Chapter 72 [VIP]

"You mean that person set up an arena and bought a lot of people to fight each other like beasts?"

Mi Yao instructed Pu Qing to find Cao Yatou's brother, but she didn't expect Pu Qing to give her such an answer.

Yesterday, Pu Qing found a buyer who wanted to purchase Cao Yatou.

Hearing that the person had buried a large number of children's bones in their backyard, she barely ate anything. Now she heard that someone had raised a bunch of living people to raise Gu poison, putting them in cages to fight each other, and the reward for surviving was to eat the corpses of their opponents.

Mi Yao felt nauseous.

"Madam and Aunt, please have some tea and relax."

Upon hearing Pu Qing's report, only Qi Niang remained in the room, lost in thought, handing out teacups to everyone.

"How can there be such a bad person? In his eyes, what is the difference between a human and a beast?"

Zhen Jing ran outside, panting, and shouted back into the house, "Even ordinary people wouldn't be this cruel to beasts! Is this even human?!"

“Naturally, they are beasts.”

Mi Yao added, waving her hand at Qi Niang. She could still control herself now, but if she drank anything, she was afraid she would really be able to vomit it up later.

“This man is indeed a beast. He doesn’t kidnap people by force. Instead, he makes the steward buy the children in front of their relatives and then sends them to the arena.”

Children who are kidnapped may still have some hope in their hearts, but if they are bought and sold in front of their families, they will know that no one can save them, that they are abandoned children, and that they have no choice but to obey the buyer and depend on the buyer.

The owners of the Colosseum did this not only for amusement, but also to train their servants. Those who won dozens of matches in the arena would be taken as slaves and trained to become their killing weapons.

This method of cultivating servants was mostly rumored in the past and not commonly seen in practice. Now that Daxing has become chaotic, there are more of these powerful and wealthy people who don't treat people like human beings.

“Madam, you need not worry about this matter. As long as Cao Tieniu is still alive, I will bring him to you.”

Seeing Mi Yao retching, Pu Qing glanced nervously at her stomach.

He knew that Zhen Jing and the others had prayed to Guanyin for a child. When he saw Mi Yao vomiting, he thought that perhaps Guanyin had already answered his prayers and that the mistress was already pregnant and couldn't bear to be frightened.

"Don't look at my stomach, there was some rice porridge inside, but I vomited it all up yesterday."

Because of Xiao Shan and his family's five children in one pregnancy, she is now very sensitive to the gazes of others.

If it weren't for the inconvenience, she would have liked to tell everyone directly that she got her period the night she met the Goddess of Fertility, and because she stopped taking any random medications, the color of her menstrual blood was much brighter than before.

"Who is this person? Since they can set up such a place, they must be of high status. Are they a member of the Ji family?"

Mi Yao asked, guessing.

Of all the powerful figures in Jingzhou that Xiao Chuan had mentioned, she only remembered the Ji family.

Hearing that Mi Yao was going to intervene, Pu Qing said directly, "That man's surname is not Ji, but he is indeed related to the Ji family. He is the husband of the second daughter of the Ji family head. His full name is Tang Ronghuan. He is the youngest son of the King of Chu. He said that he was in poor health, so he went to Jingzhou with his wife to recuperate."

"Jingzhou is a place for recuperation?"

Even though she deliberately avoided the chaos of the world, she knew that many places in Jingzhou were more severely affected by the disaster than Jiannan, especially the Ji family's territory.

Tang Ronghuan came here to recuperate, but also to cure his epilepsy. Knowing that Jingzhou was chaotic enough, he came specifically to play his game of raising poisonous insects.

“Madam, saving Cao Tieniu is not difficult, but taking Tang Ronghuan’s life is not easy.”

Pu Qing reminded him that Tang Ronghuan was surrounded by elite troops given by the King of Chu, as well as guards from the Ji family. Unlike the previous demon whom he had boiled, Tang Ronghuan was not someone he could kill so easily.

The buyer that Qiu found for Cao Xiaohua was the brother-in-law of a minor official.

After discovering that he did indeed have a cannibalistic fetish, Pu Qing and his group rescued his two uneaten children, who were locked in the house. Following Mi Yao's orders, they threw the children into a pot of boiling water and then burned down the man's house.

Even the minor official who offered to protect that person didn't fare well; he fell into a ditch while walking at night and broke his neck.

Pu Qing handled the matter discreetly. When others discovered the two men's deaths and saw the skeletons unearthed from the charred house, they merely spat and said, "They deserved it."

Even if someone has a guess, no one will investigate who took their lives.

