Just like that, as she walked and inquired, she reached the railway tracks and used the Demon Art to hop onto a train bound for Chongqing. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Why Chongqing? Because it was close, and she couldn’t make it anywhere else.

But in this era, trains moved slowly, and she was barely surviving on wild vegetables and the few remaining burnt cakes.

God knows, by the time she arrived at the Chongqing Railway Station, she was so hungry she could hardly walk.

Still, she gritted her teeth and managed to walk off the train tracks, collapsing by the roadside.

No way around it, the hunger was overwhelming, so much so that drinking water couldn’t stop the dizziness; she fainted before she could enter the space.

Upon waking, she found herself lying in a shabby shack, a house temporarily pieced together with wooden planks, cluttered with various odds and ends, yet the bed was relatively clean and odor-free. Did someone bring her home?

She sat up in bed, the creaking sound drawing the attention of someone outside. Soon, a haggard middle-aged woman came in carrying a bowl. Upon seeing her, she immediately asked, "You’re awake?"

Without needing translation, she understood the lip movements of those three words, nodded, and looked at her gratefully: "You saved me? Thank you!"

"What’s there to thank for? We’re all just people with hard lives. You must be starving, have some porridge first."

The porridge was a thin wheat paste, very watery, but being able to drink even thin wheat porridge in such circumstances was already a stroke of luck.

A bowl of porridge went down quickly, making her stomach feel less acidic. Embarrassed, she looked at the woman: "I’ll repay you."

"Repay what? No need to repay me. From your accent, you’re not local, are you?"

"My name is Ma Lu, I’m 15, from out of town. My hearing isn’t great, I can’t hear well, so communicating is a bit difficult for me."

The woman looked at her in surprise, "I couldn’t tell. I’ll speak slower then. You have no family?"

Ma Lu shook her head, "I’m an orphan, no relatives."

"Even better, I have no family either. Since I saved you, it’s fate. How about we rely on each other like mother and daughter?"

It seemed she had realized she was a girl. Ma Lu saw her sincere nature; despite being so poor, she still gave her white flour porridge, so she nodded.

"Since you’ve agreed, I won’t hide it from you. I was sold to a brothel by a man. Later, I escaped and came here. Although no one knows my past, I find myself disgusting, so I’ve never remarried and have always lived as a widow. I barely manage by washing clothes and scavenging. You’re a girl, why is your hair so short? Is it because you’re too pretty?"

Ma Lu gave a bitter smile, "No wonder you say we’re all people with hard lives. My situation isn’t much better. I don’t even know who humiliated me. I ran away but didn’t know how to survive. I sold my hair for a cake, fainted after eating it, probably due to my long-term malnutrition."

"Surprisingly, you speak very fluently. Usually, people who can’t hear have difficulty speaking. How do you manage it?"

"My hearing is just impaired, not completely gone." If she didn’t say that, she couldn’t explain.

Moreover, although this woman was dressed in rags, she was clean, and her speech didn’t resemble that of an illiterate, coarse woman; she spoke in an orderly manner, not an ordinary person, right?

In this era, being able to read and write was not something just anyone could do.

"What kind of work do you think I can find? I once followed a teacher and learned to read and do arithmetic, I can do bookkeeping. Although I can’t do physical labor, I can write and do accounting. I can also embroider and cook, I can become a maid for someone."