My brother entrusted his child to me, and I livestreamed raising the baby, making the Empress cry wi

Shu Jingwei deliberately ignored the texture of the fabric exposed under the man in black's raincoat. The fabric didn't get wet in the rain, so it was obviously not ordinary coarse cloth.

Their clean-cut style and innate ruthlessness clearly indicate that they are not ordinary people.

And those movements, which were anything but gentle, gripped her like a piglet, making Shu Rou's thin limbs turn white from being squeezed. It was clear that they didn't intend to treat Shu Rou well at all.

Shu Jingwei closed her eyes, pretending not to have noticed anything, and began to mentally prepare an excuse.

Shu Rou's gaze gradually changed.

The hope in his eyes dimmed little by little, like pouring a bucket of cold water on a pile of embers that were about to go out; with a hiss, the last spark was completely extinguished.

Instead, hatred replaced it!

The second time! The second time!

This woman abandoned her for the second time!

She simply stopped struggling, as if all the bones in her body had been pulled out in an instant, and her whole body went limp.

She let the two men in black hold her in their hands, as if she were a lifeless piece of merchandise.

Anyway, it's pointless. There's no escaping it anyway.

and--

The corners of her mouth even formed a very faint curve, which looked particularly eerie on the face of a four-year-old child.

Moreover, even being sold to a servant, to do things like serving tea and water, chopping wood and starting fires... or being sold to a brothel, might be better than being a beggar here.

Images of women she had once seen at the alley entrance, dressed in light, silken clothes, flashed through her mind.

At least they have a place to shelter from the wind and rain, and they can eat their fill instead of scavenging for food in garbage dumps every day.

but!

She closed her eyes tightly, forcing the hatred surging within them back into the depths of her pupils.

As long as she survives!

When Shu Rou opened her eyes again, her gaze had turned fierce. On her thin face with prominent cheekbones, her eyes were fixed on the motionless, frail figure, as if she wanted to carve that figure into her bones.

She will never let Shu Jingwei get away with this!

One day, she will make this woman pay back every penny she owes her, with interest!

The man in black wrapped Shu Rou in his large raincoat. When the raincoat was unfolded, it looked like a giant bat spreading its wings, completely covering Shu Rou from head to toe.

The movements were clean and efficient, without making any unnecessary noise from beginning to end.

Shu Rou's small body was wrapped in a raincoat, making her silhouette completely obscured, with only a few strands of hair soaked by the rain visible.

The two then silently retreated from the alley, their figures quickly disappearing into the dense rain.

The alleyway returned to calm, as if nothing had happened.

Only the rain continued to fall, the puddles still pounded against the corners of the walls, and the door panels still thudded overhead as the rain pounded against them. The wind howled through the alley.

Shu Jingwei sat against the wall on a wooden board with her eyes closed. A drop of rain leaked through a crack in the wooden board above her head and hit her forehead with a soft pat.

She didn't raise her hand to wipe it away, letting it slide down the curve of her brow bone, past the corner of her eye, and drip from her chin onto her soaked front.

The intact hand rested on the knee, the fingers slightly curled, the fingertips already white from being soaked in the rain.

The alley fell completely silent, with only the incessant sound of rain pounding against the puddles, walls, and wooden planks.

Then there's the occasional whooshing sound of a gust of wind blowing through the alley.

The sound came from one end of the alley, and was distorted as it passed through the narrow passage, sounding like someone crying softly somewhere in the alley.

After the crying subsided, the wind died down, and only the sound of rain remained in the alley, overwhelming and making it hard to tell whether it was real or a hallucination.

Shu Jingwei remained in that position for a very long time, so long that her buttocks, which were sitting on the mat, began to go numb.

The wooden plank was soaked in water, and no matter how long she sat on it, it wouldn't warm her up at all; instead, it would get colder and colder, the chill seeping into her skin and spreading all the way.

She suddenly felt very cold.

It's a cold that seeps into your bones, and it has nothing to do with whether it's raining or windy, or whether you're wet or not.

It was so cold that her jaw started chattering uncontrollably, her upper and lower teeth clicking together with a soft clattering sound.

Shu Jingwei clenched her teeth desperately to suppress the trembling, but the harder she tried, the more violently she shook, and she huddled in the corner like she was having a seizure.

She tried to curl herself up tighter, but found that she had already curled up to her limit.

The next morning, or rather, it wasn't necessarily morning, since the sky was dark the whole time, and it was impossible to tell whether it was dawn or dusk.

The sky was exactly the same as it had been the previous few days, a dirty, leaden gray, with thick clouds that looked like they were all glued together.

It's not exactly nighttime, because nighttime is pure black, but at least you can vaguely see the outlines of things.

Without that small body that always sheltered her from the rain but provided warmth when they leaned against each other, she felt several degrees colder throughout the night.

She was so cold that she couldn't sleep. She listened to the rain all night with her eyes closed, her mind going over and over the events of the previous night.

Shu Jingwei opened her eyes when she felt a floating sensation of water under her buttocks.

His eyes were dark and bluish-black, with bloodshot veins running from the corners of his eyes toward his pupils. At first glance, it looked as if his eyes had been split open.

Overnight, the water level rose considerably, overflowing the mat. The murky water licked the mat and rippled under her buttocks.

The water had become darker, and rotten leaves, dead rats, and other broken things that were hard to identify were still floating on the surface, splashing against the mat under her buttocks with each ripple.

She glanced at the sky, which remained completely dark.

The thick clouds hung extremely low, looking even thicker than yesterday. Their color grew darker towards the horizon, until they blurred into the horizon, making it impossible to distinguish where the sky ended and the ground began.

Dark gray waves surged at the edge of the cloud's foot, as if it might collapse at any moment.

The air was filled with a damp, earthy smell and a musty smell from prolonged soaking in water. When you inhaled it, it felt damp and sticky, as if the air itself had turned into liquid.

There was also a faint, almost imperceptible, rotten smell wafting from somewhere, but it would seep into your nose as soon as you inhaled.

The rain showed no sign of stopping; on the contrary, it fell more and more heavily, splashing up countless tiny water droplets on the water's surface. Before one droplet could dissipate, another would burst open immediately afterward.

I wonder when this rain will end.

I can't stay here any longer.

Shu Jingwei lifted the blanket that was spread on the mat and put it back on her head.

This is my only asset.

It was taken out by a couple having an affair in someone's house in the middle of the night. She happened to see it and quickly brought it back before any other beggars noticed.