Chapter 48
Pei Huai clenched his jaw, picked up a piece of angular gravel and smashed it at the hand. He slapped the boy on the back and rushed out of the shelter before the boy.
Under the cover of his arms, the child struggled to climb out of the hollow log and hid behind it.
As the former leaped to his feet, he was caught off guard by a nervous face. The man's pupils were a very light gray-blue, his features regular, yet he held a beastly aggression. Judging by his beard, he had likely lived in the mountains for quite some time.
The moment the two looked at each other, Pei Huai felt his teeth clenching together in horror.
The man grinned, revealing his neat upper teeth.
"You're so beautiful."
Without hesitation, Pei Huai thrust his fist, clenched in the gravel, through his elbow and thrust it forward, striking directly at the boy's brow. He pushed the boy aside, not even turning his head. "I'll lead him away. Follow the direction of your right foot. Tell the search and rescue team everything you know, and get them up the mountain. Hurry!"
The boy nodded through sobs and took a few steps back. He clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly, then wiped away his tears and ran towards the riverbank, looking back every few steps.
In this way, Pei Huai no longer had to worry.
He looked at the man in front of him.
Obviously, a child's strength wasn't enough to cause any harm to an adult. The punch just now, aside from the redness and swelling, didn't even damage the surface tissue.
The man turned his face away and stared at him with a smile: "Did I make you angry?" He grabbed Pei Huai's wrist, pulled it to his lips, and kissed it lightly, his gray-blue eyes always glued to his face.
"You're so pretty." He repeated with a sigh, "How old are you, eleven? Twelve? You don't look that old. That's great. When I first saw you, I thought it was an illusion. Because you look so..."
He licked his lips and leaned closer in a calm voice: "...It's delicious."
The incident happened in an instant. The man leaned forward, his forearm muscles bulging, and swung the hammer with a precise arc, shattering the boy's shoulder blade behind him.
Then, ignoring Pei Huai's resistance, he tucked him under his armpits, stood up, and walked towards the child who had fallen to the ground. Hearing the child crying, Pei Huai aimed his knee at the child's lower back, but only elicited a chuckle.
Even if he kicked the man's sacrum and knees with all his strength, the situation did not change at all.
The other party remained unmoved, and even touched the top of his head lovingly, squatting in front of the fallen man.
The latter crawled towards the riverbank in panic - his nails were turned upside down, and the cracks were full of blood. Every time he moved, he left a mottled blood mark - but was hit on the side of the head by a chisel.
There was no way this child, barely twelve, could stand up to a muscular adult man. He grabbed the child's hair and slammed it onto the cobblestones.
The wails, the crashing sounds, and the teeth-grinding cracking of bones suddenly passed through the eardrums in a mournful manner.
Pei Huai bent his knees and swung upwards, quickly adjusting his body to a sideways angle and biting the man's arm. The depth of his fangs was enough to force the man to twist and break free from the two children.
His knee bumped against the gravel, but Pei Huai didn't care. He grabbed the boy and ran away.
The way down the mountain was blocked by a landslide, so they had no choice but to run along the riverbank. Sigh lingered close behind them, "What a fierce kitten. Do kittens scratch people? I think so. Yeah, I remember their teeth were pointy. So cute."
——From the river's edge to the depths of the dense forest, the two children didn't dare stop. They ran until they were out of breath before finally pushing open an iron gate with a no-entry sign. Arriving...
Pei Huai couldn't help but feel nauseous.
The stench of decay was everywhere.
This was a forest of dead trees, a sort of quarantine zone set aside to prevent leaf blight. The surroundings were eerily silent, the sound of rain whimpering among the dead trees.
As I looked up, I saw corpses of all sizes, impaled on branches, like the remains of a shrike after a hunt. Some of them dangled, but most had been pierced through the chest and abdomen by sharp objects, pinned to the branches. Their states of decay varied.
The vast majority of the corpses were animals: birds, rabbits or wild dogs.
Others are people.
Pei Huai raised his fist several times before finally suppressing the cramps in his stomach. But the boy beside him could no longer bear the visual impact. His knees gave way and he collapsed to the ground, doubled over, and vomited sporadic acid.
As soon as he finished vomiting, he hugged his arms and scratched them desperately as if he was having difficulty breathing.
"No... I don't want to, I don't want to, I, I don't want to become like that."
"Brother, what should we do? I don't want to die. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to—I, I want to go home. I'll do anything as long as I can go home. Why, why hasn't the search and rescue team come yet? Why why why…"
Pei Huai squatted down in front of him.
"I'll take you home," he said. However, the boy, as if possessed by an evil spirit, tore at his arms, bent forward, and let out a shrill, agonizing wail.
Over the past eight days, the mental pressure that the child in front of me has suffered has been unimaginable, and he is almost on the verge of collapse.
But this wouldn't work. If she did that, it would only be a matter of time before that man discovered her.
Pei Huai tried shaking his shoulders, but to little avail. When he tried a different approach, shaking his hand, the latter's eyelids twitched, and he began blinking as their fingers interlocked.
Once, twice, he gradually regained his clarity of mind.
His light brown eyes glanced around, but as he looked, his lips pursed upwards and tears welled up. He buried his head in Pei Huai's chest and cried loudly.
A hand patted his back.
"I promised you. It'll be okay."
"But they are all dead."
"I know."
"They're all dead, brother. We could die too. We could die at any time, anywhere..."
"I know." He said, "Let me take a look at your injury first."
He found a dead tree where no bodies were hanging and sat down. The boy sobbed and hunched his shoulders in front of him. After Pei Huai examined him, his brows knitted into a line. He said nothing and politely fastened the boy's collar.
