"Ah! Ah! Ah!"
Yunying's situation wasn't much better. When she lifted the pot lid, she saw a white, tender foot floating on the water, steaming gently.
The two of them, one in front of the other, clutched their stomachs and ran to the side to vomit.
Lin Yiheng and the other three heard the two screams and rushed over to see what was happening.
A moment later, they too were clutching their stomachs and vomiting violently in the woods.
Lin Yinan frowned. It looked like they would be vomiting for a while before they could stop. She walked towards the house not far away.
Yun Mo led his guards to inspect the other room.
Lin Yinan stood in front of a locked room, reached out and pushed the door, but it didn't budge. She took two steps back, then kicked the door lightly with her foot, and the wooden door fell down with a thud.
Light streamed in through the doorway, revealing eight disheveled women huddled together, their expressions numb and their eyes vacant.
They didn't react at all when someone came in through the door.
Lin Yinan glanced inside, ignored it, and continued to the next room.
The doors of the neighboring houses were all open. In two of the houses, on the haystacks, lay two women, motionless and naked. If it weren't for the rise and fall of their chests, Lin Yinan would have thought they were dead.
The smell in the room was disgusting. After entering two rooms in a row, Lin Yinan took a long time to recover before putting down a slice of ginger.
It seems these are women that deserters kidnapped from the village.
At this moment, the guards dragged in the deserters, untied their belts, and tied their hands behind their backs.
The deserters had never suffered such hardship before, and they all cried out and begged for mercy.
Hearing the noise outside, a woman stumbled out of the house. Seeing the bound soldiers, she grabbed a half-burnt tree branch from the ground and began to beat them wildly.
The soldier screamed in agony, and the louder he screamed, the harder the woman hit him.
Lin Yinan watched from the side. The woman had been tortured to the point of near death and hadn't eaten for a long time. Although she looked like she was hitting hard, she couldn't actually cause any harm to the soldiers.
"Give her a knife," Lin Yinan said to the guard.
Upon hearing Lin Yinan's words, the soldier was terrified and desperately tried to back away by kicking the ground with his feet.
"Spare me! I was forced into this by them. I'll never do it again."
With a clang, the guard threw the confiscated knife at the woman's feet.
The woman glanced blankly in Lin Yinan's direction, panting as she bent down to pick up the knife. She approached the soldier step by step, her eyes radiating intense killing intent.
With a "sizzle," the knife pierced the soldier's body. He stared wide-eyed at the knife protruding from his abdomen, powerless to resist.
A strange smile appeared on the woman's face. "Does it hurt? My baby cries in my ear every night, 'Mommy, my stomach hurts so much!'"
The woman drew her knife and then raised it to slash at his legs.
The soldiers could no longer endure it and let out screams of agony.
"That's how you cut off Bao'er's legs and then strung them on wooden sticks," the woman said in a hoarse voice.
The woman tried to pull the knife out to continue cutting, but she cut too deep and the knife got stuck in the bone. It took her a lot of effort to pull it out.
Then, the woman chopped off the soldier's fingers one by one.
Hearing his screams, several women rushed out of the house one after another. They picked up knives from the ground and desperately slashed at the other soldiers, while those without knives used wooden sticks to stab them.
The women only stopped what they were doing when all the soldiers were completely still and hacked to pieces.
The first woman to rush out was covered in blood. She slowly walked towards Lin Yinan and asked, "Many others have gone out. Did you encounter them?"
Lin Yinan secretly placed her hand on her abdomen, "They have all been killed."
The woman glanced at what she was doing, a smile playing on her lips. When she heard that all the soldiers who had gone out had been killed, she knelt down and kowtowed three times to Lin Yinan.
Then he plunged the knife into his abdomen, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes.
"Bao'er, wait for your mother."
Seeing this, the other women also took their own lives.
Their homes were destroyed, their families were killed, and their children became food for others; they had lost all will to live.
Yun Mo stood under the eaves, his face heavy.
He said to Yun, "Let people bury the bodies of these poor women and children."
When all the log cabins were ablaze, the firewood crackled and popped as it burned.
A gust of cold wind blew by, ruffling the strands of hair at Lin Yinan's temples. She sensed that the women were saying goodbye to her.
They couldn't stay overnight in this place, so under the guidance of the Yun family's secret guards, they walked another five miles before stopping to rest.
During dinner that evening, Lin Yiheng was so upset that he lost his appetite. He looked at his sister, who was eating heartily, with a mournful expression.
"Anan, how can you still eat?"
Lin Yinan buried herself in cooking, not even bothering to glance at him. "My mother and I have survived mountains of corpses and seas of blood."
“That’s different.” Lin Yiheng’s face scrunched up like a bitter gourd.
"Nothing's different, you'll get used to it after seeing it a lot."
What happened in the afternoon was nothing to her; in a zombie apocalypse, what disgusting things hadn't she experienced?
Lin Yiheng didn't eat, so Lin Yinan added another bowl for himself. The remaining food was divided between Lin Yizhang and Lin Yisong, the two boys who could eat a lot.
After dinner, the village chief called a meeting with the villagers to discuss the arrangements for night duty.
Having lived in the mountain stronghold for so long, the villagers had long been accustomed to the presence of the Yun family's secret guards, and they all subtly expressed their desire to continue to benefit from the Yun family's influence.
"Village chief, we've been carrying these loads all day, we're so tired!"
"Yes, some of the guards don't even need to carry anything; most of them have horses to ride."
"Since they have to be on duty anyway, they might as well help us keep an eye on things."
"Village chief, why don't you go and discuss this with Third Master Yun?"
“The guards are strong and healthy, one of them is as good as three of us. They don’t get too tired from keeping watch all night. We’re too old to do it.”
Lin Yinan, who was listening nearby, scoffed, "You guys have such a big mouth!"
With her face exposed, the villagers began to criticize Lin Yinan, saying that she was talking without understanding the situation.
Yun Er crossed his arms, leaned against a tree, and chuckled, "You scholars from Linjia Village really know how to play the game; you've even set your sights on me."
He suppressed his smile and looked at the village chief. "Village chief, you don't need to ask. The secret guards belong to the Yun family and have nothing to do with your Lin Family Village. Don't blame us if things go missing or people die in the middle of the night."
Lin Yinan was surprised by how eloquent he was.
Yun Er glanced at the people of Linjia Village and continued, "The Yun family didn't take any money from you and took you to the South for free. You are not grateful and even dare to dream of having the secret guards as your village's bodyguards. Don't be so ambitious."
After Yun Er finished speaking, he rolled his eyes at the village chief, hummed a little tune, and turned to leave.
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