Chapter 102: Husband and wife talk
Speaking of corpses, Xu Degui naturally thought of Liu Jieshi.
And the shocked and terrified eyes before his death.
His stomach churned, and after swallowing it with great difficulty, he absentmindedly comforted Miao: "Don't worry, Ying'er is not an ordinary girl. She won't be afraid of these things."
"What are you talking about? No matter how powerful she is, she is still a girl. What girl is not afraid of death? What's more, those people died in such a tragic way. It's obvious that they were killed by a calamity."
Miao disagreed, and she also noticed that Xu Degui was acting strangely tonight. She handed him a towel and asked him to sit down and wipe his hair, but she didn't forget to ask, "What happened between you and my second brother tonight?"
Xu Degui's heart sank, but he didn't show it on his face. "What's wrong?"
"Still want to lie to me?" Miao refused to agree. "I saw the way Second Brother looked at you and Qingying just now. It was like he was looking at an enemy."
Miao covered her chest, as if she was a little scared. "What happened between you two? We are husband and wife. If anything happened, you have to tell me. Otherwise, I will be kept in the dark and know nothing."
Xu Degui originally wanted to tell Qingying everything that happened tonight, but thinking of Miao's soft nature, if she knew that Qingying had killed someone, she might not be able to sleep for several days and nights.
Besides, Miao is just a woman, and telling her will not solve anything except making her worried.
Xu Degui made up his mind and said, "It's really nothing. It's just that we took a wrong turn and my second brother injured his hand. He blamed me for this, saying that I deliberately led him the wrong way and broke his hand."
Miao was stunned, then her cheeks flushed with anger. She said angrily, "How could Second Brother have such an idea?"
Xu Degui patted Miao's thin back and said, "Second brother has become a completely different person since he was exiled. Let's have less contact with the people from the second house in the future, so that he won't blame us if something goes wrong."
"Yes." Miao clenched her fists and said fiercely. But just as she finished her words, she remembered Lian's recent attentiveness to the third wife, and she was undecided for a moment. "Well, the second sister-in-law treats us very well now. When you were trapped in the mountains before, I saw that she was genuinely worried about you."
Xu Degui naturally knew why Lian's attitude had changed. Thinking of how the soap recipe was almost lost because of the second wife, he was still angry and said, "That's what Lian owes us. The soap recipe is worth hundreds of thousands of taels. If she saves Yinxi, she won't be able to hold her head up in front of us anymore."
Miao sighed, "Forget it. We've got the recipe back anyway, so we don't have much to lose. Second sister-in-law is good to us, so we should just be good to her. As for Second Brother..."
Miao was speechless for a moment, shaking her head with a look of regret, "How could such a family of flesh and blood have come to this?"
This time, Xu Degui finally understood why Xu Qingying insisted on dividing the family. The Xu family's ship was already shaky, but Xu Deyuan still overestimated his own abilities and wanted to control everything. How could the other families agree?
What's more, their third branch is now in its heyday, holding tens of thousands of taels of soap business in their hands. They are the most powerful one, so how could they be controlled by others?
After this incident, Xu Degui no longer wanted to listen to Xu Deyuan's orders.
They were all raised by their parents, so why should Xu Deyuan always be superior to others?
Fighting is inevitable.
"Just wait and see. When we get to Qianzhou, our family will be divided."
Miao looked at Xu Degui with a determined face, and suddenly realized that since his exile, not only his second brother and sister-in-law had changed, but also the person beside him.
As a woman, she couldn't say anything. She only knew that Xu Degui had become more opinionated than before and no longer liked to follow Xu Deyuan. She even felt that Xu Degui was getting further and further away from her.
Miao couldn't say whether this change was good or bad, so she could only put it aside.
Unexpectedly, Xu Degui suddenly thought of something and said, "Bihe, do you sometimes feel that Ying'er has become a different person?"
The towel in Miao's hand fell down.
Xu Degui turned around and saw the pale-faced Miao. His heart sank. "You feel the same way as I do, right? Do you know..."
Xu Degui almost told Xu Qingying about her murder, but fortunately his reason stopped him in the end.
Miao bent down to pick up the handkerchief, put it back on Xu Degui's head, and continued to wipe his hair. "I know what you want to say. You mean to say that your daughter has become more capable recently and knows more things, right?"
