“You damned brat! How dare you steal food! I’ll beat you to death!”
“Nuannuan didn’t… Auntie is lying.” Nuannuan felt the strikes from the hideous Wei Qingrou’s club rain down one after another on her emaciated, skin-and-bones body, yet she did not dare to cry out loud.
She could only curl her tiny, thin frame as tightly as possible. Her uncle had clearly told her to come and get the items; why was her aunt saying she was stealing?
“Father, Mother, I told you we can’t keep this mother and daughter. Our rations are already running low. If this continues, we won’t even make it to the capital.” Wei Qingshu watched the beating, a flicker of smugness crossing his eyes.
Wei Qinghan rushed over in a panic, shielding Nuannuan in her arms. She wept as she explained to Father Wei and Mother Wei, “Father, Mother, it’s absolutely impossible for Nuannuan to have stolen food. She was with me all last night. I swear, Nuannuan definitely didn’t steal anything.”
“Sister, she’s the wretch you gave birth to, of course you’d protect her! If she didn’t steal it, could it be that one of us did?”
Hearing Wei Qingrou’s words, Wei Qingshu subconsciously wiped the corner of his mouth.
He glanced at Li Dafu, who stood nearby, and whispered, “Father, Mother, Li Dafu said he’s willing to pay two strings of coins to buy Eldest Sister. Anyway, that man hasn’t shown up for three years; he must have abandoned her. How about…”
Wei Qinghan’s face turned pale. On this journey as refugees, Li Dafu had bought many young and beautiful women, but none of them lasted more than ten days before being tortured to death.
It didn’t matter if she died, but Nuannuan…
Looking at the bruise-covered Nuannuan, whose eyes were faintly tinged with purple in her anger, Wei Qinghan felt a deep, piercing sorrow.
That man had clearly made a promise, but why had he never returned after three years?
“You’re not allowed to sell Mother! Uncle is a bad man, it was Uncle who—” Two-year-old Nuannuan stretched out her short little arms to block her mother, shouting at Wei Qingshu.
Li Dafu, who had been watching from the sidelines, saw Nuannuan and his eyes lit up. He walked over and said, “If you sell the little one to me as well, I’ll add another bag of rice.”
As he spoke, his lecherous gaze swept repeatedly over Wei Qinghan and Nuannuan.
A mother-daughter pair! He could certainly play all sorts of tricks with them.
“Father, Mother, I can do even more work in the future. I can eat just a little—no, I won’t eat anything at all! I beg you, don’t sell me.” Wei Qinghan was terrified. Her own life didn’t matter, but Nuannuan was only two years old!
“Add another half-bag of rice, and both of them are yours,” Father Wei said after calculating the offer.
“Grandfather is bad! Mother, let’s go…” Nuannuan pulled on Wei Qinghan, trying to flee.
“Humph! You two have already been sold to me. Where do you think you’re going?” Li Dafu gestured to his subordinates to tie them up and take them to his carriage.
As Wei Qinghan struggled while holding Nuannuan, a red string slipped out from around Nuannuan’s neck, with a jade thumb ring attached to it.
Wei Qingshu’s eyes lit up when he saw the ring. He hadn’t expected this little wretch to be hiding such a treasure.
“This thing belongs to our Wei family. we’re taking it back!”
Fearing someone else would grab it, Wei Qingshu shoved Li Dafu’s servant aside and reached out to snatch the red string from Nuannuan’s neck.
Driven to despair, Wei Qinghan saw this and suddenly shoved Wei Qingshu away. Clutching Nuannuan, she turned and tried to run.
“Quick, catch them!” Li Dafu shouted. Wei Qinghan was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
He had been eyeing her for a long time. Now that she was finally within his grasp, there was no way he would let her slip away.
Wei Qinghan was, after all, just a frail woman. Carrying Nuannuan, there was no way she could outrun several men.
Seeing that they were about to be caught and would then face inhumane humiliation, she looked at the cliff ahead. She gazed down at Nuannuan with guilt and sorrow. “Nuannuan, don’t be afraid. Mother will be with you on the road to the Yellow Springs.”
Nuannuan reached out her tiny hand and obediently wiped her mother’s tears. “Mother, Nuannuan isn’t afraid. Nuannuan will stay with Mother…”
Hearing this, Wei Qinghan pulled Nuannuan into a tight embrace. At the very moment they were about to be seized, she leaped off the cliff.
Though Nuannuan was held tightly in her mother’s arms, she was still battered by branches and jagged rocks along the cliff face.
Just as a rock struck her on the head and she drifted into unconsciousness, the jade thumb ring around her neck, now soaked with her blood, began to glow with a faint purple light.
Thump!
The unconscious Wei Qinghan and Nuannuan tumbled onto the road at the bottom of the cliff, lying motionless.
At that moment, the jade thumb ring, seemingly saturated with Nuannuan’s blood, suddenly emitted a thick purple glow that enveloped her. After a brief pause, as if hesitating, it expanded to shroud Wei Qinghan as well.
It wasn’t until the two women’s nearly extinguished heartbeats became steady and strong again, and the color returned to their faces, that the purple light zipped back into Nuannuan’s body.
Clatter, clatter, clatter!
Inside a speeding carriage, the once-renowned Wu’an Wang, Xiao Qingcang, stared with bloodshot eyes at a piece of incense that was nearly burnt out.
Only fifty years old, his hair was already white, and his expression was haggard. He looked as aged as someone in their seventies or eighties.
A divine seer had told him that the fortune of the Wu’an Wang Manor was supposed to have ended, but because nine generations of his family had performed good deeds, Heaven had granted them a single glimmer of hope.
He was told to travel following the direction of the spirit incense. If the incense finished burning before he found what he was looking for, then it was simply the fate of the Wu’an Wang Manor to perish.
Now, seeing the spirit incense that had burned for three days and three nights reach its end, Xiao Qingcang closed his eyes in despair.
“Whoa!”
The carriage came to a sudden halt. The voice of the guard, Yan Yong, drifted in: “My Lord, there are two people lying ahead. It looks like a mother and daughter.”
Just as the words fell, the incense went out.
Xiao Qingcang’s heart skipped a beat. “Quick! Bring them up!”
Yan Yong hurried to carry the pair into the carriage.
At a single glance, Xiao Qingcang saw the girl’s face. She bore a striking resemblance to his eldest son, Xiao Yunheng—a face so exquisite she looked like a child attendant to the Goddess of Mercy.
“This… this girl, why does she look so much like Yunheng?”
“And this jade thumb ring… it’s Yunheng’s!”
Could it be…
This girl, who looked barely over two years old, was Yunheng’s bloodline—the “glimmer of hope” the divine seer had spoken of?
Seeing the two of them covered in blood, Xiao Qingcang didn’t have time to wonder why his eldest son had a child living in exile.
“Quickly, find a doctor!”
Nuannuan curled up in her mother Wei Qinghan’s arms, her tiny body covered in a mix of old and new scars.
When they fell off the cliff, she had thought she and her mother were doomed.
But the moment her blood dripped onto the jade pendant around her neck, a burst of purple light had enveloped them.
Then, she had fallen into a deep sleep.
She slept for three days.
Until a voice in her mind kept calling out to her: “Nuannuan! Nuannuan! Wake up!”