Dozens of green seedlings rustled in the wind against the setting sun like a

group of dancing fairies; two well-built thatch huts were laid out carefully and
encircled by a green fence.
Although the small yard was the closest place to the garbage field in the entire
slum, Ding Hao found it an oasis; he was slightly surprised and even felt
cheerful.
This was Ding Hao’s home.
He pushed the door open and entered the yard.
More than 20 pots of flowers were carefully placed in the yard. Those were
the most common wildflowers on the roads of the ritual square in the front of
the sect. Normally, they were not eye-catching and would even be uprooted
as weeds, while here, they looked quite stunning.
Ding Hao played with the plants in the yard for a while and pushed the door
open into one of the huts.
The setting sun cast its hues through the windows, leaving the room kind of
dim.
A few pieces of furniture were found in the house.
There were an old wooden bed covered in a thin quilt, a three-legged square
table, a clay stove made out of rocks, a black pan, a few simple cookers, and
several chipped jars with pickled vegetables and meat in them. Additionally,
some shabby staples were hung on the wall.
The only different item was a girl’s cotton-padded jacket hung on the wall
beside the door.
The jacked looked that of a girl of 5 or 6 years old. The cloth was homespun
and the needlework was average. However, it was kept clean, dirtless. The
hue of bright red livened up the shabby hut.
When Ding Hao first opened the door, he saw the cotton-padded jacket.
It was his younger sister, Ding Ke’er, used to wear before she was taken
away.
He recalled that in that snowy afternoon three years ago, he finished his duty
and returned to his sister who awaited him home. However, his younger sister
was nowhere to be seen.
He searched through the entire slum frantically.
Later, he heard from many witnesses that a mysterious and ethereal person in
white took her away. The person appeared out of nowhere and took the crying
girl, Ding Ke’er, when passing by the thatch huts.
Then, the previous Ding Hao found a note he had ignored engraved on the
hut’s wooden column.
“The girl is destinated to tread my path and learn my way. Muhuang Tianji of
Southern Land.”
The handwriting was neat and implied the writer’s extraordinary force because
normal people usually felt dazed after looking at it for a while. Therefore,
many of the people in the slum contended that the words were left by a
peerless expert.
However, who was Muhuang Tianji?
No one knew that.
The only thing they knew was that Southern Land was far, far away. It was so
far away that even a normal guy spent all his life riding on the horse on the
way, he could not reach there.
After Ding Ke’er went missing, the previous Ding Hao had kept the red cotton-
padded jacket and been missing his sister for three years.
At that moment, in the sight of the red jacket, memories came flooding into his
mind like waves of the sea. Montages of their lives together played in his head
like clips of a movie. A deep-rooted yearning spread in his bone like an
infectious disease.
“Brother, why did mom and dad no longer want us? Where did they go?”
“Brother, I’m hungry, can you make me a bowl of porridge?”
“Wow, a jacket! Pretty! Brother, is this for me? Thank you!”
“Brother, when I grow up, I’ll make good meals for you every day...”