The heart rates of both parties are
Calm down during the slow trek.
As they headed deeper into the forest, the boy wiped the blood from his nose and whispered, "I'm sorry, brother. I was really scared just now. I'm sorry."
Pei Huai was still looking into the boundless distance.
"I will take you away." He didn't lower his head, but slowly tightened his fingers, as firm as a vow, "I won't break my promise."
"Um."
The hands clasped together tightly. At that moment, the boy could not think of any words to describe what he had received.
It was an embrace. It was summer, school, home, the coast, freedom, and a longing as fervent as a hearthfire. On a cold night when I was ten, they were like wings, clasping a pile of dead wood ready to ignite at any moment.
If we wanted to cross the barrier and descend the mountain, we'd probably have to walk until noon the next day. There was no telling when this rain would stop. Pei Huai couldn't help but ponder.
Judging from the man's clothes, beard, and the mud on the soles of his shoes, he had been hiding in the mountains for at least two years. The strange thing was why no one noticed anything unusual during these two years.
I'm afraid we need to look at things from a different perspective.
He couldn't leave the mountain, which meant that for some reason, he couldn't easily show himself to others.
There was only one reason left: think about it, for eight days, he had been hunting children day and night. This behavior was more like silencing them than pleasure or appetite.
...Could it be that he is a wanted criminal on the run?
As their thoughts wandered, they were already halfway across the barrier. To be safe, Pei Huai touched the boy's carotid artery with two fingers. Sure enough, the pulse quickened.
He turned sideways first: "Are you okay?"
The boy's shoulder hurt so much that he couldn't breathe, and tears welled up in his eyes.
"I want to go home." He lost his voice several times before finally uttering a hoarse plea, "Brother, I can't hold on any longer. I want to die. If he kills me, will I not have to endure this?"
Humans have a flexible capacity for tolerance, capable of accommodating negative emotions and being distorted by different emotions. However, its tension is often limited.
Because before his complete collapse, Pei Huai could not see, touch, or imagine what kind of torture this child had endured during his eight days of hiding.
He pulled the boy under a tree and bent down to examine his sneakers.
The shoes were soaked from head to toe by the rain, damp as hell. Unlacing them, he saw they were covered in blisters, some of them oozing pus and becoming infected. Without a word, he tied the other man's shoe back on.
"Brother, no one in my family cares about me." The boy's hands dropped to his sides, his body slumped back. A clear tear streak ran from the corner of his eye to his temple. "They only care about my cousin. No one cares about me, no one cares about me. So even if I die here," his nose felt sore, "it doesn't matter."
"No."
Before he could raise his red, swollen eyes, someone rubbed his head. A pair of cobalt-black eyes stared at him intently, like a mellow wine, with no other flavor than strong. "Do you want me to be sad?"
He shook his head firmly. The boy wiped his tears roughly and asked him, "Brother, what's your name?"
"Pei Huai. My brother's name is Yu Mingrui."
"Why don't you and your brother have the same last name?" His shoulders relaxed. "My brother and I don't either. Were you taken to his house by your uncle like me?"
"I'm from a reconstituted family. My mother has passed away." Pei Huai nodded. "What about you? Your name?"
The latter lowered his head with an extremely apologetic look: "Well, I didn't mean to keep it secret. But my uncle always told me not to talk about it. He was afraid that I would cause trouble. Well, I'm sorry..."
"Don't be so careful. I understand." Pei Huai said no more, reached out and pulled him up, and continued to walk hurriedly towards the foot of the mountain.
The boy nodded obediently and followed him with his hands behind his back.
"Brother!" As they climbed over the increasingly steep slope, he opened his arms, trotted over and hugged Pei Huai, smiling like a short-tailed kangaroo.
"Um?"
"After you find the search and rescue team, can you please not go into the mountains again? It's so dangerous, I'm worried something might happen to you."
"No." Pei Huai raised his arm. "I haven't found Yu Mingrui yet. As his brother, I need to be responsible for his safety."
"But my brother is not like that. He doesn't care about me at all. Even if he finds a rescue team, he won't come to me... Brother, you lied to me. This is not the obligation of brothers."
"I saved you, my brother or others, but it doesn't mean I'm a competent brother, nor does it mean your brother should be condemned." Seeing the boy secretly looking at his face and hugging him again, Pei Huai reached out and rubbed his short hair, saying, "I said I would take you to live, so, I must." At this time, his right thumb was gently pulled by a small hand.
"elder brother."
"Um?"
"I wish you were my brother." The boy raised his eyes and smiled. "Well, after you find me, we'll go down the mountain. We'll..."
Pei Huai couldn't help but smile. The next second, he suddenly heard the sound of wind sweeping in from behind the trees. There was a smell of rust that even rain couldn't erase. He instinctively grabbed the child and pulled him down behind him.
A felling axe chopped deep into the tree's structure, right at the boy's head. The axe swung a few times before being pulled free by a sturdy arm. Pei Huai turned around and yelled, "Run!"
——The boy fell to the side, frantically retreating to where he could, forcing back his tears.
The young man, standing between himself and the huge shadow and refusing to waver, shouted at him, "Don't look back. No matter what happens, don't look back. Do you hear me?!"
He stepped back, unsure whether to nod or shake his head. But under Pei Huai's repeated urging, all his emotions surged up, causing him to flee in despair, sobbing in despair.
"Well done." That elder brother, as warm as the sun, turned around so gently and calmly in the face of death, in the face of an axe stained with blood and flesh, and smiled at him.
"Well done, kiddo."
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