Transmigration; Married to My Ex-Fiancé's Uncle-Chapter 393; Lin mansion

The older girl’s eyes flickered with something, recognition, maybe understanding. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out. Six months of being beaten for speaking had destroyed her ability to vocalize even when she wanted to.

"You don’t have to tell me now," Shuyin said gently. "When you’re ready, when you feel safe enough, we’ll figure out what each of you needs. For tonight, just rest. Eat the food the doctors approve. Drink water. Sleep in clean beds. Tomorrow we’ll start working on everything else."

She repeated this careful approach in several rooms, always sitting low, speaking softly, asking but not demanding, offering time and patience that these children had never been given before.

In one room, she found a boy who appeared older than the others, perhaps sixteen, though malnutrition made age difficult to assess. He watched her enter with sharper awareness than most of the others showed, some spark of defiance not quite beaten out of him.

"You’re different from the others," Shuyin observed, sitting on the floor near the door. "You’re aware. Alert. Less broken."

The boy’s jaw tightened but he didn’t respond verbally. Six months of conditioning was hard to overcome even for those who retained more of themselves.

"I need someone who can help me understand," Shuyin continued. "Someone who remembers clearly how they came to be in that chamber, who observed the patterns, who might know about the others. Not right now. But soon, when you’re stronger, when you feel ready, I need to talk to someone who can explain this operation from the inside."

The boy’s eyes met hers directly for the first time, calculating, evaluating whether she could be trusted. Then the slightest nod, barely perceptible. Acknowledgment that he’d heard, that he might eventually cooperate.

"Thank you," Shuyin said simply, and left him to rest.

She found Lu Yuze in the hallway coordinating with Ting Fei about logistics. "The doctors say most of them will stabilize with proper care," he reported. "But recovery will take months, maybe years. The physical malnutrition can be addressed relatively quickly, but the psychological trauma..."

"Will take much longer," Shuyin finished. "I know. But at least they’re out of that hell. At least they have a chance now."

"What’s the plan for long-term placement?" Lu Yuze asked. "Two hundred children can’t stay in the guest wing indefinitely."

"I need to understand their situations first," Shuyin said. "Once we know who was kidnapped versus who was sold, we can make informed decisions. The kidnapped children, if their families are safe and loving, we can facilitate reunification quietly, without involving authorities that might complicate things. The sold children need different solutions. Foster placement, adoption, possibly permanent residence in a protected facility. But we do this carefully, thoroughly, making sure every child ends up somewhere actually safe."

"That’s going to take significant resources," Lu Yuze said. "Time, money, coordination...."

"I don’t care," Shuyin interrupted. "We’re doing it right. These children have been failed by every system that should have protected them. We’re not failing them again by rushing to solutions that don’t actually serve their needs."

Lu Yuze nodded, understanding. "I’ll start making calls. I have contacts who handle sensitive family situations discretely. We can build a network of trustworthy people to help with placement and long-term care."

"Good. Start with that." Shuyin looked down the hallway at the many doors, behind each one children who’d survived hell and now needed to learn how to live again. "And tomorrow, we start the patient work of healing two hundred broken lives."

For today, though, she’d done what she could. Two hundred children had been freed from a nightmare. Two hundred children were sleeping in clean beds, receiving medical care, being treated like human beings rather than inventory.

It wasn’t enough to undo the damage done to them. But it was a start.

And Shuyin would see it through to the end, no matter how long it took or what resources it required. These children deserved nothing less than complete dedication to their recovery and future safety.

By six o’clock in the evening, the immediate medical crisis had been addressed. All two hundred children had been moved from the cramped horror of the hidden chamber to clean guest rooms throughout the mansion’s expansive wing. Doctors moved between rooms administering IV fluids, antibiotics, and initial treatments. But there remained one critical, glaring problem that Shuyin realized with growing urgency as she surveyed the operation.

None of the children had eaten yet. Not properly. Not real food in quantities their starving bodies desperately needed.

The doctors had been clear about the dangers of refeeding syndrome, feeding starving people too quickly could actually kill them, overwhelming systems that had adapted to prolonged deprivation. But careful refeeding needed to start immediately, and it needed to be done correctly across two hundred individuals simultaneously.

Shuyin found the head doctor in one of the hallways, reviewing notes on his patients. "We need to feed them," she said without preamble. "All of them. Tonight. What do they need and how do we do this safely?"

Dr. Chen looked up from his clipboard, his expression grave. "Small portions. Very specific composition. We’re talking maybe half a cup of diluted broth to start, with added electrolytes and glucose. Nothing solid yet. Their digestive systems can’t handle solid food after months of near-starvation."

"Can the kitchen staff prepare that? Two hundred portions?"

"If they have the ingredients and clear instructions, yes. I’ll write out exact specifications, the broth needs to be specific strength, specific temperature, specific additives. No variations. Every child gets exactly the same thing in exactly the same amount."

"Do it," Shuyin ordered. "I’ll mobilize the kitchen immediately."

Within twenty minutes, the mansion’s extensive kitchen had been transformed into a medical feeding operation. Staff worked under Dr. Chen’s direct supervision, preparing precisely measured portions of enriched broth, each bowl identical to ensure proper dosing. The smell of cooking filled the corridors, simple, nourishing, the first real food many of these children would have encountered in half a year.