Chapter 377 Why not separate us?
Murong Di and Old Man Qin were the first to notice it.
They usually practice in dark environments and have good hearing.
As soon as they heard the noise, they had plum blossom darts ready at their fingertips.
Whoosh—
Several plum blossom darts flew into the darkness.
In an instant, the howling of wild beasts was heard.
Then, several wolves jumped out of the snow and pounced towards Old Man Qin and others.
The wolf's body was illuminated by the firelight.
Su Zhizhi was surprised to see that the wolves were huge, snow-white, and had a circle of black stripes on their faces.
"Be careful!" Wu Yingniang spoke as the spear had already stabbed out.
A huge snow wolf pounced over, and Su Zhizhi reacted extremely quickly, swinging her whip and locking the wolf's throat!
Wu Yingniang tensed her arms, and her spear flashed a cold light. She took advantage of the wolf's leap in the air to cut open its belly.
Wow!
The blood spilled onto the ground, forming red ice crystals.
On the other side, other villagers also showed their skills and cooperated with each other to kill several other wolves.
The people who were sleeping in the military camp were awakened by the noise. Some of them came out with their clothes on to see what was happening. They saw the corpses of wolves lying all over the ground, which made them feel terrified.
They were somewhat relieved that they did not encounter the wolf while they were on night watch.
Otherwise, it would not be the wolf that died, but them.
Qiu Jinyu looked at the wolf from left to right, even thinking about how to marinate each part of the meat:
"Zhizhi is right. We can have an extra meal tomorrow. Even if it's just broth, it will give everyone more energy to work."
Old Man Qin's expression had not yet relaxed.
The tip of his single ear moved slightly in the night, and he suddenly said:
"besides!"
Old Man Qin chased in one direction.
Ni Tianji and Qiu Jinyu were even faster, they touched the ground with their toes and flew directly over.
The direction they ran towards was the granary of the military camp.
Outside the granary, several dark shadows were moving.
The plum blossom darts in Old Man Qin and Murong Di's hands flew out again.
The wailing sounded again in the darkness.
But this time it was not the howling of wolves, but the voice of humans.
Old Man Qin and others thought it was a sneak attack by the enemy and were about to take ruthless action.
At this time, Su Zhizhi and others holding torches caught up from behind and lit the fire.
The firelight reflected pale and panicked faces.
They were a group of ragged people, and their dress did not look like Hu people, but more like local villagers.
Each of them looked haggard, with obvious fear in their eyes, and carried a small bag on their backs.
Among them was a shorter child who looked to be only a little over ten years old.
Old Xu slapped the air with his palm, and the bags of two of the men were shaken by the air current and flew up, and the dry food and flour stuffed in the bags also exploded.
The soldiers following behind saw this and someone shouted:
"You are here to steal military rations!"
"How dare these unruly people steal military rations? This is a capital crime!"
"Who sent you here?"
After being discovered, those people turned around and ran away with their bags.
They ran very fast and were obviously very familiar with the terrain.
The youngest child was a step slower and fell in the snow.
He turned around in horror and looked at Old Man Qin and others approaching, but he reached into his bag and desperately stuffed flour into his mouth.
Before he could swallow the flour in his throat, he stuffed the flour on his hand into his mouth.
He looks like he is very hungry.
Old Man Qin pinched the boy's hand.
The boy was so scared that he wanted to cry, but his mouth was full of flour and he suddenly felt that he couldn't breathe.
Old Man Qin slapped the boy on the back.
The boy uttered a wow and spat out a ball of something from his mouth, and then he was able to breathe deeply.
"Silly boy, you'll choke to death if you eat like this."
Old Man Qin was angry and sighed:
"Who are you?"
"I, I'm Aguli."
The boy was shaking all over, and his voice was intermittent:
"Sir, please spare us... We are so hungry... There is really no other way..."
He knelt on the ground, banged his head hard into the snow, and never got up again.
Old Man Qin and Murong Di pulled the man out of the water and saw that the child had passed out with a blue face.
Not far away, there were two people lying down who had been hit by the plum blossom darts.
Old Man Qin and Murong Di looked at each other.
Murong Di said: "Take them back and treat them first."
Time passes by little by little.
