Lin Rong pleaded.
"No, why do you want to go home so soon? We haven't had enough fun yet."
"Yes, yes, don't cry. We'll take you home after you've had your fun."
Several teenagers laughed and joked, trying to stop Lin Rong from leaving.
Lin Rong pouted, looking like she was about to cry.
"I really have to go home."
These kids, who were also from the Beitang team, were already twelve or thirteen years old. They were quite old and had hardly ever played with Lin Rong. However, Lin Rong was cute and obedient. He would do whatever Ma Zi asked him to do. The kids thought it would be nice to have such a loyal little brother, so they kidnapped him on his way home.
Today, they were to act out a scene of escorting prisoners to exile thousands of miles away. Lin Rong was the prisoner, and the others were the head constables responsible for the escort. They had already set off from Beitang Team, passed through Xitang Team, and were about to continue onward. Lin Rong's legs were aching from walking, and he became increasingly frightened by the unfamiliar places. He couldn't hold back any longer and voiced his objections.
But the three people still refused to take them back, and Lin Rong's lips trembled as tears fell.
"Waaaaah, I want to go home! I want to go home! I want my brother!!!"
He lay down and rolled around on the ground, crying and screaming, which annoyed the three of them terribly.
"Why is he being disobedient? It's boring."
"Exactly! Do you even know how far 'a thousand miles' is? This is nothing! You have no perseverance at all, yet you want to play with us? You're just a little kid!"
Suo curled his lip in disdain.
Yes, Lin Rong initially went along voluntarily. He wanted to make more friends, so when they approached him, he readily agreed and went with them, not wanting to go home for dinner. But now he regrets it; he wants to go home!!!
"I don't want to play with you guys anymore, I want to go home, waaaaah."
"Okay, okay, let's go home, let's go home, alright? Stop crying! Let's go back. After all, he's the captain's cousin. If we go back and complain, we'll be in big trouble."
Chen Xiaoyi urged impatiently, he was tired after walking for so long.
"No way! We've come this far, and if we go back, we'll have to start all over again. I don't want to!"
Liu Yong objected; he disagreed.
"I disagree too! Why should he go back? We agreed to go very, very far away, otherwise how could we exile prisoners? He could just run back!"
Suo also refused, resulting in a stalemate between the three, with two votes against one.
Actually, this was just a whim of three immature teenagers who didn't understand the consequences and just did what they wanted.
"Then what do you want to do! I can't walk anymore, and he refuses to walk either. You can carry us."
Chen Xiaoyi also plopped down on the ground and refused to move.
Lin Rong was observant and knew that the three of them were discussing whether to go back. He immediately stopped crying and just lay quietly on the ground. Chen Xiaoyi quietly put her hand behind him and pinched him.
"Keep crying, or how will you get back!"
"Waaaaah, I want to go home! I want to go home!"
Perhaps understanding Chen Xiaoyi's lip reading, Lin Rong immediately started rolling around and wailing again, making the three of them feel a buzzing headache.
"Going back now would mean all our efforts would be wasted! How about this, let's walk a little further ahead, and once the exile is successful, we'll go back, okay?"
After whispering to each other for a while, Liu Yong and Su Ao finally decided to back down.
"How long is 'a section'? I can only walk for another five minutes at most. My shoes are worn out. I want to go home for dinner. My mother will scold me if she doesn't see me."
Chen Xiaoyi wasn't stupid; he refused to be easily fooled by them.
"Five minutes is five minutes, hurry up and stop nagging! With your stamina, you think you can play? Play my ass! I'm not bringing you out next time! We didn't even say we were hungry, and you were all just whining!"
"Nonsense! You brought sweet potatoes to eat on the road, while I didn't even have a drop of water!"
Chen Xiaoyi and Su Ao got into an argument. After they finished, he dusted himself off and stood up. He then went to take Lin Rong's hand.
"Hurry up, just five more minutes. The sooner we leave, the sooner we'll get back. Crying won't help. I won't carry you; I'm tired too."
"Oh, thank you, brother."
Lin Rong wiped away her tears with difficulty, took Chen Xiaoyi's hand and helped him stand up. He could still tell who was on whose side.
They agreed to walk for five minutes, and Lin Rong and Chen Xiaoyi gritted their teeth and persevered. But after five minutes, the two started to cheat again, insisting on walking forward and refusing to go back. Chen Xiaoyi was furious.
"Fine, if you're not going back, we're going back!"
"You can go back if you want, but we're not going back!"
Su Ao and Liu Yong said stiffly, and then the four of them went their separate ways.
Go eat shit!
Chen Xiaoyi led Lin Rong back, cursing and swearing, while Liu Yong and Su Ao continued on. However, after walking for half an hour, the two of them somehow ended up in some deserted place. Exhausted, hot, and hungry, Su Ao finally decided to give up.
"Should we go back?"
"You said it, not I!"
Liu Yong nodded almost impatiently; he was a little scared of walking so far.
So the two of them started walking back. They thought Chen Xiaoyi and Lin Rong would walk slowly and they might run into them, but they didn't see them along the way. They thought they had already returned to the team. When they were almost at Xitang team, they saw a group of people coming this way. It was their team. Liu Yong and Su Ao immediately got excited.
"Yu Zhiqing, team leader, where are you going? Is our team having some kind of event? Or is another team showing a movie?"
The two asked excitedly, "Usually, the whole village only turns out when there's a big event, or when a team is showing a movie. In these days, showing a movie is such a rare thing. Even if it's several teams away, people will walk for hours to get there. Anyway, they set off in groups, and they're not afraid of coming back late at night."
"Where did you go? Why did you come back from this side? Lin Rong is missing. Have you seen him?"
Xu Zi frowned as he looked at the two teenagers who looked like they had been pulled out of the water. Their clothes were wrinkled and looked like pickled vegetables. He wondered where they had been running around and why they were covered in sweat.
"Lin Rong? Didn't he go back with Chen Xiaoyi?"
Su Ao blurted out, "A bunch of uncles, aunties, brothers, and sisters who are going crazy looking for someone?"
"You've seen him? You're the ones who brought him out of the team!!!"
Yu Jiu asked in shock, her beautiful almond-shaped eyes widening. She had counted all the children under ten in the group; they were all there. She'd forgotten to look for the twelve or thirteen-year-old teenagers! Mainly because they all knew their way around, were quite daring, and wandered off every day, never going home until they were exhausted. So even their own parents couldn't find them, and the whole group had overlooked this fact!
"Huh, what's wrong?"
Su Ao and Liu Yong sensed something was wrong and took a step back, trembling.
Xu Zijiang, his face dark, grabbed each of them and kicked them.
"You little brats, running around like this is one thing, but what are you doing taking Lin Rong with you! How old is he?! He grew up in this village, we thought he was lost! The whole village searched for him for ages! Where did you take him?! Where is he now?!!"
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