Chapter 66

Chapter 66

Worried about encountering refugees hiding who-knows-where on the road, the Village Head was a man who played it safe. Seeing that everyone wanted to go to Wanxia Village to check things out, he simply took along all the men from the village who had volunteered to come.

Four or five dozen men, carrying hoes on their shoulders and axes in their hands, set out from Taoli Village. They passed through several other villages along the way, heading straight for Wanxia Village.

As they passed by, villagers from other villages craned their necks, gawking and shouting questions about where they were going, whether it was to start trouble or what, and why the Village Head was leading them.

"Wanxia Village was attacked by refugees. More than half the village's menfolk are dead and gone. Now only the old, weak, women, and children are left. They can't even move the bodies. They had no choice but to come to us for help. We're following the Village Head to see the situation and lend a hand if we can."

Upon hearing this, everyone sucked in a sharp breath.

"More than half the men are dead?? You gotta be kidding me!" That's gotta be so many people! They knew about Wanxia Village—it was very remote, with only one small path leading into the village. How did refugees end up there??

Even they didn't like going in that direction; it was a godforsaken place.

News of Wanxia Village's refugee attack spread like wildfire, stirring up the surrounding villages. Some came to watch the spectacle, some genuinely wanted to help, and there were even daughters who had married into Wanxia Village or women who had married out from Wanxia Village, wailing as they brought their husbands back to their parents' homes.

They were all villagers from the surrounding area. With such a major incident, they couldn't just stand by and watch. Even those working in the fields couldn't stay put, hoisting their hoes and following barefoot in the mud.

"We gotta go see this. How come we didn't hear a thing? We had no idea!"

"Yeah, exactly!" Even the women couldn't stay home. Seeing their menfolk had already joined the crowd, they dumped their grandchildren into their daughters-in-law's arms and followed along.

A spectacle this big, you couldn't miss it.

Even though they knew refugees were causing trouble outside, since the lice hadn't fallen on their own heads, they always treated it as just a rumor. Who would have thought those heartless bastards would one day appear right beside them?!

Everyone felt both worried and somewhat relieved—relieved the refugees hadn't come to wreak havoc in their own village, yet worried about where the roving refugees might turn up next. After all, Wanxia Village, however remote, wasn't too far from them. If refugees could go to Wanxia Village, they could certainly come to their village too.

This feeling was like having a fierce tiger sleeping beside them. They had to go see the place it had ravaged with their own eyes. If the casualties were truly that high, then their own village needed to take precautions.

A great, swarming crowd, with vastly different moods, made their way to Wanxia Village.

Li Laiyin led a large group back, but no one came to greet them. The entire village appeared desolate and deathly quiet.

Just as they entered the village entrance, they heard hoarse cries of mourning coming from one direction. On the way, they had already heard from the old man of Wanxia Village about the tragedy that had befallen his village. They knew the bodies had been gathered in a makeshift shelter—the same shelter built after the earthquake earlier in the year. It seemed everything kept circling back to disaster.

Natural calamities and man-made misfortunes, none were spared.

The group followed the sound of weeping to where the old, weak, women, and children had gathered. From a distance, everyone caught a whiff of an acrid, putrid stench. The smell was utterly overwhelming, making people gag. Many retched, covering their mouths, and those with full stomachs vomited on the spot.

"Village Head, please look at them," Li Laiyin said, wiping his tears and turning to the Village Head, who was covering his nose and frowning.

The women kneeling on the ground, keening for the dead, glanced up at them, then lowered their eyes again.

The Village Head had braced himself for them to rush over, pouring out their grievances to him, or begging him to take them to report to the authorities. At the very least, he expected them to throw themselves on the ground, wailing and cursing the refugees to get sores and rot. Instead, they merely glanced at them. Their limp bodies knelt tirelessly, faces numb, hands mechanically burning paper money. Their throats seemed to hold a saw, grating against raw, ragged throats, emitting harsh, sobbing wails.

The shelter was open-sided. Aside from the roof overhead, all four sides were exposed, so anyone with eyes could see the rows of bodies laid out. Dozens of them, yet not a single one was intact. Some were charred black; others reeked of decay, bodies swollen, smeared with their own waste, completely unrecognizable.

"...Bleh."

Someone vomited first, followed by a chorus of retching.

Dozens of men with hoes squatted on the ground, heaving their guts out until their stomachs cramped, yet they couldn't stop the dry heaves. A few children from Wanxia Village timidly hid behind trees, staring at them, terrified of strangers.

