I had a terrifying night, but thankfully things passed peacefully. However, when I quietly went out of my room for breakfast, I was still very cautious and kept a close eye on my surroundings.
Just as the Zhou family was about to leave, Jingjing saw the two men again. Their eyes kept glancing in their direction, which made Jingjing's heart, which had just calmed down, jump up again.
"Mom, I think those two people look sneaky and keep staring at me. We need to be careful," Xingxing whispered to Zhao Guihua.
Zhao Guihua felt a cold sweat break out on her brow. It had only been a day, and they were already being watched?
However, she pretended to be nonchalant and glanced back casually as she boarded the carriage, only to see the backs of the two people; they were walking in the opposite direction.
"Perhaps there's been a mistake?" Zhao Guihua muttered to herself.
Nothing happened for the next few days, and the journey was smooth. Even though we spent two nights camping in the wild, we didn't encounter any danger.
Ten days had passed since they left the county town. They finally arrived at a small town, passed through the city gate, and found an inn to stay in.
After so many days of eating and sleeping outdoors, everyone was exhausted. For dinner, we ordered a large table of meat dishes, ready to have a good meal.
Just as everyone was about to start eating, Xingxing suddenly reached out and stopped them, saying, "Everyone, don't eat yet."
After she finished speaking, she whispered something in Zhao Guihua's ear.
Zhao Guihua's pupils shrank, as if she was frightened. After Xingxing finished speaking, she nodded and said, "Let's share these dishes. Brother Fu and the others will eat this plate of braised pork and roast duck. My husband, Xingxing, and I will eat this plate of chicken. Tangguo, the three of you will eat this plate of fish and this plate of beef."
“Why do we have to share? I want to try everything,” Zhou Erfu complained in a low voice.
"Just eat what I tell you to eat, why are you talking so much nonsense?" Zhao Guihua wasn't in the mood to explain to him, and immediately scolded him with a stern face.
Seeing Zhao Guihua lose her temper, no one dared to object anymore. They picked up their bowls and began to eat the dishes that had been assigned to them. After they were full, everyone immediately returned to their guest rooms, which were still two rooms, one for men and one for women.
Only two people can sleep in the bed, and everyone else has to sleep on the floor with their own mats. Sleeping on the floor is cooler in this hot weather, but there are a lot of mosquitoes at night because there are no mosquito nets. Fortunately, Zhou Wufu brought a lot of mosquito-repelling herbs with him when he went out.
Zhou Laoda slapped Zhou Erfu on the head and scolded him in a low voice, "You silly boy, Xingxing said that the vegetables can't be eaten casually. Your mother has already divided them, but you still have to talk back. You only know how to hold people back. Of the five boys, you are the dumbest."
Zhou Erfu wasn't stupid; he was just greedy and didn't want to miss any meat. In fact, he had already realized at the dinner table that there was definitely something wrong with the food, but what was the problem?
"Fifth Brother, do you know what's wrong with those dishes? Why do we have to eat them separately?" Zhou Erfu asked.
“It should be a colorless and odorless poison. Eating one of them alone will not cause poisoning, but mixing them together will cause a reaction. If ingested, it will definitely cause poisoning. There must have been two kinds of poison in our food,” Zhou Wufu analyzed.
"Could it be someone from the inn?" Zhou Erfu guessed.
"It's hard to say. Be careful tonight and don't sleep too soundly," Zhou Wufu said with a serious expression.
Around midnight, Zhou Laoda and Zhou Erfu were still awake. They couldn't sleep and felt extremely uneasy. Sure enough, they heard someone quietly approaching the door.
The night was quiet; even the slightest sound could be heard, especially when the father and son were on high alert.
Zhou Erfu was used to tracking prey in the mountains, and his light footsteps made him difficult to spot.
At this moment, he got up from his bed and slowly walked towards the door. In the darkness, he saw a pipe extending through the crack in the door, and then black smoke came out of the pipe.
Sleeping smoke?
Zhou Erfu's face suddenly darkened. He took out a handkerchief and blocked the pipe. Soon after, a thud was heard outside the door as someone fell down.
Tsk, that's so weak. How dare they resort to dirty tricks?
However, the commotion alerted the thief who was releasing smoke into the next room. The thief leaped up, his large knife flashing coldly, and kicked open the door, rushing in to attack.
Jingjing rushed forward, grabbed her knife, and fought with the thief. Xiaoxiao and Tangguo protected Zhao Guihua and Xingxing behind them, vigilantly watching their surroundings, afraid that more thieves might rush in.
However, the thief was quickly captured by Jingjing. Just as Jingjing was about to tie him up with a rope, a hidden weapon suddenly flew in from outside the window. Jingjing rolled away to dodge it, but the thief groaned and fell to the ground.
At this moment, Boss Zhou and five brothers Fu also brought over the drugged thief, but before they even entered the door, the thief was hit in the back by a hidden weapon and died instantly.
"Watch out, everyone! There's a hidden weapon!" Boss Zhou shouted, and everyone tensed up, instinctively ducking into a corner.
After a quarter of an hour, no one appeared, so it seemed that the villains outside had left.
Zhou Laoda walked into the room with a candle, glanced at the fallen thief, who was already dead with blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Zhou Erfu pulled out the hidden weapons from the two dead bodies and found black liquid on them. It turned out that the hidden weapons were coated with poison. These people are really ruthless. They don't even spare their own people.
"Strange, with such a commotion, why are the other guests not reacting at all? Could they have all been killed?" Old Zhou wondered in alarm.
"No way!" Zhao Guihua's face turned pale. If everyone in the inn was dead and only her family was still alive, they would have no way to explain themselves when the government officials came to investigate tomorrow.
"I'll go check it out." Zhou Erfu said and ran out. Soon after, you could hear him kicking the door of the next room, and shortly after, you could hear him kicking the doors of other guest rooms.
When he returned, he was slightly out of breath and said, "The others are not dead, but they all seem to have been drugged. Even kicking the door so loudly didn't wake them up. I checked their breathing, and they are still breathing."
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