The dark tide in the sky receded, revealing a slightly white line in the east.
Aguli woke up in the tent.
The tent was warm and smelled of porridge and barbecue.
Aguli propped himself up and sat up, and saw two people sitting by the door curtain.
A girl and a man.
Both of them looked very strange.
The girl was pretty, a few years older than him, but she was wearing armor like a soldier.
The other man had thick eyebrows and big eyes. He was older and tall and strong.
Aguli swallowed his saliva and didn't dare to speak.
However, Su Zhizhi and Kong Wu, who were eating barbecue, noticed the movement here.
Su Zhizhi: "Hmm? You're awake. Have some porridge first. The doctor in our barracks said you fainted from hunger."
Kong Wu went outside and brought back a bowl of well-cooked multi-grain porridge.
Aguli didn't care about anything else. He took the multi-grain porridge and poured it directly into his throat.
There seems to be a hint of meat in the porridge.
He finished the porridge in one breath, and his eyes unconsciously fell on the barbecue skewers in Su Zhizhi's hand.
Su Zhizhi shook her head and ate the last bite of meat on the skewer:
"Doctor Yu said that your stomach is weak and you can't eat greasy food so soon."
The cooks in their camp got up early, and with their mouths watering, they quickly prepared the wolf meat.
The meat of a dozen or so wolves was chopped up, stewed in a pot with seasonings to remove the fishy smell, and then cooked together with multi-grain porridge.
Su Zhizhi and others were rewarded with two skewers of wolf meat each for their contribution in killing the wolf.
Kong Wu also nodded: "Ah, ah."
Aguli lowered his head, clutched the corner of his clothes a little awkwardly, and even curled up his toes.
He had frostbite on his feet and his hands were almost swollen into a bag.
Su Zhizhi asked: "You said your name is Aguli?"
Aguli nodded.
Su Zhizhi: "Are you stealing military rations because you have nothing to eat? Last year, the imperial court didn't collect grain, so you should have had your own food. Why are you stealing?"
Aguli remained silent with his head down.
At this time, Kong Wu brought back another bowl of porridge from outside.
Aguli smelled the aroma of porridge and swallowed several times before speaking:
"We're so hungry."
His voice was as soft as a mosquito's buzz:
"There's nothing to eat in our village. They've taken all our food and killed our cattle and sheep."
Su Zhizhi clenched the wooden stick in her hand:
"Who? Who stole your things?"
In another tent.
Wu Yingniang, Qin Xiao, Wei Dashuan, Murong Di, Old Man Qin and others sat together.
Murong Di: "Master and I just came out from Doctor Yu and learned some information from the two injured people."
"Some time ago, a group of barbarians secretly detoured here to plunder and robbed all the food supplies in the nearby villages. They took away what they could take, and burned and killed what they couldn't."
"The local villagers fought them desperately and killed a few of them, but it was to no avail. The others fled, and their village was left with no food for the winter. When they heard the army was passing through, they wanted to steal some food."
The wrinkles on Qin Xiao's face deepened:
"The barbarians came to plunder food but spared their lives, leaving the nearby villagers starving and cold, with nowhere to go. This was clearly a deliberate plan, intended to trick the villagers into robbing the army's rations."
Wei Dashuan's brows were also furrowed:
"There's a small group here tonight, but there are many more in this area."
He had been here before, and from his impression, there were quite a few villagers nearby. If they were all starving...
While the people in the tent were still thinking, there was a commotion outside.
There were voices shouting and even the sound of weapons clashing.
A soldier hurried in and reported:
"Generals, this is bad! More villagers have just arrived and surrounded the military camp. They're all here to steal our rations!"
Wu Yingniang and her group went out to check.
They walked quickly to the granary and saw a large group of villagers in the early morning light.
There were hundreds of people.
They held shovels, hoes, axes, whips... and confronted the soldiers guarding the granary.
The people standing in the front blushed and said:
"We're going to die anyway if we don't have food, so why would we care about the death penalty?"
"Every meal you go hungry for means you lose strength, and every additional meal in our village that goes hungry means several lives lost."
"When the Hu people bullied us, you didn't come. Now that you are here and have so much food, why don't you share it with us?"
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