"What? The child is missing?"
"How could the child be lost?"
Upon hearing the commotion, the villagers nimbly scrambled down from the various caves.
The elderly people counted them one by one, afraid that their own children might also be missing, and also looked for Gousheng to see if he was hiding somewhere.
Aunt Wu and her husband had a hard life. When they were young, they had two children in a row but they couldn't keep them alive. They didn't have a son until they were over thirty.
After Gou Sheng gave birth to a little girl, she died when she was two years old.
Gou Sheng'er is a true only child, and he is cherished more than the eyeballs of the world.
In the past, it wouldn't have gone a whole night without them realizing the child was missing. After all, the cave was small, and there were only two families and two children.
But last night, after changing the cave, Gou Sheng'er continued to play with several teenagers.
When it was time to sleep, the couple assumed that Gousheng felt cramped and went to sleep with his friends.
The only time they didn't take it seriously was when they didn't ask around in each cave.
Unexpectedly, when they went to breakfast this morning, the two of them still hadn't seen their child return, so they called out to them a few times.
After all, no one has much food, and it's not good to let children stay and eat for free.
As a result, they asked at one cave, but Gou Sheng'er wasn't there; they asked at another, but he still wasn't there!
"Gousheng, Gousheng, where are you? Come out quickly, don't scare your mother!"
Aunt Wu's voice became hoarse from shouting, her eyes were red, and she was almost going crazy.
Uncle Wu was also pale-faced, his hands were tied up, and he was running around like a fly with his head covered, asking everyone he saw for his son.
The villagers quickly gathered together and looked at the village chief and Uncle Zhao and the others.
The village chief waved his pipe and ordered everyone, "Everyone, spread out and search the surrounding area thoroughly. Even if you can't find the child, you should at least find something."
Everyone felt a chill run down their spines, sensing that something was amiss.
In this cold weather, whether a child is dragged away by a wild animal or gets stuck in a snowdrift, the outcome won't be good...
Besides the elderly who had difficulty going up and down the cave, there were also children from various families. Everyone scattered and shouted to search.
Soon, a villager found a slingshot a dozen steps behind the shack.
Aunt Wu rushed over and burst into tears, clutching the slingshot.
"This is Gousheng's, Gousheng's! He even sleeps with it! My dear Gousheng, where have you gone? If anything happens to you, I won't live anymore."
She cried and tried to run towards the nearby rock, but the villagers quickly pulled her back.
The village chief frowned, and just as he was about to speak, an arrow suddenly shot out from the woods ahead.
Liu, the镖头 (bodyguard/escort), was the first to notice, and with lightning speed, he pulled the village chief away, shouting, "Watch out!"
The village chief stumbled and fell, and the arrow flew past his shoulder and pierced Sun Ersao's back.
Sun Ersao was bending down to persuade Wu Sanshenzi when she realized there was such danger.
She screamed in pain and collapsed to the ground.
"Retreat! Retreat!"
Liu, the镖头 (bodyguard), roared and pulled the village chief and Uncle Zhao back with him.
The villagers were in an uproar and ran back home in a panic.
Li Laosi and Jiayi each grabbed one and brought Uncle Wu and Aunt Wu back to the shack.
Still shaken, the group hid behind the shack, but there was no further movement in the forest.
Tao Hongying half-embraced Sun Ersao and whispered, "There's a note on the arrow!"
Everyone looked in the direction of the sound and breathed a sigh of relief.
The arrow was held in Tao Hongying's hand. It turned out that it had been stuck too shallowly and had fallen off after the commotion.
Sun Ersao's cotton-padded jacket was stained with blood, but not much.
Li Laosi snatched the note, tore it open, and found it to be quite simple, containing only four sentences.
"Thirty li to the northeast, ten bags of grain, two hundred taels of silver, exchange the child at noon tomorrow."
Gousheng has been kidnapped!
Everyone remained silent for a long time, as they had assumed that they were the only group of people active in this deep mountain forest.
Unexpectedly, not only were there other people involved, but they also managed to kidnap their child so easily!
"We were careless. We settled here and stayed in a cave, thinking we had nothing to worry about. We didn't arrange for anyone to keep watch day or night, and that's how they took advantage of us!"
The village chief looked unwell and felt very guilty.
Uncle Zhao clenched his fists tightly. "I was too overconfident. When Chief Escort Liu mentioned that this place was like a broad bean's waist, the closest it gets to the outside, I should have warned everyone..."
Li Laosi frowned and replied, "We've been gone for so long for nothing, and we didn't even notice anyone else around here."
At this moment, Sister-in-law Sun was carried back to find Doctor Zhang to apply medicine.
Aunt Wu was beyond tears, filled with utter despair.
"Ten sacks of grain and two hundred taels of silver? My family doesn't have any of that. How are we going to save Gousheng?"
Uncle Wu held his head, squatted on the ground, wishing he could just smash his head against the ground and die.
It's good that my son is still alive; it's better than him freezing to death or being carried off by wild animals.
But the kidnappers want something that the whole village can't afford. How can they save their son?
The villagers also chimed in, offering their own suggestions.
"If we don't have enough silver, we'll put stones in the bag; if we don't have enough food, we'll stuff it with hay. Can we fool these bandits and get Gou Sheng back?"
"Do you think bandits are blind? They'll definitely check the goods!"
"Stop arguing," Li Lao Er interrupted the crowd loudly, then said, "Let me explain everything from beginning to end before we decide how to save them."
He took a deep breath and continued, "First of all, these people must have known that there were people here and came to check. Perhaps they didn't dare to show their faces because they saw that we were slaughtering a pig and stewing meat and there were many of us. If I'm not mistaken, Gousheng probably went to pee or pick up a slingshot and ran to the outer perimeter, where this person grabbed him."
"Possibly! Yesterday was too chaotic; we were all down there, and we had machetes and such. If there weren't many people coming, they definitely wouldn't dare to make a move." The village chief nodded, and the others agreed.
Li Lao Er, with his hands behind his back, continued, "After they go back, they probably heard from Gou Sheng that we were just refugees fleeing famine, so they don't want to bother anymore. They'll just send a message asking us to deliver the goods. If we have them, they might keep us all and kill us, then come back and rob us completely. If we don't have them, then they haven't really contributed anything."
Just by looking at how they fired their arrows without even avoiding the crowd, it was clear that these people weren't commoners or soldiers fleeing famine into the mountains; they were likely ruthless bandits, the kind with countless lives on their hands, who didn't care about human life.
The more they listened, the more their hearts sank. They thought this place was extremely safe, but little did they know that a man-eating tiger was sleeping next to their bed.
They had been living next to such vicious mountain bandits!
Uncle Zhao took a deep breath. "If what the second brother said is right, then we have no way out. We can only prepare to fight to the death. It's not just for Gousheng. If we don't get rid of these bandits, we will be in danger at any time."
"Yes, and we have to be quick!" Liu, the head镖师, also said. "They don't take us refugees seriously. They think we're going to be scared and scrambling to scrape together food and silver. If we follow the messenger who delivered the message earlier and sneak into their mountain stronghold, we can catch them off guard and at least have a chance to secretly rescue Gousheng'er first."
"Then let's go, the sooner the better!" Li Laosi suggested. "We need to prepare silver and food, just to make it look like we're on the move. Even if we're discovered, we can at least fool them for a while."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com