At this moment, several patrolling Quzhao soldiers walked over. "What are you doing? Are you trying to rebel?"
Zhang Daniu hastily bowed and nodded submissively. "No, it's just that we went up the mountain and our companion was eaten by wild beasts, so... please forgive us."
The soldiers had actually understood the whole situation at a glance and couldn't help but spit. "Cheap wretches. We told you not to go deep into the mountains. You deserve to be eaten."
Zhang Daniu gritted his teeth to hide his hatred. When he looked up, a fawning smile had already appeared on his face. "We had no other choice but to do this. We promise we won't dare do it next time."
The old woman's voice was already hoarse from crying. She didn't dare look up, afraid that the Quzhao people would see the resentment in her eyes. It would be fine if she died, but she still had her grandson.
A soldier glanced at the woman holding the child and sneered. "It's only because your face is ruined. Otherwise, if you kept us company, we could have given you some food."
The other soldiers roared with laughter.
The woman kept her head down, closing her eyes to fiercely suppress the panic and humiliation in her heart, tightly hugging the child in her arms.
The soldier then turned his gaze to the child. "I didn't expect your family to have such a young child. Meat at this age is the most tender."
The child trembled with fear, not even daring to cry, only hugging his mother tightly.
The old woman, ignoring her grief, kowtowed continuously to the Quzhao soldiers. "I beg you, please let my grandson go."
The Quzhao soldiers gave her a cold look and shouted at the watching commoners, "What are you looking at? Get lost!"
The onlookers did not dare to talk back. They all hurriedly lowered their heads and dispersed.
Jiang Jin didn't want to cause trouble at this time, so she left with the crowd, hiding in a farther alley to secretly observe the situation here.
Soon, only the old woman's family of three, the ruined head, and Zhang Daniu and his companion were left at the scene.
Zhang Daniu hesitated for a moment, then offered the rattan basket holding wild vegetables with both hands. "We don't have anything good to honor you with right now. Would you like to take these wild vegetables back to eat?"
The soldier raised his hand and slapped the rattan basket to the ground. "You want to feed us things that even wild dogs wouldn't eat? Do you want to die?"
After saying that, he even went up and stomped on the wild vegetables a few times.
Zhang Daniu's face turned pale. He was filled with hatred but did not dare to show it, begging for mercy, "No, no, I wouldn't dare. This, this..."
The soldier glanced at the old woman and the others. "Stop wailing, otherwise, hmph."
After saying that, he spat before turning to leave.
Zhang Daniu only dared to look up after the soldiers left. He stared in the direction the Quzhao soldiers had gone with a face full of hatred, taking a long time to withdraw his gaze.
He bent down and picked up the wild vegetables that had fallen to the ground and been trampled into a mush, placing them back into the rattan basket one by one.
After thinking for a moment, he took out half of the wild vegetables from the rattan basket and placed them in front of the old woman, his face full of guilt.
"Auntie, I'm sorry. We... we didn't dare to save him at the time. If we had gone, we definitely would have... I also have elderly parents and children at home."
The other companion also took out half of the wild vegetables he had dug up and placed them on the ground. "I'm sorry."
The fact that the three of them could go up the mountain together showed that they had a good relationship. At this moment, they all felt equally terrible.
They had no knives or other weapons on them; going up would only be a death sentence.
After the Quzhao people occupied Gefeng, they feared the city's residents would rebel and kill them, so they had long confiscated all their farming tools and knives.
The old woman fought back her sorrow and gently shook her head. "You are kind. I don't blame you."
Could she blame them? Naturally, she couldn't. They carried the burden not just of their own lives, but also the lives of their young and old at home.
Jiang Jin sighed inwardly, stopped watching, and led her people back.
Yun Chengxuan only half-understood what he heard. "Was that person eaten by a tiger?"
Jiang Jin was always very patient with him. "Yes, it was probably a tiger, or maybe some other wild beast."
Xia Chanyi gritted her teeth. "The crimes of these barbarians are too numerous to record!"
The sun set in the west, the sunset glow was a dark red, and the sky gradually darkened.
A knock on the door came from a low house in the alley.
A low, hoarse voice came from inside. "Who is it?"
"Mother, it's me." A male voice filled with exhaustion sounded.
The door creaked open, revealing the shriveled, sallow, and wrinkled face of the old woman inside.
The man standing outside quickly entered the house.
The old woman closed the door, turned around, and took a small coarse linen bag handed to her by the man.
Feeling its weight, her heart tightened. She hurriedly opened it to look, and sure enough, inside was only a small handful of dark, coarse flour.
"Why is it getting less and less? How are we supposed to survive?" Saying this, she couldn't help but shed tears. "Ah Le is so hungry she can't even get up. What should we do?"
The man lowered his head. Having worked all day, he felt a bit dizzy at the moment. He bit the tip of his tongue to keep himself awake and comforted her softly.
"I work in the armory, so I can at least bring a little back. Other people's lives are even harder. I won't eat today. Give my share to Ah Le."
"How can that be? If you don't eat, how will your body hold up? If something happens to you, what will we do?" The old woman wiped her tears, the wrinkles on her face deepening.
Her face was full of despair. "I won't eat. Save my share. I'm old and won't live much longer anyway."
The man felt his throat tighten. It took a long while before he said, "If you don't eat, where will you get the strength to go out of the city and dig for wild vegetables? We will all eat. We'll share it."
He looked at Ah Le lying on the wooden bed. That was his daughter. She was already eleven years old, but so thin and small that she looked like a five or six-year-old girl.
He didn't dare let Ah Le go out, afraid she would be snatched by the Quzhao people. So, it was always his mother who went out of the city to dig for wild vegetables.
However, the people in the city all relied on the mountain near the north gate. The wild vegetables and tree bark on the mountain had been almost entirely stripped bare, and sometimes she even returned empty-handed.
The family of three relied almost entirely on the meager rations he received for working in the armory. Let alone three people, it wasn't even enough to make him twenty percent full.
Ah Le was very sensible. Every time, she only ate a small bite, leaving the food for her father who had to go out to work and her grandmother who had to dig for wild vegetables.
Ah Le gave him a weak smile. "Father, I'm fine. I won't be hungry if I just lie here and don't move."
The old woman's eyes turned red again. She wiped her tears and said after a long while, "By the way, this afternoon I saw a few strangers pushing a handcart past our door. I wonder who they were?"
She hadn't dug up any wild vegetables today. She didn't dare go deeper into the mountains, nor could she. She was old and couldn't walk far, and long-term starvation had made her body weak, so she just gathered some firewood and came back early.
Not long after returning home, she heard the sound of a handcart coming from the alley, so she quietly opened the door a crack to look.
The man's expression didn't change much. "They might be refugees fleeing from elsewhere. We can't even take care of ourselves, so let's not worry about others."
Saying this, he let out a long sigh. "Right now, we can still occasionally dig up some wild vegetables, but in a little while, I'm afraid... This year's winter... sigh..."
