Chapter 643
Chapter 643
-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 643
>Chapter Title: Escape
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
The county yamen was filled with nonstop shouts of rage and screams of agony. At this moment, everything here had descended into utter chaos.
Everyone had forgotten why they had come, all rushing inside in a frenzy, excitedly doing the things they had always wanted to do but never dared.
“Grain!! Grain!! It’s all white flour!! No coarse grain!!” A voice cried out from the west wing room, and the crowd surged toward it like a black tide.
The old man who had been the first to eat the county magistrate’s flesh also wanted to join them, but his foot caught, and he tumbled straight to the ground.
He struggled to crawl back up, but a foot stomped down on his raised right hand. With a sharp crack, he threw open his blood-smeared mouth and let out a piercing wail.
Yet that wail was utterly insignificant amid the surrounding clamor. As more feet stomped down, the sound soon faded away.
Those passing by merely felt the ground a bit soft beneath them and noticed nothing else.
Amid this dense throng, Yang Kid and his wife Zhao Xiumei were caught up in it too. They hadn’t wanted to come in at all—they were simply shoved forward by the press of bodies.
By the time he wanted to leave, he was surrounded on all sides. There was no way out anymore.
His face ashen, he gripped Zhao Xiumei’s hand tightly, trying to force his way out of the human tide. “Hold onto my hand! Don’t let go no matter what! If you do, we’ll never find each other again!!”
After charging left and right with no escape in sight, Yang Kid suddenly remembered something. He pulled from his robes the rotten wooden ruyi that Li Shixiong had given him, the one strung with a human tongue.
He raised it high and swung it toward the crowd on his left. The people, who had been boiling with excitement just moments before, froze in place. Blank confusion filled their eyes, as if they had forgotten what they were about to do.
“Follow me! We’re going this way.”
Yang Kid hunched over and wove through the crowd, inching toward the wall.
With the help of that thing, Yang Kid exerted every ounce of strength he had and finally broke free from the mob.
Still shaken, he glanced back at the chaos before him, then pulled Zhao Xiumei toward the inn.
“Head of the house, what’s going on? How did it turn into this?”
Zhao Xiumei was clearly terrified by the mayhem around them.
It had been such a righteous crusade against evil just moments ago—how had it spiraled into total disorder?
“I don’t know either. Anyway, never mind that—let’s get out of here! It’s too dangerous!”
Though that was what he told his wife, Yang Kid was no stranger to hardship. He suspected it was that old lady’s doing. Without her, none of this would have happened.
But if he said she was wrong, he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. She really had been helping the downtrodden deliver heavenly justice. She had been doing good.
He wasn’t well-read. He couldn’t make sense of it. Right now, he just wanted to get his people out of this mess.
When Yang Kid burst back into the inn, he saw the three scampish kids squatting on stools, staunchly guarding the old lady’s ceramic jar on the table.
“Hurry up! Come on!”
Yang Kid shouted urgently at them before charging toward the stables behind the inn.
“Nainai?”
“Aiya!! Forget Nainai! She’s got mystical powers—she won’t die! If we don’t run now, we’ll get dragged into it!”
The carriage was quickly wheeled out. Yang Kid hopped on and whipped the horses into turning back the way they had come.
“This place doesn’t look safe at all. Better take the long way around and steer clear.”
But just as his carriage neared the county gates, he spotted several oddly dressed people leading horses to block the road.
At first, Yang Kid thought they were just fellow travelers like himself. Then he caught sight of the badges at their waists, and his face drained of color. Those were Supervising Heaven Division badges.
He knew all about them from Li Shixiong—their nature, and how they operated. “Turn around! Turn around!”
Yang Kid yanked the reins hard, lashing the horse’s back with his whip as he tried to flee via the other route.
But when he looped back to the yamen entrance, the sight before him nearly brought him to tears.
The very people who had been looting just a short while ago had all come back out. They formed a massive circle, listening intently to someone speaking from within, their cheers of agreement rising now and then.
If they were just listening, that would have been one thing—but they had completely blocked off the main road to the other exit.
“Grandpa Shidu! We are your most loyal servants and personal guards! We follow you step by step, never leaving your side!”
With a resounding shout full of conviction, the others echoed it. Everyone pulled out strips of white cloth and tied them around their heads.
Yang Kid shot a look of bitter frustration at the white headcloths on their heads, then at the one on his wife’s. With deep regret, he reached over and yanked hers off.
Now he finally saw it—this was all that old lady’s scheme. He had blindly followed her, thinking she was one of the good ones!
“Hmph, just as I thought. The more remote the place, the more likely these cults are to stir up trouble!”
Hearing a voice from the other side, Yang Kid whipped his head around. There, perched on the inn’s eaves like a ridge beast, was a man with a hooked neck and cold, piercing eyes.
Yang Kid remembered him—one of the men from the Imperial Observatory.
As Yang Kid stared, the ridge beast reached into the back of his robe. With a red cord dangling it by the hair, he flung down a child’s mummified corpse—clad in a red bellyband, with cinnabar smeared on its forehead—right onto the eaves below.
When Yang Kid saw the corpse’s hand twitch into motion as the red cord tugged it, and the white headcloths closing in from the other side, terror seized him utterly.
“Get off the cart!! Abandon the cart!!”
Seizing the moment just before the two sides clashed, Yang Kid led the others charging into a nearby alley.
From his beggar days, Yang Kid had learned one thing: nothing mattered more than his own life.
Shouts and clashes of battle erupted behind them. Yang Kid could only lead them deeper into the alleys.
Only after they finally scaled a wall into someone’s courtyard did the sounds of fighting grow distant.
“We’ll wait here till the fighting outside dies down, then head out.”
Yang Kid kept his voice to a bare whisper as he explained to the others.
The three kids blinked. Finally, one of them spoke up. “Nainai.”
“Shh! No more Nainai! It’s because of your Nainai that we’re in this fix!”
Yang Kid spoke in anxious haste, then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
He wasn’t sure if it was the anxiety, but the air around him felt hotter and hotter.