Susan is a friend of Zhao Zimai who met on the ferry back to China, and Amy is an abandoned baby she adopted in Dongchang five years ago, and she came back this time to take Amy to find relatives.

Several people have been on the boat together for four months, Amy is cute and lively, and likes to pester Zhao Zimai, so he and their mother and daughter have already become friends who talk about everything.

It's just that he didn't expect to see Susan again in this poor and remote place, and Amy was lost.

Sang wrinkled his nose, "So Amy is not a foreigner, she is a Chinese?" ”

Susan, who was sitting across from her, smiled slightly sadly and replied in fluent Chinese, "Amy found herself different from others when she grew up, and when I told her that she was from China, Amy always pestered me to ask what China was like, so I decided to take her to her homeland so that she could learn more about this land, and it would be great if I could take this opportunity to find her biological parents." After disembarking and parting with you, I took Amy to the relief society to find some old friends, where I had stayed for a few months, and had only come here the other day. But after living in Dongchang for a few days, her parents have not been found, but Amy has suffered such a disaster, and I really regret bringing her to Dongchang now. ”

"Don't worry, tell me where Amy got lost, so many of us will definitely find her." Zhao Zimai comforted softly.

"Yesterday the weather was nice, so I wanted to take her around and show her her where she was from. Amy was very excited, seeing everything fresh, and asked me to buy her a kite and fly it in the suburbs. The sky was as blue as a jewel, and the clouds seemed to have been roasted by the sun, leaving not a trace in the air. Amy was running under such a blue sky, dragging her kite in her hand. Because there was no wind, the kite always didn't fly high, and it fell again and again, but Amy didn't want to give up, she begged me to hold the kite high, and tried to make it fly again and again. I knew in my heart that the kite was Amy's strong nostalgia, and it flew high and high in her heart, but she rarely said it. But the kite could not fly at all, and then a gust of wind finally came, and the kite finally went up to the sky, but it fell headlong and hung on a small tower. The tower was low, not much taller than me, so I climbed up to help her pick up the kite."

At this, Susan sobbed softly, "But when I take off the kite and come down from the tower, I can't see Amy, I have searched all around, and I can't find her." I'm scared, I'm afraid she'll fall into the river, I'm afraid she'll be taken away by a wild beast, Mike, I don't know what to do anymore, Amy is my everything, I can't live without her. ”

As she spoke, she shook Zhao Zimai's hand hard, as if she wanted to draw some warmth from it. Zhao Zimai took out his hand and patted Susan's hand lightly, then turned to Baotian and said, "Now that it's almost dawn, you go to a nearby town to find a carriage and go back quickly." ”

"Childe, you just got injured, can you eat well?" Baotian hesitated a little, and in a blink of an eye, he saw Sang's gloomy face, so he swallowed his saliva, not daring to say anything more.

"Go now, go back quickly." Zhao Zimai repeated these four words in an irrefutable tone, and after witnessing Baotian walking away, he rushed to Sang Dao again, "Great Immortal, I'm sorry, I may need to delay here for a few more days." ”

Sang Leng snorted, turned around and walked to the corner of the wall and sat down, and after a while, he said in a loud voice, "If you want to find someone, you can find it yourself, I will wait at the inn, and I won't give any strength." ”

"Mike." Hearing Sang say this, Susan's hand shrank visibly.

"Don't mind, she's always hard-mouthed and soft-hearted." Zhao Zimai comforted, but his answer was only exchanged for a provocative sneer from Sang.

When she heard the sound of the water and the lonely chirping of wild birds, Susan, who had been lying on the window, hurriedly ordered the coachman to stop and was the first to get out of the carriage.

"This is it, Amy got lost here." She pointed to a winding path on the grassy slope ahead and said in a loud voice, "Follow this path and you will see the little tower." ”

Hearing her say this, several people walked down from the carriage, and Zhao Zimai first smelled a new stream of water, which surged along the somewhat stuffy air after the rain and burrowed into his nose. Then, following the direction of Susan's finger, he saw a path, so narrow that only two people could walk side by side, but the grass on the side of the road was much higher than elsewhere, almost up to the neck of an adult, and the weeds were so large that they almost covered the road.

"Let's go in first and take a look, maybe Amy and you will get lost, and I'm afraid that you will come back to look for her, so I'll wait in place."

Zhao Zimai said and walked towards the path, but before he could take a step, Sang's lazy voice came from behind, "I'm not going, I'm waiting here." ”

He was stunned for a moment, and just wanted to return it with the word "good", but saw a group of children jumping and running from the side, the leader holding a dogtail grass in his hand, pretending to wave it behind him while running, and said in a loud voice, "Drowning people are vulgar, they can be hated, and they are strictly forbidden." ”

The six or seven children who followed behind stopped, stood with their heads bowed, and replied solemnly, "The minister obeys the order, and the minister receives the order." ”

sang and harmonized, as if it was really in the court.

After the play, several children ran forward again, singing: "I heard people drowning, and the miserable situation is unbearable." The hard work is inevitable, and the stone people are also sweating. Mo is ignorant, but he can't speak, he has a spirit, and he looks like a relative. Who gave birth to me? Parents are more than heaven and earth. Who is the one who kills me? i.e. my parents are. ”

They sang and ran all the way, and after a while, there was no one in sight, but the singing voice stayed, and it circled around a few times in the hearts of several people, and slowly settled down.

"Who gave birth to me? Parents are more than heaven and earth. Who is the one who kills me? i.e. my parents are. Sang repeated the words and said softly, "Is this ballad about drowning babies?" ”

Zhao Zaimai's eyes were covered with a layer of compassion, "Drowning babies used to be the most common thing here, almost every household was involved, I heard my father say when I was a child, some women even went to the stream to drown, talking and laughing while killing their own flesh and blood." Therefore, the imperial decree explicitly prohibited infanticide, and the provincial governors issued a ban stating that any parent who intentionally kills a newborn child is guilty of murder and should be sentenced to sixty years of caning and one year's exile according to the law. ”