Sensing Pu Qing's change in demeanor, Mi Yao asked, "Is Tang Ronghuan more capable, or is your town magistrate more capable?"

"Of course he's the town envoy! Tang Ronghuan isn't even worthy to carry the town envoy's shoes!"

When Xiao Chua was compared to him, Pu Qing became as if he had been injected with chicken blood, and he stood up and cheered for his master, "Tang Ronghuan is a good-for-nothing who relies on his father and women. He has done things that are utterly immoral. Compared to him, the town magistrate is in the sky, while he is just dirt on the ground. The town magistrate would not even bother to step on him when he sees this piece of filth."

"Since that's the case, and I have your town magistrate as my backer, why hesitate?"

Pu Qing choked: "The town is here, but it's all for the safety of the ladies. If the ladies don't like Tang Ronghuan, they can wait until the town's affairs are settled before I..."

"When Xiao Chuan left, he boasted to me that this was his territory and that the Hong family had submitted to him. Since that's the case, there's no need for so many elite troops to guard us. If I don't like someone, I won't be able to sleep today if I don't kill him today, and I won't be able to sleep tomorrow if I don't kill him tomorrow. If this drags on, by the time your town magistrate returns, we'll only be seeing ghosts."

Pu Qing broke out in a cold sweat after hearing what Mi Yao said.

As Xiao Chuan's constant attendant, he was the one who could best see the changes in Xiao Chuan.

The wife they were meant to be with, growing old together, was no longer the girl sent from Jiangnan. If anything happened to Mi Yao, they...

"Don't worry, I'm not the kind of person who would risk my own safety to meddle in other people's business. Call Zhao De over. I see him running around with a frown every day; he's obviously bored out of his mind. Let's sit down and discuss whether you can kill the people I don't like as soon as possible. If that doesn't work, I can put up with it."

Zhao De and Pu Qing are different.

Zhao De was a retainer who was granted the surname Zhao Tianhe, and his official position was earned by following Xiao Chuan on the battlefield.

Pu Qing didn't feel bored staying by their side, but for Zhao De, knowing that his superiors and colleagues were fighting each other, while he was idle here, he would only become more and more restless.

When Zhao De arrived in front of Mi Yao, just as she had expected, he couldn't stay still any longer.

"Don't worry, madam. He's just a spoiled brat. You don't need to bring anyone with you. I can assassinate him single-handedly in the night."

Mi Yao ignored his boasting and still gathered everyone together, giving Zhao De enough men before letting them leave.

"Remember that your primary task is to protect me. So if you get there and Tang Ronghuan is difficult to kill, just come back. If anything happens to you, I will be even more worried."

Upon hearing Mi Yao's instructions, Zhao De readily agreed.

Knowing that the lady was soft-hearted, she not only couldn't bear to see innocent children suffer, but also didn't want anything to happen to her subordinates.

"Don't worry, Madam. But if the trip goes smoothly, what should we do with those children? Should we bring them back or burn them?"

Zhao De paused, afraid that Mi Yao would think he was cruel, and explained, "Children who have touched human flesh are no longer the same as ordinary people. If Madam kindly keeps them by her side, it may cause trouble."

Therefore, instead of bringing the person back, it's better to resolve the issue locally.

"Bring them back if you can. I'll set aside a few rooms to manage them. If they're alright, great. If not... we can't let them go and harm other people."

She could evade this matter. Just as Pu Qing said, since the purpose was to find someone to save Cao Xiaohua's brother, she should only save her brother and pretend that the others knew nothing about it.

But if that were the case, she felt she would spend the rest of her life in nightmares.

If she can't harden her heart, then it can't be a momentary act of kindness. She needs to figure out how to manage these people, instead of releasing more demons.

When Pu Qing mentioned the arena, she felt a vague sense of familiarity.

While she was reading, the cannibalistic overlord built many such arenas on his territory, where young people, children, and the elderly were all present.

The reason he did that was because he was raised as a Gu.

After determining the timeline and thinking about Qiu Niang and Cao Xiaohua, she felt that the cannibalistic overlord of the future was very likely Cao Xiaohua's brother.

The story includes a scene where two sisters beg the man to spare them, and he kindly says that they were about the same age as his sister when they died.

Just when the two sisters thought they were about to be saved, he said that if he spared them, then who had spared his sister back then?

Thinking about this made Mi Yao's head ache slightly.

Saving people is not easy, but handling the aftermath is even more difficult. If Cao Xiaohua's brother is really the cannibalistic tyrant in the book, how will she deal with it?

Kill them now, nip the danger in the bud?