.
…
Zhao Xiaobao quietly slipped out of the crowd and went to the shelter where Aunt Li was.
At this time, most villagers were at the mourning hall. Inside the shelter, besides the unconscious Sister Li, only the two brothers, Big Radish and Little Radish, were squatting by the bedside, keeping watch.
The two brothers—Big Radish, seven years old, and Little Radish, five—looked almost identical. With no one taking care of them these past few days, their faces and bodies were covered in dirt, making them look messy and pitiful.
When they saw her enter, both turned their dark little faces toward her, their eyes filled with unease. Little Radish even twisted his hands together, his face smeared with snot—dirty and frightened.
“Aunt Xiaobao, why are you here?” Big Radish saw her staring at his younger brother, grabbed some straw, and tried to wipe his brother’s face—but only made it dirtier.
They were from the Li family, so they didn’t have to call Zhao Xiaobao “Aunt,” but since they often played with Xiao Wu and the others, they followed suit and called her that, showing their closeness.
“Big Radish, Little Radish, I came to check on Sister Li. How is she?” Zhao Xiaobao asked with concern.
“My mother drank the medicine Uncle Dashan brought back, but she still hasn’t woken up,” Big Radish said, pulling his brother aside to make space. Uncle Ertian had helped carry his mother out, so he felt very grateful to the Zhao family.
This shelter had also been secured for them by Grandma Wang. Since the disaster, only the Zhao family had cared for them. When the village cooked communal meals, Xiao Wu would take them along to eat.
“Big Radish, take Little Radish to the mourning hall and bow your heads. I’ll watch over Sister Li for you,” Zhao Xiaobao said, acting like a little elder, perfectly imitating her father’s manner. All the villagers were at the mourning hall, and children were expected to go and pay respects. If Big Radish took his brother, others would see them as sensible and be more willing to help them in the future.
Otherwise, they would end up like the village head’s family—excluded from communal meals, with no one helping them build shelters, pushed to the edge of the drying ground, and avoided by everyone.
“Aunt Xiaobao, we’ll go now,” Big Radish said without questioning her. He didn’t feel anything strange about listening to someone younger than him. He grabbed his brother and ran out in their worn straw shoes.
Zhao Xiaobao liked obedient juniors, and she felt happy.
Looking at Sister Li lying on the straw, her head was wrapped in a gray cloth stained with blood. Like Erlai, she had been hit on the head by a falling beam. It was said that she had protected her two sons, shielding them under her body at the critical moment.
Zhao Xiaobao squatted in front of her and gently pried open her tightly closed lips. Seeing her clenched teeth, she could only fold the thin peach slice and push it into the gap of her lips.
After doing this, she squatted there, holding her face in her hands, staring at Sister Li without blinking. Her complexion seemed slightly better.
“Sister Li, you have to get better soon. Big Radish and Little Radish can’t live without their mother.”
Children without a mother are like wild grass—when they’re cold, hot, hungry, or thirsty, no one cares for them.
They are especially pitiful.