Chapter 88: Bringing? [Seeking monthly votes]
Shen Tang asked, "What are you vomiting about?"
Zhai Le, his handsome face pale, explained in a low voice, "I'm afraid some people nearby saw you burying the body. So, you just left, and then you came back and dug the body up..."
Because she was drunk, Shen Tang couldn't figure things out for a moment.
What are you going to do with these?
Zhai Le was no longer as relaxed as usual; even his usually smiling peach blossom eyes were somewhat dim, with worry hanging at the corners. His words sent chills down one's spine: "I'm too hungry. What else do you think I can do?"
He made it clear directly, and Shen Tang's eyes widened in surprise.
He remained silent for a long time.
"But...but that's a person..." Shen Tang looked helpless and confused. She hesitated unconsciously, muttering softly, "How could a person...it can't be! That's a person, one of our own kind, and buried in the ground..."
Qi Shan led Shen Tang all the way to Xiaocheng. In order to avoid hardship and gather more information, their route was not remote, and they encountered villages and towns every day or two. The people there lived a very difficult life, barely managing to make ends meet and clinging to the most basic necessities.
Shen Tang knew such things existed, but had never seen them before.
Zhai Le, however, is different.
Zhai Le and his cousin Zhai Huan set off from the southeast. Relying on their good skills and excellent teamwork, the two dared to venture into any place. Along the way, they raided several bandit dens and killed several groups of vicious criminals. Just as Zhai Le said, they were chivalrous and fought for justice.
Villains are good at killing, but they can't fill their stomachs.
He and his brother once passed through a village with only thirty-six households, mostly elderly, weak, women and children, as the able-bodied men had been conscripted to fight.
That day, an old man in the village passed away peacefully. He and his brother were staying at one of the farmhouses. As night fell, they heard voices coming from outside the courtyard. Curious, he looked out through the crack in the window and saw the village head, who was so thin he was practically skin and bones, delivering bowls of meat soup to each household.
Thanks to his good eyesight, he could also see the bitterness on the peasant woman's face.
There aren't many edible tree roots left in the area.
Zhai Le didn't know what kind of soup it was at first, so he asked his brother out of curiosity. To this day, he still remembers his brother's expression at that time. Half of his face was stained red by the candlelight, while the other half of his face was hidden in the shadows, and his shadow appeared and disappeared with the faint flame.
He even had a terrible delusion—that a ferocious beast covered in blood lurked in the shadows, ready to leap out and devour him whole, chewing him into minced meat, at the command of his brother to open his mouth.
The oil lamp flickered.
The elder brother said indifferently, "The living are always more important than the dead. The dead are dead, but the living must live."
Zhai Le still didn't understand the deeper meaning of those words until the day he left the village, when another family was holding a funeral.
Zhai Le rode away, and inadvertently turned his head to see the deceased's relatives weeping as they buried the body in a pre-prepared grave. However, before the coffin could be sealed, the village head arrived with his men to negotiate.
The distance was too great for Zhai Le to hear clearly, but judging from their heated exchange that nearly escalated into a physical altercation, neither side was happy, and in the end, the body was still brought out.
Suddenly—
His brother's words lingered in his mind.
Only then did he truly understand what had happened.
Zhai Le, who kills without batting an eye, nearly fell off his horse that day and vomited up all the dry rations he had eaten the day before.
Ah, brother...
Similar incidents have occurred frequently.
Zhai Le: [But...]
Zhai Huan's expression was indifferent: "[Never criticize their actions or interfere until you have the ability to help them escape hunger. Unless—you have the self-sacrificing courage of Buddha cutting off his own flesh to feed the eagle, and take his place. Xiaofang, they must live…]"
Zhai Huan's voice was as gentle as ever, but it also conveyed an unprecedented sense of helplessness to Zhai Le. It was the despair of his cousin, whom he had always looked up to as a role model, who was now at a loss.
Zhai Le said somberly, “My brother said these people want to live more than anyone else, but the world wants them dead more than anyone else. They’ve harmed a living person, just a corpse. What right do outsiders have to call them cruel and inhuman? They can’t say that…”
Upon hearing this, Shen Tang stood rooted to the spot, staring at the three severely decomposed and incomplete corpses at her feet, stunned for a long time before she could come to her senses.
After a while—
She said, "That's true. Guan Zhong said, 'When the granaries are full, people know etiquette; when they have enough food and clothing, they know honor and shame.' But these people, let alone having full granaries and enough food and clothing, their stomachs are empty. A family of several people can't even afford decent clothes. How can they talk about etiquette and honor?"
In this situation, wouldn't it be the greatest arrogance to judge their behavior by etiquette, honor, and ethics?
Seeing that Shen Tang's expression was a little strange, Zhai Le raised his hand and pushed her arm, trying to shake Shen Tang, who seemed to be under a spell, awake.
Shen Tang took a deep breath and waved her hand, saying, "I'm fine."
"Brother Shen, what should we do with them? All of them..."
Zhai Le looked at the trembling thugs, raised his hand, extended his thumb, and made a clean, sweeping stroke across his neck.
Seeing this, several of the thugs vaguely guessed their fate. They knelt down with a thud, their heads hitting the ground with loud bangs that made one's head throb. Trembling with panic, tears and snot streaming down their faces, they cried, "Heroes, have mercy!"
There were also those who didn't believe in superstition, such as the burly man at the head.
He didn't think Shen Tang and his companion had the guts to kill him, knowing his backer was the second-in-command of a bandit gang. As for Shen Tang's claim of taking over the bandit gang, he didn't believe the two of them could do it.
He knew exactly how big the bandit's den was.
Shen Tang said, "I did want to kill him."
Zhai Le conjured a knife in his hand, waiting for Shen Tang's command before he swiftly chopped the thugs into pieces.
Shen Tang added, "But it would be a pity to kill them all."
Zhai Le: "What a pity?"
Shen Tang scoffed, "What can they do while they're alive? Once they're dead, they're just buried in the earth. But I feel uneasy about letting these people live. Xiao Fang, what do you plan to do?"
Zhai Le: "Just kill him, we can't take him with us anyway."
It wasn't just the two of them who offended this gang today; the white-haired old man who stepped forward also got involved, and the onlookers could be roughly counted as well. While the two of them were unharmed by letting the tiger return to the mountain, the ordinary people suffered the consequences.
Shen Tang said, "You said... bring it? How do you mean to bring it?"
Zhai Le, however, had a different interpretation.
Surprised: "Brother Shen, you plan to recruit them?"
Killing them and burying them anywhere is a quick and easy solution with almost zero cost. But recruiting them is a different story; it's a huge problem.
Shen Tang: "..."
When did she say that?
Zhai Le looked troubled: "It's not that I'm deliberately trying to hurt Brother Shen's feelings, but each person is a mouth to feed. There are twenty or thirty people here, that's twenty or thirty mouths to feed. How much will the daily expenses be? Even if Brother Shen is kind enough to recruit them, will they be willing to pledge their loyalty?"
Brother Shen himself is penniless.
They're so poor they have to sell wine at a counter!
What will they use to recruit and support these thugs?
Shen Tang's mind was still blank.
She didn't know how the topic had jumped to recruiting thugs; she was just curious about how to "bring them in" based on Zhai Le's question.
"Wait a minute, let me think about it some more."
Before he could figure it out, the burly leader spat out a sneer and said, "You think I'd work for a pretty boy? Dream on! When my brother finds out, you'll all be—"
puff--
|ω｀) I was so engrossed in chatting with Tanzi that I forgot there was an update.
PS: I feel that Qi Busan's worries are completely unnecessary.
(End of this chapter)
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