Chapter 98 Night Raid on the Old Sow
Although Jiang Wanqiu was puzzled as to how she had acquired such a large number of items in her space, now was not the time to dwell on such matters.
She took a deep breath and rushed towards the courtyard gate!
As long as you can get out of this yard and onto the main road, you're bound to run into someone!
However, before she could run a few steps, a loud bang was heard, and the courtyard gate was kicked open from the outside!
Amidst the flying sawdust, a lean and wiry old man rushed in, carrying a dark, homemade hunting rifle!
Behind him stood Old Lady Zhou, who had just been terrified.
"Old man! It's her! It's this bitch!" Old Mrs. Zhou pointed at Jiang Wanqiu in a panic, "She's the one who knocked Youcai unconscious!"
Seeing that Jiang Wanqiu was the only one in the courtyard, the old woman sensed something was wrong and hurriedly shouted into the house, "Where is Youfu? Where is Youfu!"
Then, a sharp squeal suddenly came from the pigpen.
Grandma Zhou's forehead twitched suddenly.
Old Zhou looked the woman up and down; even in such a disheveled state, she was still stunningly beautiful.
Her small, dusty face was deathly pale, but her almond-shaped eyes shone with a frightening intensity due to fear and anger. Beneath her disheveled clothes, her slender figure was dazzlingly beautiful.
Such a beauty could indeed make a man lose his mind.
But it is precisely such a beauty that is most likely to cause trouble!
"Stand there, don't move!" Old Zhou's dark gun barrel was steadily pointed at Jiang Wanqiu's forehead.
Jiang Wanqiu stared intently at the other person, remaining motionless for the time being.
She knew in her heart that this old man was really capable of firing a gun!
Seeing that she was indeed too scared to move, Old Zhou walked over, slung his hunting rifle over his shoulder, and untied a thicker, stronger hemp rope from his waist.
His movements were swift and ruthless; in no time, he had Jiang Wanqiu's hands tied behind her back, binding them tightly in a tight knot.
They also tied up her entire arm.
"Still dare to run?" Old Zhou grabbed the rope and roughly dragged her into a dilapidated mud-brick house in the corner of the yard, which was even more run-down and cramped than a pigsty. He then pushed her to the ground.
There was no kang (heated brick bed) in the room; the floor was covered with a thick layer of dry grass, which emitted a foul stench of something rotting mixed with the smell of urine.
"Behave yourself!"
"Husband! Husband, something terrible has happened! It's horrible!" Old Mrs. Zhou shouted at the top of her lungs behind her husband, as if she had seen something earth-shattering. "Come quick! Something terrible has happened!"
Old Zhou, who had originally intended to give Jiang Wanqiu a good talking-to, frowned upon hearing the old woman's panicked voice and could only tell Jiang Wanqiu, "Wait for me to come back!"
After saying that, he turned and went out. With a loud bang, the heavy wooden door was closed, followed by the crisp sound of an iron lock falling.
Outside the house, the screams of Old Man Zhou and his wife soon echoed again, mixed with the increasingly pitiful cries of the old sow.
Jiang Wanqiu knew that they had gone to deal with the mess in the pigsty.
She lay on the cold, dry grass and struggled to sit up.
This room doesn't even have windows; it's truly pitch black.
In the deathly silence, Jiang Wanqiu suddenly heard a very faint sobbing sound.
Immediately following was a rustling sound, like something was moving.
"Who?" Her heart tightened, and she asked sharply.
In the darkness, the voice paused for a moment.
Then, one, two, three... from the corners, suppressed sobs began to rise one after another.
Jiang Wanqiu was startled. After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she was horrified to discover, by the faint moonlight shining through the crack in the door, that there were five or six women huddled together like animals in this room of less than ten square meters!
The pungent, nauseating stench in the air was emanating from them.
Jiang Wanqiu struggled against the rope in her hands, and her wrists were quickly chafed raw.
"Newcomer?" A weak voice sounded beside her, tinged with a numb pity. "Don't waste your energy. This rope was tied by Old Man Zhou using hunting methods. The more you struggle, the tighter it gets. Once you're in Zhoujia Village, don't even think about running away."
Jiang Wanqiu looked in the direction of the voice and saw that the speaker was a pregnant woman with a high belly.
Her cheeks were sunken, her cheekbones were high, and her limbs were as thin as dry sticks. Only her belly was as big as an overturned pot. Her whole body looked like a skeleton with its belly inflated, which was extremely strange and incongruous.
The pregnant woman sighed and continued, "We were all tricked or robbed. Want to run away? The only thing you'll get is your legs broken and then sold to some remote mountain village to be the wives of those old bachelors who can't find wives."
She raised her thin, bony hand and pointed to a figure huddled in the corner.
"Look, do you see her? She ran away a few days ago, got caught and brought back, and that's how her leg is now."
Jiang Wanqiu looked in the direction she was pointing and saw that the woman was twitching from time to time, clearly having a high fever. She was groaning unconsciously, and one of her legs was twisted outward at a strange angle, obviously because the bone had been broken.