Fighting the impulse to bolt, the Village Head forced himself to stay calm. He scanned the bodies roughly—about fifty or sixty. The old man hadn't been lying; so many people really had died!

He was horrified, his legs momentarily weak. He turned to look at the surrounding mountains, suddenly seized by the fear that refugees might burst out and slaughter them all. He turned to Li Laiyin, his voice trembling slightly, "Are you sure you didn't see which direction the refugees went? When you fled into the mountains, didn't they chase you?"

"We were terrified! We just grabbed the children and ran. Who dared look back? Looking back meant death! Once we entered the mountains, we found a remote spot and hid. We hid for two days until our rations ran out. We were starving and had no choice but to sneak back down the mountain," Wang Tiegen said from the side, wiping his tears as he spoke. "When we came down, the village was empty. The refugees were long gone, vanished without a trace. We don't know where they went."

He stepped forward and grabbed the Village Head's wrist with such force the Village Head couldn't shake him off. "Village Head, you gotta get justice for us! You've seen it yourself—so many people in our village are dead. This can't just be left like this! We must report to the authorities, we must have the magistrate seek justice for us! Look at how they died, so wronged, so pitiful! They were all killed by the refugees! And the houses... the Wu family at the village entrance and the old Zhao family at the foot of the mountain, their houses were burned to the ground. And the village chief's house... these bodies were found in his pigsty and latrine pit. Our village has nothing left now. Every household's grain was looted clean. People are gone, houses are gone, belongings are gone..."

Wang Tiegen cried for real because his family's grain really had been looted. During their frantic escape, they had only managed to take a small portion in their panic; the reserves left at home were completely emptied.

His tears clung to his wrinkled, aged face. "Village Head, you must help us, or we truly cannot survive!" He held onto the Village Head tightly. The Village Head had been covering his nose, but with this tug, his hand was pulled away. The overwhelming stench instantly hit him full force. He retched violently, nearly vomiting on Wang Tiegen's face. Fortunately, he pushed the old man away in time, taking several large strides to lean against a nearby tree, where he contributed his entire breakfast—two bowls of rice porridge, an egg, and a flatbread—to the earth.

Wang Tiegen was also a toothless old man. How could he withstand such a push? Caught off guard, he fell hard on his backside, feeling as if his tailbone had cracked. The pain brought fresh tears to his eyes, making his sorrow look all the more real. "Village Head, fellow villagers, our Wanxia Village now only has the old, weak, women, and children left. We can't move the bodies, we can't find the people who fled into the mountains. We can only rely on your help."

"Didn't I bring people?!" the Village Head roared, having even vomited bile. Annoyed by Wang Tiegen's incessant, ghost-like wailing, he turned and shouted, startling Wang Tiegen into silence like a chicken with its neck wrung.

Supported by others, the Village Head left the shelter for the relatively fresher air of the village.

Daughters who had returned home, unable to find their relatives, sat in courtyards wailing loudly. Elderly parents whose daughters had married into Wanxia Village also wept, rushing to the shelter to search among the bodies, trying to identify familiar shapes from the pile of charred remains.

The brave men from other villages, who had come genuinely to help, stayed at the shelter. They asked Zhou Fugui and the others for coffins to carry the bodies into the mountains. Learning there were no coffins, they asked for straw mats. Learning there weren't enough mats, they finally had no choice but to ask them to find hemp rope.

As for carts, they didn't even ask. The village was surrounded by mountains; carts were useless here. Even wheelbarrows wouldn't be much help.

As for those who had come to watch the spectacle, they scattered around the village, peeking into houses here and there. Some specifically went to the foot of the mountain, seeing the burned-down houses there. Even the walls had collapsed, with only vague outlines of rooms discernible from the fallen stones and beams.

It was a damn shame.

This village's plight was utterly miserable. Not a single complete woodpile could be found under the eaves of any house. In the countryside, there were no lazy people; firewood was never lacking under one's own eaves throughout the year. But look at them? Now, if the whole village could gather one bundle of firewood, it would be a mercy from heaven, unwilling to add to the burning of those bodies. Alas.

It felt like a dead village.

The children were frightened and uneasy. The women seemed to have lost their minds from the shock. Only a few withered old men appeared to be barely holding on, not yet collapsed. Not a single proper, able-bodied man was in sight. Judging by their builds, most of those lying in rows were likely the pillars of their households.

They heard some lucky ones had escaped into the deep mountains.

But could entering the deep mountains really be considered lucky? One must remember, during famine years, tigers and wolves came down from the mountains. It was only in recent years, as disasters hadn't reached the mountains, that those living near them hadn't suffered beast attacks.

