I survived the famine by scavenging and supported my family.

The sound came from the exact location where they were!

Ignoring the village head, Ning's father strode through the line and returned to his own carriage. Before he could get close, a group of people surrounded the carriage, and Ning's mother stood on the carriage, wielding a machete with great force.

Two men who had attacked her were already lying at her feet. It was too dark for Ning's father to see their injuries clearly, so he could only hurry over to help.

"The fragrance of orchids!"

"I'm fine, here you go!" Ning's mother didn't even turn her head. Standing on the front of the car, she pretended to take something out of the car, but actually took out a large knife from her spatial storage and threw it to Ning's father.

This broadsword was forged by Zhao Qi himself after studying blacksmithing. It took him more than ten days to forge and sharpen it. When Ning Ma tried it, she thought it was too light, so she asked Xiao Qi to sharpen it a bit and then re-sharpen it. She used it very skillfully.

Ning's father took the knife and immediately joined the battle.

Seeing that both of them were armed and looked like they were not easy to deal with, the people on this side immediately ran away to find someone easier to pick on.

In the ranks, the village headman was banging a large gong relentlessly, shouting, "Enemy! Enemy!"

The sound of the gong startled a large group of villagers. Some of them, alert, scrambled up from their straw mats, grabbed their farm tools, and cautiously looked around.

Unsuspecting, the raiders went straight up to them and ripped off the things they had tied to the car.

Many people only woke up after their belongings were taken away, and when they saw the chaos in the queue, they sat there slapping their thighs and wailing.

Ning's parents stood guard by the car, while Zhou Jian and the others were on the other side, one car away. Ning's mother peeked out from a gap in the road and saw that, perhaps because they were afraid of being beaten up here, no one was coming to this area for the time being.

The disturbance lasted for about 15 minutes. After that, the village chief led a group of young men from the Li family and arrested all of them.

A campfire was lit in the group, illuminating the surroundings. Fearing they might have a backup plan, several young men walked around the woods, but found nothing except a few horses.

"Tell me! How did you find us?!"

The village headman began the interrogation, but none of the men inside uttered a sound.

"Go and get the whip," the village chief instructed his son. Li Si returned to his carriage, quickly retrieved the whip, and the village chief, upon receiving it, lashed it out, striking the group of people with it.

One of the men, after being whipped, glared angrily and shouted, "You! How dare you use vigilante justice to beat us law-abiding citizens!"

"Good citizens?" The village headman laughed angrily. "You ambushed our group in the middle of the night. According to the laws of the Great Zhou Dynasty, you should be beheaded!"

"Besides, what year is it now? Where are you going to find a magistrate who can uphold justice?"

The man gritted his teeth, but the village chief's hands didn't stop; several more lashes came down, and bright red blood seeped directly through his torn clothes.

One of them, unable to bear the pain any longer, grimaced and shouted, "I'll talk! I'll talk!"

The village chief paused his actions.

"We met your team today, and after walking for a short while, we stopped to rest."

The man began to explain in detail.

It turned out to be the group of refugees they had encountered at noon today. After they separated, they continued on their way and rested for a while, but they still hadn't seen the group from Wangli Village coming.

Several men with horses took notice, but after a while, even past the midday break, they still hadn't seen the group.

The group then conferred: There must be something fishy about that team!

Either they had enough food and weren't in a hurry to travel, or... they found a water source!

After discussing it for a while, the group decided to turn around on horseback and go look for them. Sure enough, they didn't find the group at the place where they had met before.

There's no one in front of me, so turning back is practically impossible. The most likely scenario is that I'm still in this vicinity.

So they searched along the woods for an entire afternoon, and just when they were about to give up, they saw the glow of a campfire.

As night deepened and the group was mostly asleep, they began their operation. Their plan was to target the weaker members, secretly robbing a few households of their grain, and then flee if discovered. However, their first target—a mule cart with a wagon—turned out to be a tough nut to crack.

After hearing this, the villagers who were watching each spat at him.

Instead of finding a proper water source, their own team is trying to take advantage of the other team!

If they had succeeded, we would have lost so much food and water today, which was already a small amount!

Especially the water! If we hadn't found a pond today, the whole village would have been without water!

After hearing this, the village chief whipped them ten more times before stopping. Li Si put away the whip, rubbed it in the mud and sand to wipe off the blood.

