After all, Ye Qi and Shao Qingge were not real robbers. Seeing the man trembling with fear, Ye Qi comforted him and said: "Don't be afraid, we don't want to kill you. It's just that I've been hungry these days, so let's find some food."
Scanning the cellar, I found that there was quite a lot of inventory in the cellar, including several bags of sweet potatoes, pickled pickles, dried steamed buns, etc.
Shao Qingge also saw this and couldn't help but smile and pat him on the shoulder: "You are quite good at living."
The man said with a bitter face: "You, since you are only looking for food, I will give it to you. I beg you two heroes to spare my life! Leave some for me, don't take it all..."
Shao Qingge said: "Don't worry, you have saved so much food, and we can't take it away. Besides, walking on the road carrying these things, isn't it tempting other people to fight for it?"
He pretended to be deep in thought, lowered his head and thought for a while, then smiled and made a suggestion, "How about this, our brothers stay and keep you company. If someone robs you in the future, it will be easy for three people to handle it. What do you think?"
The man was stunned: "Stay, stay?"
Ye Qi looked around the cellar with a look of admiration on his face: "My brother is right, this place is quite spacious. We two outsiders don't have anywhere to live, so we can live in the cave with you." After that,
He also turned around to find a place and spread some hay to make two simple beds, which had the meaning of "staying here and never leaving".
man:"……"
Not only did they break into the house and rob him, but they also wanted to occupy his nest. These two people went too far.
But it was hard for two fists to beat four hands. Moreover, the two of them seemed to have martial arts skills at first sight, and they just robbed all the food in stock without taking his life. This was much better than the bandits who came to his shop in the town a few days ago to smash, smash and rob him. It was not as good as
…Seek compromise first?
The man's eyes were rolling, obviously thinking about how to respond.
Shao Qingge originally wanted to subdue him violently and force him to cooperate with the investigation. However, although this person has a timid personality, he is very smart. If the two of them keep forcing him, maybe this guy will stab him in the back or run away in the middle of the night.
On the contrary, it is self-defeating. If you want him to truly cooperate, you may want to change the method.
For example, let him regard them as friends and talk to them calmly?
Thinking of this, Shao Qingge said gently: "Don't worry, we have no enmity with you, and there is no need to harm your life." After that, he took the initiative to let go of the other party.
Ye Qi and Shao Qingge had a good understanding of each other. Of course they knew what Shao Qingge was thinking, and they immediately cooperated and said: "I caught you just now because I was afraid that there were some gangsters hiding in this cave. After all, there is famine everywhere, and many people are crazy.
As unreasonable as they are, all the money and food our two brothers brought were robbed by the people in your town."
Xiaoye is smart, so he can find an excuse to investigate the location of the gangsters in the town.
The man was stunned by what they said, but when he noticed that their tone softened and they didn't sound like brutal robbers, the man resigned and stopped resisting. He gritted his teeth and said, "Okay, you guys will stay here temporarily.
Stay here with me, but don’t go out and be discovered by others, otherwise, all the things I have saved will be robbed.”
Ye Qi nodded: "I know. We are about to starve to death. Can you find us some food first?"
The man turned around and went to find some sweet potatoes.
Since roasted sweet potatoes easily give off a fragrant flavor, he found a way to make a temporary stove in the hole. He used the saved coal to make a fire, put the sweet potatoes in a pot and cooked them. He could cook more at a time and eat them.
For several days, the remote location of his yard and the cover of the hole made it difficult to attract the attention of outsiders.
Shao Qingge saw him busy heating sweet potatoes, so he walked to sit next to him and asked, "What's your surname, this brother?"
The other party said: "My name is Ren Yuan."
Shao Qingge smiled and said: "My name is Shao Xiaoge, and this is my younger brother Shao Xiaoye."
Ye Qi: "………………"
Why do you ask me to take your last name every time? Can't your last name be Ye?
Ye Qi's complaint was received by Shao Qingge. The man looked at him with a smile and had no intention of changing his words. He continued to make up the story seriously: "Our brothers are doing business in other places. There is a famine everywhere this year. Our family is in the middle of nowhere."
We were robbed by a group of thieves a few months ago. We managed to escape and kept walking all the way, but when we got to your town, our money and food were also robbed by a group of people."
Ren Yuan's face was full of sympathy, and he gritted his teeth and said: "It must have been robbed by the 'Hound' gang!"
Ye Qi and Shao Qingge looked at each other.
——The key clue finally appeared.
The Hounds, this organization was a brutal organization that twenty years ago made a living by robbing homes and eating human flesh. Chu Huaying asked a surviving homeless man in the town about it, and the homeless man also mentioned this organization.
Ye Qi immediately asked with interest: "Brother Ren, does he know where these people are? The packages my brother and I were carrying were snatched by them. I want to get them back. There are many things left by my mother for us.
Something valuable.”
Ren Yuan hurriedly shook his head and said: "I advise you not to go. The hound people are cruel and have a large number of people. You two will definitely not be able to defeat so many of them. If you go, you will only be caught and treated as human sacrifices...
..." At this point, he seemed to realize that he had said something he shouldn't have said, and immediately turned pale and closed his mouth.
Shao Qingge raised his eyebrows slightly and continued to ask him: "Human animal? What is that?"
Ren Yuan gritted his teeth and refused to say more. He opened the lid of the pot, took out two hot sweet potatoes, and said: "You two should eat something first. These are the sweet potatoes I cooked last night, and some radishes."
Let’s do it and eat together.”
Since Ye Qi and Shao Qingge had established themselves as "hungry for several days", in order to avoid arousing his suspicion, they had no choice but to take the food, pretend to be hungry, and gulp it down.
