68 Chapter 68

"How can you be like this! You argue with me but don't offer any solutions!" Wang Jie said angrily, pointing his finger at Tong Shu.

"No, I think you're right." Tong Shu didn't want to explain. She was distracted by the noise outside, trying to distinguish the voices of those people.

Based on what that man just said, we can deduce that the people clearing the vines outside don't have any tools. The man with the high-pitched voice is in cahoots with the man called "Crippled," and someone called "Crippled" likely has a problem with their leg.

Tong Shu saw a sliver of light coming through the window in the restaurant area on the left, so she took her fruit plate and sat down there.

"No, what exactly are you planning to do?" Wang Jie pressed on relentlessly.

Tong Shu glanced at him helplessly, put her finger to her lips and shushed him: "Don't make a sound, or you can find a window to sit down and listen to what they're saying outside."

Wang Jie's eyes lit up, and he immediately understood. Even though he couldn't hear anything outside, he still tiptoed to the back of the car and pressed his ear against the window to carefully distinguish the sounds outside.

Tong Songming and the others understood somewhat; they were probably trying to find out what was going on outside. So they each found a place to sit down.

At this time, the people cleaning outside had no idea what was happening inside.

The old woman, leading the boy named Ashun, avoided the sight of Zhao Feng'er and the others, and hid on the left side, plucking at the vines and leaves.

"I told you to talk less, but you wouldn't listen. Now look what happened, you got beaten up!" The old man seemed to understand Mandarin but couldn't speak it, so he still used his local dialect.

"Grandma, these three people are scoundrels. They have tools but won't give them to us. They're just deliberately torturing us!" Ah Shun's legs were still throbbing with pain, but he refused to back down.

"What can we do? Didn't Old Wang's youngest son get beaten to death just because he tried to sneak out?" the old man said softly.

Ah Shun fell silent. Those people, as a warning, had deliberately beaten Old Wang's youngest son to death in front of all the villagers. For the past few days, Ah Shun had been dreaming every night of blood splattering a meter high in front of him.

Tong Shu listened carefully to the conversation between the grandfather and grandson, and managed to understand the gist of it by guessing.

"What the hell are you all doing?! I brought you here to work! You're all huddled together chatting nonstop, do you all want to die?!" A loud, angry voice came from outside the vehicle, and the whispers that had been surrounding the RV suddenly disappeared.

Tong Shu and the others waited a while longer, and after confirming that the people outside would not continue talking, they gathered around the dining table to exchange the information they had just gleaned.

Wang Jie spoke first, saying, "I just heard them talking about things in the village. It seems like this group of people are from the same village, something like Yangshan Village. But those few people are from out of town; they're the ones who speak very rudely and have a very aggressive tone."

“The people who brought them here aren’t good people. I heard from outside that they’ve been killing villagers indiscriminately in their village,” Tong Shu chimed in.

“I heard a couple say that three people brought them here this time, and one of them will whip them,” Tong Songming said.

Shu Hua looked at them, her expression embarrassed: "I did hear voices, but they were speaking in dialect, which I couldn't understand."

"It's alright, we have a general understanding of the situation." Tong Shu analyzed, "It should be that a group of bandits fled to Yangshan Village. The mountains here are high, and the villages are all deep in the mountains. I estimate that the villagers didn't know about the natural disaster that happened outside at first, and as a result, they were controlled by this group and then forced to do things for them through violence."

"They've brought people here to look for supplies. Judging from the noise, there are probably more than a dozen people outside, with at least six villagers and three bandits," Wang Jie added, offering his analysis.

"I reckon there aren't many people. I think these villagers are quite eager to resist. If the car is cleared out, we can sneak out and see if we can directly ambush those three robbers," Tong Shu said.

Although Tong Songming felt that the plan was a bit risky, it was indeed the best solution at the moment. He thought for a moment and said, "The floor panel next to the seat can be opened. We can then exit directly from under the car, making it less likely to be discovered."

Wang Jie's eyes lit up upon hearing this: "Wow, Uncle-in-law! You even thought of that in advance?"

Tong Songming waved his hand: "It wasn't my idea. This car originally had several exits. I just studied it from top to bottom when I got the car."

Tong Shu sat on the small sofa with her back to the car window, her hands in her pockets, one containing a dagger and the other a gun.

The light streaming through the car windows grew stronger. While the people outside were busy, those inside weren't idle either. Someone was helping to clear the vines around the car, but they had to do the work under the car themselves.

Tong Songming used a key to open the hidden door in the baseboard. Several people peeked out and saw that it was covered with dense vines.

"Spray directly with pesticide." Tong Shu closed the hidden door a little more, leaving a small gap, and told everyone to put on their gas masks. She then took a pesticide spray bottle, stuck the nozzle out of the gap, and sprayed the plants under the car.

When the base was lifted again, the once lush vines had turned dry and yellow. When the shovel was used to tap them, the vines immediately broke apart, creating a sizable empty area.

