Just as the two of them finished the last bite of hot meat and felt a little full, Li Hongzhuang's hoarse, tearful roar pelted the mud house like hailstones.
"Er Gouzi! Er Gouzi! Open the door! Help!"
Zhang Cheng's ears twitched, and from the commotion, he roughly knew what was going on.
He stood up, casually brushed the ashes off his backside, and mumbled something to Shi Yangyang, who was huddled by the edge of the kang (heated brick bed):
"I'm going out to check. You stay put."
After saying that, he strode out.
As soon as the tattered curtain was lifted, a cold wind carrying snowflakes rushed in.
In the courtyard, Li Hongzhuang carried his son Li Yaohui on his back. His lips were purple from the cold, and he was panting heavily, looking like a broken bellows.
Li Yaohui's injured arm hung limply, the exposed flesh frozen into a frightening bluish-purple color, looking no different from a piece of frozen pork.
As soon as Li Hongzhuang saw Zhang Cheng come out, he rushed forward, his voice hoarse:
"Ergouzi! Good brother! Please, save my Yaohui! I'm begging you on my knees!"
He was about to kneel down when he said that.
Zhang Cheng quickly reached out to stop him, his brows furrowed deeply.
"Uncle Hongzhuang, please get up first."
"I can't guarantee anything about this; I can only give it a try."
He glanced at Li Yaohui's arm. With such a severe injury, in this place lacking medical care and medicine, whether he could survive was a matter of luck.
"Uncle knows! Uncle understands!"
Li Hongzhuang's eyes were red-rimmed, and tears were welling up in his eyes.
"Go ahead and do it! As long as you're willing to lend a hand, no matter what happens in the end, whether you live or die, our whole family won't blame you! We absolutely won't blame you!"
Li Yaohui, who was clinging to his father's back, had been a little dazed from the cold, but he was now much more awake. His pale face was filled with fear, and he pleaded in a trembling voice:
"Dog, Dog Bro... Save me... I... I haven't gotten married yet... I don't want to die... Waaah..."
As she spoke, her voice began to tremble with emotion, and she even started to cry.
Zhang Cheng sighed inwardly; this kid was indeed honest.
He stared at Li Hongzhuang and laid out the unpleasant truth upfront:
"Uncle, I'm telling you this now, I'll do my best."
If Yaohui... doesn't make it, that's his fate, it has nothing to do with me.
"I know! Uncle knows!"
Li Hongzhuang nodded repeatedly, as if he had grasped at the last straw.
"Alright."
Zhang Cheng said no more and turned to go inside.
Under the anxious and expectant gazes of Li Hongzhuang and his son, Zhang Cheng soon reappeared, holding a dark, half-person-high earthenware jar in his hands.
He walked to the corner of the yard, grabbed some clean snow, and stuffed it into the jar until it was completely full.
Then he returned to Li Hongzhuang and gestured towards Li Yaohui with his lip:
"Put your arm in."
"Huh? Oh, oh, oh!"
Although Li Yaohui didn't understand, he quickly did as he was told, struggling to stuff his almost numb injured arm into the earthen jar full of snow.
The icy sensation made him shiver violently.
Zhang Cheng's method was simple and brutal: he used extremely low temperatures to completely freeze the arm.
"die"
This causes nerve paralysis and vasoconstriction, buying time for subsequent treatment and reducing pain and bleeding.
"Uncle, could you go to the old blind man's house in the village and ask him for some candles, the more the better?"
Zhang Cheng gave the instructions.
The old blind man knew a bit about folk remedies and herbal medicine in the village. This "hairy candle" was the best homemade hemostatic medicine that could be found these days.
"Okay! Okay! I'll go right now!"
Li Hongzhuang responded quickly, carefully put his son down, made him squat against the wall, and then ran out of the yard to find life-saving herbs.
Li Yaohui half-squatted on the ground, his arms tucked into a snow canister, his teeth chattering from the cold. He stared expectantly at Zhang Cheng, whose expression remained unchanged, and asked in a low voice:
"Dog, Brother Dog... is my arm... ruined? Am I going to die?"
Zhang Cheng ignored him, but squatted down and reached out to touch the arm in the jar.
It was freezing cold outside, dozens of degrees below zero. In no time, my arms were as hard as rocks.
Not long after, Li Hongzhuang and his wife came running back like a whirlwind.
Li Hongzhuang was carrying a small, shrunken cloth bag containing a handful of dry, yellowed candles.
His wife, with red eyes and carrying an even larger coarse cloth bag, quickly took off her old cotton-padded coat and draped it over her shivering son.
"Er Gouzi, bring the candles!"
Li Hongzhuang handed the small cloth bag to Zhang Cheng, then pointed to the large bag in his wife's hand, and said, panting:
"Er Gouzi, this is all the coarse grains we've saved up at home, and some coarse salt that we're reluctant to use. Take it first! Oh, right, and this too!"
He pulled a military knife with a leather sheath from his pocket; the handle was brass, and it looked like no ordinary weapon.
"This was sent back from the army by Yaohui's brother. You can take it for self-defense!"
Zhang Cheng didn't even glance at the bag of grain and salt. He wasn't short of food, and he didn't care for the rough, coarse grains.
But it was that military knife that caught his eye.
This knife looks incredibly sharp; it's more than a hundred times better than his dull woodcutter's knife.
"Uncle, I don't need any food, but I'll take this knife."
Zhang Cheng reached out and took the military knife.
"Whoosh!"
Just as Li Hongzhuang was about to say something more polite, Zhang Cheng had already gripped his military knife in his other hand. With a flash of cold light, he slashed at the base of Li Yaohui's arm, which was stuck in the refrigerated canister!
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