Mei Lin didn't answer and after waving with her hand, two spirit fruits appeared. Xia took one and started eating it. Xia ate the fruit in no time and went to add more wood to the fire. "I am still hun…"

  Xia stopped compining as she saw deadly pale Mei Lin who had even any strength left to move her hand. Unlike yesterday, Mei Lin looked much worse and her face was even paler. To the worst, Mei Lin didn't even open her eyes, and Xia tried to find out by looking directly at her from her facial expression how hurt she was.

  " Mei Lin, are you all right, you don't look good."

  Mei Lin was in a trance from blood loss, and she couldn't focus on Xia and what she was talking about. She tried to grab one of the fruits, but before she managed to do that, Xia stopped her.

  "Are you hungry? Do you want to eat or drink something?"

  Mei Lin mumbled something, which Xia didn't understand, but from what Mei Lin wanted to do, she picked up the second spirit fruit and started feeding it to Mei Lin.

  It took a while, but Xia managed to feed the whole spirit fruit to Mei Lin thanks to Mei Lin not being able to resist persistent feeding.

  "Do you want another one?" Asked Xia, but Mei Lin already hid her hand under the bnket, once again not responding to Xia.

  "What about your neck? Do you have some bandages or something, if you have I can help you to put them on." Xia had the hatch, that Mei Lin would not be responding, so she took the bnket and pulled her off Mei Lin. Mei Lin didn't have any strength to stop her and she uncovered her body. Mei Lin was still thoroughly covered by her red robe, with only her neck exposed.

  Xia looked at Mei Lin's neck and saw raw, exposed flesh without any skin. It looked disgusting and extremely painful, with a few veins clearly visible and blood strangely moving through them. Xia was horrified by the strange wounds as they were not bleeding only small droplets of blood were forming on her flesh and then absorbing back in the fsh. Xia was so focused on the strange almost non-real wound that she overlooked that something happened.

  In Mei Lin's hand appeared a green corked pill bottle. Xia looked at the bottle and with a bit of a struggle she opened it. Instantly, a rich fragrance of herbs filled the air and entered Xia's nose, and a warm feeling spread through her body, which started healing her bruises all over her body.

  Xia felt much better with just one inhale from the bottle, and as she looked inside, she saw six small green pills sitting right at the bottom of the bottle. All six pills were not completely round and in close inspection, they looked not very well made and full of impurities.

  "There are six pills, how many pills do you want?"

  "No."

  Xia didn't understand how many exactly wanted, so Xia rolled out one pill and tried to feed it to Mei Lin.

  "Comon open your mouth. I will give you one pill all right?" Xia fed Mei Lin one of the pills and corked the bottle once again. As soon as she pced the bottle into Mei Lin's hand the bottle disappeared. Xia looked carefully at Mei Lin's hand for a while to find out the trick behind this sudden disappearance and reappearance, but she didn't find any traces.

  Meanwhile, Xia carefully undid Mei Lin's robe, exposing her chest. Mei Lin's small breasts emerged, and Xia took at her bruised body. Mei Lin's ribcage appeared like a desote battlefield, her skin dry and as pale as her face. Her whole torso looked dried up and most of the bruises were without any sight of bleeding, like she was out of blood.

  Xia didn't mind Mei Lin's deadly white skin, but the sight of her ribcage was concerning, and the dried skin looked unusual like it was dried off blood and she saw Mei Lin's only part that looked normal which was part of her ribcage, where she had broken ribs.

  "Did you get injured fighting the bandits?" Xia asked, her voice filled with worry. "Your wounds look severe. You shouldn't move too much until they've healed properly."

  "No, we need to… We should resume our way into the city. We can't stay here for long. We cant protkt ourslf agan badits."

  Xia didn't understand Mei Lin's attempts to say, so she ignored her. Mei Lin was too exhausted to move on her own, so she let Xia do whatever she wanted and slowly fell asleep once again. Xia wanted to help Mei Lin but had no idea how and because of the fact, that they had no fire at the moment she stopped trying to get more information from Mei Lin or to understand what she was saying and started preparing fire so they would not freeze to death.

  *****

  A few hours ter. Somewhere on the road into the Peng City.

  Mei Lin woke up as Xia tried to cover the injury on her neck with some dried herbs. Mei Lin's eyes opened a little, but she could barely see Xia. Her eyes kept closing, but Xia had prepared hot water for Mei Lin to drink. Being only ten years old, Xia didn't have much except basic survival items, and no bandages. Her brother and the rest of her friends carry all the medical supplies, leaving Xia with just a few cooking necessities and herbs she picks on their way.

  "Mei Lin, can you hear me? We need to get to the city as fast as possible. We can't stay here. If we stay here long enough, bandits will surely come back, and we can't escape like this. We're also out of food, so try to get up. We need to go to the city right now."

  Mei Lin couldn't get up alone, but with a lot of help from Xia, she managed to sit up and drink a little hot herbal tea. Mei Lin felt like throwing up, but thanks to eating only spirit fruits and now near anything she was not able to do so. As the water dribbled down her chin, it found its way into her exposed neck wounds, making her feel worse than dying.

  Blood tears instantly started flowing from Mei Lin's eyes as she looked at Xia. She saw the tears streaming down Mei Lin's face and realized that the hot tea had seeped into her wound, causing immense pain and Mei Lin felt as if the water was burning through her neck. Xia quickly stopped feeding her the hot water and id her back on the mat. Mei Lin continued to cry, but not as intensely as before.

  "I am sorry, I didn't know…"

  Xia tried to gently dry the tea from Mei Lin's face and neck and threw away the rest of the tea. As she got rid of the rest of the tea, she added the st pieces of the wood to the fire. Wood starts quickly screeching and burning, heating the tent more and more. Xia pced the bnket tightly on Mei Lin not letting her exposed neck outside and helping her heat up a little. After not long time after, Mei Lin's face looked much better than before, but Mei Lin still looked bad. Xia prepared everything and was waiting for the new water to boil. After the water was boiled, Xia woke up Mei Lin once again.

  "Mei Lin, do you have something for storing the water in? We need to make some supplies for the journey, so we don't need to boil them every time we need to drink. Also, I need more food, so we will not starve. Do you have more food hidden somewhere? Well with that I mean normal food, not that strange food that you gave me. I don't think it's good for eating."

  Mei Lin was already a little bit more sane, so she waved her hand and pot appeared on the bnket. It took Xia more than half an hour to fill the pot up with the hot water found around from the snow, and then, Mei Lin stored the sealed pot back in her storage ring. Mei Lin was happy that she finally found out where Mei Lin was hiding everything which hipped Xia's interest in Mei Lin's secret ring. Xia then picked up the tent and helped Mei Lin to get up, so she could pce the mat and tent in the storage ring.