Liu Dazhi's recitation was a little stilted, but he got the sentence exactly right.
Qin Ningyi turned his head back, glanced at him, and nodded, a gentle smile in his eyes. "That is indeed the origin. Big Brother, you are correct."
The admiration and affirmation in his eyes made Liu Dazhi blush. He scratched his head and chuckled, "This is the only sentence I know. It's good that I didn't get it wrong."
"Indeed." Qin Ningyi continued to smile, without the slightest trace of surprise in his eyes. This made Liu Dazhi feel extremely pleased.
City folks always mocked them, the villagers, for being uncultured. When he occasionally learned a few words and showed them off, he was still laughed at. But this person didn't laugh at him, as if it were perfectly normal for him to be able to utter these two sentences.
Qin Ningyi accepted it so naturally that Liu Dazhi spoke even more casually. He waved his hand, "Actually, I learned these two sentences from Sister Huo."
Qin Ningyi hadn't been surprised when he recited the ancient text earlier, but when he said this, Qin Ningyi's footsteps visibly paused. His eyes lit up noticeably. "Arou taught you?"
Liu Dazhi nodded. "Now that I think about it, you really are An'an's father, and Sister Huo's man."
"That year, it snowed, and Sister Huo was afraid we would have a hard winter, so she gave us a lot of charcoal. When I went to see her with the New Year's pig, I saw her writing in the snow with a branch in the yard. I was curious and asked her to teach me."
When it came to learning, Liu Dazhi became quite interested, and his voice couldn't help but rise.
"Sister Huo is a good person. She didn't mind that I was stupid. She pointed to the words on the ground and taught me to read them one by one."
He didn't mention how much time he spent memorizing this single sentence. He smiled happily, "I wondered why she wrote this sentence out of the blue. So it's the origin of Big Brother's name!"
Qin Ningyi was immensely shaken.
"When was this?" He eagerly grabbed Liu Dazhi's arm, wanting to get an answer.
Liu Dazhi didn't understand why the previously calm and gentlemanly man was now so anxious.
Being grabbed so suddenly, he realized how strong Qin Ningyi was. He looked thin, but he had more strength than him, who had been doing hard labor for years.
He was stunned and merely replied blankly, "What?"
Qin Ningyi, without any sign of impatience, asked again, "When did Arou write that sentence? Did she write anything else besides this?"
Liu Dazhi squinted, touching his forehead, and began to think very seriously. "Anything else... let me think..."
The strength in Qin Ningyi's hand unconsciously increased a bit. He desperately tried to suppress the excitement and anxiety in his heart, but the strength in his hand and the emotion in his eyes couldn't be hidden.
"Young Master Qin!"
Just as Qin Ningyi was waiting anxiously, a subordinate who was scouting ahead ran back quickly, shouting to him as he ran, "We've found her!"
This sentence made Liu Dazhi immediately forget what he was thinking a moment ago. "Found her?"
The muscles in Qin Ningyi's temples twitched.
The light in his eyes instantly turned into a storm.
It was good that the person was found, but he...
Liu Dazhi had already run ahead. This elder brother, with his loud voice and stern appearance, was truly warm-hearted.
"Zhao Di! Zhao Di!" Liu Dazhi shouted as he ran forward. "Why did you go so deep into the mountains in this heavy snow, child?!"
He was worried that Zhao Di would be scared by the strangers they found, so he tried to shout louder to let her know they weren't bad people.
However, no matter how loudly he shouted, only the echoes in the mountains responded to him. Li Zhao Di's voice still didn't sound.
"Little brother, didn't you say you found her?" Liu Dazhi looked back at Qin Ningyi's subordinate, who was lagging behind. "Why isn't Zhao Di answering me?"
The subordinate glanced at Qin Ningyi's displeased face, unsure of the situation, and stammered, "She fainted..."
Qin Ningyi collected himself and caught up. "Fainted? Is she injured?"
In this remote mountain village, many things were unpredictable.
When Liu Dazhi heard Qin Ningyi's question, he became even more anxious. He cried out to the heavens and dashed forward.
"No injuries."
The subordinate followed Qin Ningyi. "Preliminary observation is that it's due to the cold. She was wearing thin clothes and was hit by ice shards from the icicles."
Qin Ningyi was reminded of Li Zhao Di's parents who had come to cause trouble. He figured Li Zhao Di's thin clothing was also due to her parents' actions.
Of all parents, there were careless ones, incapable ones, busy ones... and some who deliberately abused their daughters to this extent!
Growing up was already difficult enough. Li Zhao Di was truly a pitiful child.
When they saw Li Zhao Di, Liu Dazhi immediately began to curse, "These damned people! How could they treat their own daughter like this?!"
Even Qin Ningyi felt a prick in his heart.
He hadn't expected that "thin clothes" as described by his subordinate would be so thin!
In this freezing weather, apart from the jacket the subordinate had taken off and covered her with, Li Zhao Di was only wearing a thin coat, without even an inner layer.
Liu Dazhi took off his own jacket and put it on Li Zhao Di. He then turned and carried her on his back. "Uncle will take you to see a doctor. Zhao Di, you must get well!"
"Why did you come back?!" Liu Dazhi grumbled as he ran, "It's not even New Year yet. If you had stayed outside and studied properly, you wouldn't have suffered like this!"
After all this activity, it was already dark. When they arrived at the home of the village's old traditional Chinese medicine doctor, the doctor was returning on his motorcycle.
"Another one collapsed?" The old doctor sighed as he looked at the shadow at his doorstep from a distance. "Why are so many people having bad luck today?"