A foul stench wafted past her nose, and Qianwu quickly pulled out a handkerchief to cover it.
"This place stinks!"
“Almost no one lives here. The houses on both sides have been rented out by pork sellers to raise pigs,” said one of the stewards next to Chen Gu.
Lin Yinan frowned, carefully discerning the stench in the air. In her previous life, when carrying out missions, they could basically tell the number of zombies and the degree of decay by smell.
A scene suddenly popped into her mind, and she stopped in her tracks, carefully considering the content of that scene.
Yun Shiyi was the first to notice her unusual behavior and quickly stopped and looked around.
"Madam, what's wrong?"
"The taste here is somewhat familiar."
Chen Gu almost stepped in a pile of pig manure in front of him; anyone who has smelled pig manure will remember the smell.
Lin Yinan's senses were much stronger than theirs, and Yun Shiyi believed her words without a doubt, seriously and carefully sniffing the stench in the air.
"It definitely tastes different from what we have at our farm."
"Yes, there seems to be a smell of rotting corpses." She was very familiar with that smell.
As soon as she spoke, everyone's expressions turned serious, and they stared warily at their surroundings.
Smelling that familiar scent, Lin Yinan suddenly remembered the acrobatic performance on the street; that scent emanated from the animal that looked like a brown bear.
"Eleven, do you still remember that bear-like animal in the street acrobatic performance?" Lin Yinan asked softly.
Qianwu said, "Madam, I remember, his eyes were so eerie!"
Yun Shiyi lowered his eyes and pondered for a moment before saying, "Have you noticed that its walking posture is very strange? It drags its hind legs as it walks."
They often went into the mountains to hunt, and after seeing so much, he realized that normal animals don't seem to walk like that.
Finally, he was quite certain that "the animal performing was most likely to have had its leg broken."
"Is that acrobatic show good?" Chen Gu asked. He had heard from the manager that a group of unfamiliar acrobats had arrived, but he hadn't gone to see them yet.
Just as the servants were about to speak, Lin Yinan gestured for them to be quiet and pointed to the room next door.
A short while later, everyone heard voices coming from inside the house.
“Sir, we are all honest and law-abiding businessmen, and we would never dare to do anything illegal.”
The voice inside the room was ingratiating, and Lin Yinan felt that the voice sounded somewhat familiar.
"Whether it exists or not, it's not up to you to decide. We'll find out once we go in and search."
Immediately afterwards, everyone heard the sounds of yamen runners searching and rummaging through the items inside the house.
A moment later, the constables found nothing and left cursing and swearing.
"Sir, please wait. I already told you, my family is extremely poor and has nothing."
The front door slammed shut, and the person inside spat angrily onto the ground.
Lin Yinan remembered the man at the pork shop; it was him!
Just then, some faint noises came from another room, and then the pigs raised inside the enclosure squealed, drowning out the noise.
Chen Gu and Qian Wu did not hear it.
The smell here is too strong; Qianwu wanted to leave immediately. "Madam, let's go!"
"No, there's movement inside."
Everyone immediately fell silent and listened intently. Apart from Yun Shiyi and the skilled subordinate next to Zhen Gu, no one else could make out what they heard.
"What's inside?" Chen Gu asked his subordinate in a low voice, barely daring to breathe.
"It sounds like a child crying."
No sooner had his subordinate finished speaking than Lin Yinan said, "Young Master Chen, quickly go and bring more people to surround this courtyard."
In a flash, Lin Yinan and Yun Shiyi, along with Qianwu and the guards, leaped inside the wall.
Inside the wall was the backyard of the house. The adjacent row of yards was separated by mud bricks and used as pigsties. Under the scorching sun, the stench of pig manure was even stronger than outside.
The pigs in the nearby pigpen were running back and forth in their pen, seemingly disturbed by something.
Lin Yinan led the group to the courtyard where they had heard the sound.
Suddenly, she stopped in front of the commotion in the pigpen and stared at the black, unidentified object huddled inside.
The commotion in the pigsty was probably caused by it.
Yun Shiyi picked up a pebble and threw it at the creature. The creature jumped up in pain and landed on one of the pigs. The pig was caught off guard by the sudden weight and screamed and ran around the pigpen in fright.
When the pig turned around, the group realized that it was carrying the brown bear that had been performing street acts.
Seeing the crowd standing outside the pigpen watching it, the thing tumbled off the pig's back, its body covered in pig manure.
Up close, and looking at its appearance clearly, it doesn't really look like a bear.
When Lin Yinan met those clear, black and white eyes again, she was startled. Those eyes did not belong to an animal at all; they were human eyes.
“He is a human!” Yun Shiyi couldn’t be mistaken.
Qianwu exclaimed in a low voice, "They're the legendary beastmen!"
Upon closer inspection, Lin Yinan noticed something amiss: the hair on his body was dry, brittle, and uneven, revealing the darkened flesh beneath.
"Not an orc..."
Before she could finish speaking, they heard the butcher from the front yard walking towards them.
The group pushed open the door of the room next door and slipped inside.
The half-human, half-beast monster was still standing blankly in the pigpen when the man walked in with a leather whip, raised it, and lashed the monster and the pigs across the face.
"Howl, howl your ass! I told you not to be so restless!"
Seeing through the crack in the door that the little monster neither fought back nor dodged, but just stood there staring blankly at the house where they were hiding, Lin Yinan broke out in a cold sweat.
Perhaps tired of beating, the man quickly returned to the front yard with his whip.
Just as the group was about to leave, a rumbling sound suddenly came from under the tables and chairs in the room.
"Oh no! There's a hidden room down there!"
Yun Shiyi spoke in a whisper, then quickly found a hiding place with the guards.
The two guards rolled to the ground and then under the bed against the wall.
Lin Yinan, Yun Shiyi, and Qianwu lightly leaped and landed on the roof beam.
There was a pigsty outside, and the windows of this room were sealed shut, making the room extremely dark.
They all hid well, and then they saw that the table and chairs in the room had split in two, with a crack in the middle. Immediately, they heard the pitiful cries of many children and the flickering shadows of candlelight.
"Damn it, what bad luck! We've been discovered before we even left the city!" someone cursed as they climbed out of the crack.
Another person followed closely behind, saying, "Once things calm down, we can take these goods and make some money elsewhere."
"Ah! It hurts! You bastards, let me go! Ah!" A piercing scream of excruciating pain rang out, as if the person was experiencing extreme suffering.
Lin Yinan recognized the voice; it belonged to the titmouse.
“The titmouse is inside!” she gestured towards Yun Shiyi in the darkness.
Thinking of the half-human, half-beast monster in the pigsty outside, and knowing that the titmouse and the other children were in mortal danger, they couldn't wait a moment longer.
He drew the long sword hidden under his clothes and stabbed it at the two people who crawled out of the ground, with Yun Shiyi following closely behind.
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