"Quickly, help find them! Yuan Tian's second son is missing!"
"Where did it go missing? Could it have been kidnapped by a child predator?!"
“They got lost in the mountains. Now the villagers aren’t even cutting firewood; they’re all busy looking for them. Let’s go help them out.”
Lu Qiqi led Wangcai to deliver lunch to Lu Dahai and the others, and overheard the conversation between the two aunts.
Lu Qiqi tried to call out to one of the aunties to ask what had happened, but the two aunties ran off as if they were being chased by dogs.
This was the time when the women of each household would deliver lunch, but at the foot of the mountain, apart from the piles of firewood, there was no one around, only the cold wind howling wildly.
Lu Qiqi, having reached the foot of the mountain, placed her basket beside the woodpile and led Wangcai up the mountain together.
She was going to see what had happened.
For some reason, Lu Qiqi felt uneasy, a feeling that made her very uncomfortable, so she could only quicken her pace up the mountain.
Lu Qiqi walked to the area where there were villagers, and was already about a third of the way up the mountain.
As she took her first step into the crowd, she heard a woman's heart-wrenching cries echo through the sky, startling many birds into flight.
"Erwa! How can your mother live without you!"
"Erwa, where are you? Come out quickly, don't scare your mother!"
"Erwa!"
When Lu Qiqi saw Li Changlong in the crowd, she called out softly, "Second Brother?"
"Why did you come up the mountain?" Li Changlong turned around and saw Lu Qiqi, and asked in surprise.
"What happened?" Lu Qiqi asked.
Lu Qiqi's gaze remained fixed on the woman sitting on the ground, crying and shouting.
Li Changlong sighed and said, "Erwa is lost. It's almost noon, so Erwa's mother took Erwa up the mountain to deliver lunch."
"I never expected that Erwa would disappear in the blink of an eye. Now Dad and Uncle have gone to look for him."
Lu Qiqi then asked, "How old is Erwa?"
Li Changlong estimated Erwa's age based on his height and said, "Probably four or five years old."
At the age of four or five, living deep in these mountains, if something really happened to him, not even his remains could be found.
Lu Qiqi's heart sank. She was about to go over and ask Erwa's mother what exactly happened when the child went missing.
Suddenly, a gasp was heard.
"Blood! There's blood here!"
Upon hearing the mention of blood, Erwa's mother collapsed to the ground. Fortunately, her aunt caught her in time, preventing her from hitting her head.
In the midst of the chaos, Lu Qiqi stepped forward and took Erwa's mother's pulse.
After confirming that Erwa's mother was only suffering from a sudden heart attack and was otherwise unharmed, Lu Qiqi went to the place where the villagers had found the bloodstains.
The place where the bloodstains were found was not far from Erwa's mother, about a hundred meters away, and Lu Qiqi quickly walked over there.
"What should we do? Erwa is probably in grave danger!"
"I heard wolves howling and tigers roaring a few days ago. Could it be that it was carried away by wild animals in the mountains?"
As Lu Qiqi pushed through the crowd, she heard the villagers discussing the bloodstains.
The wolf howls the villagers heard belonged to Wangcai.
Wangcai was right next to her, so there was no chance for him to pick up the child. Besides, Wangcai was well-fed, so he didn't need to find food for himself!
Also, when Xiao Hua and her three tigers were hiding from the Tartars, Lu Qiqi released Xiao Hua to protect the villagers, so it was even less likely that Xiao Hua would eat children!
Lu Qiqi squatted down to examine the bloodstains left on the withered leaves on the ground.
She touched it with her hand; the blood was still wet, indicating it had been there recently.
Then Lu Qiqi saw a landslide next to the mountainside. The landslide was quite deep, and Lu Qiqi couldn't see the bottom at a glance.
The information in Lu Qiqi's mind instantly connected, and she suspected that the child was playing and had accidentally rolled down the slope.
There are many dead branches on the mountain, and children are easily injured because their skin is thin. These few drops of blood must have come from that.
Just as Lu Qiqi was about to organize the villagers to go down and search for Erwa, an old woman pushed the villagers aside, knelt down in front of the bloodstains, and cried and cursed.
"Erwa! Your grandfather's lifeblood!"
"It's all your mother's fault for not taking good care of you!"
"If anything happens to you, I'll beat your mother to death to make you pay with your life!"
Upon hearing this, Lu Qiqi pursed her lips. She hadn't expected that this old woman wasn't in a hurry to find someone, but instead was thinking of beating her own daughter-in-law to death.
Zhang Cuihua looked up with teary eyes and saw Lu Qiqi standing right in front of her. She stood up and rushed towards Lu Qiqi.
"I'll beat you to death, you wicked devil! If you hadn't hired someone to burn charcoal, my second child wouldn't have gotten into this mess!"
Before Lu Qiqi could react, Zhang Cuihua was pushed to the ground by Zhou Yi.
Standing in front of Lu Qiqi on Monday, Lu Qiqi could clearly see the veins bulging on Monday's forehead, indicating that he was quite angry.
Lu Qiqi said softly, "Thank you."
"Seventh Sister, are you alright?" Lu Dahai also rushed over. He saw Zhang Cuihua rushing towards Lu Qiqi, as if she was being choked and unable to move.
Lu Dahai didn't want to insult Zhang Cuihua, who was an elder, but he wasn't afraid of Li Yuantian. He angrily said, "Yuantian, your mother actually wanted to push Qi Yatou down the mountain. This is clearly an attempt to kill someone. Is your mother doing this because she thinks my family has no one to rely on?!"
Li Yuantian didn't know what had gotten into his mother, but the Lu family and the Zhou brothers kept helping to find Erwa.
His mother actually wanted to push someone else's daughter off the mountain! Isn't that incredibly ungrateful?
Li Yuantian kept apologizing, and Lu Dahai snorted coldly, but didn't make things difficult for Li Yuantian anymore.
After all, it was Zhang Cuihua who pushed the person, not Li Yuantian, and Lu Dahai could distinguish right from wrong.
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