I survived the famine by scavenging and supported my family.

Another small group, seeing the fierce battle ahead, quietly circled around to the back, looking for any houses with carriages, and directly started stealing things from the carriages.

Valuable items were taken from the frame, but the contents of the carriages were not looted.

Of the five people, three were carrying the stolen goods, and two of them went around chopping at the carriage doors.

From Zhao Ningning's perspective, after speaking with Zhao Qi, the two of them, clutching a dagger and a machete, quietly waited in the carriage for the thieves to arrive.

"There's one more here!"

"Pah! It's hidden pretty well. Let's go take a look!"

The carriages usually housed women and children, along with their possessions. Having just robbed two, they had made a fortune, and the carriage looked even more luxurious.

Besides, the two carriages were parked on the side, attracting no attention at all.

"Open the door!"

The thief knocked on the car door, but there was no response. He then jumped onto the hood of the car and brandished his axe, about to chop at the door.

Zhao Ningning saw this scene in the space and immediately flashed out. Just as the thief was about to slash at the car door, she suddenly pulled the car door open.

Caught off guard, the man missed his axe strike and fell forward. Zhao Qi, who was hiding nearby, seized the opportunity to slash down with his sword. The thief clutched his abdomen in pain, his eyes filled with disbelief.

They came to launch a surprise attack, but they were the ones who got ambushed?

He instinctively reached out and raised the axe, intending to chop at it, but Zhao Ningning, who was hiding on the other side, seized the opportunity and used all her strength to stab him in the arm with a dagger.

"Da Mao! Da Mao! What's wrong with you!"

"Damn it! Someone actually launched a sneak attack! You'll all die a horrible death!"

A man came up, and Zhao Ningning took out the leftover thorny bundles from her spatial storage and threw them directly in front of her.

The man was stung by the sudden object. Taking advantage of his momentary lapse in attention, Zhao Qi stepped over the thief and walked to the front of the cart. He raised his machete with both hands and slashed diagonally.

The second thief fell.

Seeing that their two brothers had run into trouble, the three men who followed behind looked at each other, then simply picked up their things and ran away.

What a joke! They're here to steal, not to get themselves killed!

With the crisis averted, Zhao Qi turned around and saw that his sister had already kicked the axe out of the thief's hand at the carriage door.

At this moment, the thief was bleeding from his mouth, and he was grabbing Zhao Ningning's clothes with one hand, trying to reach out and strangle her.

Zhao Ningning kicked him twice impatiently, sending him flying from the front of the car to the bottom.

Zhao Qi jumped down, snatched the large knife from the other person's hand, and handed it to Zhao Ningning.

Zhao Ningning and Zhao Qi returned to the carriage, closed the door, and put the broadsword and axe back into their spatial storage. Looking at the pool of blood at the front of the carriage, Zhao Ningning was extremely worried.

Once the blood seeps in, it's very difficult to wipe it clean!

Zhao Ningning left her brother to watch over the car while she went to her spatial dimension to fetch water to wash it.

When she was getting water, Zhao Ningning's hands were still trembling. In the dark, she had only managed to stab the thief with a dagger on a completely subconscious basis.

Under the familiar modern bathroom decor and warm yellow lighting, Zhao Ningning looked at the blood on her palm and slowly calmed her breathing.

—It's okay... This little bit of blood isn't even as much as the blood I see during my period every month.

The trembling hands gradually calmed down.

Even so, Zhao Ningning still washed her hands thoroughly with soap, then filled a basin with cold water and took it out for her brother to wash his hands as well.

The two siblings hid in the carriage, quietly waiting for the fighting outside to stop.

The sounds of fighting in the distance gradually subsided, and half an hour later, the sky began to lighten, revealing the situation on the ground.

Many people were lying haphazardly on the ground. Zhao Ningning stood at the front of the car and looked around. Almost half of them were villagers from Wangli Village.

The remaining half consisted of thieves who showed little sign of life.

At this moment, only two thieves remained, putting up a last-ditch effort. Seeing that their brothers who had come with them had been beaten to death or wounded by the group of ferocious refugees, the two abandoned the grain and silver they had stolen, threw them on the ground, and ran away.

The remaining villagers, too exhausted to pursue the pursuers, dragged their weary bodies to check on their families.

