Seeing Song Ning stop, Li Xingwang asked, "What's wrong? Is there a problem with this house?"

Shh, listen.

Li Xingwang listened carefully, but heard nothing: "Listen to what?"

Pointing to the courtyard not far away, Song Ning said, "There are sounds coming from inside the courtyard."

Li Xingwang's expression changed: "Don't scare me, it's not like there are ghosts in broad daylight."

Song Ning rolled her eyes at him, and then heard two more "click" sounds.

Song Ning called over a few young men at the back of the group and decided to go in and take a look.

Some of the bolder ones searched every single room, but found nothing.

Was she hallucinating?

Li Xingwang breathed a sigh of relief: "I knew it! There's no one here, so where would the noise come from in broad daylight?"

No sooner had he finished speaking than a "click" sounded, and this time, even Li Xingwang heard it.

The group looked around, trying to hear where the sound was coming from.

After another period of silence, Song Ning called out, "Is anyone there?"

The courtyard was completely silent, then two distinct "click" sounds came from behind the house.

Song Ning quickly looked in the direction of the sound and saw a cellar behind the house.

It was covered with wooden planks and weighed down with stones.

Li Xingwang quickly stepped forward, moved the stone aside, grabbed one end of the wooden plank, swallowed hard, and looked at Song Ning: "I...I opened it."

Song Ning nodded, while the others remained vigilant.

The cellar door opened, and Song Ning peeked inside. The cellar wasn't deep, and sure enough, there were two people locked up inside.

One was lying at the bottom, and the other was lying on the steps above. The clicking sound she heard was probably the sound of this person lifting the wooden plank.

Song Ning called out, "Hey, can you hear us?"

The man didn't answer, but he moved; he was still alive.

Upon seeing that the man was alive, Li Xingwang was no longer afraid. The group quickly went down, lifted the man out of the steps, and then checked the woman's breathing below.

"He's still breathing!"

Both of them had numerous wounds, suggesting they had been beaten.

His face was covered in blood, making it impossible to see his features.

Moreover, the cellar smelled terrible, clearly indicating that it hadn't been exposed to light or ventilation for a long time.

The two of them reeked of an unpleasant odor, their outer garments were long gone, and their remaining inner garments were tattered beyond recognition.

Men don't care, but women don't.

Song Ning took off his outer garment, which at least partially covered the woman's upper body.

"Let's carry the person out first."

The man was still conscious. As he was being carried out, he slightly opened his eyes, then his lips moved slightly, and he called out, "Er Ya..."

Upon hearing the man speak, Song Ning stepped forward and leaned down to ask, "What did you say?"

Seeing that he was too weak to speak, Song Ning comforted him, "Don't worry, we're not bad people, you're all alright now."

Perhaps after hearing Song Ning's words, the man seemed to calm down a bit, but the woman remained unconscious.

Song Ning felt a pang of sadness. These two people looked like they had suffered a lot, but thankfully they were still breathing.

This was the greatest comfort they could find on this trip.

Since Song Ning was the one who saved the person, she naturally had to take responsibility. She lifted the person onto her own mule cart and, without caring about anything else, put most of the things on the cart into her spatial storage.

Song Dahai and Liu Yuelan were startled to see their daughter bring back two half-dead people.

"They must have been locked up by the villagers, but thankfully they're still alive."

After placing the people on the bed, Song Ning, disregarding the smell on them, quickly fed them water.

The man's lips moved, and Song Ning asked, "Do you have something to say?"

The man nodded with difficulty.

"It's okay, no rush. You should focus on recovering first, and we can talk about it when you're healed, okay?"

The man finally closed his cloudy eyes and quietly fell asleep.

The two people were so dirty that the car quickly filled with an unpleasant smell.

Song Ning helped the woman remove her undergarment, which was so black that its original color was no longer discernible, and then called Liu Yuelan to wipe her body.

The wounds on his body had become inflamed and suppurated due to a long period of neglect, and the wounds were festering in patches.

Liu Yuelan couldn't bear to watch and cried out that it was a terrible tragedy.

Song Ning gently cleaned her up and then applied some medicine. She was too unconscious to take the medicine.

"This perfectly healthy girl, how could she have been harmed like this?" Liu Yuelan couldn't bear to look.

After applying the medicine and changing clothes, Song Ning and Liu Yuelan went out to let Song Dahai go in.

Even Song Dahai, a grown man, gasped when he saw the wounds on the man's body.

He gritted his teeth and said, "Letting them starve and die of thirst is too lenient for them; they should be torn to pieces!"

Song Ning handed in a medicine bottle: "Dad, after you're done wiping, put some of this medicine on him."

Village Chief Zhou came over and asked about the situation: "How are those two people?"

Song Ning shook her head: "I don't know yet. We've only applied external medicine for now. We'll talk about the rest after they wake up."

Village Chief Zhou sighed, "They were just lucky to have met you."

They were all lucky; Song Erya saved their lives again.

"By the way, how is Village Chief Luo doing now?" Song Ning asked.

"Still the same as before, ever since they left the village they've been listless and can't even eat. Gao Tiedan and the others are in the same situation."

Song Ning was helpless. Anyone would find it unbearable to see such a scene. It would get better with time; the hunger would eventually become unbearable.

The village chief asked worriedly, "Er Ya, what exactly did they see next door that day? Why won't you tell us? Are you sick or something?"

Other things are fine, but even a tough guy like Gao Tiedan has been acting strangely these past two days, and everyone suspects he might have caught a disease.

Song Ning didn't answer, but asked, "Village chief, did you eat the meat from yesterday?"

"No, everyone was scrambling to eat the meat, and as the village chief, I couldn't compete with them."

Song Ning smiled and said, "It's nothing, it should be fine in a couple of days. It's not really an illness. If you have to call it an illness, it's a mental one."

Village Chief Zhou was quick-witted. After hearing Song Ning's words, he immediately realized something: "Did they see something scary?"

Song Ning nodded, without explicitly stating that the village chief was a smart man.

"So many people died in that village, but we only saw many skeletons and no bodies."

The village chief pondered Song Ning's words for a while, then his expression changed drastically, and his hands trembled.

Seeing that he understood, Song Ning slowly said, "So this matter cannot be publicized. The village chief just needs to keep it to himself."

Village Chief Zhou nodded stiffly, "Yes...yes, I can't say..."

Putting everything else aside, his wife was craving meat, and she quickly ate a piece, even giving him another one.

If Er Ya hadn't stopped him in time, he might have eaten it too.

When the village chief returned, he was clearly in a bad mood, which Song Ning understood.

Because she's the same way; although she appears calm on the surface, she's actually panicking inside.