Wearing protective clothing and a gas mask, Tong Shu jumped down and continued spraying pesticides around her.

It has to be said that this method is indeed much faster than cleaning by hand. Just as the rear of the vehicle was cleared to the point where the cargo box was visible, Tong Shu had already reached the edge of the undercarriage.

At this point, the people with protruding ears stopped chatting and walked towards the back of the car.

The lame man reached out and pried at the container box on the truck, saying confidently, "It's a metal box, a shipping container."

"A container?!" the man with protruding ears exclaimed excitedly. "Quickly! Quickly clear the container out! There might be some good stuff inside!"

Upon hearing this, the villagers of Yangshan Village immediately sped up their cleaning efforts. If there were indeed things inside the container, they could take advantage of the chaos and secretly slip some onto their person without these people noticing.

Tong Shu could vaguely see the situation outside through the last few layers of vines. She focused on observing the three people carrying things, and then quietly returned to the car.

“I saw it clearly, there were indeed only three people. One had an axe, one had a shovel, and I couldn’t see what the third one was, but it should be the whip the villagers were talking about. There was no gun,” Tong Shu said.

Their reluctance to act rashly stemmed from their fear that the people outside possessed firearms. Once they confirmed that these people only had melee weapons, Tong Shu and the others felt much more at ease.

"Did Shushu practice with a slingshot for a while before?" Wang Jie suddenly asked.

Tong Shu was taken aback, recalling her last time in the north of the city, and she nodded.

“Okay then, when the time comes, my dad, my uncle, and I will get out from the car door, and you can stay under the car and shoot them with your slingshot,” Wang Jie said. “Your aim should be pretty good, right? That time in the factory area, didn’t you use your slingshot to shoot that one down from the roof?”

Tong Shu glanced at him and nodded: "Don't worry, I'm very accurate."

With hope in sight, the villagers sped up their cleanup efforts, and soon the entire truck gradually came into view.

The three men with protruding ears gathered at the side of the carriage, where there was a large side door. It seemed that they planned to wait until the area was cleared before entering through this door.

Wang Jie, Tong Songming, and two others were already crouching under the front of the car. The villagers, who had been driven far away by the three men, were now craning their necks and looking in this direction unwillingly from the woods.

"Tch, do you really think I can't see through their scheme? Trying to make a quick buck?" The man with protruding ears glanced into the woods, his face full of disdain.

"Stop talking, break down the door and see if there's anything inside." The bearded man said impatiently.

The man with protruding ears was clearly afraid of the bearded man. As soon as he spoke, the man with protruding ears lost his previous imposing manner. He spat twice into his palm, then raised the axe in his hand and swung it at the door.

Hearing the crackling sounds, Wang Jie felt a chill run down his spine. He turned to Tong Songming and whispered, "Uncle, won't our car get damaged if they keep smashing it like this?"

Tong Songming shook his head and whispered back, "It'll be fine. The car body was reinforced with materials from there. They say it'll be safe unless a meteorite hits it."

Meteorites... well, there's really nothing to worry about then.

Looking at the chipped axe in the hand of the thin man with protruding ears, and then at the steel broadsword he was carrying, Wang Jie instantly gained a lot more confidence.

The bearded man and the cripple had been banging on the car door for ages without managing to break it open, and they were getting impatient. The bearded man snatched the axe from the cripple's hand and, together with the cripple, started banging on the door.

Standing to the side, Fat Ears was panting heavily, feeling very resentful. The carriage looked incredibly dilapidated, but it was actually as hard as a rock, yet these two people thought he was deliberately being cunning.

The cripple and his companion hacked and smashed for a long time, but not a single scrap of iron fell out of the carriage. The two men, panting heavily, leaned against the carriage door and looked at each other, both feeling that something was wrong.

Seeing that the three people had exhausted a lot of energy, Wang Jie felt that his opportunity had come. He quickly exchanged glances with the three people behind him, and they tore apart the loose vines blocking their way and crawled out from under the car.

Just as Zhao Feng'er was about to suggest calling some villagers to help break down the door, a shovel suddenly struck him on the back of the head. His vision went black, and before he could react, he fell face down to the ground.

The cripple and the bearded man reacted very quickly. When their protruding ears were suddenly attacked, they only hesitated for a second before grabbing whatever they were holding and rushing over. The bearded man, in particular, had his face contorted with grotesque features, and his chipped axe seemed to leave afterimages as he swung it.

Although the cripple had a limp, his martial arts skills were formidable. Qin Jiaqiang was hit in the lower back by him and was momentarily out of breath.

No wonder these three dared to bring a group of villagers out; these two are really something else, holding their own against four opponents.

While parrying with his axe, Wang Jie frequently glanced under the car out of the corner of his eye. Tong Shu's eyes shone brightly in the darkness. She raised her gun and pulled the trigger without hesitation.