Chapter 61 - 61: Lifesaving Gourd_l
Wen Hengyin also sensed something was wrong, chasing frantically behind the deer.
In the busy farming season, there weren’t many people in the village. People were either in the fields harvesting wheat or preparing meals at home to be delivered to the fields.
Youyou galloped swiftly, and soon saw a woman holding Xiaojie and Xiaowu, hurrying ahead in haste.
Xiaojie and Dawu were obviously not happy, struggling and crying desperately.
“Stop!” Yingbao shouted, urging Youyou to move faster.
The woman looked back, immediately dropped the more troublesome Xiaowu, and ran away holding Xiaojie.
Yingbao reached Xiaowu and glanced back to see Wen Henzvin trailing far behind, “Wen Hengyin, please take care of my brother!” she yelled, before pushing the deer to chase after the woman.
Wen Hengyin roughly understood the situation. He run over to Xiaowu and picked up the crying child, looking in the direction where Yingbao had disappeared. He knew he couldn’t catch up, so he turned around and started running back.
Sigh, he was just feeding Ahua, he never thought he would encounter a child thief. He had to quickly find an adult to rescue Yingbao and her brother.
Holding Xiaowu, he ran all the way, gasping heavily, when he saw a villager. He immediately shouted, “Auntie! Someone is stealing a child, go to the Jiang family to call for help!”
The person was Wang Ke’s wife, who was preparing to deliver food to the field. Hearing these words, she immediately headed to the Jiang Family,running and shouting, “Help! Someone is stealing children!”
Yingbao chased all the way to the Chuanhe river, and just as she was about to catch up, the woman turned and coldly laughed, forcefully throwing the child in her hand.
“Xiaojie!”
Yingbao’s eyes were bloodshot. She had no time to tangle with the woman, following Xiaojie downstream.
Because it had rained recently, the river flowed rapidly, taking Xiaojie far away in a flash.
Yingbao urged Youyou to chase downstream, watching Xiaojie’s red coat floating up and down in the water, her mind buzzing, but her heart was unusually clear.
No! She must get ahead of the current and stop Xiaojie. If they continued to chase this way, a wave could easily sink him to the riverbed.
Yingbao slapped Youyou fiercely, urging it to run faster. When she had passed Xiaojie, she jumped off the deer’s back, ran to the riverside, and jumped in disregarding the height difference.
As she fell into the water, Yingbao released a Gourd Vine linked with two large gourds.
Upon entering the water, she unconsciously held her breath and the small body was pulled out of the water by the Gourd Vine.
She grabbed the Gourd Vine with one hand and wrapped it around herself, swimming with all her might towards Xiaojie.
In her past life, she knew how to dog paddle, and she hadn’t forgotten it now. Finally, she managed to catch him.
Yingbao held Xiaojie tightly, letting his head rest on the thin waist of the gourd.
She wanted to have Xiaojie ride on the thin waist of the gourd, but the large gourd rolled in the water and couldn’t carry a person.
And she couldn’t control the floating gourd, only watching herself and her brother drifting downstream.
It was over, she and her brother couldn’t make it to the shore.
Looking back, she saw Youyou chasing after them, non-stop.
In the water, Yingbao holding her brother was being carried further and further away by the gourd, and soon she couldn’t see Youyou clearly.
The chest of Xiaojie in her arms was rising and falling with breath, his eyes tightly closed, not knowing if he was asleep.
Yingbao felt slightly relieved. With one hand holding him and one hand grabbing tightly onto the gourd, she didn’t let herself and her brother sank into the water.
She didn’t know how long they had been drifting for. The surface of the water began to widen and the current slowed down.
Catching her breath, Yingbao kicked her legs hard and swam towards the shore.
After struggling for a long time, Yingbao, exhausted as she was, finally drifted to the shallow bank.
After consuming a handful of Wuding Shi, she felt a slight recovery in her powers and managed to drag her brother to the shore.
