Chapter 1 The Ancient Temple and the Woman
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Compared to the drizzle of spring and autumn, the cold wind and freezing rain of the harsh winter were especially biting, with ice droplets that resembled but weren't quite snow pelting the face with the sting of a knife.
The frost-covered path had hardly any respite before it was once again churned into slippery mud.
Jiang Shouzhong, not minding that his hem was sullied with much mud, steadied the old man with a sprained ankle into a deserted temple and finally let out a long sigh of relief. He wiped the rainwater from his face with his sleeve, and took the firewood off the old man's back to place it by the wall.
"This weather really changes in the blink of an eye," he said.
Looking at the relentless water arrows pouring onto the earth, Jiang Shouzhong's brows inevitably knit together with a deep sense of melancholy.
Suddenly, a small handkerchief embroidered with lotus leaves was offered to his face.
The meek little girl in a red cotton-padded jacket, who followed the old man, looked at him timidly, her large, clear eyes as pure as morning dew.
Jiang Shouzhong smiled and shook his head, "A girl's handkerchief shouldn't be casually given to a strange man."
The little girl looked confused, not quite understanding.
The old man, who had sprained his ankle on the way down the mountain, walked with a limp to the stone stool. Without bothering to dust it off for his granddaughter, he plonked down. He took out the old tobacco pipe he carried and smoked it hard twice, alleviating some of the pain in his foot, before speaking in a hoarse voice, "Smoking doesn't leave the house, long worms invade the lane. I had long anticipated trouble, alas, I did not look ahead when coming down the mountain and suffered this misfortune. Lucky for me to have met a young man like you. An old man getting soaked by the rain is nothing, but if my granddaughter, who is frail, gets sick because of this, it would be troublesome."