Chapter 28: Human Thralls (Part 2)

As if trying to hide her guilty conscience, she smoothed the hair by her ear. “I, I don’t understand what you’re saying. How is calling you to eat a crime?”

Then, as if regaining her courage, her voice grew louder. “This isn’t my family’s business anyway. The dead aren’t from my family either. If they suffered retribution, who can they blame? As if anyone wants to meddle in other people’s—”

Her complaining cut off abruptly, and a smile piled onto her face again. “Let’s go. I’ve already made it. This meal I made for you would normally be enough for our family to eat for half a month. It’ll be a waste if you don’t come.”

Chen Yi observed silently.

Probably because of cultivation, his eyes and mind were clear, and he could perceive the finest details. The tiniest changes in the woman’s expression could not escape his eyes.

Not to mention, this woman’s acting ability was truly not much to speak of.

The more she spoke, the more mistakes she made. Panic seeped out from her very bones.

When Chen Yi had just heard Pang Xiaolei’s words, he had still needed to think it over. Now that this woman had appeared, he no longer needed to think. The deduction was one hundred percent correct.

“We won’t eat. We have regulations during work,” Pang Xiaolei refused directly. He did not spar verbally with the woman and simply asked, “How many years have you been in the village? I’m asking you. Speak!”

The woman was startled and answered honestly, “T-twenty-some years.”

“How many years over twenty?”

“Twenty-three? I think I came here in 19XX.”

“How old are you this year?”

“Forty.”

“How many children? Boys or girls?”

“Three, four, four. One died less than a month after being born. There are also two girls and one boy. The eldest and second are girls, and the third is a son.”

Pang Xiaolei asked rapidly, question and answer following each other. Then, all of a sudden, the direction of his questions changed. “Did you marry in of your own will, or were you sold in?”

“Sold in... Mar-married. I married in!”

“Tell the truth!”

Pang Xiaolei let out a low roar. The woman shuddered in fright. Her psychological quality had never been strong to begin with, and now that Pang Xiaolei had directly questioned her on the key point, her psychological defenses collapsed instantly.

From shame, she turned furious. “What business is it of yours whether I was sold or married? In any case, I’m a person of Little Tanshi Village! My son and daughters are people of Little Tanshi Village! So many years have already passed. This is my home!”

Seeing that as the woman spoke, she had also begun to retreat and was turning to leave, Pang Xiaolei hurriedly shouted for her to stop.

“Stop right there! Did I say you could leave? The criminal protection team is conducting visits. We need your cooperation in the investigation!”

But the woman did not stop. Relying on the fact that she was outside the house, she broke into a run.

Pang Xiaolei nimbly flipped out the window and chased after her.

In the blink of an eye, Chen Yi was the only one left in the room.

If this were a political-intrigue novel, Chen Yi, left alone, would be absolutely doomed.

Even in the middle stage of this novel world, when the ancient beings appeared one after another and fought wits and schemes against the protagonist, Chen Yi would still have been in grave danger.

But now...

Footsteps came from outside the house. Calm-faced, Chen Yi turned to look.

Another woman he had not seen before poked her head in from outside the door. That face was rarely clean and fair, and her build was on the plump side. She looked rather prosperous. Smiling, she beckoned to Chen Yi. “Little brother, are you alone? I saw the Zhang family’s daughter-in-law cooked a meal for you. Why didn’t you go eat? Come, I’ll lead the way.”

Chen Yi’s toes felt slightly cold.

He had thought that what he feared was dead people in all kinds of grotesque shapes. It turned out that something even more terrifying than that was the human heart.

He sighed. With matters having developed to this point, continuing to look for evidence was no longer important.

Besides, it had not been his area of expertise in the first place.

Right now, he should still follow Pang Xiaolei’s order and collect witness testimony.

Chen Yi did not say much. He lifted his foot and walked toward the door.

When the middle-aged woman saw Chen Yi coming over, her smile bent both her brows and eyes, like an uncanny smiling mask stiffly worn on her face.

