Lian Xiaomin used her mental power to take a closer look and found that there were five people lying on the big kang. My God, that was a lot.

And they are all children!

There are five children in total, big and small. The youngest one looks to be only four or five years old, and I don’t know if the oldest one is over ten years old.

How did they get in? I'm really confused.

Looking into the yard, I saw a ladder in the corner of one side of the wall. It was not my house's. Oh, maybe they brought their own ladder, climbed in, and used this thing to climb in and out.

Lian Xiaomin put her mental power back into the house to check. The five children took out the mattresses and quilts from the kang cabinet and used them, but they did not heat the kang.

There wasn't much coal stored in the yard, and since no one lived there long term, just keep some for cooking. It seemed that the little coal that was available had been used up.

It had just snowed heavily. It was so cold and I was lying on the icy kang, even with a quilt, it wasn't warm enough.

The youngest girl was hugged tightly in the quilt by a little girl who was only two or three years older than her. The two little heads were touching each other, and they were sleeping soundly.

Then I looked around to see what other items were in the room. I saw five sets of cotton-padded clothes on the kang. They were so dirty and torn!

The kang table was moved to the ground and placed on it. There were a few bowls on it. They should be from home. Two of the bowls contained two small pieces of cake each.

On the table, there was a small aluminum basin filled with six or seven small potatoes. They were black and seemed to have been roasted over fire.

There is no other food.

She seemed to understand instantly, could these five be little beggars? Orphans or something like that, who used my empty house as their base...

Judging from the mess in the house, I guess they have lived here for some time.

Sun Xuefeng's cousin Chen Chunqiao would occasionally go to the county town to deliver goods and would stay here for two days. I guess he hasn't been here during this period and hasn't been discovered yet.

Oh, I remember now that Chen Chunqiao seemed to have gone back to his hometown, Kaoshantun, and stayed there for some time, and hasn’t come back since.

Forget it, since they are all such poor young children, if there is no thief, don’t wake them up in the middle of the night.

It’s late at night, go to bed first and talk about it tomorrow morning.

Lian Xiaomin entered the space directly with her bicycle.

After washing up, I set the alarm and made sure to get up early. I gathered them all in the room and asked them what was going on.

At 5:30 in the morning, before daybreak, Lian Xiaomin got up. She still took her bicycle out of the space and appeared directly at the gate of the courtyard.

He used the key to unlock the front door, went in, bolted the door, parked his bicycle in the yard, and walked to the door of the east room.

The door would have been locked, but now the lock had been broken by something, leaving only the lock nose.

She pushed the door and saw it was blocked from the inside. Wow, these little guys are quite defensive.

With a thought, the bolt inside disappeared and was stored in the space. He took it out again in an instant and held it in his hand.

She pushed the door open and put the bolt back in the dark.

"Who are you? What do you want to do?"

It was a boy's childish voice. Lian Xiaomin took out a flashlight, turned it on and shone it onto the kang.

The little boy, half of his body sticking out of the quilt, was probably about six or seven years old.

There were two tufts of hair standing on its head, and its face was dirty, but its eyes were big and round, looking at this side with horror.

Because the flashlight suddenly lit up, he squinted his eyes, feeling a little uncomfortable. He stretched out his hand to block the light, and his little mouth moved, but he didn't dare to say anything.

You are still too young and not very brave.

The other children on the kang also began to wake up. Lian Xiaomin looked at the five kids who had jumped out of the four quilts and shook her head.

"You're asking me who I am? Shouldn't I be the one asking you who you are? How dare you sneak into someone else's house and live there?"

The kerosene lamp was out of oil, so she walked over and tried to take out a candle from the drawer to light it, but she saw that the candle was also out.

I had to use the cover of my bag to take out three candles and a box of matches.

Two candles were lit and placed on the large cabinet on the floor. The room suddenly became bright. The flashlight was turned off and put aside.

Lian Xiaomin moved a chair and sat there, and began to "interrogate" five "little bandits" who had occupied other people's houses.

She deliberately pretended to have a cold expression, which was a bit scary.

"Can anyone tell me what's going on? If you don't explain clearly, I'll send you to the police station."

The little boy who got up first just now sat in the bed, grabbed his tattered jacket and put it on in a panic, and was the first to answer.

"I, we have nowhere to go. It's snowing heavily and too cold..."

Her little voice was trembling, she was really scared.

Lian Xiaomin asked him: "What's your name? Where are your family members? Where is your home?"

"My name is Xiao Huzi. I have no family left. I used to live by the river..."

Well, it does look chubby, and would be quite cute if it weren't so dirty.

In the bed next to him were the two little girls. The younger one was only four or five years old, and the older one was a little older than Xiaohuzi.

The older girl spoke obviously more fluently, and her voice was quite crisp when she opened her mouth.

"Xiao Huzi and I are from the same village, Shuangyang Village, right by the Lin River... His parents and grandmother were all washed away by the flood. There is no one left, and none of his other relatives want him."

Lian Xiaomin suddenly remembered that she knew Shuangyang Village near the Lin River, which was a severely affected area.

Wasn’t it last summer, in July, when there was a heavy rainstorm that caused the Lin River to flood?

I even went there myself, pretending to be from an anonymous unit, and left a lot of food there as a donation.

He also rescued two soldiers who fell into the water while saving villagers, namely Wang Duo and Qian Daxixi.

She continued to ask the little girl: "What's your name? How old are you? Are you alone at home? Is this your little sister?"

The little girl's eyes were covered with mist.

"My name is Hehua. I'm eight years old, two years older than Xiaohuzi. My younger sister Xinghua is four years old..."

"...My mother died when she gave birth to my younger sister. My father went to save my grandfather from the flood, but he himself never came back...Later, my grandfather and my uncle had to adopt us."

"...But my aunt always beats my little sister, leaving purple marks all over her body, saying she is a disaster star. My grandfather and uncle see it but don't care."

Lian Xiaomin frowned after hearing this.

"So you ran away?"

"Yes! Xinghua was only two and a half years old at that time. I carried her in a basket and ran away in the middle of the night. Xiaohuzi followed me too. Anyway, he was begging for food everywhere and couldn't get anything over there."

Lian Xiaomin asked again what happened to the other two children in the quilt, thinking that they were all from the disaster area and ran out together, but it turned out that they were not.

The other two, a boy named Sheng Lai, was the same age as Xiao Huzi, also six years old, and was an orphan from a village not far from the outskirts of the county town.