New and dark light years

Chapter 190 Inner Anxiety
The pungent smell of blood was everywhere.

The captured civilians finally dared to cry out loud.

Some people held the corpses of their loved ones, glaring resentfully at the local soldiers and militia of Yulin County.

"Why...why don't you surrender? If you had surrendered, we wouldn't have died so many times..."

Snapped!
A slap sent the man's voice fading back into his stomach, and knocked out a few of his teeth in the process.

The person who made the move was not Li Lin, but an ordinary soldier.

"We've already lost many brothers trying to rescue you." The soldier, a young man of about sixteen or seventeen, grabbed the man and pulled him up with a dark expression. "You want us to surrender? Are you trying to kill us all?"

The man dared not speak.

“If you keep talking nonsense, I’ll kill you all. Even if the supervisor wants to punish me, I’ll still kill you all.”

The young soldier viciously threw the man to the ground, his gaze sweeping over the crowd, his eyes filled with anger and hatred.

He had a very good brother who died not long ago.

He died trying to save these ungrateful bastards.

He also came to hate these people, his eyes hardening.

The captured civilians didn't even dare to look him in the eye.

Li Lin saw this from a distance and pulled Todd aside to ask, "What's that soldier's name?"

"Yue Shan!"

"Looks promising, nurture her well."

"Yes."

At this moment, Su Bei led a group of people and dragged a small, red altar out of the enemy's camp.

Compared to the large crimson altars we'd seen before, this thing was about the size of a dining table.

Li Lin walked around the blood-red altar, then tapped on its surface and said, "Come out."

A small True Lord, with a cat's head and a cat's tail, and only about a meter tall, floated out from inside.

It was terrified; it only glanced at Li Lin before lowering its head again.

"Siamese cat... Huh." Li Lin looked at the other cat with some surprise: "You don't have any evil aura or smell of blood on you."

The Siamese king glanced up at Li Lin again, then quickly lowered his head and said cautiously, "I only eat grilled fish..."

Oh, no wonder it doesn't have any evil aura, but it's not powerful either.

It turned out to be malnutrition.

"Then would you be willing to come back with us and become the true ruler of our Qi people?"

"What will happen if I don't want to!"

Li Lin squinted and smiled, "What do you think?"

"I do, I do... Don't smile like that, it scares me!"

The kitten covered its head and trembled.

Am I that scary?
Li Lin was a little puzzled.

At this moment, Todd walked over and asked, "Commander... what should we do with the more than one hundred captured Southern Barbarian soldiers?"

"Kill all those who look like southern barbarians. Take those who look like people from Qi back to our country and throw them into the local militia to work as laborers."

Todd laughed: "Okay."

A superior who is decisive in doing things makes his subordinates feel very comfortable.

Li Lin had his soldiers count the number of Qi people and civilians. After a night, the count was completed.

A little over 19,000 people.

The main problem was that last night on the battlefield, the southern barbarians killed prisoners, resulting in the deaths of over a thousand civilians.

Li Lin sighed, feeling sorry for the civilians who had died, but he had no regrets. Under those circumstances, it was absolutely impossible for him not to continue the attack, much less to surrender.

After counting the number of people, Li Lin led them back to Yulin County.

Fortunately, Yulin County is large enough and has sufficient grain reserves; otherwise, with an additional 20,000 people, it would have been difficult to solve their survival problems.

However, his only responsibility was to bring the people back; how to arrange things was the county magistrate's business.

Li Lin sat in the barracks and began writing battlefield records.

These things will all be submitted to the Secretariat and the Chancellery in the future. He had just finished writing down the general events that happened on the battlefield last night when Jiang Jili came looking for him.

“County Commandant Li, some disaster victims have reported to you that last night they disregarded their lives and tried to kill them.”

Li Lin smiled and said, "I guessed there would be someone like that."

Those people were frightened by Yue Shan last night, but in a different place, they would naturally still dare to speak.

“You’re still laughing? If this gets to the Zhongshumen, it will become a stain on your future career. Some people with ulterior motives will use this to their advantage.”

Li Lin waved his hand: "It's alright."

Jiang Jili gave him a deep look and said, "Since you don't care, then I won't try to persuade you. I will find a way to help you eliminate this influence and prevent the document from reaching the Secretariat."

"Why are you helping me like this?" Li Lin asked, puzzled.

Their relationship wasn't actually very good; it was more of a peaceful alliance formed out of mutual wariness of each other's strength.

"We are friends."

After saying this, Jiang Jili left.

Li Lin felt somewhat confused.

At this moment, a yamen runner came over and said, "County Commandant, the person you were looking after has woken up."

Li Lin nodded and then went to the prison.

Behind the black iron fence stood Qin Donglai, his face flushed red.

He was breathing heavily, looking like he was in great pain.

"It seems you're not feeling well," Li Lin said, looking at Qin Donglai.

"I'm dying..." Qin Donglai looked at Li Lin: "You shouldn't have saved me; it would have been a waste anyway."

Li Lin shook his head: "I can't say that. I want to ask you some questions."

"I won't say anything."

Li Lin laughed and said, "I knew you would do this... so I have an idea. If you refuse to tell me, I will have your ancestral hall cut down and fed to the dogs. Then I will let those homosexual prisoners stay with you. What do you think?"

"You vicious villain!" Qin Donglai was furious.

Li Lin smiled and said, "A traitor who betrayed his people, sided with barbarians, and slaughtered his own kind, actually dares to call me a vicious villain... Do you have the right to say that?"

Qin Donglai's face turned even redder, his expression full of humiliation. After a while, he said helplessly, "Ask away... My body is no longer capable. The medicine that witch doctor gave me wasn't for healing injuries at all, but rather to overdraw my body's potential."

"Does your Qin clan know of the White Elephant Divine Flesh, having joined forces with the Southern Barbarians?"

Qin Donglai looked at Li Lin with some surprise: "I thought you would ask about our King Qin. The white elephant's divine meat... I not only know about it, but I've also eaten it."

"Isn't the White Elephant Divine Flesh in the hands of the Tang Family Army? How did you get it?"

"Hehe...it was naturally obtained through a trade with the Tang family army."

Li Lin was stunned for a moment, and a sense of crisis suddenly welled up inside him.

After all, Qin Donglai's smile was too... smug and unrestrained.

Li Lin then asked, "Why did you join forces with the Southern Barbarians?"

“Our clan leader wanted to become emperor, and coincidentally, the southern barbarians also wanted to invade the Central Plains, so we hit it off immediately.”

Although what the other party said made perfect sense, Li Lin felt that things were not so simple.

Two incense sticks later, Li Lin emerged from the prison.

There are not many secrets left to be extracted from Qin Donglai.

After all, he was just a distant relative of the Qin family, separated by several generations, and not in the political core.

After Li Lin came out, he said to the yamen runners at the prison gate, "Go and buy Qin Donglai a jar of good wine and a poached chicken so he can eat and drink. When he dies, give him a proper burial and erect a tombstone."

Li Lin believed that Qin Donglai had likely contracted tetanus and didn't have much time left.

Let him have something good to eat one last time.

After all, the other party had revealed some information that was quite important to Li Lin.

The county magistrate has his duties, and Li Lin also has his own job.

He sent the information obtained from the interrogation to his father-in-law, Huang Yan, via carrier pigeon, and... distributed compensation.

(End of this chapter)