The Fortunate Lady and Her Mountain Man

Chapter 29: Chapter 29: Child

Ji Huan knew her current situation was hardly ideal for meddling in others’ affairs. She had intended to ignore it, but after hesitating for just a moment, she turned and walked toward the earthen house.

’What if it’s child abuse?’

The earthen house had no yard, so Ji Huan walked right up to the door. She raised her hand and knocked lightly on the wooden panel. "Anyone home?"

There was no reply from inside.

The voice she’d heard earlier, though faint, hadn’t stopped. Ji Huan could now tell that it was definitely a child, but their voice was hoarse from crying out that they were hungry.

Ji Huan cast aside all thoughts of politeness and began to pound on the door.

Her hand began to ache, but still, no one responded.

It was then that she realized something was wrong.

The door wasn’t locked from the outside, but bolted from within, which meant an adult had to be inside.

Someone was inside but not responding, letting a child starve to this point...

Ji Huan glanced around and spotted a wooden lattice window on the west wall. Without hesitation, she walked over, poked a hole through the paper covering, and raised her oil lamp to peer inside.

The sight made her gasp, and the oil lamp nearly slipped from her grasp.

Even someone as composed as Ji Huan turned and fled.

Hu Liang was helping clean up the dilapidated shack, while Hu Dacheng was pulling the cart back alone, planning to go home and fetch Ji Huan.

He saw someone running toward him from a distance. When the person reached him, panting for breath, he froze. "Wan, what are you...?"

"Come with me!" Ji Huan grabbed him and ran back to the earthen house. She pointed at the wooden door. "Can you get this open?"

As she spoke, she gave the door a kick to demonstrate, but her kick was too weak. The wooden plank didn’t budge.

"Th-that’s not a good idea, is it?" Hu Dacheng was completely bewildered. He couldn’t understand why Wan would be kicking down someone’s door in the middle of the night.

Ji Huan had no time to explain. "Just kick it like I said! I’ll take responsibility for any trouble. Hurry! If we wait any longer, it’ll be too late."

Hu Dacheng was confused and a little scared, but he was willing to trust Ji Huan. Besides, his mother had told them that if Wan ever needed help, they absolutely had to provide it.

Though still a half-grown young man, a boy without a father learns to run the house early. He’d done more than his share of farm work and possessed a fair bit of brute strength.

He backed up a few paces, took a deep breath, got a running start, and slammed his foot into the center of the door. After a few more tries, the tightly shut door finally gave way, opening a crack. Hu Dacheng deftly slipped his hand inside, fumbled around for a moment, and slid the bolt open.

Ji Huan quickly stepped in front of him, blocking him from pushing the door open and seeing inside. "Dacheng, I’ll stay here. Go get the village chief."

Hu Dacheng was truly baffled now.

Ji Huan then added, "Just tell the village chief that someone here is dead."

She said it so casually that for a moment, Hu Dacheng wondered if he had misheard.

"Hurry up. What are you staring for?"

Ji Huan gave a stunned Hu Dacheng a push, turning him around. He had already run quite a distance before he truly processed what was happening.

He ran all the way to the village chief’s house without stopping. The moment he saw the village chief, his legs gave out, and he almost collapsed to the ground.

"You’re from the Hu family, aren’t you? What’s the matter?" the village chief asked, steadying him.

"Some... someone’s dead." Hu Dacheng was trembling so hard he could barely speak. "Wan... she said there’s... there’s... a dead person..."

After sending Hu Dacheng off, Ji Huan held the oil lamp in one hand, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

The scene inside could only be described as horrifying.

A child, hoarsely crying out in hunger, was crouched beside a body that had long gone cold. One of the corpse’s hands was mangled, a bloody mess of flesh and bone, clearly the result of being bitten.

Ji Huan glanced at the child’s blood-smeared mouth. For a moment, she couldn’t tell if the deceased had deliberately wounded their own hand to keep the child alive, or if the child...