“This way, little brother. You look so young. You haven’t been working for more than a couple of years, have you? How is your investigation going this time? We’ve already moved out for almost a week. We can’t just leave the livestock and vegetable fields at home untended. Could you hurry it up a little?”

The woman led Chen Yi out and along the road. Faces peered out from the courtyards of the households beside the road, also wearing kind, benevolent expressions, the corners of their eyes curving down and the corners of their mouths turning up into smiling masks.

“Little brother is a good man. Sorry to trouble you. You have to solve the case quickly.”

“So many people died for no reason. It’s terrifying.”

“I say, if you carry away the coffin on the cliff, there won’t be any more aberration trouble.”

“When I was young, I heard that a thousand-year-old long-haired zombie lived in that coffin. It wakes once every sixty years and comes down the mountain to eat its fill before going back to sleep. Maybe it already ate enough and went back.”

“What if it hasn’t eaten enough? Are you going to feed your man into its mouth?”

“Pah! Why not feed it that useless son of yours? He’s this old and still can’t even get a wife. He’s got no ability at all, still thinking this is the old days...”

“Hey!”

A deliberately raised, abrupt, shrill voice interrupted the quarrel. The middle-aged woman walking with Chen Yi called out loudly, “The sun is westering. Have you finished your work? Do your work properly. What are you gossiping for?”

As soon as her voice fell, Chen Yi’s ears instantly became quiet. Everyone shut their mouths.

If he had not known what they were afraid of, Chen Yi probably would have thought they were truly afraid of the aberration.

Yet the human heart was sometimes even more terrifying than aberrations.

The words “the sun is westering” reminded Chen Yi. He glanced at the sky, activating both the Aura Observation Technique and the Delusion-Piercing Eye Technique at the same time. His pupils turned demonically black, deep within them layers upon layers of black petals rotated, and flecks of golden light flowed.

The red clouds that had earlier been swallowed by the blazing noon sun appeared before his eyes once more in fine threads and wisps. They were spreading outward in a radial pattern, staining large swathes of sky, as if trying to gather as quickly as possible and continue gestating that bloody moon platform disk.

Looking at the place where the red clouds rose, it was precisely in the direction they were heading.

Chen Yi withdrew his divine abilities, and his eyes returned to normal. After thinking for a moment, he asked, “Ma’am, where are we going? I still haven’t asked which family you’re from.”

Walking in front, the middle-aged woman who had suppressed all the women with one sentence turned back and smiled at Chen Yi. “Oh, I haven’t introduced myself yet. In the past, I was the village chief’s wife. Now, I’m the village chief’s mother. The one who reported the case this time was my son. He’s organizing work down the mountain right now. His name is Zhang Xueshi. He’s the only high school student in our village. I was also the one who insisted on sending him out to study. He found his own wife too. She’s smart and pretty, and she was his classmate. My son, ah, he’s wonderful...”

Chen Yi listened and nodded. Seeing that they were indeed walking toward the place where the red clouds rose, he waited until they arrived before the best house in the village, a three-story small building plastered with white lime, blocking the position of the red clouds.

Without showing anything, Chen Yi asked, “This house is very nice.”

“Isn’t it? My son paid to build it.”

“Is there a back courtyard?”

“Yes. Behind it is the vegetable field. If you want vegetables, you can just go pick some. The Zhang family’s daughter-in-law brought over a bit of food, but most of it was picked from my family’s land. Look, the rice is all simmering in the pot. Oh, right, where are those colleagues of yours? Hurry and call them over to eat.”

Chen Yi did not say much. He picked up his phone and made two calls.

Not long after, Pang Xiaolei walked over from the tail end of the village with a disgruntled look on his face. When he arrived before Chen Yi, Captain Sun of Shanghai and the others also appeared at the head of the village.

Pang Xiaolei shot Chen Yi a look. Chen Yi smiled and introduced her. “This is the village chief’s mother. This is her home.”

