Chapter 5

Most animals had an instinct for finding their way back, able to return even far from their dens.

With the black donkey and the gray wolves leading the way, Li Cunxin and Yan Baiyu didn’t fear getting lost. Their only fear now was being too slow.

Two lives hung by a thread.

Li Cunxin’s stamina was limited. After carrying the person for a while, her pace slowed. Yan Baiyu took over and carried the person on her back.

Yan Baiyu said, “Put on the down jacket.”

“Huh?” Absentminded, Li Cunxin’s gaze woodenly followed Yan Baiyu’s indication toward the black donkey. There was a gray down jacket draped over the woman lying on the donkey.

Yan Baiyu had also taken off her outer jacket, like Li Cunxin, and was now wearing only her inner layer as she carried the woman. She walked past Li Cunxin. “Put it on quickly, don’t catch a chill after sweating.”

“Oh.” Li Cunxin obediently put on the down jacket. Yan Baiyu’s mountaineering gear was of the highest quality. The outdoor jacket was still durable despite scaling mountains and fording ridges, and the down jacket’s insulating properties hadn’t diminished at all. Their builds were fairly similar. Once Li Cunxin zipped it up, not a thread of cold wind could get through. Her body heat accumulated inside, warming her all over.

Li Cunxin took the donkey’s reins and quickly caught up with Yan Baiyu.

The two took turns like this, and amazingly, they managed to return to the little house before dark.

In a flurry, the two carried the two frostbitten women onto the earthen bed and covered them with the two furs.

Li Cunxin quickly ran to the kitchen, grabbed a clay basin, and went outside to fill it with snow.

Yan Baiyu asked, “What are you doing?”

Li Cunxin’s reddened hands scooped up two handfuls of snow as she stood by the bed. “I’m going to rub them with snow to warm them up.”

“Don’t rub them with snow; you’ll hurt them. You go start a fire and boil some water first. Their whole bodies are frozen stiff; they need to be immersed in warm water for rapid rewarming. Also find a container that can serve as a bathtub, big enough to hold their entire bodies.” Yan Baiyu’s every sentence was clear and direct, without any extraneous entanglement.

Li Cunxin knew that in the original world, Yan Baiyu loved climbing snowy mountains, so she would certainly have some knowledge of first-aid for frostbite and freezing. Thus, she trusted her and did as she said without hesitation. She hurried back to the kitchen and crouched in front of the stove to start a fire.

Yan Baiyu took off the two frozen women’s shoes and socks, called over the three gray wolves, and patted the bed. “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, up.”

The three gray wolves were very intelligent. With agile movements, they leaped onto the bed, stepped into the gaps left by the two lying women, curled up, and lay down next to them. Their thick fur made their bodies hot, like three hand-warmers.

Yan Baiyu stroked Alpha’s nape, then got up and went to the kitchen.

Li Cunxin was still trying to strike a fire. Her hands were sweaty; the iron piece struck the flint but couldn’t produce any sparks. A few stray ones appeared but wouldn’t ignite the tinder. The more anxious she got, the more she failed, and the more she failed, the more anxious she got.

Yan Baiyu’s cool, slender fingers gently pressed down on her wrist. “Let me do it.”

For a fleeting moment, Li Cunxin’s glass-clear eyes showed helplessness as she looked at Yan Baiyu, then quickly hid it. She handed the fire striker in her hands to Yan Baiyu and stepped aside. “There’s not enough water. I’m going to fetch some.”

When Li Cunxin returned from fetching water, Yan Baiyu had already started the fire.

The clay vat was roughly big enough for one person to squat in with knees bent. If they did the immersion one by one, it would take too much time.

Li Cunxin opened the other clay vat in the kitchen used to store vegetables, dumping the radishes, cabbages, and asparagus lettuce all over the floor, emptying this second watertight vat and pouring the fetched water into it.

The iron wok, with its large heating surface and hot fire, boiled water very quickly. Li Cunxin hadn’t even finished filling that one vat before the water was already boiling.

Yan Baiyu first scooped the hot water into a clay basin, then scooped the cold water from the water vat into the wok to continue heating. She then poured the hot water into the remaining cold water in the water vat.

