This child was not very young. He looked about thirteen or fourteen years old, and was actually a youth.
He was shabbily dressed. He was wrapped in a thicker garment, which looked like an old shirt from an adult, and he wore a straw garment outside it.
It was made of straw, and looked somewhat like a raincoat. He wore it over himself to help keep out the cold.
The youngster looked at them with cold suspicion, his expression frosty. But when he saw Gu Qingyao and the others, his expression softened.
Li Fangting called out to him when she saw him. “Elder Brother Jiang Xun!”
Jiang Xun nodded with a grunt. Then he looked at Gu Qingyao and said, “The entire Poplar Brigade lives in terror of Li Aiguo. They won’t dare to take you in. But there’s an abandoned house at the foot of the hill. Why don’t you hide there for a while? There’s no one there.”
Gu Qingyao turned to look at her younger aunt on her back. She knew that she urgently needed to get her younger aunt home to attend to her. There was no point lingering here.
Gu Qingyao said to Jiang Xun, “My younger aunt has had a miscarriage and is still bleeding. It’s no use hiding here. I have to bring her home to treat her. Can you go and get my father and elder brother? I live in the Qing River Brigade. Just follow this road. The brigade at the foot of the mountain is the Qing River Brigade. My family lives halfway up the mountain.”
Jiang Xun looked at the pallid Gu Yunshuang and nodded. “Alright, I’ll run over and get them.”
Gu Qingyao hurriedly thanked him. “Thank you. My father’s name is Gu Yunshen. He’s the doctor there. If you ask for Doctor Gu’s family, everyone there will know where he is. Ask them to bring a small cart. My younger aunt needs to lie down. And bring some blankets too!”
Jiang Xun nodded to show that he understood, then he ran down the road.
Gu Qingyao could not move quickly while carrying someone. It was much faster for Jiang Xun to go alone.
Gu Qingyao carried Gu Yunshuang and moved on. As she walked, she comforted Gu Yunshuang. “Younger Aunt, don’t be sad. I’ll bring you home. When we get home, no one will bully you. In the future, you and Tingting can lead a good life. Considering what the Li family is like, it’s best that you leave them.”
Gu Yunshuang smiled mockingly. “Don’t worry, I won’t be sad. I’ve wanted to get a divorce for a long time, but that Li Aiguo is a very difficult man. And Old Madam Li is absolutely unreasonable. She always brings up the fact that I’m a girl from a landlord family. But she and Li Aiguo are relatives, so I had no choice but to bear with it all these years.
“I’m not sad at all to have finally escaped.”
Although she said that she was not sad, her tears continued to flow.
She thought of the years she had spent trying to accommodate them in order to get by, how she had lived like a slave in the Li family, waiting on the whole family like a maidservant, and how she had miscarried twice from exhaustion. She had not managed to keep this one either.
As Gu Yunshuang thought about it, her tears flowed and she leaned on Gu Qingyao’s shoulder and sobbed hard.
Gu Qingyao’s heart ached to hear it. “Younger Aunt…”
“Mother…”
When she saw Gu Yunshuang crying so hard, Li Fangting also started to cry. She clutched Gu Qingyao and they kept going but with difficulty.
Gu Qingyao looked at Li Fangting and thought of what she had said just now to the Li family. She hurriedly explained, “Tingting, just now I told the Li family that you didn’t know how to do anything, and asked them to take you back. Please don’t misunderstand me. I purposely said that so that you could be with your mother. Do you understand?”