Oh my god! A centipede crawled up his leg. Normally, centipedes are green or black, but this one was red, and Little Samuel's foot happened to block its hole. The red centipede crawled over the top of Little Samuel's foot, saw it was blocked, then turned and tried to crawl past on the right, but was blocked again. At this point, the centipede might have gotten "angry." Usually, centipedes don't bite people proactively, but now it had no choice and wanted to go home, so it bit down hard on Little Samuel's foot. Little Samuel felt pain in his foot—it bit me and it really hurt.

Hold it in, can't be found. Kids have a strong desire to win, so he casually picked up a stick and flicked the damn centipede away. It didn't hurt much anymore. Ignorance is bliss—he looked and saw it was nothing, just like a mosquito bite, so he wiped it with some grass and forgot about it.

After a while, David Bennett also found a few people, but there were still two or three he just couldn't find, so he had to shout in the open space, "Alright, alright, I can't find you, come out, I give up." As soon as Little Samuel heard this, he immediately crawled out of the bushes, overjoyed—he hadn't won in a long time. If he hadn't hidden in that big bush today, he probably would have been found long ago. At this point, all the kids came out.

"That's it for today, let's go home."

The kids scattered excitedly and hurried down the mountain back to the village.

Evening

"Mom, my foot hurts!" Little Samuel started to feel something was wrong with his foot and told his mother.

"Let me see. Ah, your foot is all swollen! What happened, Little Sam!" Since he was the third child at home, his parents usually called him that.

"When I was playing this afternoon, I think a centipede bit my foot. It didn't hurt much at the time, so I thought it was nothing, but now it really hurts!" Little Samuel said, his voice trembling with tears.

His mother immediately put down what she was doing, carried Little Samuel on her back, and took him to Dr. Carter in the village.

"Dr. Carter, is Little Sam's foot going to be okay?"

"It's nothing serious, just apply some anti-inflammatory medicine and give him an injection. He'll be fine tomorrow," Dr. Carter thought it was just a regular centipede bite.

"That's good, that's good," said Siqi's mother.

"Be more careful from now on, don't go playing in the mountains anymore, understand?" his mother said.

"Got it," Little Sam replied casually, thinking to himself: Not going to the mountains is impossible. Once my foot is better, I'll go again.

Dr. Carter disinfected Little Samuel's foot, applied medicine, prepared the prescription, and got ready to give the injection.

"Mom, injections really hurt. Can I not get one? I'm scared of the pain."

"You have to get it, otherwise your foot won't get better. Little Sam, you're smart. I heard you can already do arithmetic at your age, is that right?" Dr. Carter chimed in, changing the subject for Siqi.

"Yes, I can recite the multiplication table now, and I can count from one to one hundred, and I can use an abacus. One times one, two times two, three times five minus two, four minus six plus one, five times five, six times one minus five plus one, seven times seven, eight minus two plus one, nine minus one plus ten..." As soon as he started talking about this, Little Samuel became very enthusiastic. Since his father Kevin Bennett taught math, maybe he inherited a bit of it. Little Samuel was very interested in math and learned it well. For a child his age, being able to count to ten was already impressive, let alone multiplication and the abacus.

"That's great, so don't cry when you get the shot, Little Sam is so brave!" Dr. Carter was good at understanding children—after all, he'd been a barefoot doctor for over twenty years.

"I won't cry," Little Samuel said, not afraid of the pain after being praised.

After the injection, his mother carried Little Samuel home. But the next morning, Little Samuel's foot was not only still swollen, it was even bigger, and Little Samuel was in a lot of pain. His mother immediately carried him back to Dr. Carter. Dr. Carter took one look and realized something was wrong—it should have gone down overnight!

"Little Sam, are you sure it was a centipede that bit your foot?" Dr. Carter asked Little Samuel, worried he might have been mistaken.

"Yes, Dr. Carter, but this centipede was red," Little Samuel replied.

"Red? I've never heard of a red centipede."

"Little Sam's mom, where's Mr. Bennett? I think you should go to the town hospital or the county people's hospital to get it checked out."

As soon as Little Sam's mom heard this, she got anxious. "Old Bennett has been at school lately because the graduation exams are coming up. He doesn't have time to come home, he's focused on helping students with their studies. I'll go to the school and bring him back."

That afternoon, Kevin Bennett took his son to the county people's hospital. The doctor there had never heard of a red centipede either, so they just gave him a standard anti-centipede injection and sent them home.

As soon as they got home, neighbors came by to ask about the situation. Hearing about it, they all offered suggestions—folk remedies, or stories about people who specialized in treating centipede bites, and told Kevin Bennett about them. But since he was educated, he knew this was something only a big hospital could handle, though he was still very grateful.

At that moment, a voice came from the doorway: "Is there anything to eat?"

Chapter Two: Taking a Master