Song Xingjian stared at Wang Zhaoming with a mixture of shock and suspicion.
He turned his head to question the clansmen beside him, “Did any of you leak the news?”
“Don’t tell me the whole village knows by now?”
Song Xingjian was furious.
“How many times have I told you not to blab everything to your wives! Are you deaf!”
“Hey!”
Wang Zhaoming interrupted him.
“So this is how you gained your position as village chief—by pinning non-existent blame on innocent people.”
“How very dignified.”
“Remember, when you’re on your deathbed, tell your descendants to carve right onto your tombstone how you became village chief by smearing women, so even more people can follow your example.”
“Wang Zhaoming!”
“When I get back, I will definitely make your father teach you proper manners!”
“Don’t be so sharp-tongued. Those gossiping women in the village love nothing more than gathering to chatter about other people’s business—I wasn’t wrong!”
“Go right ahead then. It’s not like I tied your legs.”
“After you~”
Wang Zhaoming made a inviting gesture.
Song Xingjian was fuming with rage, yet felt that arguing over such things with a sick child made him look terribly petty.
He simply chose to ignore Wang Zhaoming and shouted angrily at his clansmen, “Who on earth blabbed? Step forward!”
The clansmen were all utterly bewildered.
“We didn’t, Third Brother! Just like you, we only got the news yesterday. After that, we were scrambling to pool money together—where would we find the time to gossip with others?”
“Could this fool girl just be spouting nonsense?”
“Let’s hurry up, Third Brother! Don’t delay any longer. If we’re late, who knows how much more suffering those boys will endure!”
“Why waste so much breath on a crazy person?”
Listening to his clansmen’s words and looking at Wang Zhaoming’s youthful face, Song Xingjian allowed his reason to override the impulse to take a gamble.
“Let’s go!”
Wang Zhaoming very tactfully took a few steps backward.
As those men left, they turned around to glare at the two of them, planning in their hearts to file a heavy complaint against them in front of Wang Chengye once they returned.
If not for Song Song’s aura of fortune—where saving him could benefit even more common folk, while also earning some money to buy a dose of cough medicine for her mother—Wang Zhaoming would rather lie around at home until she rotted than step outside.
Since they didn’t appreciate the favor, Wang Zhaoming certainly wasn’t going to give them a warm face when they showed a cold shoulder.
“Come on, I’ll take you to get something good.”
Wang Zhaoming raised her foot, preparing to leave.
*Rumble!*
A loud crash of thunder erupted out of thin air across the sky.
“Shit!”
“What do you want from me?!”
“Is it that I don’t want to help? It’s that they don’t want it!”
Wang Zhaoming looked up at the sky and questioned out loud.
She was so green with envy that her cell membranes were nearly separating!
*Is having good fortune really that amazing?!*
Even God was taking their side.
Such a massive commotion successfully stopped Song Xingjian’s group in their tracks.
And as they watched Wang Zhaoming muttering to herself with a face full of resentment, Song Xingjian felt an eerie uncertainty.
*Fine, fine. Other people rely on themselves, while she relies on God’s protection.*
*For God’s sake, I’ll give them one final pointer.*
“If they don’t listen, don’t you dare blame me—we have to be reasonable here.”
Having coaxed herself back to composure, Wang Zhaoming turned around, her resentment still lingering.
“I want five taels of silver!”
“Five taels? Why don’t you just go rob someone!”
The man standing to Song Xingjian’s left shouted aloud.
“Aren’t I robbing you right now?”
“When you go to someone to pick an auspicious date, you have to pay a fortune fee anyway. What I’m about to say concerns the safety of the most promising youth of your Song clan—asking you for five taels of silver isn’t asking too much.”
“Think carefully about the difference between one tael of silver and one hundred taels of silver.”
“Once you hand over that hundred taels of silver, you might not even be able to bring the people back safely.”
Wang Zhaoming leaned against the slope, casually plucking a blade of grass to play with in her hand.
Her tone was completely indifferent, as if she didn’t care in the slightest whether they listened to her words or not.
Everyone turned their eyes toward Song Xingjian, waiting for him to make the decision.
If they could still claim that what Wang Zhaoming said earlier was just a wild guess, then the moment Wang Zhaoming stated the exact amount of silver those people demanded, the way everyone looked at her instantly changed.
Song Xingjian steeled his heart and grit his teeth. “Let’s take a gamble!”
“Third Brother, are we really going to do as that fool girl from the Wang family said?”
“You need to think this through carefully. No one has ever heard of that fool girl having such abilities before. Ten to one, she just bumped into a dead rat like a blind cat and happened to guess right—the things she said won’t help us at all!”
She told them not to go rescue the people directly; instead, she gave them a strange address and told them to keep watch at that spot, saying they could successfully rescue the boys once midnight arrived.
When asked why, she wouldn’t say.
How to rescue them, she wouldn’t say either.
Taking the five taels of silver, she left them with a single phrase—”Believe it or not”—before walking away.
He felt sick over those five taels of silver. He couldn’t even earn five taels in a month, yet it had been scammed away by that fool girl just like that.
On top of that, she even made sarcastic remarks, saying that they wouldn’t soar with the wind until next year.
It was only because she wasn’t his own child; if one of the kids at home had spoken such jinxing words, they would have slapped them across the face long ago.