Ning's parents returned exhausted. As soon as they arrived, Zhao Ningning went to greet them and took out some warm water from her spatial storage, asking them to wash their hands and faces first.

It wasn't time for a bath yet. Despite the nauseating smell of blood on her clothes, Ning's mother asked, "You two didn't encounter anything, did you?"

Zhao Qi shook his head. "My sister and I encountered five thieves."

Upon hearing "five," Ning's parents were both startled. Zhao Qi continued, "The two of us worked together and injured two of them, and the rest ran away."

The two who were slashed were then dragged away by others, and their whereabouts are unknown.

Zhao Qi briefly explained the situation at the time.

The hearts of the two parents were raised high and then gently lowered.

"You..." Ning's father patted his son's head, then his daughter's head.

"Hey, let's not get sentimental. We agreed on this from the day we fled the famine: anything could happen on the road." Zhao Ningning patted her father's hand.

That's what they said. A few days before they set off, Ning's mother taught the family a few killer moves. Zhao Ningning, with her small arms and legs, swung a machete that was half her height at a time, hacking at the wooden scarecrow. Watching her wobbly, Ning's mother was terrified.

But from what my son just said, my daughter was clearly fighting alongside him.

"Didn't we tell you to hide?" Ning's mother touched Zhao Ningning's face with her clean hands. "If we had known someone would sneak over here, your father and I wouldn't have left."

"I can still coordinate with my brother while I'm here, but what if I hide and he's all alone?" Zhao Ningning said, hands on her hips. "You only have one daughter, me, and one son, my brother!"

Ning's mother smiled helplessly, "If something like this happens again, your father and I will never leave our carriage again. You two, no, all four of us have to be safe and sound."

Zhao Ningning nodded. "You can only eat what you're capable of! If you can help the villagers once, and twice, and they still don't learn their lesson, I really want to just kidnap their whole family and hide them in some cave deep in the mountains."

Anyway, there's food in the space.

The family chatted and laughed as if nothing was wrong, but only Ning's parents knew that they were hiding a knife in their hearts, afraid to touch it, and this time they had even dragged their two children into it.

Ning's mother nudged Ning's father's waist and whispered, "Talk to the kids more during the day today."

Ning's father understood and nodded.

In the team.

After a quick count of the number of injured people in the team, the village head's already gray hair looked even whiter.

As the night passed, seven of the thieves who had launched the night raid were beaten to death by the villagers of Wangli Village.

Two others were seriously injured and were not taken along by the group when they escaped. The village head ordered them to be tied up for interrogation later.

In Wangli Village, almost a third of the men were injured to some extent, and three of them were killed by the thieves with hoes.

At this moment, their family members are kneeling beside their children or husbands, wailing and crying.

The village head felt bad and turned around. Wang Xiufeng wrapped his hands and came over to comfort the village head's father, "Father, don't be sad... I just asked Ershun's wife, and she said that Ershun found someone touching his feet in the middle of the night."

He woke up and realized something was wrong, so he secretly notified his wife. His wife bravely ran and shouted, which is how the rest of the village woke up in time.

Two clear tears streamed down the village head's deeply lined face. "Alas, those three children died so unjustly. It was almost dawn, and... we had arranged for people to patrol."

"Father," Wang Xiufeng said solemnly, "Second... I asked the villagers, and they all said that when the thieves came, the two guards were still asleep. Ershun's wife had to call them all the way to the team before they woke up."

The village head wiped away his tears and said, "I understand."

No matter how much you plan, who could have predicted that everything would be fine a few days ago, but today you'd run into this lazy guy?

The villagers were seriously injured and probably wouldn't be able to walk well this morning, so the village headman simply decided to let everyone rest where they were.

The doctor was busy bandaging the patient, but halfway through, he came to find the village head with a pained expression.

"Village head, we're running out of medicine," Doctor Kang said. "I had only prepared enough medicine for the trip to the prefectural city."

Who knew that the journey would be fraught with danger, including heatstroke, ambushes, and locust bites.

Adding to the impact of last night's battle, even after using all the prepared wound medicine and hemostatic medicine, it still wasn't enough.

The doctor took out the remaining medicinal herbs and prepared new prescriptions one by one, but it still wasn't enough.

