Night gradually fell, and only the crackling of the fire could be heard.
Inside the carriage, Song Zhili had fallen asleep several times, only to be shaken awake each time by Madam Li.
“Big Brother, how much longer do we wait?”
Er Gouzi was getting impatient. They had never failed before, so he assumed this time would be no different.
It was only one man with some martial arts skills. He couldn’t understand why Chang Er was so worried when they had so many people on their side.
“Grab your weapons and follow my lead.”
Chang Er frowned, his eyes fixed firmly on the horse cart and mule cart in the distance.
Over on the other side, Pei Guang’s ears twitched slightly, and he shifted his body.
The movement of the carriage immediately made everyone inside tense up.
Madam Li gripped the dagger tightly, her palms covered in sweat.
“Attack!”
Seven or eight men rushed toward Pei Guang. Before they could reach him, Pei Guang had already drawn his saber and charged at them first.
Lin Yan guarded the front of the carriage as one man swung a hoe at him.
Lin Yan jumped down from the cart to dodge it, then slashed back with the machete in his hand.
Nearby, Lin Zhishu and Lin Dian had also begun fighting.
Lin Zhiyue observed the situation carefully. Pei Guang’s side had the most enemies, but he was clearly handling things the best. The fight there would probably end soon.
“What are you all standing around for?!”
Seeing that they couldn’t take down Pei Guang, Chang Er was already regretting the ambush.
He shouted angrily at the women.
“Huh? Oh—charge!”
A burly woman led the remaining women as they swarmed toward the carriage.
Old Master Lin and Madam Li guarded the carriage entrance while two women climbed aboard at the same time.
Old Master Lin swung a thick wooden club at one woman’s legs.
The other woman had just reached her hand into the carriage when Madam Li stabbed at it, forcing her to pull back immediately.
Meanwhile, Lin Zhiyue held an electric baton and jabbed it toward every head that poked through the carriage window.
One head appeared—she shocked one head.
One of the men realized they couldn’t break through at the carriage and rushed over instead. With one slash, he knocked the wooden club from Old Master Lin’s hands.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, the burly woman and the old lady who had tried to abduct Lin Zhixing climbed onto the carriage again.
Seeing this, Old Master Lin stepped out of the carriage and kicked the burly woman square in the chest. She tumbled off the cart, but two more women immediately pushed forward.
Old Madam Lin took Old Master Lin’s place, grabbed one woman by the hair, and yanked her inward.
The moment Madam Li saw her mother-in-law seize someone, she screamed, shut her eyes, and stabbed wildly toward the woman’s face with the dagger.
Blood instantly splattered across the woman’s face.
When Lin Zhixing saw the old woman who had tried to abduct her, she suddenly shouted and lunged forward, grabbing the old woman by the hair too.
Her little fists rained punches onto the old woman’s face.
“You tricked me! You slapped me! I’ll beat you to death, you old hag!”
Madam Li had just forced one woman back with her dagger when she turned around and saw her younger daughter grappling with the old woman. Without hesitation, she drove the dagger straight into the old woman’s thigh.
Lin Zhiyue and Lin Zhili stared in shock.
“Big Sister is fierce…”
“Eldest Auntie (Mom) has gotten used to stabbing people now?”
The two silently complained inwardly at the same time.
Before long, Pei Guang finished his fight. After helping Lin Zhishu and Lin Dian quickly deal with their opponents, he returned to the carriage.
Lin Zhixing was still punching the old woman in the face nonstop, cursing as she hit her.
The old woman’s body hung crookedly, unable to move with her hair tightly gripped. She wailed and flailed her arms helplessly.
The surroundings had gone silent except for Lin Zhixing’s yelling and the old woman’s cries.
“Spare us! Please spare us! We’ll never dare again!”
Outside the carriage, people lay sprawled all over the ground while several women knelt and begged for mercy.
Hearing the pleas, Lin Zhixing finally stopped punching.