Xu Degui remained silent for a long while before he cautiously said, "Otherwise... when we get to Qianzhou, should we ask a Taoist priest to take a look? There are many unclean things in this forest. What if it's something dirty..."
Miao's hands stopped moving for a moment, and her hands trembled slightly, but soon stopped.
"What nonsense are you talking about?" Miao smiled slightly and put away her handkerchief. "I know my daughter's abilities. Do you remember the year my father was seriously ill and I took her back to my hometown to visit relatives? That year, my father happened to have a friend with him. Anyway, I don't know the identity of his friend, and my father doesn't allow us to ask, but he looks like an immortal, definitely not an ordinary person. My father's friend liked Qingying and taught her for a while. I know all the foreign numbers and mathematics she talked about, but I'm not as smart as her, so I didn't remember anything."
Xu Degui was very skeptical, but looking at the calm Miao, he felt a little confused for a moment, "But... even if the ability is real, it doesn't necessarily mean that a person's personality and habits have changed, right?"
"You." Miao poked Xu Degui's forehead. "You are such an incompetent father. Ying'er hasn't changed. She has always been the same. It's just that in the Xu family before, the children of the second branch were all powerful, so our daughter had to hide her incompetence and avoid the limelight. You were busy all day and night and rarely at home. Plus, Ying'er is a girl, so it's not easy to tell you about her worries. Now, our family has been exiled and we can't care about many things. After all, isn't everything Ying'er did for the good of our third branch? Don't you think about it? If she hadn't come up with the soap recipe, we would have earned so much money halfway through our journey? If you say such nonsense again, don't blame Ying'er for being angry. I will be angry too."
Xu Degui thought about it and felt that what Miao said made sense. He remembered that every time he went home, his attention was mostly on Xu Huiming's homework, and he rarely got close to his two daughters.
Is it really so?
Is my daughter really that capable?
Xu Degui was somewhat skeptical.
But seeing Miao's face full of determination and a little bit of grievance, Xu Degui didn't dare to ask any more questions. He just took Miao in his arms and said softly, "I was wrong. I didn't care enough about my two daughters before. Don't worry, I will try my best to treat them equally in the future and will never let outsiders bully our family."
Miao then smiled happily, but she was sighing in her heart.
On the other side, Xu Qingying, led by Zhao Bantou, held an oil-paper umbrella and went to see the corpses piled in a room one after another.
Xu Qingying covered her mouth and nose with a handkerchief. Although it was winter and the body was still relatively fresh and had not had time to rot, it still had a smell of dead rat. Xu Qingying was afraid of corpse poison, so she borrowed a handkerchief to cover her mouth and nose.
All the bodies were dragged into this dark house.
Zhao Bantou took a tinder and lit the oil lamp on the table. In the dim light, Xu Qingying saw several corpses.
Ming Xiaoshuang and Dazhuang also came over at this moment. They must have rushed over after hearing about the unusual situation in the village. The dim and narrow space was suddenly filled with people.
Ming Xiaoshuang glanced at Xu Qingying calmly, then looked away.
Xu Qingying asked, "What's the situation? Tell me more."
Zhao Bantou said, "Just as the young lady saw, we noticed something unusual as soon as we arrived at the village. The entire village was deserted. We initially thought everyone had fled the famine, so we prepared to pack up and stay until the rain stopped before leaving. But then we found a body in the room. Later, they found more bodies one after another. To make room, I asked a few brave ones to pile all the bodies into this room."
"Is there anyone else in the village?"
"It seems not. The rain was so heavy that we haven't been to the remaining houses, so we don't know what's going on. And since this incident happened, everyone's been really scared. They said it's best to live together so we can look out for each other."
Xu Qingying walked slowly around the corpses twice, only to find five bodies in total. They were all frail elderly people. Judging from their clothes, they were ordinary elderly people from farming families. They all had wounds on their bodies, which had already healed, but they looked a little scary.
Xu Qingying looked around at the solemn expressions on everyone's faces. "It looks like the work of bandits."
Liu Dazhuang stopped pretending and put away his usual playful expression. After a careful inspection, he said, "That's right. They must have been the work of nearby bandits. Look at the wounds, they were all fatal. The wounds are deep on top and shallow on the bottom. These bandits must have killed people on horseback."
Zhao Bantou was puzzled. "Why did the bandits rush into the village? Where are the young people?"
