It was late at night, and the cold wind, which had been howling for almost the whole month, seemed to be tired, and gradually died down. In the warm bedroom, the fire is blazing, sparing no effort to transfer the heat to the whole room, and even make the room a little stuffy.

Elena Barker froze into her chaise longue like a statue, no longer trying to wake up her child, the baby in her arms getting colder, though he looked like he was asleep.

The young mother's delicate face had become haggard and pale from a long lack of rest, and the blue and purple bags under her eyes hung on her marble-smooth face, giving her a sickly and fragile beauty.

She wore a warm white cotton home dress, and her long, fluffy blond hair was draped over the dark widow's burqa. Less than two weeks ago, she had just lost her beloved husband, the tall and handsome Edward Moore.

This winter, a terrible flu hit the entire village, and under the heavy cold, freezing and heavy snow, the haze of the disease refused to leave, and several lives were claimed in the village of Garin. Edward, the son-in-law of the miller, was also one of the unfortunate ones.

Known as a beauty, the single daughter of the miller Dunken Barker eventually chose a wandering mercenary as her husband, much to the deplorment of many, including the minor nobles of several nearby estates.

The happy young couple also got their first child at the beginning of the new year, but while they were still basking in the joy of the birth of their beloved son, illness suddenly struck down the always strong Edward.

The young man, who had no concern for a small cold, quickly deteriorated within a week and passed away suddenly. Grief-stricken, Elena longs to sleep with her husband in the ground, but her newborn baby is still waiting to be fed. For the sake of her child, Elena endured her grief and survived, but she locked herself in her bedroom every day, not wanting to see anyone, even her parents.

Fate was so cruel that less than a week after Edward's death, the otherwise healthy child suddenly contracted the flu. When the doctor was powerless, Lao Dunken did not hesitate to spend a lot of money to hire the most haode priest in Qingyuan City, more than a hundred miles away, to come over for treatment and prayer, praying that God would give his poor daughter a little mercy and not take away the light of her life.

The prayer seemed to work, and by the time the well-dressed priest left, the young life showed some signs of improvement, and the little baby, who had been suffering from breathlessness and a high fever, began to have a fever and was able to eat a little of its mother's milk.

The good news of this day made the whole family, who had been worried, a little relieved, and everyone was crushed by the fatigue of the day, and they all went back to the room to rest at this moment.

Forcing Elena to rest, she held the baby in her arms and sat in front of the fire to watch it carefully, but finally fell into a sleeping swamp. When she awoke from her slumber, she was shocked to find that the baby in her arms had stopped breathing.

She thought she would cry or scream, but she found that her emotions seemed to be frozen by this cold winter, and she could only sit there stiffly. Her lungs were breathing mechanically, her heart was beating numbly, even in the face of the raging fire, she felt that she was slowly dying with the child in her arms, slowly becoming cold, and a sense of detachment arose.

Outside the window, there was a slight crash and crackling sound, the sound of the river thawing. The rising temperatures of the recent days have caused the river that pushes the mill waterwheel to thaw and regain its vitality, except for a small amount of ice floe near the shore, which makes such a sound every time it is hit by a tree or something that washes down upstream.

Elena slowly stood up and walked to the window, looking down from the window on the second floor, the river reflecting the starry sky was like a ribbon, it was a path to dark dreams, and each dark vortex was full of fatal attraction for her at the moment.

The young woman gently pushed open the bedroom door, silently passed the maid who was napping against the wall, and walked barefoot down the first floor. After passing through the uninhabited living room, after going out through the small kitchen door, there is a corridor of wood. The end of the corridor leads to an unloading dock by the river, from where barley oats are brought from the nearby villages every harvest to grind into fine flour and then transport them away.

At the moment, there was only the sound of the wind and the crisp sound of ice splitting on the dock......

As if bewitched, Elena walked straight to the water, the January cold tugging at her clothes and burrowing into her arms from all angles, but the cold could not match the frost in Elena's heart.

The desperate mother kissed the baby again under the starlight. The baby's round fleshy face had turned pale and stiff, and her green eyes, as clear and bright as her mother's, would never open again, and her closed little mouth had not even called her mother once, but had since fallen into eternal silence.

Elena turned her back to the river and looked at the huge mill standing by the river, knowing that her selfish departure would leave her family in great pain, but now she could no longer bear the torment of living.

