Chapter 40
After being stunned for a moment, tears welled up in my eyes. The surging emotions made it impossible for me to stand still. Without waiting for Li Ying'an to react, I suddenly opened my arms and ran towards him.
This was the first time I'd exerted such incredible force. I hadn't expected it to be so powerful, knocking Li Ying'an back. All I knew now was that I needed to hold him tightly, like a sacred gift bestowed upon me by the Goddess Wuqing, holding him tightly, preventing him from escaping even a single step. He felt like his feet were rooted to the baptism of my tears.
Thousands of words accumulated in my heart, and surged up my throat from the bottom of my heart. My sobs, which were speechless, sounded particularly mournful.
How could someone as wonderful as Li Ying'an exist in this world? His presence is like finding a small, sheltered hut in this world, a place I can shelter from all the winds and cold, a place I can live in. He's also the sturdy truss that holds me in place. Even if one day these trusses fail and the hut collapses, it will still be the hut I love.
Li Ying'an will not abandon me because of my changes. Similarly, I also remember the good things about Li Ying'an. I will not forget what Li Ying'an has done for me. I will always and clearly remember the eyes that were full of me when he looked at me.
What should I do? Listening to his rumbling heartbeat, I couldn't help but get closer to him. I really like Li Ying'an like this.
His hand fell on my back. Even through the fabric of my clothes, I could feel the warmth of his hand as it moved up and down. I heard him soothe me in a gentle voice, "Don't cry."
I controlled my outward emotions, tried my best to keep them in, and then left Li Ying'an's arms: Man, you are really good to me, I like you, and I want to call you brother.
I looked into his eyes firmly: Is it okay?
"Brother?" He chewed, "Of course. If you become a human, you'll be my brother Li Feng. If you become a cat, you'll be the playful Li Youzhi. No matter what, we're friends and family. No matter how you change, I'll always love you the same way I did before."
He said that what he wanted to give me was pure love, without interests, impulses, or restraints. It was the simplest and most superficial love. He just wanted to tell me that I was fine, it was good to have me by his side, he liked me, and he loved me very much.
"I love you, you have to be happy and live a happy life."
He hopes I will always be healthy, free from illness and pain, because he wants to bear all the pain and illness alone. He loves me, and he is willing to give everything for me. I am his only reliable support in this city. The indifference of others towards him will be soothed by my soft and warm fur. Nothing can heal better than me.
"Stop crying," he wiped the tears from my eyes with his thumb. "You've been out for the past three days. Go get some sleep and don't think about work. I'll ask your boss for leave."
It is now half past five in the morning. Li Ying'an didn't even cook dinner because he went out to look for me. He still has to work and has to cook to fill his stomach, so he has no time to waste with me anymore.
But I must explain one thing to him, something I deliberately omitted when I just recounted my three-day experience.
I quickly grabbed his hand, but hesitated to speak.
Li Ying'an was puzzled: "What's wrong?"
I looked at him and said, "I want to tell you something, maybe it has something to do with where you were born. Can I ask if you came from a place with a small maple forest nearby?"
Li Ying'an's expression changed: "Have you been to that place?"
I nodded: I also climbed a hill and found a small village on the other side of the hill, and there were even people living there.
He subconsciously frowned and wanted to refute, but no sound came out after his lips opened slightly. He swallowed all the words that were on the tip of his tongue, and finally just shook his head in disbelief.
Li Ying'an escaped from the cannibalistic village with his mother at the age of twenty-one. It took him two years to get here. He didn't tell me how hard the journey was, but only said that the road was bumpy and fortunately he managed to come here with his life.
When he arrived in the city, the first thing he did was to find the police station his teacher mentioned and report the case to the police. The police attached great importance to such cases and promised to investigate.
Later, he was summoned to the police station, but the police told him that the village mentioned by the local police station was a normal village and the trafficking incident he described did not exist at all. In order to eliminate the concerns on this side, the other party even directly sent a "Case Handling Cooperation Letter" to the local public security government, hoping that the local police could assist them in investigating this sensitive case.
