Filho biológico não é tão bom quanto o filho adotado? Se você se arrepender, não me procure!

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The Dragon Kingdom. The twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month.

The cold was bone-deep and merciless.

New Year's Eve was drawing near. Before the small stone rooms of the orphanage, lanterns fashioned from old newspapers swayed in the wind, trembling with each gust.

Lin Tian crouched beneath one of those lanterns, absorbed entirely in the task of shaping little clay figures. Beads of sweat, cold as ice, traced slow lines down his cheeks and fell into the earth, which had long since frozen solid.

When the last figure was finished, he cradled it carefully against his chest, shook out his numb legs with great effort, and rose stiffly to his feet.

Beside him on a broken-legged wooden chair lay several other figures, each one vivid and lifelike, resting quietly in a row.

These were his New Year's gifts to everyone at the orphanage.

The sky had not yet brightened. By the faint glow of the paper lantern, Lin Tian had worked without pause, shaping one figure after another, driven by the single hope of seeing the children smile — children who, like him, had no one in the world.

The New Year ought to be a joyful thing.

He swept up the clay scraps from the ground, pressed his hands together — fingers gone purple and numb from the cold — and breathed warm air over the cracked skin of his knuckles before returning to his work.

A slight figure came rushing toward him in a hurry.

"Brother Lin, there's someone outside asking for you. Says she's your eldest sister, come to t