Then the bell floated to the doorway. Jiang Xi was puzzled, but her body followed the bell uncontrollably.

There was a thick layer of snow outside, and she thought to herself that she couldn't go out; it was too cold.

But her body involuntarily passed through the wooden door, and once she was outdoors, she didn't feel any cold at all.

Then, the bell led her forward, its tinkling sound echoing in her ears, guiding her all the way to the cave with the wooden house.

I thought I would see a desolate village hidden in a cave, but I never expected that there would be people in the cave.

There were men and women, as well as the elderly and children.

Two men were knocking on the stone bricks in the cave entrance plaza, laughing and joking as they talked.

Then, Lingdang led her further inside, where Jiang Xi saw several old women cooking in the earthen stove room, with the whooshing sound of bellows coming from inside.

"Mother, Mother, when will Father come back?"

For some reason, Jiang Xi was suddenly drawn to the words. It was a little girl of five or six years old, wearing a gray coat with silver fur trim, and her hair was tied in two buns. Jiang Xi felt that she looked familiar, but she couldn't remember where she had seen her before.

At this moment, the little girl was sitting in the doorway of a wooden house, holding a ball of cloth and needle and thread in her hands, leaning her head against the woman beside her, who was probably her mother. Both of them were sitting in the doorway of the wooden house, sewing something with the cloth in their hands.

Hearing the little girl's words, the woman smiled gently: "Your father will be back once you finish sewing this collar."

Hearing this, the little girl pouted and said, "Mommy, this scarf was so hard to sew, I've pricked myself with so many stitches."

As he spoke, he stretched out his two chubby little hands to show the woman.

The woman beside her took her hand, blew on it gently, and said, "If you sew slowly, you won't prick yourself. Look at your brother Qianhu, he's only a year older than you, and he's already learned to shoot arrows."

Hearing this, the little girl became even more unhappy and said angrily, "Hmph, he caught a quail last time but didn't even let me see it."

The child's voice was soft and sweet. Listening to it, Jiang Xi felt as if they were really living among her, and a smile involuntarily appeared on her face.

Immediately afterwards, she saw the little girl suddenly stand up and sweetly call out, "Daddy."

Following the gaze, there was a man with a thick beard. He was very strong and wearing a bearskin coat.

When he saw the little girl coming, he quickly opened his arms, picked her up, and lifted her into his arms.

Smiling, she asked, "Sister Jing, do you miss Daddy?"

The little girl in my arms said in a soft, sweet voice, "Yes."

The man chuckled, stroked the little girl's cheek with his finger, and then pulled a pair of iron bells from his pocket.

He placed the bell in front of the little girl and shook it: "Look, this is what your father made for you."

The little girl saw the bell and immediately took it, shaking it back and forth, unable to put it down. The man put it down, and the girl rushed to her mother: "Mommy, look at the bell Daddy made."

The woman's face softened when she saw the man return. She took the bell, shook it, and said, "That's wonderful. Let Daddy hang it up for you."

"Um."

After agreeing, the little girl faced another dilemma: which of the two bells should she hang it on?

Then, she thought of something and said to the bearded man, "Father, hang this small one on the door, and hang this big one where Father forges iron."

"When the bell rings, just imagine I'm keeping you company while you're forging iron."

These words sounded childish, but the man laughed and said, "Alright, then Daddy will have someone to keep him company while he's forging iron."

Then he took the small bell, hammered an iron hook into the wooden wall, and hung the bell there.

Seeing this scene, Jiang Xi suddenly thought of her parents.

When he was little, his parents would bring him lots of gifts when they came to the countryside to pick him up during holidays, and he would often show them off to Dazhuang and the others.

As my thoughts drifted, the scenes around me seemed to be accelerated dozens of times, rushing past like the wind.

Then, the scene suddenly changed again. This time, there was no laughter or cursing from men, nor the sound of bellows from the earthen stove.

There were no children's voices either.

Only groans rose and fell in waves. Jiang Xi walked forward unconsciously, and every time she passed a wooden door, it was as if there were no obstruction; she could clearly see the scene inside.

She saw that everyone had collapsed—children, women, the elderly—everyone was lying in bed, their cheeks sunken, their faces pale, and some had festering sores on their faces.

They all seemed to be enduring immense pain.

Then the bell rang again, and Jiang Xi followed it to a wooden house.

The little girl's laughter was gone, replaced only by the woman's soft sobs.

The little girl who always wore her hair in double buns lay on the wooden bed, her eyes closed, her whole body emaciated, but she still held the bell in her hand and murmured "Father."

Suddenly, two men with thick cloth covering their mouths and noses entered from outside the cave. They went straight to the little girl's house and were about to carry her out.

The woman by the bed clung tightly to the man's leg: "No, Sister Jing hasn't died yet, you can't take her away, her father hasn't come back yet."

The man whose legs were being held tightly couldn't break free. He said with a pained expression, "Second Aunt, we can't do anything about it. Second Uncle is also dying. He's too sick to get out of the blacksmith's shop."

Another man said with a sorrowful expression, "The chieftain said that if anyone dies in this cave, none of you will survive."

Then he added, "Let's go, let's go, it'll only get worse if we drag this out any longer."

As they spoke, the two rolled the little girl up with a straw curtain and carried her out. As they moved, the bell in the girl's hand fell to the ground.

The woman hadn't slept for days and nights, and now she was too weak to stop them. She could only watch helplessly as her daughter was carried away, and could only wail helplessly behind them.

"You can't leave, you can't leave, where are you taking her?"

Jiang Xi murmured to herself as she spoke to the two men, reaching out to stop them.

But it was no use; she couldn't touch anything with her hands and could only watch helplessly as they carried the little girl away.

Jiang Xi hurriedly followed. The two men carried the little girl up the mountain. The sky outside was gloomy, and the snowflakes fell softly on the little girl's straw mat, disappearing before leaving any trace.

Upon reaching the mountaintop, Jiang Xi looked around and saw that the entire mountaintop was covered with graves of all sizes. The pits had been dug long ago. The little girl was only five or six years old, and the pit was not very big. Two men wrapped her in a straw curtain, put her in, and buried her with soil.

Jiang Xi was already sobbing uncontrollably as she watched.

I felt an indescribable sadness, as if a stone was stuck in my throat, making it hard to breathe. I knew I was just a spectator, but it felt like I was experiencing everything.

Then she saw one of the men walk to the middle few graves, kneel down, kowtow several times, and say something urgent.

"May our ancestors protect them and help them recover quickly."