But things didn't go as smoothly as Song Zhuiyan and the others had hoped. Chen Linchong seemed to be very familiar with the terrain of Songlin Village, and he could always escape the moment the wolfhound found him.
"He can enter the mountains unharmed and wander around the village as if he were at home. Perhaps this is his home. Could he be the owner of the stone house?" Ye Moxun said in a low voice.
"Will he go back to the stone house? Auntie, let's go back and check." The stone house is their home now. What if that guy sees that the house has been occupied and burns it down?
"Waaah..." came a woman's cries for help from inside the room. They had been silent for a while and almost forgot that there was someone in the room. They had come to rescue her.
"Brother Zhong, I'm leaving this to you. We must go home immediately." Before Song Zhuiyan finished speaking, she and Song Tantan turned and left one after the other.
Ye Moxun didn't stay either, and left with Taishan without looking back.
Zhong Qingyi: "..." She had no choice but to go inside to untie Liu Mei and Zhu Yu.
"Thank you for saving me, Young Master Zhong..." Liu Mei slumped out of bed, trying to give him her luggage. Her face was streaked with tears, making her look quite pitiful.
Zhong Qingyi didn't even glance at her, and said as she walked out, "Be smarter in the future, and learn some kung fu when you have time, so you don't just let others kill you whenever you're in danger and always have to trouble others to save you." Her tone was incredibly disdainful.
When Song Tantan rushed home, she found the house perfectly calm. Weifeng and Qiaoqiao were strolling around the yard, looking quite energetic, as if nothing had happened.
"Weifeng, Qiaoqiao, did you see anyone come in? No, you need to quickly sniff around to see if there's any stranger's scent. A bad guy has entered the village; we need to find him quickly." Song Tan ran to the door, but dared not rush in recklessly. That bastard was full of tricks and schemes; he couldn't be careless.
Weifeng and Qiaoqiao stared blankly for a moment before wagging their tails and getting to work. They patrolled the front and back of the yard but found nothing amiss.
Song Zhuiyan had a rather impulsive personality. She immediately went to kick down the door and searched every room, but couldn't find anyone. She stood in the middle of the main room, frowning and deep in thought.
"If she didn't come home, where did she go? Oh no, did she go to take hostages?" Song Tantan grabbed her big knife and was about to run outside.
System: "Master, that Chen Linchong is a notorious womanizer in the martial arts world. He's highly skilled in martial arts, and he's treacherous and cunning. Whether it's a daughter from a noble family or a poor family, as long as she's pretty, he'll kidnap her in the middle of the night."
This man had a wicked habit: the women he abducted were all first sexually assaulted, and then killed.
"And then?" Ye Moxun pressed impatiently, hoping the system could provide some useful information.
"Chen Linchong is heading towards the pool now. There's actually a secret chamber behind the Water Curtain Cave that you haven't discovered. There are several bows and arrows inside, as well as a lot of hidden weapons. He's probably going to use the bows and hidden weapons to come back and fight again. This person is skilled in disguise..."
Ye Moxun had no interest in listening to what the system said next. He ran out to catch up with Song Tantan, stopped her on the way, and told her what the system had told him, "Let's go to the pond to catch them."
The two of them alone won't do; we need to call Auntie and Zhong Qingyi as well, and the four of us will head to the pool together.
When they arrived at the waterfall, the flower thief had already entered the Water Curtain Cave. They hesitated whether to go in or wait for him to come out.
"I wonder if that secret room leads to the other side. What if he escapes from the other side?" Song Zhuiyan asked worriedly.
System: Host, there is only one place to enter the Water Curtain Cave; there is no other way.
“We’ll wait here. There’s no other way out; he can only come out from the waterfall.” Ye Moxun said meaningfully.
Everyone except Zhong Qingyi understood his words and knew it was a system notification.
"Brother Zhong, you and A-Xun are over there, and Tan-Tan and I are over here." The four of them stood guard on either side of the pool, and Tai-Shan was finally assigned to the road back to the village.
The four men and their dog hid among the trees and weeds, patiently waiting for the flower thief to come out. Unexpectedly, they waited for two hours without seeing him emerge from the Water Curtain Cave.
Song Tantan muttered, "Is he going to die in there? Or is there a bug in the system, and there's actually another exit?"
"Shh, we're out now. Be careful later." Song Zhuiyan spoke in a whisper, pointing in the direction of the waterfall.
A masked man dressed in a magnificent brocade robe jumped out from behind the waterfall, carrying a bow and arrows and a large cloth bag on his back, and seemingly holding something in his hand, clearly fully armed.
Why dress up so smartly? I really can't understand the thought process of the ancients. Do they think that this will increase their momentum and make them more likely to win a fight?
Before Song Tantan and the other could react, Zhong Qingyi had already jumped out and started fighting with the other party. The tea-picking thief was obviously prepared and was not caught off guard. He handled the situation with ease. After about a dozen moves, the other party suddenly retreated, lowered his body, and then shot out a hidden weapon.
Zhong Qingyi easily dodged the attack and charged forward again with her sword. The man tried to use a hidden weapon again, but he didn't find another opportunity.
Ye Moxun looked at the two throwing knives on the low tree and noticed black marks on them. The tea-picking thief had actually coated the hidden weapons with poison. How dare a mere flower thief use poison in front of him? Did he think he was dead?
"Taishan, capture him, capture him alive." Ye Moxun's eyes turned cold as he shouted.
Taishan, who had been hiding his figure, suddenly leaped out of the bushes and instantly became a blur. In the blink of an eye, he rushed in front of the flower thief, biting the back of his neck. His sharp teeth pierced the other man's flesh, but he did not kill him directly.
"Ah, ho ho." The flower thief struggled desperately for a few moments, only to find it was all in vain. The more he struggled, the harder the wolfhound bit him. Its eerie green eyes seemed to tell him that if he dared to struggle again, it would immediately bite off his neck.
Taishan brought him to Ye Moxun, who fed him a hemostatic pill and a muscle-relaxing powder. Once he recovered, Ye Moxun began to question him.
“You’re a womanizer. This used to be your hideout. The stone house is yours, and the things in the Water Curtain Cave are yours too. Tell me, what’s the story behind the people in those boxes?”
The flower thief, his face ashen and covered in blood, lay there limply, refusing to utter a word.
"Not going to talk?" Ye Moxun waited for a moment, then lost his patience. "Taishan, bite off one of his arms."
Taishan's eyes flashed green, and it leaned over to sniff, seemingly pondering whether to bite the left or the right side. Before it could even make a bite, the flower thief was so frightened that he wet himself.
"I'll say it, I'll say everything, just tell this beast... tell this wolf to stay away from me." He originally wanted to curse the beast, but after Taishan roared at him, he immediately changed his mind.
He looked ashen-faced, wondering how the other party knew his identity as a flower thief. He knew he had been inside the Water Curtain Cave before because the tiger skin inside was missing.
But how could they determine his identity based on just a tiger skin? Could it be one of those dead people? But those people had all their clothes stripped off, and their bodies were rotten beyond recognition. How could they know that those were women?
He was thinking this when he inadvertently asked the question, and he was even surprised when he said it.
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