Song Xingjian felt uneasy in his heart as well, but he couldn’t afford to lose his composure. If he panicked, everyone would panic.
“Since we’ve decided to trust her, let’s not dwell on it any longer.”
“It’s better to believe in these things than to dismiss them. Didn’t your brother and the others head over with the silver? We’ll make two-pronged preparations. Even if we really were tricked by that girl, at least we haven’t delayed our main business.”
“But what if? What if that girl really possesses some ability we don’t know about and turned out to be right? If all of us marched in with the money, not only would we fail to rescue them, but we might even get ourselves dragged into it!”
Song Xingjian also harbored deep doubts about Wang Zhaoming’s words, but he had always acted cautiously and preferred to prepare for both possibilities.
After much thought and inner struggle on the way over, he had decided to follow Wang Zhaoming’s advice half-and-half, while carrying out the original plan as well.
The sky grew darker and darker. He looked up at the heavens, hoping everything would go smoothly.
Enduring the agonizing torture in his heart, they finally scraped through to the hour Wang Zhaoming had specified.
During their wait, the door before them had never opened once.
This location was extremely remote, and having stayed here for so long, they hadn’t seen a single soul pass by. If Wang Zhaoming hadn’t given them directions, they might not have found it at all.
“Third Brother, it’s midnight now! I told you we were tricked by that fool girl! When I get back, I’m definitely going to ask Wang Chengye how on earth he raises his children!”
No sooner had the man finished his complaint than the door that had remained still all this time suddenly opened from the inside.
Their eyes, having adjusted to the dark, caught sight of a person poking their head out from the doorway. After scanning the surroundings in all directions, the person turned back and motioned inside.
Immediately afterward, Song Xingjian and his men watched as several burly men carried three people wrapped in burlap sacks out the door.
At the sight of this scene, everyone’s breathing grew heavy.
A terrible premonition arose in their hearts.
They unanimously agreed not to alert the enemy for now, deciding to follow them first to see what these people were up to.
They followed these men all the way into increasingly secluded terrain.
Song Xingjian and the others did not dare follow too closely.
These men were extremely vigilant, stopping every now and then to check their surroundings.
Following them all the way, they watched as those men carried the sacks into a mountain not far from that residence.
Finally, they came to a halt beside a deep pool of water in the mountain.
Seeing this, Song Xingjian and his men felt as though they were burning with anxiety. There was no telling how the people inside the burlap sacks were faring; they hadn’t shown a single reaction the entire way.
Yet he feared that rushing out would ruin the rescue and end up harming the boys in the sacks instead.
Forcing down the anxiety and desperate urge in his heart, he watched helplessly with wide eyes as those men tied large rocks to the openings of the burlap sacks, threw the boys into the water, and watched the sacks sink down.
“We can go back and report our mission complete now.”
“Wait a moment. The boss instructed us to watch these few die with our own eyes—let’s wait a bit longer.”
“Chief, you’re way too cautious! In this deserted mountain wilderness, what ghost would come to save them?”
“Unless there’s a ghost, or the King of Heaven himself shows up.”
“Wolves appeared around here not long ago. If we’re unlucky enough to run into wolves, we’ll have earned this silver for nothing.”
“Shut your damn crow mouth! If you want to slack off, just say so. Let’s go, let’s go.”
Hearing them say they were leaving, Song Xingjian and his men, who had been preparing to charge out and fight desperately to rescue the boys, pulled themselves back.
Once those men had walked a bit further off, those in the clan who were good at swimming couldn’t wait a moment longer and leaped into the water.
The people on the bank waited until their hearts burned with agony.
They knelt on the ground, praying to gods and worshipping Buddhas.
Wang Zhaoming’s name was the one uttered most frequently from their lips.
Even though they hadn’t seen who was inside those burlap sacks, a subtle feeling told them in their hearts that the people inside were precisely the ones they had come searching for.
Perhaps their prayers had truly worked, for ripples gradually appeared on the surface of the water.
The people on the bank hastily leaned over. Seeing that the person popping his head out was Song Xingjian, the chatty Song Fagui broke into loud sobs, “Third Brother~”
“Don’t mind me! Pull the person up first!”
After dragging the person up, Song Fagui hurriedly untied the burlap sack.
When he caught a clear look at the face inside and realized it was his own son, Song Xingjian’s heart nearly stopped beating.
The others followed closely behind, breaking the surface of the water one after another.
At this moment, no one had time to think about anything else. Their only thought was to save them quickly. Working together, they hoisted the boys upside down on their backs, jolting them continuously.
At first, none of the three showed any response, making Song Xingjian and the others grow more and more frantic.
His eyes turned bloodshot.
How was he supposed to endure the tragedy of a white-haired elder sending off a black-haired youth?!
His Song’s turn had not even reached adulthood, nor had he married, had children, or left behind a bloodline.
Nor had he realized his own ambitions.
“Song’er, you said you wanted to pass the civil service exam, to become an official so our Song family could raise our social standing—you have to keep your word!”
Regret and remorse wrapped tightly around everyone.
They thought that if they had followed Wang Zhaoming’s instructions without splitting into two groups, with enough manpower, they could have easily subdued those men and seized the boys before they were thrown into the water.
The others were also calling out the names of the other two boys in raspy, tear-choked voices.
Whether he had heard his father’s voice or not, Song Song choked up a mouthful of water, then began coughing and vomiting violently.