“Huh? It’s over already?”
She even sounded a little disappointed.
Madam Li pulled her daughter over.
“Xingxing, do your hands hurt?”
She carefully examined her daughter’s hands, worried she might have injured herself from punching so hard.
Lin Zhili crawled over to the carriage entrance and knelt beside her, massaging her shoulders.
“Big Sister, are you tired? You were amazing!”
Lin Zhiyue: “……”
Lin Zhishu stepped forward, dragged the nearly unconscious old woman off the carriage, and patted Lin Zhixing’s head.
“Xingxing did great.”
Then he glanced sideways at Lin Zhili.
“I didn’t even get a chance to show what I could do,” Lin Zhili muttered unhappily.
“Alright, everyone did well. Ow…” Lin Dian rubbed his arm as he spoke.
“Ah Dian, you’re hurt?” Madam Li asked anxiously.
“It’s nothing. I just got hit once. Zhishu hit him right back immediately, haha.”
Lin Dian smiled proudly. Both his son and daughter were dependable and fearless in danger.
“What should we do with them?”
Pei Guang glanced coldly at the kneeling women begging for mercy.
“Please spare us! We had no choice! They forced us! Please let us go!”
The women kowtowed even harder, crying and pleading miserably.
“Hand over all the food and water you stole.”
Lin Yan stared at the burliest woman as he spoke.
“We… we don’t have any…”
The woman avoided his gaze and stammered quietly.
“If you don’t, then we’ll just kill all of you.”
“We do! We do! Don’t kill us! It’s over there—I’ll get it for you!”
One frightened woman scrambled to her feet while the others continued kowtowing desperately.
She pushed over a handcart loaded with several sacks of grain and more than a dozen water skins.
“So many water skins? How many people did you rob? You truly deserve death.”
Lin Yan glared furiously at the assortment of water skins of various sizes and styles.
“They robbed them! They did it! It has nothing to do with us!”
The women continued banging their heads on the ground.
“You’re not innocent either.”
Pei Guang kicked the burly woman hard.
“Ah!”
She crashed to the ground without another sound. No one could tell whether she was dead or alive—it showed just how powerful Pei Guang’s kick was.
“You people should dig a pit and bury all these bodies,” Lin Zhiyue suddenly said.
“They’re all such horrible people. Why bother with them?”
Lin Dian said while moving the grain from the handcart to the mule cart.
“Dad, they have to be buried. The weather’s hot. So many corpses could easily cause a plague,” Lin Zhishu explained as he looked toward Lin Zhiyue.
“Huh? That serious?” Lin Dian froze.
“Yueyue, is that why you wanted them buried? How do you know these things?”
As Lin Yan sorted through the water skins, he said:
“Big Brother, I already explained this stuff to Yueyue along the way. During a famine journey, you can’t afford to be careless. Yueyue’s smart—I taught her a lot, and she remembered it all.”
“If Yueyue were a boy, her studies probably wouldn’t be any worse than Zhishu’s,” Old Master Lin praised proudly.
“Grandpa…” Lin Zhiyue called shyly.
“Alright, Yueyue, come here. See what should be done with these water skins,” Lin Yan said as he pulled her over.
“Dad, I’ll handle them. You go supervise them burying the bodies.”
Lin Zhiyue blinked at him meaningfully.
She had no intention of letting her family drink that water. Who knew how many mouths those water skins had passed through?
The water wouldn’t kill anyone, but she already had clean water anyway. These water skins were just useful for appearances.
Lin Zhiyue carried all the water skins into the carriage. Taking advantage of the fact that no one else was inside, she quickly emptied seven or eight of them.
Then she transferred water from her space into the hot-water bag.
After finishing, exhaustion instantly washed over her, and she hurriedly drank a few mouthfuls of spiritual spring water.
Throughout the entire process, Lin Zhiyue never entered the space herself—she manipulated everything inside using only her thoughts.