"Thief, thief in front, don't run!"
Amidst the hustle and bustle of the market, a middle-aged man with a flesh-killing knife in his hand was chasing after the teenage boy in front of him.
The teenager's name was Noah, he was only eighteen this year, and his figure couldn't be described as large or obese. It was probably just that throwing him into a crowd wouldn't allow anyone to notice anything special about him.
However, his eyes leaking with gravity and reluctance, he didn't dare to relax at this moment. Although he had fantasised about being chased, it was by a group of girls who adored him, not the middle-aged man behind him who hated catching up with him.
But Noah couldn't help himself, and he ran desperately through alleyways of all shapes and sizes, trying to shake the middle-aged man off his tail. But the middle-aged man behind him seemed to have a tracking device on him, so whether he hid or temporarily shook him off, it would find his location.
He stepped into a dark alley, but as he turned the corner to go out, the man behind him was unwittingly standing in front of the teenager. "Now you can't run away, give me back the meat I just collected," he said, looking at the teenager in front of him.
Noah looked at the middle-aged man in front of him and replied with a smile, "Can you tell me how you find my location every time?
The middle-aged man roared at this moment with eyes that were on the verge of spitting fire, "It is because my psychic ability is C-level full tracking, and any person or object that has a mark on it will be tracked by me. Now return the meat immediately, it was retrieved from me after the nearby troop caught it".
Noah also sighed in relief, expressing his helplessness, he understood now why he kept getting caught. Nevertheless, he returned the meat and escaped with an apology. The middle-aged man also returned to the stall with the meat that belonged to him.
It was only after the teenager's escape that the middle-aged man took a small portion of the meat he had just torn out of his pocket. His gaze changed from stony to gentle.
He jogged all the way to the small forest in the nearby backwoods where the teenager's home was.
When he returned home and opened the door to his room, he saw a teenager younger than himself standing guard at the door. He was also holding a machete he had picked up earlier in the mountains. It was Noah's younger brother, John.
John, who had just turned thirteen, looked at Noah and said, "Big brother, next time let me go with you to look for food. Then you won't have to be so lucky."
Noah looked at his brother and said solemnly, "No, if you go with me, who will look after the younger brothers and sisters? So the task of protecting your younger brothers and sisters in the house will be yours, I'll just go and find food.
That's right, Noah and John had other younger siblings.
As soon as Noah had finished speaking, the curtains in the house were opened and three small figures stepped out of the house.
One of them who came out first was the youngest child in the family, her name was Ying, and she was only five and a half years old.
But she held the wooden sword Noah had given her and said to John, "Second brother, are you planning to go out with your big brother and leave us all at home? I'm telling you, it won't happen, because even if Big Brother wanted to take who out, he should have taken me out first".
John looked at her with his eyes at that moment and said, "Have you finished reading the book that Big Bro bought for you from the outside? Hurry up and finish it before you eat."
Ying looked at Noah with tears in her eyes as she listened, trying to get the strength from her big brother to not have to read for a day.
But it was not to be, Noah slapped her forehead and then said softly, "Be good, finish reading before you go play. The two behind him also covered their mouths and giggled as they saw their little sister's plan fail.
One of them looked at Ying and giggled, he was the third child. He was only ten years old this year, but his figure was much bigger than his peers. To put it simply, he was much fatter than the others.
He is often bullied because of his fat and careless and low self-esteem, but Noah will be on the sidelines every time to encourage himself, every time he eats the most food, but because he is still too young has been arranged by the big brother at home to take care of his sisters.Noah also promised to take him out when he grew up, but he still felt very self-conscious.
When Noah saw the little fat man standing in front of him, looking down at the ground, he walked over to his body, lifted up his head and said: "Jeptha, I have said that I have lifted up my head in order to look at the beauty of the distance, at the people and at the things that I cherish. But when you lower your head, all you can see is the ground, is it the ground that you cherish?"
Jeptha looked up at Noah at this point and laughed too. Yes, the only way to see into the distance was to look up, there was a way, a way that would allow him to try to grow up and share the pressure of his big brother and second brother, and take care of his sisters, it was called the future.
The girl who stood silent at that moment was called Annie. She was only six and a half years old this year, but she was also the sister who broke Noah's heart the most because she couldn't speak. Although she couldn't speak, her ability to learn was very strong. She could recite the contents of a storybook almost completely from memory and write poetry in her spare time.
Noah looked at his younger sibling with great joy in his heart.
About five years ago, Noah was only thirteen years old. He came across some people being chased by a group of people, and although Noah didn't want to cause any trouble, he vaguely heard the cry of a baby and the voice of a desperate child.
Noah, not wanting to get involved, impatiently helped them, and at that time Noah was equipped with a long sword. He easily decapitated one of them with a single stroke.
The one who followed indifferently killed all the people behind him who were chasing the child.
At the time, John was only eight years old, Jeptha was only five, and Annie and Ying were still babies. When they saw the other side claiming that someone had killed everyone in their village, they were the only ones left alive.
Noah looked at the two children and two babies in front of him and took them in with a soft heart.
From then on, he became the older brother and they became his younger siblings. Noah had an understanding of what it was like to be alone because he had been in an orphanage since he was a child and was alone because of the closure of the orphanage.
He wasn't willing and didn't want to have a child manager for that pain, and even though he couldn't do anything about it at the moment, he could still take in a few children. At least until they reached adulthood, when he would take care of them.
Noah, remembering everything, was pulled by Annie's sleeve, and then she wrote on Noah's palm, "Big brother, don't be sad, Annie will be heartbroken.
When Noah saw this, he also cheered up, took the meat in his pocket from the new one and said, "There will be meat to eat tonight, and later I will go to the mountain to pick some wild vegetables and berries.
Hearing this, Jeptha also raised his hands in excitement and looked at the meat in front of him, his mouth watering. Annie took the meat from Noah's hand and prepared it for cooking.
Although the family were not in-laws, they seemed to be.