At this moment, the sunset painted the sky, the clouds at the horizon reflecting a fiery sea of flowers—a red twilight enveloped the world…
In a clearing among the small woods, there were about a dozen sun-darkened children, their ages ranging from four or five to roughly ten years old. They had a plain, thin look about them, an appearance of malnutrition.
Especially a little boy at the very front—his hair was unusually long, almost covering his face, and his clothes were even more threadbare.
Standing in front of them was a thin, short Vietnamese man wielding a whip, who used broken Mandarin to lecture the children.
"Listen up, all of you, you must learn to speak Vietnamese, or else you'll get the whip and no food. Do you understand?"
"We understand!" the children's feeble voices responded.
The Vietnamese man brandished his whip in the air a few times, the cracking sound startling the children, some of whom, scared, fell to the ground trembling.
