Destroy Jin and conquer Song, and carry the Northern Expedition through to the end

Chapter 61: Painstaking Efforts to Peace the People (Part )
"The night before yesterday, the town suddenly erupted in chaos. My father asked me to hold Ah Da and hide in a haystack. From there, I watched as thieves broke in and forced my father to hand over his valuables, which he did. But these thieves... these thieves actually killed my father anyway. In the end, when they couldn't get any valuables out of him, they actually set fire to my mother... wuwuwu... My mother rolled on the ground in pain. Just as she was about to throw herself into the haystack, she turned her head and crashed into the doorpost, dying..."

At this point, Xu Erya finally burst into tears, and Cheng Ada, who was two or three years old, also burst into tears.

At this time, the whole audience was silent. Not only were locals like Zhang Xiaoyi gritting their teeth in hatred, but even Lu You, who was sitting on the side and always appeared calm, stopped reading the documents and sat there in a daze.

Liu Huai sighed again and waved his hand. Two more Jin prisoners were brought up.

But this time it was Zhang Baiyu who escorted him personally.

"Xu Erya, these two men both have scars, are missing an ear, and are both captains. Come and identify who is the murderer?"

In fact, there was no need to admit it. When the two Jin army prisoners were brought up, Xu Erya stared at one of them. However, this man was not dejected like the other prisoners. Instead, he held himself proudly and glared back at Xu Erya fiercely.

"Is it him?" Liu Huai asked.

"It's him. I will never forget him even if I become a ghost!" Xu Erya's eyes were filled with hatred and anger.

However, the child's anger seemed to have no deterrent effect, at least it made the scarred and earless man laugh out loud.

"Mr. Liu, if you, the Loyal Army, want to accomplish great things, why are you killing brave men? Is it just to seek justice for this little bastard?"

Liu Huai hadn't expected to encounter such a scene that accorded with the core ideology of feudalism. He was speechless, but he immediately shouted back, "I've heard that when the weak get angry, they draw their swords against the weaker, and when the strong get angry, they draw their swords against the stronger. You slaughter the common people wantonly and act tyrannically, but when you see us, you throw yourself on the ground, surrendering and begging for mercy. You thief, how dare you call yourself a hero?"

Shandong and Hebei were full of rebel forces, and the Northern Expedition Army would not be short of manpower at all. Liu Huai would be crazy to try to recruit and accept the traitors from the Jin army that was slaughtering the people in such a situation.

"Zhang Silang, quickly finish this man off!"

Zhang Baiyu remained calm and kicked the scarred man in the knee.

The scarred man fell to his knees in dismay, finally panicking: "Master Liu, how can you distinguish between the strong and the weak like this? Even if there were a hundred more of these two little bastards in the audience, they would not be my match. Master Liu, if you only spare my life, I will definitely..."

Before he could finish his words, Liu Huai finally lost his patience and said, "How can you tell the difference between strong and weak?!"

Xu Erya's face in the audience turned pale, but she immediately bit her lip and shouted with all her might, "General! General Liu! This man and I have a blood feud. Let me kill him with my own hands to avenge him! Please, General!"

Liu Huai instinctively wanted to refuse. He didn't want to leave this young girl with an unforgettable psychological trauma for the rest of her life.

But he immediately realized that this was just a trivial psychological shadow. The real psychological shadow had already been inflicted when Xu Erya's entire family was killed one by one the night before.

The Cheng family's mistress, her whole body raging, actually endured the excruciating pain and crashed herself to death in order to give her adopted daughter and son a chance to live. How heartbroken must Xu Erya be watching this scene?

Liu Huai felt his scalp tingling just thinking about it.

It was impossible for him to stop Xu Erya from taking revenge, both emotionally and logically.

Xu Erya carried Cheng Ada up to the platform and handed her to Liu Huai. She kowtowed respectfully to Lu You, Zhang Baiyu, and several other Song soldiers, causing the young man, Zhang Silang, to blush. Then, she accepted the short knife Liu Huai offered her and approached her enemy. The scarred man's mouth was restrained by Zhang Baiyu's belt, his head tilted back, unable to utter a single word. He simply glared fiercely at the girl approaching him.

Xu Erya glared back fearlessly, gritting her teeth and saying, "Look into my eyes! Remember me! When you get down there and see my parents, remember to tell them I killed you! I killed you with my own hands!"

After saying that, Xu Erya first slashed her enemy's throat with a dagger, but immediately found that her strength was a little weak and she only scratched a layer of skin. The next second, she became ruthless and used all her strength to press down on the handle of the knife and stabbed the knife into the enemy's neck.

Blood spurted out.

Xu Erya's head and face were stained with dark red blood, but she held the dagger tightly until the enemy's struggle gradually weakened, then she pulled it out with force. However, she could no longer hold it in and vomited with a "wow".

After vomiting some sour water, Xu Erya knelt down respectfully again, but this time she prostrated herself in front of Liu Huai.

Liu Huai held Cheng Ada in his arms and covered his eyes. He didn't have any extra hands to pull Xu Erya up, so he could only say, "Xu Erya, we'll speed up the inspection of the Cheng family's property. Just be patient for a few days. In addition to what we distributed yesterday, we'll also distribute food tomorrow. We won't let you go hungry."

Xu Erya raised her head upon hearing this, ignoring the bloodstains on her body, and asked, "Captain, according to your words about strength and weakness today, since I killed a strong man today, do I count myself as a strong man as well?"

"I guess so." For some reason, there was some weakness in Liu Huai's words.

Xu Erya continued, "Captain, even if the Cheng family's property is returned to us, how can a three-year-old like Ah Da protect it? I am willing to donate all this wealth to the military, and only ask for a place to stay in the army so that I can raise Ah Da."

"Captain, I can wash clothes, cook, and mend things. I'm not useless. Please keep me here!"

"Okay!" Liu Huai nodded immediately, because he had realized that this was different from the hundreds of people from Dayi Town who had joined the army before.

After they have selected, those who are screened out can still make a living.

Rejecting Xu Erya would directly cut off the lives of these two children.

If you don't save them, you're killing them!
"Peng Sanlang, take them to the rear camp to find Wei Rujun and let her take them there." Liu Huai gave an order and stuffed Cheng Ada into the arms of a soldier, asking him to lead the people away.

Amidst Xu Erya's profuse thanks, Liu Huai waved his hand casually and began to look through the documents in his hand again.

Li Xiu in the audience was stunned.

He originally thought that the Song army might punish or kill people, but he didn't expect that the Song army came to act like judges.

Is this idle?
But for some reason, Li Xiu, who looked rough on the outside but delicate on the inside, vaguely felt that this was a very serious matter.

But Li Xiu couldn't explain it clearly based on his past experience and knowledge, so hesitation, fear, confusion, and surprise all surged into his heart at the same time, and he couldn't tell what he felt for a moment.

(End of this chapter)