They acted first and asked for permission later. The written request had already been presented, so they had no choice but to cooperate. They went to investigate the scene of the crime Li Ying'an had described and found it to be exactly as the local police had described. It was indeed an ordinary small village. Apart from the poor environmental conditions and living conditions, no illegal activities had occurred.
Li Ying'an questioned my words because the police had told him that they had been observing the local area for many days, and some people even disguised themselves as plainclothes officers to investigate the local small villages 24 hours a day. The final conclusion was that the village was sparsely populated, and men were rarely seen, let alone women. Most of them did not go out, but when they did go out, it was just to dig wild vegetables.
As for abducting women and secretly giving birth to children, they did not discover such illegal activities. They only found that the village was about to be deserted and most people had gone out to work.
So the households with lights on that I saw that day were actually the only few left in the village?
But why is their geographical location so regular to a strange degree?
This is also what Li Ying'an is worried about, because he has lived in that environment for twenty years and knows that this is equivalent to acting as a camera, and it is set up to monitor people who escape.
"But there is indeed a maple forest there. I don't know if the people living in that village are still the same group."
I put my hand on his arm: Let’s go and see later!
His expression was very conflicted, and he couldn't give me an accurate answer, but in the end he still said to me, "Go and take a look."
His main concern was that I might encounter an accident. Perhaps he realized that I was a cat, and that I could use my identity as a cat to help him.
Mentioning this, Li Ying'an's mood was obviously much more depressed than before. He forced a smile and stood in front of the operating table, quietly preparing breakfast with a knife.
His mood seemed to have grown wings, not only covering his face but also flying in the air and refusing to land. The whole room was filled with those complacent little emotions. I couldn't stand seeing such a scene.
I didn't listen to him and go to bed. I wanted to selfishly stick with him for a while, to know more about his past, to listen to what he had experienced, and to let him tell me his stories.
I walked over and tugged at his clothes, and only after seeing him turn around did I make my intention clear: Can you tell me about your childhood?
This request is actually very cruel. Li Ying'an's childhood was probably dark. He finally escaped from it, but I want him to recall it again.
I suddenly felt like giving up.
He didn't put down the kitchen knife or refuse my rude request. Instead, he continued cooking while saying, "Sure."
He told me that it was winter when he was born. It snowed heavily that day. The snowflakes fluttered everywhere, covering the entire village in silver. If a person stepped in the snow, half of his leg would be lost. Some families were so poor that the heavy snow collapsed their roofs, and they had to go to their neighbors' houses to stay warm when they slept.
At that time, his family next door was unfortunately hit by heavy snow, and they fled to his house. They had no place to sleep and could only sleep on the floor, but this was much better than freezing to death at home.
Li Ying'an said that if this family hadn't come, he would have died in the snow the year he was born. The man of that family suddenly had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and happened to see his mother, Li Rui, burying him in the snow. The man, witnessing the murder, wet his pants on the spot and screamed to the sleeping family, who finally dug him out of the snow pit.
But this made Li Rui suffer. She was still in confinement when she was forced to wear chains and locked in a small dark room. She was tortured for several days. When she came out, she was unconscious. However, she would remember Li Ying'an from time to time, the child who made her life worse than death. So if she saw him too often, she would go crazy.
So from a young age, Li Ying'an knew that his biological mother didn't like him, and he also resented his mother because of the words of his grandmother, who was said to be his blood relative. His original name was not Li Ying'an, but Zhao Shou. Because he almost died in the heavy snow, his grandmother deliberately gave Li Ying'an this name to anger his mother.
Zhao Shou Zhao Shou, may you live a long and healthy life. The more you don’t want her to live a healthy life, the more she will live against your wishes!
He thought that this was how his life would be. His ideas were gradually distorted by his so-called father. He would buy a wife with money like the men in the village, and then die in the small village.
Until he was lucky enough to meet the mentor in his life.
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