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"They're all dead! They're all dead!" The man suddenly exerted a strange strength, overturning the two county officials who were suppressing him, and rushed towards the door.

"Stop him!" Seventeen suddenly shouted.

Upon receiving the order from Seventeen, the two guards leaped to the doorway and blocked the man's path. They quickly subdued him, leaving him only able to howl in pain.

"Seventeenth Master, this man seems to have gone mad!" the guard said.

Seventeen said to the others, "Be careful, the situation here is really strange. Go and check again to see if there's anyone else!"

The county officials searched the house thoroughly, but found no one else.

"Your Excellency, besides this madman, there is no one else here," the county official reported.

"Let's go, take him with us!" Seventeen was in a terrible mood. "Collect these remains too, find some cloth here to wrap them up, and take them away."

He had come with disaster relief funds, but upon entering the first affected mountain village, he discovered something so bizarre. Seventeenth Master felt a heavy weight in his heart; he wondered if the seemingly insane man he had just encountered had survived by cannibalism.

Seventeen and the others walked out of the room. He looked around and saw that the scattered rooms were just like the one they had just left—silent, cold, and devoid of human presence.

"You five go check that house, then you five go check that house again, be careful. I'll wait for you here." Seventeen ordered the county clerks to go, while he, along with four guards and the madman who had been tied up, stayed behind.

The county officials had no choice but to follow the instructions of the Seventeenth and go to the two households separately.

After a long while, the county officials returned one after another, all saying they hadn't found anyone. Seventeen's heart sank. He didn't know what had happened here. Had they all fled, suffered a great disaster, and gone to make a living in various places? But along the way, Seventeen hadn't found many refugees fleeing. According to reports from the counties and prefectures, the people in these places hadn't fled the famine, so they should be in their hometowns. How could the entire village be empty?

Just then, Seventeenth Master heard voices behind him. He turned around and saw that it was Duolong and his group. They were also leading a few people and were walking towards Seventeenth Master.

"Brother Duolong, have you found anything over there?" Seventeenth Master's heart sank again when he saw that the county constables behind Duolong were also escorting two people, but he still asked aloud.

"There was nobody over there, so you only caught these two crazy guys. What, you caught one too?" Doron asked, seeing the people behind Seventeen.

Seventeen nodded, incredulously saying, "It seems like the whole village is deserted. We found him at the very first house. Moreover, we found human remains and limbs in his house!"

"Alas, I'm afraid these people were so hungry they couldn't stand it anymore, so they started killing and eating people," Dorgon said. He seemed quite calm, unlike Seventeen who had panicked the first time he encountered such a thing. Perhaps they had become numb from seeing death and injury on the battlefield, so they didn't care so much about human life.

"Cannibalism?" Seventeen felt a churning in his stomach, and waves of nausea rose from his abdomen to his throat.

“This is not surprising. Such things are prone to happen during times of great famine and disaster,” Doron said.