Xu Qingying asked, "Did you see any food when you were tidying up the room just now?"
Zhao Bantou shook his head. "It was almost completely looted."
"That's right," Xu Qingying said confidently. "I think it must be because Jinzhou was hit by a disaster. The young people have all fled, and the elderly are reluctant to leave their homeland. I'm afraid the last of the food has been stolen by the nearby bandits."
Zhao Bantou was shocked and asked, "Are the bandits in Jinzhou so brutal? Why don't the government send troops to suppress them?"
"The people at court are busy vying for power. Perhaps they only know that Jinzhou has suffered a disaster, but they don't know how serious the situation is. I just came here and there's not a single field to be seen, and there's not a single grain of food in the village. I'm afraid the situation in Jinzhou is even worse than we imagined."
Everyone looked worried.
They still have to go around Jinzhou. What if they encounter refugees again?
Zhao Bantou pointed at the bodies on the ground and asked, "What should we do with these bodies?"
Xu Qingying sighed, "Wait until the rain stops tomorrow and search the village to see if there are any other dead people. If there are, we can bury them together. After all, we've lived in someone else's house and borrowed their things. It's not good to leave their bodies exposed in the wilderness."
The others also expressed their agreement.
Only Zhao Bantou said worriedly, "What should we do? We don't know what the weather will be like this year. Why is it so difficult to get to Qianzhou? If we take a detour through Jinzhou, what if we encounter bandits?"
These words made everyone silent.
Yes, the risks involved in taking a detour from Jinzhou to Qianzhou are too great.
There are refugees, bandits, and closed cities. This is not exile at all, it is clearly a journey to obtain the true scriptures.
The sound of the rain was steady and showed no sign of stopping. The mountains and plains were filled with the sound of wind, the rain pattered on the banana leaves, and the water droplets on the eaves formed a string of beads.
Xu Qingying fell ill.
Perhaps because she had been in the rain for so long, she suddenly developed a high fever in the middle of the night without any warning.
She seemed to be in a nightmare.
Sometimes she dreamed that she had returned to the modern era, sometimes she dreamed that she had killed many people, and sometimes she dreamed that the Zhou Dynasty was in chaos and all the members of the Xu family had died in front of her.
Finally, she dreamed that she was killing people non-stop. The knife flew up and down, blood splattered, but she felt nothing.
She was sweating all over from the fever, and her body felt heavy, and her eyelids felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds, making it impossible for her to open her eyes.
This disease has alarmed many people.
Miao and Xu Degui got up in the middle of the night, took the pills from the carriage in the heavy rain, and gave her some water to drink.
Several people in the fourth room were also awakened and helped to light a fire and boil water.
Gradually, the noise woke up the people around. Even Mrs. Huang came running over anxiously. Seeing Xu Qingying sweating profusely, she couldn't help but blame her two sons, "It's all your fault. You two grown men got lost, and Qingying went everywhere looking for you and got caught in the rain. What are you still standing there for? Bring some wine and wipe the sixth girl down."
Miao was so anxious that she was sweating all over. "Mom, where can we get the wine?"
"Then boil some water. My back is all sweaty."
"Mother, it's burning." Fourth Aunt helped Huang over. "Don't worry, there are so many of us here. We will take good care of the sixth girl."
Huang was also very tired, but she was worried about Xu Qingying. "Okay, if I don't leave, I'll sit here and wait for the sixth girl to wake up."
Xu Qingying vaguely felt someone pinching her nose and pouring medicine into her mouth, and then she was awakened by the bitter taste of the medicine.
When I opened my eyes, I saw everyone from the Xu family was there.
Zhao Bantou, Ming Xiaoshuang and others were standing outside. Due to their status, they could not enter the house and could only look out.
Xu Qingying realized it later, "Why are you all here so late at night?"
After Xu Qingying spoke, she realized that her voice was very hoarse and that she was sick.
Well, this body is not very useful to begin with, and it has been in the rain for so long, it would be strange if it didn't get sick.
"Ying'er, you're finally awake! You scared me to death. I told you not to go, but you insisted. Now you know how serious this is!" Miao hugged Xu Qingying, her face full of worry. "Don't run around anymore. Take good care of yourself!"
Huang Cui'e also said: "You damn girl, you scared us to death. There is no doctor here. I was afraid that you would get confused due to the fever. What should I do?"
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