"Who's there? Who's running into the mountains this late at night?"
It was a few of the town's able-bodied survivors on night patrol. They held torches, illuminating his mother's panicked face.
His mother's body tensed, and she instinctively tucked Lu Ping behind her.
"It's... it's Mrs. Lu!" one of them recognized her. "Where are you taking Pingwa so late at night?"
Another man drew near. The torchlight cast his face in an eerie glow, and his eyes darted back and forth between Lu Ping and his mother.
"I... I..." His mother's lips trembled, and for a long moment, she couldn't form a complete sentence.
Lu Ping could feel that the hand holding his was drenched in cold sweat.
"The boy... the boy just recovered from his illness; he was getting stir-crazy inside." His mother finally forced out a sentence, but it sounded incredibly hoarse and strained. "I... I brought him out to look at the mountains, to get some fresh air."