Pang Xiaolei nodded to the village chief’s mother, with no intention of exchanging pleasantries.

The other party, however, was extremely enthusiastic and kept pestering Pang Xiaolei and Chen Yi in conversation.

Finally, Captain Sun of Shanghai and the others also arrived before them.

All eight people had gathered together. The imagined situation in which the enemy broke them down one by one did not occur.

In the current era, violations and crimes were clearly defined by law. Even in remote, poorly informed mountains, people did not dare casually carry out attacks against the protection team.

Besides, the village currently only had women. They had no way to use more methods.

Creating a disturbance to lure them away one by one was merely because they did not want them to continue investigating.

Several people met each other’s gazes and exchanged silently, until the village chief’s mother seemed to become somewhat impatient from speaking. She simply reached out with one hand toward Chen Yi and Pang Xiaolei, wanting to drag them into the house, and finally kicked an iron plate.

Pang Xiaolei raised his hand and waved her off. “We’re handling a case. What are you grabbing people for? I’m asking you, where are all the women in this village from? Tell me their old homes before they married. If you can’t, I’ll call your son up here.”

As soon as the village chief’s mother heard that they would call her son, her face changed instantly. “What time do you think it is? If you call him up here, are you trying to get him killed? The protection team is killing people! The protection team wants to kill people! Everyone, come look...”

Before even three sentences were finished, she immediately began making a scene and acting shamelessly, howling so loudly the whole village could hear her. There was none of her previous enthusiasm left.

Her shout was like poking a hornet’s nest.

Seven or eight women living nearby all came out. One after another, they said, “Is your protection team bullying people?” Then they said, “We called you to eat, and that was wrong too? How can you be like this?” In the end, someone even began shoving them. “Go, go, go. The village doesn’t welcome you. Even if everyone in our village dies, we don’t need heartless people like you to handle the case!”

The great strength of village women who had worked for years was not the main reason they pushed Chen Yi and the others into leaving. It was simply that the group exchanged a look, and in the end, Chen Yi made the decision to withdraw for now.

They were chased out of the village by seven or eight women working together.

The village chief’s mother followed behind the crowd in a domineering manner and shouted at the top of her lungs, “With an attitude like yours toward handling a case, I’ll report you later! If you dare enter the village again, don’t think we’ll be afraid of you just because we’re women! Get farther away! If I see you again, I’ll report it up the chain! I’ll make sure you can’t bear the consequences!”

Chen Yi and the others were driven out of the village. Then they were chased another half li away before the women finally left after dropping harsh words.

The road conditions in the mountains were terrible. The winding mountain path could not fit three people standing shoulder to shoulder.

As a result, the eight of them were strung out along the yellow mountain road like candied hawthorns on a skewer, standing in a row.

The sun was blazing fiercely, making it a little hard for people to open their eyes.

Squinting, you looked at me; squinting, I looked at you.

In the end, those gazes all landed on Chen Yi’s face.

Chen Yi’s identity as Sect Master was worlds apart from the status of a sect master in a true cultivation civilization, but it was still the principal officially appointed through a national red-headed document.

He was also the principal of a school that the Night Watchers had no choice but to attend, a school that could save their lives.

Respecting him was only natural.

On top of that, Chen Yi’s cultivation was the highest, and he had many methods. If something really happened, Chen Yi would naturally become the one among them who could make the decision.

Just now, it had been Chen Yi who told them to leave.

Everyone had listened to Chen Yi, and now they were waiting for Chen Yi’s next arrangement.

Chen Yi turned back and glanced at the women who had already walked far away, his expression grave. “I plan to sneak back into the village in a while and investigate. Which of you will go with me?”

“I will.”

“Me.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Everyone eagerly volunteered. Chen Yi did not need that many people. He chose Captain Sun and another captain with a cultivation foundation to follow him. “Officer Pang, human thralls—the collection of witness testimony still needs a professional like you.”

“Human thralls.”

Those four words said everything Chen Yi wanted to say.

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