The two large gourds also got entangled in the weeds on the bank, not drifting
away.
She turned him over to drain the water from his lungs, removed his wet clothes, fetched a thicker garment from the cave dwelling, and wrapped her brother in it.
Then she fed him a bit of Wuding Shi juice, and only then did she collapse on the ground herself, gazing absently at the blue sky.
After an unknown length of time, Youyou ran over, bumping her with its head, trying to rouse her to get up.
But she could not move, not even able to lift a hand.
At that moment, someone ran over in their direction.
Yingbao took a glance, but couldn’t clearly see who it was.
“Baobao!” Jiang Sanlang ran over like a madman, seeing the two children lying silently on the beach, his vision darkened, and he almost fainted.
“Baobao! Xiaojie!” Jiang Sanlang knelt on the gravel, holding Yingbao in one arm and his son Xiaojie in the other, encircling them tightly into his chest, with unstoppable tears cascading down.
A man in his thirties, choked up to the point of speechlessness, touched his son’s still warm body and the rise and fall of his chest, reassured somewhat.
He then checked the breath from his daughter’s nose. There was breath on his fingers too, settling a bit more of his anxiety.
However, he couldn’t stabilize his fluctuating emotions, bursting into loud, heartrending sobs.
A few villagers arrived, saw Jiang Sanlang in this state, and, assuming that both children were gone, immediately felt sorrow and regret. They didn’t even notice the two strange huge gourds nearby.
At this point, Jiang Erlang also ran over, picked up his nephew from the arms of his sobbing younger brother, discovering that the boy still had breath. He immediately started pushing and pressing the water out him. Xiaojie woke up from the pressing, opened his eyes, and cried loudly.
“Ah, the child is crying, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Everyone was shocked and delightfully exclaimed: “God bless.”
Yingbao also recovered a little. She raised her hand and pointed to the villagers who were about to move, “You, don’t move! Those gourds are mine.”
A few villagers had already noticed the gourds by the shore and were going to take a look, but after hearing this, they laughed, “We wouldn’t move them, we just wanted to help you pull them up. Wow, what kind of gourds are these, they’re so huge!”
“These gourds must be what saved the children, ah, amazing, the fairy child is indeed extraordinary, even summoned such magical gourds.”
Yingbao: …
Could she say that these people were too smart for her?
It was terrifying. They were about to expose all her secrets.
After this, the villagers carried the two large gourds, Jiang Sanlang carried his daughter, and Jiang Erlang carried his nephew, they quickly returned to the village.
At this moment, there was a large crowd gathered in front of Jiang Sanlang’s house, a woman with her hands bound behind her back sat collapsed on the ground.
Jiang Liu, furious, slapped her across the face and pulled her hair back and forth, crying and cursing, “You’re damned! What did my children ever do to you, why did you try to harm them? If anything happens to them, I’ll kill you, you beast…”
The kneeling woman had a bruised face and was bleeding from the corner of her mouth. She chuckled at Jiang’s family, “Why should my son die while yours lives well? If it weren’t for Jiang Sanlang’s pitilessness, how would my son Donkey have been sent to the barracks?”
“Nonsense!” Jiang Dalang retorted in anger, “Your son, Donkey, would’ve still been conscripted even if he was home. Only someone sick in the head would blame my family.”
The clan leader, Chen, and Chen Sanyou too arrived, pushing their way through the crowd in front of the woman, biting their teeth in fury.
“You’re a wicked woman! You’ve utterly disgraced our Chen Family!”
The clan leader then turned to Chen Sanyou.
“Later send her to Lizheng, have him judge her as he sees fit. Who will go to call her family? Such an evil woman, she’s not wanted in our Chen Family.
Where is Chen Ergou? Call him here. If he is an accomplice, send him to the authorities as well.. If he knew nothing, let him write a divorce letter, and divorce this ignorant and foolish woman first!”