The unexpected battle against the bandits came to an end surprisingly quickly.
From the moment they encountered the bandits to the end of the battle, it took less than a quarter of an hour.
The entire village returned to peace, with only the sound of burning houses crackling in the night, reminding everyone that a massacre had just occurred.
“Finish them off, put out the fires, and see if there are any survivors!”
Liang Zhen, who had not dismounted his horse from start to finish, gave the order loudly.
The Qingjia Army immediately divided into several groups, following the commands to take action.
Some went to check if the bandits were still breathing, some went to put out the fires, some went to find survivors…
Others dragged the villagers’ bodies out of the houses, one by one, and laid them out in the open space at the village entrance.
Most of them had been killed with a single stab to the heart.
Looking at the bodies, Wei Changtian felt an increasing sense of unease, while Liang Jin returned at this moment.
“Father! Brother Changtian!”
She first shouted at the two of them, then turned her head to glare at Cao Shu, her tone filled with anger and sadness.
“Lord Cao! Are you satisfied now?”
“If it weren’t for you obstructing and delaying earlier, these villagers wouldn’t have died!”
“I…”
Cao Shu’s face instantly fell, while Liang Zhen quickly intervened, shouting, “Jin’er, don’t speak nonsense!”
“Lord Cao has his own considerations, and you should blame these bandits instead!”
“Hmph!”
Liang Jin opened her mouth, but ultimately only let out a dissatisfied grunt and didn’t speak further, instead walking away to wipe the bloodstains off her body.
Liang Zhen bowed to Cao Shu, saying something like “Lord Cao, don’t take it to heart,” and then a few soldiers ran back to report the situation from a distance.
“General! There are a total of 128 bandits, not one escaped, and they’ve all been killed.”
“There are only a dozen or so of our brothers who were lightly injured, but we lost several dozen horses.”
“Hmm.”
Liang Zhen nodded, asking, “How many civilians died?”
“We’ve found over 200 bodies, and there may be some buried in the rubble of the houses.”
“Are there any survivors?”
“There’s a young girl and a woman.”
“Bring them over.”
“Yes!”
The soldier gestured, and immediately, someone led the two figures, one big and one small, over.
The woman was around thirty years old, wearing tattered linen clothes, with disheveled hair.
However, upon closer inspection, one could discover that she was actually quite attractive, with a good figure, and would likely be quite charming if dressed up properly.
In short, she was a beautiful mature woman.
As for the little girl, they had just seen her that morning…
“Ah Chun?”
Liang was the first to react, immediately running over to ask, “Do you live around here?”
“……”
Ah Chun stared blankly, seemingly too scared to speak.
Liang felt a pang of sympathy and gently wiped the dirt off her face, then looked up at a soldier beside her.
The soldier immediately understood and began to explain, “Miss, we found her in a well.”
“We were inspecting a burned-down house when we heard the sound of someone falling into the water, and we rescued her after going to take a look.”
“It’s likely she was initially holding onto the well rope, hiding in the well, and eventually fell in due to exhaustion…”
The soldier finished explaining the situation, and Ah Chun finally came back to her senses, kneeling down and kowtowing repeatedly.
“Thank you, thank you, ma’am! Thank you, sir!”
Ah Chun was trying to hold back tears, her small body prostrate, her voice filled with gratitude.
Liang took a step forward and hugged her, her heart almost melting.
From noble mtl dot come
This sensible child had such a bitter fate.
Not only had she lost her parents, but now she had also lost her home.
“Don’t cry, Ah Chun, don’t cry.”
Liang patted Ah Chun’s little head, speaking softly, “You can follow us from now on, okay?”
“Are you willing to take me in, ma’am?”
“Of course.” Liang smiled and nodded.
“……”
The little girl was stunned for a moment, then tears welled up again, her voice filled with excitement and joy.
“Thank you, ma’am, thank you, ma’am!”
“I-I’ll eat very little, and I can do a lot of chores…”
Ah Chun hastily began to introduce her “strengths,” while the crowd listened with a tinge of sadness in their hearts.
A young girl without family, who had just been pulled back from the brink of death, was trying to sell herself like a commodity to survive…
Many of the soldiers had wives and children, and at this moment, they couldn’t help but think that if they were to die someday, their wives and children would be left to fend for themselves…
Someone was sorrowful, but Liang Zhen was rather anxious at this moment.
Because Liang Jin had already taken in many servants like this!
It wasn’t that the Liang family couldn’t afford to raise so many people, but this wasn’t a long-term plan.
There were so many pitiful people in the world; they couldn’t just take them in whenever they saw them, could they?
But Liang Zhen couldn’t resist Liang Jin, so he could only sigh helplessly, turn his head, and ask the woman:
“How did you survive?”
“Sir!”
The woman had been wiping away tears since earlier, and now that she was finally asked about herself, she burst into loud wails: “I hid in the haystack at home, listening to the fighting outside until it stopped. Then I met a few military officers…”
The soldiers nearby nodded in agreement, confirming that it was true.
“What about your family?” Liang Zhen asked again.
“They’re dead! My husband, my son! They were all killed by those bandits!”
The woman’s grief-stricken wails were heart-wrenching: “I’m the only one left, a widow… how can I go on living in this world?”
“It would be better if those bandits had killed me too!”
“Waaah…”
If Ah Chun gave people a feeling of heartache and pity, then this woman was utterly tragic.
If the villagers were still alive, she, as a widow, might still have some way to live.
But now that the entire village was gone, and she was already at this age, it was likely that she would have to resort to prostitution.
Everyone fell silent again, and just then, Wei Changtian suddenly said something extremely inopportune and piercing.
“If you can’t survive, then why not just die now?”
???
For a moment, everyone stared at Wei Changtian in shock, wondering why he would say such a thing.
No matter how lowly the woman’s status was, she was still a pitiful person who had just lost her husband and son!
However, before they could react, Wei Changtian did something even more shocking.
He said it without hesitation, then directly leaped off his horse and rushed towards the woman with incredible speed!
“Whoosh!”
The Dragon’s Roar sword was unsheathed, and the Returning Dust knife struck!
In an instant, the woman’s head flew into the air, and Wei Changtian didn’t seem to want to stop, as if he had gone mad, stabbing the woman’s body multiple times!
“Thud!”
The head fell to the ground, the corpse rolled over, and blood splattered everywhere.
“Changtian, what are you doing?”
Liang Zhen finally came back to his senses, his eyes wide with shock, wanting to ask Wei Changtian why he would suddenly kill someone.
But before Wei Changtian could respond, Liang Jin suddenly rushed over and blocked the woman’s mutilated corpse, her face filled with anger and disappointment.
“What’s there to say?”
“Brother Changtian, you’ve really disappointed me!!”
“I thought you’d changed!!”
“But it turns out you’re still the same as before, no, even more terrifying than before!!”
Liang Jin was truly disappointed in Wei Changtian at this moment.
After all, although their previous lord was brutal, he at least had a reason for killing.
But now…
Liang Jin suddenly thought of Wei Changtian’s indifferent attitude during the bandit-suppressing campaign, and her heart grew increasingly uneasy, her gaze turning colder.
She stared fixedly at Wei Changtian, not even noticing the changes in the expressions of the people around her.
“Brother Changtian, this is the last time I’ll call you that…”
“After this, I’ll have nothing to do with you…”
Liang Qin didn’t finish her sentence, as Wei Changtian pointed to something behind her at that moment.
She almost instinctively turned her head to look, and then her eyes widened in shock.
Under the moonlight, amidst the bloodstains, there was no woman to be seen.
Only a giant ghost-faced spider.