Traveling to ancient times, with space

Chapter 47: Looking at the Eight Trigrams

The night passed peacefully, save for the snoring of refugees and the buzzing of mosquitoes.

Many refugees began packing their belongings before dawn, while a commotion broke out not far away. The old woman who had beaten her daughter-in-law yesterday was now beating her eldest son with a fire poker, as if she wanted to beat him to death.

Upon hearing this, Su Yue acted as if she had radar in her head, running over to join the crowd and watch the excitement.

People nearby started chattering: "Old woman Zhao, even if you beat your eldest son to death, it won't do you any good! Hurry up and pack your things to go look for him. Maybe you can catch up with him if he hasn't gone far."

"That's right! Maybe we can still catch up. If we keep fighting, we'll all be dead."

“That’s right, this poor thing!” another middle-aged woman began to comfort her.

Su Yue listened for a while but still didn't know what had happened. She was extremely anxious and asked an older woman next to her, "Auntie, what's wrong?"

The woman who was called "Auntie" almost fainted from fright when she turned around. This was too scary! In the pitch black of the night, she saw a person who was covered up completely except for her eyes.

The child was covered up so tightly that no one knew whose child it was, but when she heard Su Yue ask, the aunt, who was looking for someone to gossip with, didn't care whether it was a child or not, and started talking to Su Yue, even complaining when she got emotional.

"Let me tell you, you don't know, the one that Granny Zhao beat up is actually the child of his old man's previous wife, the one over there is the one she gave birth to."

How could a stepmother truly love her stepson? Ah, isn't her stepson and his wife both her workhorses?

Last night, his wife took his two daughters and stole grain from the house and ran away... Ugh, serves her right! That baby is only a month old; besides breast milk, what else can he eat? But that old woman Zhao wouldn't give her daughter-in-law anything to eat, so she's starving and has no milk to feed the baby. Yesterday, she even got a beating for stealing eggs. Oh, how pitiful..."

Su Yue finally understood: a useless man deserves to be beaten, since he can't even protect his own wife.

These onlookers are probably all from the same village; they're used to these kinds of things, and they just chat amongst themselves, with very few genuinely offering any advice.

But that woman yesterday was really something. While everyone was asleep, she secretly carried away the last bag of grain in the house and ran away with her two daughters in the middle of the night.

Otherwise, if Grandma Zhao's grandson hadn't been clamoring for porridge this morning, we wouldn't have found out so early.

The beaten man lay on the ground, barely alive, his hands and arms covered in marks from being hit with a fire poker, and his face was covered in blood from being scratched by Granny Zhao.

Just as Granny Zhao was about to continue hitting him, ignoring the whispers and pointing fingers around her, the old man of the house, perhaps unable to bear it any longer, snatched the fire poker from Granny Zhao's hand: "Even if you beat him to death, the grain has already been stolen. Instead of wasting your time hitting him, why don't you hurry up and chase after him? She can't have gone far with two children and a bag of grain."

He kicked his eldest son on the ground again: "Look at your good wife, why don't you get up and go look for her?"

Granny Zhao was so angry that she cried and wailed while telling the family to hurry up and clean up.

The whole family ignored the man who was beaten half to death and pushed their only cart to chase after him.

Even after everyone had gone far away, you could still hear several women gathered together chatting and laughing.

Nobody cares where the mother and her three children went.

After reading the gossip, Su Yue returned to the cart in a good mood, plopped down on it, and began to share the gossip she had just seen with Old Man Luo.

Old Luo discovered that the little girl's hobby was that she liked to join in on fun.

As they walked through the crowd, they were met with envious glances from many people, who wished they were the ones sitting on the cart.

After walking about seven or eight miles, the two of them were overjoyed to see a town.

This made the two of them very happy, but before they could get close to Old Man Luo and Su Yue, they noticed something was wrong.

The city gates were wide open, but there wasn't a single soldier on guard. Even the people passing by the gates, aside from the refugees, would run away as if something was chasing them as soon as they entered.

When they arrived at the city gate, they realized why: the situation looked somewhat similar to the village they had passed through yesterday.

From the moment we entered the town, apart from the migrants, we hadn't seen a single living native. Some shops were closed, while others were wide open.

It feels like you could shout and get an echo.

Su Yue and Old Man Luo got off the cart and looked around. Behind them were only the refugees who had followed them in.

To be honest, even with the sun blazing down, Su Yue still felt goosebumps all over her body and was quite scared, so much so that she didn't dare to go any further inside.

But seeing the calm old man, I perked up again, not wanting to be laughed at by the old geezer.

Just then, a refugee who had followed them in rushed into a shop looking for something usable. The moment he pushed open the door, he screamed "Ahhh!" and was so frightened that he sat down on the ground and peed in his pants. He then scrambled out on all fours.

Su Yue and Old Man Luo exchanged a glance and ran over to see what was happening. What they saw was the most horrifying scene of their lives: two or three corpses lying on the ground in the shop. The corpses themselves weren't scary.

What's horrifying is that the exposed skin of the corpses was already ulcerated. One corpse was in the worst condition, with half of its head missing, as if it had been gnawed off by something.

Su Yue, with her sharp eyesight, thought she saw the corpse's chest move slightly. She rubbed her eyes, thinking she had imagined it.

"Old man, have you ever seen a person whose head is missing half, but whose chest can still move?" Su Yue asked, tugging at Old Man Luo's clothes.

Old Luo was carefully examining the corpses when Su Yue asked him a question, and he was stunned for a moment. The heads were gone, so how could they still move?

Before Old Luo could answer, Su Yue saw a rat about twenty centimeters long crawl out from the corpse's clothes, staring at Su Yue and Old Luo with its red eyes as they were about to enter the shop.

The giant rat wasn't afraid of the people coming, and started eating the remaining half of the head.

Soon after, five or six red-eyed rats of various sizes crawled out of the corpse.

Su Yue was so frightened that she pinched Old Luo's arm so hard it hurt. Old Luo winced in pain and quickly pulled her back. After the two left the shop, they saw the rats chasing after them.

"What the hell is this thing?!" Su Yue's voice changed.

Old Luo frowned, pondered for a moment, and said, "I'm afraid we can't enter this city. Those corpses look like they've been infected with the plague, and these rats have eaten human flesh. We must be careful not to get bitten, or we might not survive."

Next, Su Yue and Old Man Luo checked several more shops, and they were either empty or full of corpses; there were basically no survivors.

It's true that nine out of ten houses are empty.

At this moment, more and more refugees gathered around, and everyone was terrified as they watched this scene.

"We can't stay here any longer; we must leave as soon as possible." Old Luo made a quick decision, taking Su Yue onto a cart and speeding through the street toward another city gate.

The refugees who followed behind were also terrified and ran after them, not caring about what they had dropped. They ran so fast that you couldn't tell they were starving refugees.