Shao Qingge couldn't help but frown as soon as he took a bite. This was the most unpalatable sweet potato and dried radish he had ever eaten.
The sweet potatoes were half-cooked, hard and tasteless, and they didn't have the sweet flavor of normal sweet potatoes because they had been stored for a long time; the dried radish, not to mention, was like chewing on wood.
Turning his head to look, Ye Qi was eating with gusto. Thinking of his experience of eating leaves alone in the nightmare chamber, Shao Qingge couldn't help but feel a twinge of pain in his heart - when will these days end? Opening his eyes, there was something in front of him.
It might be bugs, it might be zombies, it might be wolves, and it is still being transported to the world of famine.
The challenger is like a chess piece at the mercy of others, which feels terrible. You must find the answer to the puzzle and a way back as soon as possible.
Thinking of this, Shao Qingge simply took out the card [Sapphire Necklace] from his arms. With a flash of light on his fingertips, a beautiful necklace appeared in his hand.
Shao Qingge handed the necklace to Ren Yuan and whispered: "Brother Ren, this is the only piece of jewelry our brothers have left. We were robbed at home, and now we have fled here. All our packages and dry food have been given to us by the gangsters in Qingfeng Town."
Take it away. We are not ruthless and unjust people. We will eat your food and live in your cave. We can only use this thing as repayment."
Ren Yuan looked at the necklace with surprise on his face. It was a gem he had never seen before. It shone brightly even in a dimly lit cave. It must be priceless, right? It seems that these brothers were originally from rich families. Now,
It was really miserable to be in such a bad situation, not only to have my treasure robbed, but also to be so hungry that I gnawed sweet potatoes with him.
Shao Qingge noticed that Ren Yuan had obviously relaxed his vigilance. The function of "increasing favorability" of the sapphire necklace seemed to be working. Last time in the secret room, he carefully copied one before giving away the necklace, and now it came in handy again.
Ren Yuan took Shao Qingge's necklace and asked curiously: "This chain is so beautiful. It must be expensive, right?"
Shao Qingge smiled and said: "Our family is in the jewelry business, and we made this jewelry ourselves. When the famine is over, Brother Ren can exchange it for some silver coins to renovate your shop."
Ren Yuan wanted to refuse, but he felt that it was not too much to get some reward for saving the two brothers in trouble? So he happily accepted it.
Shao Qingge has been involved in the business world and has a strong ability to observe people's emotions. Seeing the other person's relaxed expression, he immediately asked: "By the way, what do you mean by the hounds and human animals that Brother Ren just mentioned?"
After Ren Yuan heard the word "human animal", his face was still pale. He was silent for a moment, then lowered his voice and said tremblingly: "Brother Shao, this matter is a long story..."
Ye Qi said hurriedly: "You can say it, but we can't get out anyway. I have plenty of time to listen to you. The more detailed the better."
Ren Yuan sighed and said: "There was a severe drought for three months this year, and the food harvest was not as good as before. Many people in the small town did not have enough to eat. Everyone managed to survive for several months by saving food, thinking that there would be disaster relief in the state.
When the food was distributed, the mayor would also think of ways to do it, but after waiting for a long time, there was still no relief food."
"Gradually, the town became chaotic. At first, a few scattered people came out to rob, and went to the houses of orphans and widowed mothers to steal food. Later, it became more and more excessive, and the robbers formed a gang.
He robbed most of the people in the town of their food reserves, then went to the nearby mountain to claim the throne and built a mountain stronghold."
That mountain behind the woods? Isn’t it the mass grave twenty years from now?
An idea popped into the minds of Ye Qi and Shao Qingge at the same time - could this be the reason why the murderer led all those people to the mass grave when he committed the crime?
Ye Qi asked: "The copycat you are talking about is the Hound Organization?"
Ren Yuan shook his head: "No, this village was set up casually by some rabble. It was a chaotic mess and no one obeyed anyone. Later, they all fell into chaos and killed each other. It is said that not long after, several people came together at night
These gangsters were hacked to death and ran away with their gold and silver treasures. There were corpses everywhere on the mountain."
Shao Qingge asked: "What's going on with the Hound Organization?"
Ren Yuandao: "That was an organization secretly established by some people in the town a few days ago. They would wear masks every time they went out. No one could see their true faces. They would lead a dog and smell it.
People, so people in the town call them hounds. Not only do they rob food and gold, silver and jewelry, they also capture people."
Ye Qi pretended to be surprised and said: "Arresting people? Is that what you said...human animals?"
"That's right. They arrested people and imprisoned them in the biggest pigsty in the town. They ate their flesh and drank their blood!" Ren Yuan said with a pale face. "That night, I, I went out to relieve myself and heard something in the alley outside.
A child's screams came from inside, and I peeked through the crack in the door and saw with my own eyes that they took the child away, and said they would go back to cook some wine in the evening."
Ye Qi and Shao Qingge: "..."
It seems that many people who survived had actually heard of the brutal methods of this mysterious organization back then.
However, the people in the Hound Organization also know that this approach is unscrupulous and they wear masks when operating at night. No one can clearly determine who these people are.
It is precisely because of this that the "murder case" that started many years later was easier for people in the small town to accept - after all, many people did some things worse than animals during the famine and survived by eating the same kind of people.
After coming down, it seems natural to encounter the evil ghost's revenge.
Therefore, even if many people in the town disappeared inexplicably on the eve of the Hungry Ghost Festival, no one went to get to the bottom of it. They preferred to believe that it was the retribution of a cycle of cause and effect - retribution from evil ghosts.