Seeing those bloodsucking leeches crawling right up to his shoes, Li Huowang lifted his foot and stomped the leech at his side dead, then, unusually, felt a touch of pity for the little Yang boy in front of him.
"Do these things suck on your legs a lot?"
"Working in the paddies, yeah. There's always swamp leeches in the water, long as it's not water snakes, it's fine. Anyway, if it bites a person, it's alright — we've got hands, we can just pull them off."
"But if they latch onto the cattle, that's trouble. Cows don't have hands to get them off, so they just have to let these things suck away. That's why we call these 'cow-crotch rotters.'"
Li Huowang looked at the little Yang boy's tender face. If this kid was living in the modern world, he'd probably just be in sixth grade, but here, he was acting like a grown-up already.