After mixing two basins of hot water with half a vat of cold water, Yan Baiyu reached in to test it. Feeling it was slightly hot to the touch, she said, “This temperature is just right.”

The two first carried one of the women over. They removed her pants, leaving her in only her underclothes, and immersed her legs in the warm water. Using the water ladle, they doused and massaged her, helping her joints loosen up. Then they removed the animal hide covering her upper body, took off her outer clothes and inner layer, and had her crouch in the water vat so the warm water reached past her shoulders.

After immersing one person, they immediately boiled another vat of water and did the same for the other. Another pot of hot water was being kept warm on the stove, ready to be added when the water in the two vats cooled.

When all this was done, Li Cunxin collapsed on the floor, exhausted, propping herself up from behind with both arms. She tilted her head back, unable to breathe in enough oxygen through her nose, so she opened her mouth wide and panted.

She felt as if her lungs were about to split. She rested her arm on the edge of the clay vat, her forehead against it, her shoulders and back heaving.

The ends of her hair were wet, the back of her neck glistened with moisture, and a large patch of her T-shirt was soaked through with sweat.

Yan Baiyu draped the animal hide over Li Cunxin. “Don’t catch cold.”

Li Cunxin looked up and saw the face of the woman sitting in the warm water, head tilted to one side.

The woman’s terrifyingly blue lips had regained some normal color. Her cheeks were moist from the steam rising off the water. It was a very young, delicate face, with a rounded nose, full lips, and a pair of protruding ears. The taller woman had a small mole on the side of her neck, no earlobes, and very faint eyebrows. Both frozen women appeared to be only in their twenties, around the same age as the two of them.

The two women’s eyes were closed without a flicker of their lids. Their tilted heads faced the ground, and their faces wore a smile-like expression, as if yearning for the earth.

Li Cunxin’s heart was like a dead leaf toyed with by the wind outside, drifting and fluttering. She asked Yan Baiyu, “Will they wake up?”

Yan Baiyu, holding the water ladle, carefully added hot water to the cooling water vat from the edge. “They’ll be fine.”

Yan Baiyu’s voice was very soft. Her calmness and her greater knowledge of frostbite treatment steadied Li Cunxin’s heart, easing her terrible panic.

Li Cunxin leaned against the water vat and watched Yan Baiyu add water. Yan Baiyu’s movements were graceful. As she held the ladle at a slight tilt, a thin, clear stream of water wrapped in steam flowed into the edge of the vat. She gently stirred the surface with her fingers. Everything she did held a special charm.

Li Cunxin’s mind wandered. Her empty stomach let out a series of rumbles.

Yan Baiyu laughed softly and looked at her.

“Hungry.” Li Cunxin clutched her stomach.

Li Cunxin got up from the floor, bent over, and rummaged under the bamboo shelf for a clay pot. “Let’s get something to eat first.” Since breakfast, they had been rushing about. It was almost dark now, and they hadn’t eaten a single bite.

Li Cunxin fetched some split, larger pieces of wood from outside and arranged them into a “stove” to set the clay pot on.

Yan Baiyu asked, “How come I haven’t seen you use this pot before?” This pot was a size thinner than the basin. Although its lid was somewhat artistically shaped, its overall form was decent, rather resembling a clay pot from their original society.

“This one heats up slowly, so it’s not as fast as the wok for cooking. But now the wok is needed to heat water.” As Li Cunxin spoke, she added a bit of firewood below to ignite it.

With Yan Baiyu’s help these days, Li Cunxin would hull more rice each time she did it. Over time, she had accumulated a large bowlful of white rice. She didn’t need to hull rice now, but she didn’t have much energy to wash it either. She just poured it in directly, added water, and started cooking.

Thinking of how both people outside had suffered from the cold, once the congee started bubbling, she sliced a generous amount of ginger and tossed it in.

It was already getting dusky. Li Cunxin lit the candle in the kitchen. The candlelight filled the small room, and the freezing cold outside was kept at bay by the heat of the stovefire.

Starving from the day’s exertions, the two caught the scent of rice. Saliva automatically began to secrete.