The men were tied to a tree, and the village chief was picking people to guard them. He also temporarily assigned a few men who were usually good at getting things done in the village to patrol around the electric vehicle where the team was staying that night.

The village headman began to count the number of injured people in the team.

The raiders had two machetes. Ning's mother knocked one to the ground, and the group didn't dare to look back to pick it up as they ran. The leader took the other machete, and when the villagers resisted after discovering the theft, he slashed and injured several of them.

The one who was most seriously injured was the second son of Old Man Xi.

His skull was split open, a huge gash running from the back of his head to his ear, blood gushing out.

When the group of strangers were first captured, the village doctor quickly applied ointment and bandaged him. Now, Xi Ershun lay stiffly on the ground, his eyes tightly closed. No matter how much Old Man Xi patted him, he did not respond.

The villagers who were nearby looked at them with pity, thinking: Xi Ershun is probably in a bad situation now.

Apart from Xi Ershun, the other men were all slightly less injured.

The men who went to fight also suffered some injuries, but fortunately the wounds were not deep. The village doctor went from one patient to another, running around in sweat, helping to treat them.

After the injured person was almost fully bandaged up, the village head called over the villagers to come and claim their stolen packages.

These people stole quite a few things during the chaos, and they were confiscated when they were caught; the items are now piled up in a heap.

The bundles were easy to identify, as each family had its own bundle wrappings, but the grain sacks were much harder to distinguish.

After all, everyone's grain bags were ordinary coarse burlap sacks, and apart from those that were patched after being worn out, they all looked pretty much the same.

The only difference is the amount of grain.

In the end, there were still four families that couldn't be identified.

Old Man Xi stared at the grain sacks on the ground, then his eyes darted around. He walked over shakily, pushed through the crowd, pointed to the sack with the most grain on the ground, and asked, "This is mine!"

"Is this yours?" the village head asked. "Then tell me what kind of grain is stored inside."

Each family's bag contained their own coarse grains, and there were many kinds of coarse grains. Some contained brown rice, some contained millet, and some contained beans.

From the outside, you can't tell what kind of grain is inside the bag, but you can tell from the seams—

Old Man Xi shouted, "This contains coarse noodles!"

Li Zheng opened the bag in front of everyone, took a look, and immediately closed it again.

"This doesn't belong to your family."

"How could that be!" Old Man Xi sat on the ground, throwing a tantrum. "This is the only bag of grain we have! I remember it clearly. You...you're trying to steal this bag of grain so our family will starve to death!"

Upon hearing this, the village head was speechless. "What do you mean I'm being dishonest? So many people here could tell what's inside, how come you got it wrong!"

As he spoke, he called over a villager who had come to watch the commotion, opened the bag and let him take a look inside. The villager glanced at it and said, "Hey—it really is."

He looked up: "Old man Xi, you're really dishonest! If it's not yours, it's not yours. How can you lie like that!"

"You! You conspired with the village head to frame me!" Old Man Xi pointed at the man. "My poor Ershun! He was slashed by thieves while trying to stop them—and now, even you're bullying me!"

As he spoke, he went over and actually tried to snatch the bag.

"You!" The village head stepped aside to block the bag, and Old Zhao, next to the village head, lay down on the ground and began to wail about his poor second son.

Zhao Ningning, who was watching the commotion from outside, couldn't help but chuckle when she saw this scene. Her mother understood and whispered two words.

"Stealing an accident to extort money."

"Old Xi, that's not right, is it? This afternoon I saw you scooping grain out of your grain sack. I remember your sack was almost empty!"

A curious villager chimed in, "That's right! Just a few days ago, Old Xi's bag was only half full of grain. How come this bag is a treasure trove, the more they eat, the more grain they get?"

"Go away, go away!" Old Man Xi waved his hand. "Who told you we only have one bag of grain! This is another bag! It's always been tied to the bottom!"

"This bag... belongs to my family."

In the crowd, a little girl whispered.

Seeing that it was a little child approaching, Old Man Xi's eyes flashed with a sharp light. "Little girl, your parents aren't home, you can't just claim anyone as your mother!"

"I didn't just identify it randomly!" Wang Xiaohua said, "This is my family's bag!"

The village head asked her kindly, "Then tell me, what's in this bag?"

"This bag doesn't contain grain," Wang Xiaohua said. "It contains... our family's quilts."

The village head nodded, opened the bag slightly, revealing the quilt inside.