Suppressing her horror, she walked over and knelt down. ’Forgive me,’ she thought, and began a cursory examination of the body.

Rigor mortis had begun to subside, and the livor mortis was spreading, which meant the time of death was clearly over twenty-four hours ago. However, decomposition hadn’t set in, so it had been less than seventy-two hours.

The deceased was in their sixties. There were dried bloodstains in the mouth and nostrils, indicating antemortem bleeding, but it wasn’t caused by poison. There were bruises from subcutaneous hemorrhaging, and the body had turned purple, the face especially so. Her preliminary assessment was that a sudden condition, like a brain hemorrhage, had caused the death.

As she examined the body, the child remained crouched nearby, seemingly unaware of her presence. He just faced the corpse and mechanically chanted, "Hungry... hungry..."

His little face was expressionless; he wasn’t crying or making a fuss.

Ji Huan frowned. ’Does this child have an intellectual disability?’

But regardless of whether he was mentally impaired or not, the road ahead for him... would be a difficult one.

Ji Huan had sent Hu Dacheng to get the village chief for two reasons. First, a death required the village chief’s oversight. Second, she was afraid that if Hu Dacheng saw this scene, he might accidentally let it slip to others.

In this ancient society that feared both ghosts and gods, even scholars who claimed to "not speak of the strange or supernatural" were not free from superstition, to say nothing of the uneducated villagers.

As far as Ji Huan knew, there was a "coffin-born child" in a neighboring village. His mother had died during a difficult labor. She had already stopped breathing and the family had begun arranging the funeral when suddenly, a baby’s cry rang out from the delivery room. He had been born against all odds.

Medically, there’s a distinction between clinical death and brain death.

Clinical death refers to the cessation of heartbeat and respiration. Outwardly, the body’s life functions appear to have vanished, but weak metabolic processes continue within the tissues. The brain’s central functions are abnormal but have not yet reached an irreversible state.

Brain death, however, is the irreversible loss of all brain functions, including those of the brainstem. At this point, even though some of the body’s cells might still be alive, the person as a whole is gone. The complete failure of all bodily functions is only a matter of time.

Ji Huan figured the pregnant woman probably hadn’t been completely dead at the time. Either she was brain-dead but her cardiopulmonary functions hadn’t totally failed, or her heart and lungs had only just stopped while the fetus was still viable... Whatever the case, for both the dead mother and the newborn child, it was nothing short of a miracle.

But the reality was that this child, brought into the world against all odds, was not welcomed by anyone.

The villagers all called him the coffin-born child, saying he’d crawled out of a dead woman’s womb. They saw him as an ill omen; being near him would bring misfortune. As a result, no one would play with him. Some people even threw stones at him on sight.

A child whose mother had used the very last of her strength to give him life was treated this way; if people were to find out that the child before her had dared to... from a dead body...

Ji Huan didn’t dare to dwell on the thought. She seized the opportunity, quickly pulling out a handkerchief to wipe the blood and grime from the child’s mouth before the village chief could arrive.

The child was completely still, letting her do as she pleased.

The village chief hadn’t arrived, but Hu Liang showed up.

He had been waiting in the shack, but when no one returned, he went looking. He spotted his family’s cart toppled by the side of the road and followed the trail here.

The corpse inside the house gave him a terrible fright. But when he saw that Ji Huan, a young woman, wasn’t the least bit shaken, he felt he couldn’t appear too cowardly himself.

Ji Huan saw how tense he was and knew he felt uneasy. Seeing a chance to give him something to do, she said, "Brother Liangzi, could you go back and bring me a bowl of light salt water? And some food, something easy to digest."

The salt water would help quickly replenish his fluids and clean out his mouth. The child had been starving for days; giving him solid food right away would damage his stomach.

Hu Liang knew Hu Dacheng had already gone to notify the village chief, and seeing that Ji Huan was truly unafraid, he left, reassured.

No sooner had he left than Hu Dacheng arrived with the village chief.

Trailing behind the village chief was a crowd of curious villagers.

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