"I...I just went to town to sell a few eggs, hoping to buy some cloth for my mother to make clothes..." A young girl who looked only sixteen or seventeen years old began to sob softly, "I can never go home again..."
Jiang Wanqiu frowned; she simply couldn't believe she would be locked up in a place like this for the rest of her life.
"Help me untie the rope first!" she whispered to the pregnant woman beside her. "I have a way."
The pregnant woman and several other women around her were startled and shook their heads.
"No, no! If Old Man Zhou finds out, he'll beat us to death!"
"Yes, we dare not..."
Seeing their timid and fearful expressions, Jiang Wanqiu remained silent for a moment.
It seems we have no choice but to try other methods to appease these people first.
She thought for a moment, then addressed the crowd: "My husband is the battalion commander of the military region's combat battalion! His name is Zhao Wenchang! I've been missing for so long, he must be searching for me all over the world! As long as we hold on, as long as we can find a way to make a scene, he will definitely find us here and rescue us all!"
Upon hearing this, all the women stared at her blankly, their eyes filled with shock and disbelief in the darkness.
"A military... officer's family member?" a woman stammered. "Really? How could an officer's family member be abducted to a place like this?"
"She's lying to us... she just wants us to help her untie the ropes..." another voice said, full of suspicion.
"Are you telling the truth?" The sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl's voice trembled with a hint of hope. She seemed to have been captured not long ago, as her clothes were still relatively clean.
Jiang Wanqiu nodded emphatically: "It's absolutely true! His name is Zhao Wenchang! You must believe in the People's Liberation Army; the People's Liberation Army will never abandon any member of the people!"
"People's Liberation Army..."
The little girl who had been abducted to sell eggs muttered to herself, and then she struggled to sit up.
The little girl's ankle was chained by a thick iron chain. She dragged the chain, making a clanging sound, and slowly shuffled toward Jiang Wanqiu.
"I...I'll help you!" She gritted her teeth, as if she had made a huge decision, and stretched out her small, red, frozen hands to clumsily grope for the tangled knots behind Jiang Wanqiu.
...
Meanwhile, on the snow-covered plains dozens of miles away...
A group of People's Liberation Army soldiers, camouflaged in white cloth, are marching swiftly through the heavy snow.
The man at the head of the group was tall and imposing, with his hat brim pulled low, obscuring his deep-set eyes and brows.
He is Zhao Wenchang.
A series of shallow tire tracks on the snow abruptly disappeared at a fork in the road.
"Battalion Commander, the snow is too heavy, the tracks end here!" The guard rushed over anxiously, his lips turning purple from the cold.
Zhao Wenchang didn't say anything, but squatted down, picked up a handful of soil from the snow, and smelled it.
He spread out a simple map and, using the dim light of his flashlight, quickly ran his finger across it.
His gaze finally settled on a village surrounded by mountains on three sides, with only one road leading in and out.
Zhoujia Village.
“Most of the villagers who came to fish this time are from this village, and the other roads are too dangerous for donkey carts to pass.” Zhao Wenchang stood up and gave orders, “First platoon! Detour from the east hillside and block all exits of the village. Don’t let a single mouse out! Second platoon, come with me and search house to house! Remember, we are looking for military family members. Anyone who dares to obstruct us will be treated as obstructing military affairs! Even if we have to turn this Zhoujia Village upside down, we must find them!”
"yes!"
The soldiers responded in unison, their voices carrying far into the silent, snowy night.
It's almost dawn.
The iron lock on the small dark room was opened with a "clatter".
Old Mrs. Zhou carried a bowl of wild vegetable porridge that smelled rancid and was unrecognizable. She threw it on the ground with a "thud" like feeding a pig and ordered impatiently, "Eat!"
The women inside the room cowered, none of them daring to move.
Immediately afterwards, Old Man Zhou walked in from outside with a gloomy face.
He didn't sleep all night, dealing with the mess in the pigsty. He discovered that his eldest son had suffered some kind of shock and was half-mad, clinging to a pig and refusing to let go. His youngest son was still unconscious.
He truly hated Jiang Wanqiu, the culprit, to the core.
Especially when he came in and found that the rope behind the woman had been untied, a surge of rage shot up to the top of his head!
"You shameless slut! You dare to play tricks on me!"
Enraged, Old Man Zhou raised his whip high, the whip whistling sharply as it lashed down hard at Jiang Wanqiu's breathtakingly beautiful face!
"ah--!"
The women inside screamed in terror and closed their eyes, unable to bear watching that beautiful face being ruined.
Although Jiang Wanqiu had already prepared for this, she still didn't expect the unexpected to come even faster.
because……
"Bang!"
A sharp, piercing gunshot rang out without warning.
"Ah—!! My hand! My hand!!"
Old Zhou's pig-like screams rang out, and the leather whip that was about to fall on Jiang Wanqiu's face, along with half of his hand holding the whip, flew out and fell to the ground with a "thud"!
Blood splattered like a fountain, covering the walls and the floor!
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