It's hot now, and there's no blanket at night. Before leaving, Wang Xiaohua's mother folded the blankets and looked around for bags to put them in. In the end, she traded two eggs with a bag that had been used to store coarse flour.

They didn't care about the dirtiness; they just patted it off when they needed to cover it.

Because the quilt had been used for a long time, the cotton inside had become compacted and tangled, making it look loose and scattered. From the outside of the bag, it really did look like a bag of grain.

There was indeed grain inside, but it was wrapped in a quilt and consisted of only a small bag. This was something the family had hidden away to save their lives.

The contents of the bag matched what Wang Xiaohua had described. Since no one else came to claim it, the village head decided to return the bag to Wang Xiaohua's family.

The old man's act of snatching a bag of cotton quilts as if they were food was immediately amusing.

Amidst the laughter of his fellow villagers, he slunk away.

The remaining bags were quickly claimed, and even the last bag left at Old Man Xi's house was handed over to the villagers by the village head so that they could take it back with them.

What remains are the "spoils of war".

There were eight men in this night raid, riding five horses. They also carried dry rations. The village headman took charge and divided half of the rations among the men who were to catch the thieves that night.

Of the remaining five horses, the village head kept one, gave one to Zhao Ningning's family, and the rest were auctioned off on the spot.

After several days of long journeys, many villagers who only had handcarts and relied solely on manpower regretted not gritting their teeth and buying livestock back then.

Now that there was an opportunity and the family had enough money, they went straight up, paid, and picked out the one that looked the most spirited among the three.

Only two horses are left!

The villagers immediately became anxious, as they simply couldn't afford it and could only watch enviously as others did.

Two families, who didn't have much money but had carts, decided to pool their resources and buy one. They would take turns driving the carts, and once they reached the prefectural city and no longer needed the horse, they would sell it and split the money equally.

Alright, another horse has been chosen!

Only one horse remained, which looked rather thin, and no one wanted it.

Just as Li was thinking about raising the horse to use for pulling "trophies," the Zhao family came over.

Old Zhao pulled out the silver coins he hadn't even warmed yet and said, "Village head, we want to buy them!"

"But you'll have to give me a discount," Old Zhao said, picking and choosing. "This horse is thinner than the previous one!"

The village head was helpless. He took a look and saw that the man was indeed thin, but not skin and bones. Everyone else bought him for the market price of thirty taels. Why should Old Man Zhao's family get a discount?

"How much cheaper do you want?" Riyo asked politely. If it was a discount of two or three ounces, then it wasn't impossible to negotiate.

"Twenty, twenty! No, ten taels! Ten taels of silver!"

Old Zhao held up two fingers, then withdrew them.

His move stunned everyone present.

The village headman pulled on the reins and led the way. "Go back and get some sleep. We have a night watchman on duty tonight. Get some rest; we have to travel tomorrow."

As soon as the village head left, Old Man Zhao became anxious. He didn't want to walk anymore; he wanted to ride in a carriage too!

"Village head! Don't go! Twenty taels it is!"

Upon hearing this, the village head walked even faster, with Old Zhao chasing after him and calling out. Finally, when he shouted "Twenty-five taels," he stopped and said, "Twenty-eight taels."

"Alright... twenty-eight taels it is." Old Zhao reluctantly took out the silver, and after the village head weighed it, he returned the excess to him.

The reins were handed over to Old Zhao, thus completing the transaction.

Old Zhao took the skinny horse back.

Granny Qian was stunned when she saw it and asked, "Weren't we going to buy a horse? Why is the horse in such a state?"

"Don't mention it," Old Zhao waved his hand. "This is all we have."

Granny Qian was both anxious and angry. "How could you choose this?! How much did it cost?"

"Twenty-eight."

"That won't do. This horse wouldn't even sell for twenty-five taels under normal circumstances. Let's go find the village head and argue with him. We bought it for twenty-eight taels of silver; he has to give us a better horse!"

"What's the theory?" Old Zhao stopped her. "There aren't any other horses."

"Weren't there five horses?!" Granny Qian asked. "Were they all sold?"

Who else in the village could be so wealthy and powerful?

"No, the village head kept one horse, and the other one was given to them thanks to Zhao Lao Er's reminder."

Old Zhao also told us what would happen to the remaining two horses.

But all that was on Granny Qian's mind was: give it to the second son's family.