Xingxing looked at the several female corpses lying on the ground, pursed her lips, feeling uncomfortable and helpless. Her ears twitched, and she turned to look at the side room in the corner.
"There's a sound over there, like someone's locked up." With that, she ran over.
Fearing danger, Zhu Lin quickly followed and stood at the door ahead of him. He tried to push the door open, but failed several times. So he took a few steps back and kicked it open.
"Bang!" The already somewhat dilapidated wooden door collapsed with a crash.
The village chief and the others, who were locked inside, looked over in horror. Their hands and feet were bound, their mouths were stuffed with dry grass, and they could not speak. They could only stare blankly.
Zhu Qiuyu and the others also came over. They went in to untie the village chief and the others. These people had been starving for two days and had been beaten. They were very weak and could barely walk.
Aside from the village chief and his wife, their two sons and daughters-in-law, and their parents who are adults, everyone else is a child, the oldest being only ten years old, who is the village chief's grandson.
Zhu Changge led the people to sit down in the main room, but didn't rush to ask questions. She and Zhu Qingruo went to the kitchen to boil water for them to drink. There happened to be millet in the kitchen, so they cooked a pot of millet porridge for the village chief and the others.
When the millet porridge was served, the village chief and the others were hesitant to eat it at first. But Zhu Yueran put on a stern face and ordered them to eat quickly. Only then did they begin to eat, trembling. After taking a bite, they instinctively began to wolf it down.
"Now that you've finished eating, tell me what happened," Zhu Qiuyu began by asking questions.
The village chief, trembling, stood up from the bench and, mustering his courage, said, "I am the village chief of this village, Dashu Village. There are over 160 people in the village. We are all honest farmers. We suffered a snow disaster at the end of last year..."
Although the situation was quite serious and some people had died, we never considered fleeing the famine. We thought that once spring came and we started planting crops, we could gather wild vegetables from the mountains and make ends meet. That day, we finished working in the fields and were returning home. Everyone was cooking dinner when suddenly several beautiful women barged in. Seeing that they were women, the villagers were caught off guard.
Who would have thought that those seemingly delicate and frail women would kill without batting an eye? Later, whether they got tired of killing or what, they tied up the rest of the people.
The village chief paused, and his wife immediately continued, "They only killed the adults, but kept the children alive. At first, we thought these women still had some conscience and couldn't bear to harm the children. We were just about to breathe a sigh of relief when they started cooking the children."
Hong Niangzi and her companions tied up all the village children and locked them in the village chief's house. The village chief's family was also tied up, but Hong Niangzi hadn't harmed them yet; she had simply locked them up with the children.
The other adults were nowhere to be found; they were either dead or alive.
"Go door to door and find everyone else, whether they are dead or alive," Zhu Lin said.
The young master spoke, and Zhu Qiuyu glanced at the village chief, "You lead the way, and we'll go find the person together."
Xingxing wanted to help, but Zhu Lin held her back. The boy shook his head and said, "It's dark, and the road is difficult to walk on. Let's wait next door."
The village chief's house reeked of blood and was not a place to stay for long.
"What do you think? You didn't see what happened in this village, did you?" The boy was a little worried. Hong Niangzi's methods were cruel and bloody, and he was worried that Xingxing would be frightened.
"No, I don't see any images at all, so if my senior brothers hadn't told me, I wouldn't know what happened." Xingxing was also relieved that such a terrifying image hadn't appeared in her mind, otherwise she might not have been able to eat for a long time, and would feel nauseous at the sight of meat.
Back next door, they found Li Tianlin crouching in the corner of the main room, trembling with fear. The poor child had witnessed what Hong Niangzi and her entourage had done, and his younger siblings had also been eaten by Hong Niangzi. No wonder he was so frightened.
Xingxing was a little worried. She thought that Hongniangzi was also an innocent victim at the beginning, but she suffered too much and eventually became a perpetrator. She was really worried that Li Tianlin would eventually become mentally unstable and harm innocent people.
Xingxing told the boy about her worries, and the boy patted her head and comforted her, "Don't worry, Li Tianlin will get back to normal. He's not a matchmaker, so he won't suffer any more. He met us, and he'll be alright."
"How can we help him?" Xingxing asked, tilting her head.
"...Let me think. I don't know what to do with him right now." Zhu Lin slightly tugged at the corner of his lips. Few things could stump him, but he was indeed not good at helping people out of their shadows. Perhaps his fourth senior brother had a solution?
The village chief, along with several fellow disciples, started from the village entrance and searched house to house. However, apart from finding the murdered villagers inside the houses, they did not find anyone else. It was not that every household had been wiped out; some people had gone missing, presumably kidnapped by the Red Maiden and taken somewhere unknown.
They searched the cellar but didn't find any other villagers. All the old people in the village had been killed. Hong Niangzi said that the old men and women couldn't work and were just wasting food if they lived, so she might as well send them to meet the King of Hell sooner.
Hong Niangzi hated the old man, possibly due to her past experiences. Although the old man had married her and taught her martial arts, she still genuinely disliked him and wanted to kill him whenever she saw him.
An hour later, the whole village had been searched, but not a single person had been found alive. The village chief and his family stomped their feet and cried. Only their family had adults left alive in the whole village. The remaining dozen or so were all children, all under five years old. Without adults, they could not survive on their own.
"What are we going to do? God, how could this happen? How are we going to live?" The village chief's wife wailed.
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