When she poured into the icy water, she silently recited her apologies to her family. The biting chill that enveloped her body almost completely swept away her consciousness. The impact of falling water took away the baby in her arms in an instant, and when she resurfaced from under the water, she couldn't help but struggle to find her child, but the dark river no longer knew where the swaddling clothes had gone.

Elena gave up the struggle in despair, closed her eyes and relaxed, half-sinking and half-floating, letting the river slowly soak through the fluffy fabric on her body, pulling her to sink to the bottom of the water. However, it wasn't long before her floating hand suddenly knocked something down, what seemed to be a reed by a river, or some driftwood rushing upstream?

The limbs that were completely numb from the cold did not feel pain, but there was a wooden impact feeling, because of this block, Elena's body turned an angle in the river, and her head hit the mass again, this time the impact was heavier, so that the consciousness that had been floating away was pulled back again.

However, what made Elena completely conscious for a moment was a very slight infant cry, a weak cry in her ears, which made the desperate mother mobilize all her liliang at once, and backhand grabbed the thing that had struck her twice - it was the blade of the waterwheel, and it turned out that the river had carried her to the waterwheel of her mill.

Elena anxiously searched for the source of her cry, and found something stuck between the blades of two waterwheels, a half-spread cloth bag floating on top of a large mass of branches, the color of which was unreadable in the darkness, it seemed to be white, and there were some patterns that reflected the glimmer of light.

The faint cry continued, and Elena carefully stretched out her completely unconscious hand to check it, compared to her cold self, the baby's body temperature was like a flame, and her body and soul were instantly ignited. She burst out of nowhere, grabbed the baby, and then grabbed the wheel frame of the waterwheel with one hand and began to climb to the shore.

Something was pulling at the baby's body, and it seemed that the corner of the swaddling clothes was stuck in a branch or something, and because it was strangled, the baby's cry became rapid. Elena immediately returned to that corner, holding the blades of the waterwheel with one hand to prevent herself from sinking, and the other hand and teeth worked together to pull and finally free the baby from the cloth.

Without the warm cover, the baby cried louder because of the cold around her, but it also gave Elena endless courage and liliang. She miraculously pulled herself to the shore with only one hand, then took off her heavy blouse, unbuttoned her chest, hugged the almost naked baby tightly to her chest, and ran briskly to her home.

Tens of feet away became farther than ever, but nothing could stop a mother's determination and will. After the first few steps, her frozen limbs seemed to be re-energized, and she ran faster and faster, quickly rushing up the wooden hallway of her house, slamming open the kitchen door, and rushing into the warmth of the room.

She quickly took off her soaked clothes, picked up a warm and thick wool blanket from the kitchen lounge and wrapped herself and the child, and then approached the stove and opened the door, letting the blazing fire warm herself as much as possible.

The long soaked hair was still dripping, and there were some ice slags wrapped around it. Elena brushed her hair to the side so that cold water would not drip onto the baby's face. After entering the warm room, the baby's crying gradually stopped, and the instinct to survive at this moment made him turn his attention to the familiar soft and plump room.

Elena was touched by the baby's powerful sucking, even when she saw it in the firelight that it was not her child. Babies under a month of age may look the same to others, but even the slightest difference can't hide from the mother's eyes.

The greedy eater in his arms was also a boy, healthy and strong, born for no more than a month, and the soft white-gold fetal hair on the top of his head indicated that he, like his own child, would be a handsome little blond man in the future. Because the food was too urgent, it choked a little, so that the baby frowned slightly and blinked his eyes, making an uncomfortable chirp.

At a glance, Elena noticed that the child also had bright green eyes, but the color was slightly warmer than her own, a bit like the color of the buds of a hazel tree in spring.

"My ...... Baby ......" Elena's dry eyes were filled with hot tears, and a pain from the inside out ran through her, and she carefully patted and caressed the baby to free him from the pain of choking. She couldn't help but kiss him again and again, everything on Shijie was not as beautiful as half of this life in her arms at this moment.

"My dear...... Baby...... Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you......, thank you My lovely child, my light of hope...... It's mine...... Dearlando......"

Oops, I'm sorry, there's a lot of New Year's events, I just finished writing an update, and I was originally going to post two chapters, but the first chapter can't be finished today anyway, just one chapter~ This volume will introduce Dierlando's somewhat strange life experience and the black history of his childhood, haha*****