Li Cunxin lifted the lid and used the wooden spatula with only a slight indentation to ladle out the congee. Each scoop could only fill a little bit of the bowl, but she was very patient. She first filled a bowl and handed it to Yan Baiyu. “There won’t be a stir-fried dish today. It’s late, and we’ve suffered the cold. Congee is easy to eat. I added some ginger to drive out the cold and help digestion.”

Yan Baiyu took the bowl and ate quickly, as she still had to monitor the water temperature.

Li Cunxin was ladling a bowl for herself when Yan Baiyu was already halfway through hers.

Suddenly, Li Cunxin caught sight of the young woman with the adorable protruding ears. Her lashes trembled faintly, like a butterfly breaking from its cocoon flapping its wings for the first time.

As if she had discovered a rare treasure, Li Cunxin raised her voice in surprise, “Baiyu, did her eyelids just move?!”

Yan Baiyu walked to the water vat and supported the woman’s cheek. She noticed the woman’s head wasn’t unconsciously leaning against her, placing all its weight on her hand, but seemed to have a little strength of its own for support.

The woman’s lips moved, emitting a threadlike sound.

“Is she talking?” Li Cunxin put her ear close to listen.

“Mom, I don’t want to go to work.” The woman grunted twice. “No, don’t want steamed buns with watery congee. I want beef noodles, I want a fried egg…”

“Hey, you…” Li Cunxin suddenly didn’t know what to call this stranger. “Wake up, don’t sleep anymore! You’ll get sick if you keep sleeping!”

Li Cunxin’s calls didn’t wake the protruding-eared lady, but they did wake the lady beside her, the one with a small mole on her neck.

That woman silently opened her eyes. While Li Cunxin and Yan Baiyu’s attention was on the other side, she straightened up.

“Baiyu, Baiyu, she’s awake too!” Li Cunxin cried out happily. Her mood was elated, with a similar sense of achievement to when she had first planted seeds and saw them bloom and bear fruit.

Compared to the unrestrained joy of the two, the rescued woman’s eyes were wooden, as if her emotions were also frozen solid and hadn’t yet awakened.

For a moment, Li Cunxin was a little worried that the woman’s brain had been damaged by the cold. The human body was like a precise instrument; perhaps after damage, it could still function but would have faults.

Li Cunxin held a fear and awe for the unknown of the brain. She went up to that woman and asked, “How do you feel? Are you uncomfortable anywhere? Do you remember what happened to you before?”

The woman’s eyes gained a bit of life, focusing on Li Cunxin. Her face seemed to soften with warmth, her expression changing.

This was no hallucination. Not caused by the body’s sensory disorder before freezing to death, which made one feel unbearably hot and strip off their clothes.

“What’s your name?”

The woman said, “Xia Qing!”

“Your name is Xia Qing?”

The woman seemed to be looking for something. She turned her head left and right, and upon seeing the woman beside her, she grew terribly anxious and tried to stand. The moment she rose, water splashed everywhere. Her violent movement nearly toppled the water vat. “Xia Qing!”

Li Cunxin hurriedly steadied the vat with one hand and saw the woman reach out to touch the other one. Only then did she understand that the “Xia Qing” from the mouth of this taller woman with the mole on her neck was the girl with the adorable protruding ears.

Yan Baiyu said, “She’s fine. She should be waking up soon.”

The woman shuddered as if with sobs of relief. A wisp of cold air that squeezed through a gap in the curtain blew onto her, making her shiver. She suddenly realized she was wearing only her underwear and that she and Xia Qing were immersed in water vats.

She crouched back down in the water vat and curiously eyed the two women before her and everything in sight.

Li Cunxin smiled and handed over the bowl of hot congee she was holding. “Are you hungry? Want something to eat first?”

The woman’s stomach was tightly clenched, with nothing but air inside. Hunger, in her dreams, in her hallucinations, had been relentlessly tormenting her.

She smelled the fragrance of food, unconsciously swallowed, like someone suddenly granted a treasure they never dared wish for, trembling and uncertain as she accepted it.

She began to suspect again that everything before her was a figment of imagination, a scene conjured by her brain’s last pity for her body before death, which was why this angel-like figure had come to bring her food.

The sounds nearby shattered her doubt.

From the other water vat, the woman named Xia Qing also came to. She thrashed awake as if from a nightmare, shouting loudly, “Oh no, oh no, I’m gonna be late!”