If you go back a few more years, there were tales of tigers coming down to eat people!

"I really can't help over at the shelter. It's too smelly; I can't stand it," said a man from Taoli Village, looking at the few beside him. "We're all fellow villagers; we can't just stand by and do nothing. I was thinking maybe we could go into the mountains to look for people. Just scout around the perimeter. Best if we find them, but if we really can't..." Well, that would be their fate.

They couldn't possibly venture deep into the mountains to search. What relation were they? It wasn't worth the risk.

"Then let's call a few more people to go into the mountains together. These mountains look more dangerous than the ones near us. We're not familiar with the paths; we need more people," said another man from Taoli Village. He was already feeling some regret. Had he known, he wouldn't have come to join this spectacle. Not only was he disgusted, but now he also had to help search the mountains.

Wouldn't it have been better to wait in the village for the feast? Eat, then lie down on the bed, sleep until dark—that was the life a man should live.

Having recovered somewhat, the Village Head also began organizing people to help carry the bodies into the mountains and search for the missing. No matter what, he was the Village Head. With such a major incident occurring in a village under his jurisdiction, he couldn't possibly stand by and do nothing. If others saw him idle, who knew what they would say behind his back.

Moreover, this time, far too many people had died. In truth, he still felt somewhat dazed. Normally, even if he didn't report it, someone else would do it for him. If he showed no action at all, his position as Village Head probably wouldn't be secure.

But weren't these extraordinary times?

He was better informed than others. He knew the situation outside was tense and alarming. There were villages even worse off than Wanxia Village, entire villages slaughtered by refugees. Survivors fled to the county to report, but the magistrate simply didn't care, or couldn't. His words were full of bureaucratic evasion, telling them to go back, saying he would send constables to their village later to arrest the refugees.

Listen, just listen to that! Their whole village was massacred, and he tells them to go back where? By the time his constables go through the motions, the dead would have passed several seventh-day memorials.

It was precisely because he knew of such things that the Village Head understood: even if dozens of people died, even if everyone in Wanxia Village perished, they wouldn't get an ounce of justice.

The county yamen, or rather the imperial court, simply didn't care about them.

If refugees really came to a village... Thinking of this, the Village Head couldn't help but shudder. Then one could only resign oneself to fate.

"Liu Erlang, you and Xue Laowu help carry the bodies into the mountains. Let the people from Duskglow Village lead the way—they've already dug pits up there. You'll have to bear the hardship and lend a hand to bury them." The Village Head pointed at a young fellow who had been shuttling between the shed and the village, asking for mats and ropes. Delegating work was a skill in itself—you couldn’t afford to offend anyone, yet you had to make them willing to work. The simplest and most straightforward method was often the best.

Carrying corpses was dirty, exhausting work, so he specifically picked the solid, dependable men—the ones who had been circling the shed since they entered the village. As for those wandering around the village, he simply dumped the task of searching the mountains on them. If they took it seriously, fine; if not, there was little he could do.

After arranging these two major tasks, he glanced at Li Laiyin, who was hovering around him, and couldn’t help but feel another wave of worry.

This cantankerous old man couldn’t even say clearly how many people were still hiding in the mountains, too afraid to show themselves—just as he couldn’t identify who the dead were. It was enough to make the Village Head’s head spin.

The Village Head had plenty of responsibilities: reporting deaths, registering newborn sons—villagers would inform their village chief, who would then tell him, and finally he would take the head of household to the county office to file the report. Of course, the village chief could also take people directly, or the head of household could go alone to the county office.

But no one did it that way. In the countryside, it was customary to bring half a basket of eggs when asking someone for a favor. The Village Head’s position came with many powers—from overseeing land sales and approving homestead plots to managing irrigation and deciding whose turn came first. Naturally, there were plenty of opportunities to grease his palm, especially during weddings and funerals. People showed up at his door every few days. Even if a household chose to go to the county office themselves for efficiency, those who knew the ropes would still stop by his house first to inform him.

You could say that when it came to registering or removing households, the Village Head could navigate the process blindfolded. But this time, sitting under the big tree at the entrance of Duskglow Village, he was utterly stumped.

First, the county office was far away.

Second, there were bandits outside.

Third, who exactly had died in Duskglow Village? How many people were still in the mountains? There was simply no clear plan.

If identities couldn’t be determined, the only option was to report it to the county and have a coroner examine the bodies. But reporting meant going out, and going out meant possibly encountering bandits—and the fate of meeting bandits was now lying in the shed as unidentifiable charred remains.

"..."

The Village Head was so worried he could only scratch his head in frustration.