"How about..." The village chief took out a map and calculated, "We're still thirty li from Heqing County. Why don't we walk to the county town this afternoon, rest for a day, and then head to the prefectural city?"

The village head frowned and looked at the map with him.

Heqing County is a necessary stop on the way to the prefectural city. If we travel this afternoon, we can buy some herbs in the county town.

The village head nodded and agreed to the plan.

Taking advantage of the morning break to reorganize the team, we gave the patrolling men a good talking-to.

One of the two who neglected their duties was hit on the head with a hoe by the thief, his brains splattering out, and he died on the spot.

The other one wasn't much better off. He tried to run away, but the thief chopped off his leg with a hoe.

The village headman fined each of the two families five taels of silver, which was confiscated to buy medicinal herbs.

The families of the two men initially wanted to cause trouble, but were scolded back by the villagers who had lost family members or whose family members were seriously injured in the battle, and immediately became obedient.

In the morning, the village chief led his men to retrieve all the dry rations and silver brought by the thieves, finding a total of two hundred catties of coarse grains and forty-three taels of silver.

The village head gave ten taels of silver to a family that had lost a son or a husband, and then gave them another twenty catties of grain.

The remaining grain was distributed among the less seriously injured men, and the remaining seventy or eighty jin was tied to the horse that the village head had specially kept last time.

These funds are used as the "public funds" for the entire team's expenses. If any member makes a contribution to the team, they can receive a reward from these funds.

For example, the Ershun family last night.

Er Shun was the first to discover the thief, but due to his physical limitations, he asked his wife to deliver the message.

If it weren't for Er Shun's wife, the thieves would probably have been right in front of them before they realized something was wrong.

After dealing with these matters, the village head felt exhausted and told everyone to rest for the morning and set off again in the afternoon, so they could rest properly once they reached Heqing County.

After such a fright and seeing so much blood in the early morning, Zhao Ningning and her family had no appetite.

After drinking some water, Ning's mother took out the corn cakes she had steamed earlier. Smelling the fresh aroma of the grains, Zhao Ningning and her family of four managed to eat a little something to tide them over.

It wasn't until after the sun rose that Zhao Ningning noticed there was still blood on the outside of their carriage that hadn't been wiped clean.

Meanwhile, people outside were cleaning up the bloodstains on their cars. They were heading to the county town that afternoon, and if they didn't clean up properly, it might be noticed when they entered the town.

The villagers grabbed handfuls of sand and rubbed it onto the cart. In no time, the splattered bloodstains on the cart were wiped away, and then covered with dust, making it virtually impossible to see anything.

After resting for a while, the village head and chief went to see the two thieves who had been tied up and left to one side.

The village chief kicked them a few times and, using the same interrogation methods he used before, whipped them a few times. The two cowards then spilled out how they had planned and how they had set their sights on Wangli Village the day before.

It turned out that they were also a group of refugees from a small village. At first, they had someone leading them, but as they walked, they became more and more tired and their food became less and less.

Their village chief fell ill, and the group was in a hurry to move forward, so they left the village chief behind.

In the team, the rascal who used to be a troublemaker in the village took over the team. Most of the villagers were honest people who dared not speak out against him. Seeing that he did nothing after taking over the team, they just tolerated it.

But on his second day in charge of the team, he started demanding "protection money" from those people. He would ask for two ounces of rice from one family and three ounces of noodles from another. He would squat on the horse-drawn cart and look at the unmarried girls from good families in the village with a sleazy gaze.

Several bold and spirited men couldn't stand having their group run rampant under the control of such a rogue, so one night they secretly ran away with their families.

The remaining dozen or so households were even more submissive, and the scoundrel made the rest of them call him "boss".

But their good fortune didn't last long. The food would eventually run out, and the day before yesterday they ran out of food. They managed to rob a passing carriage on the main road, but the grain they stole from the carriage wasn't even enough to fill the boss's teeth.

Yesterday, they suffered another locust plague. The leader declared that no matter what, they had to seize the food of one team so that their team could continue their journey.

Either way, they were going to die—either starve or be beaten to death. Following his instructions, several men from the village quietly searched for a good place to park below the main road.

They actually managed to find a team.

That was the team from Wangli Village.

Upon hearing this, the village chief was so angry that he gritted his teeth and lashed them more than a dozen times, leaving their skin torn and bleeding. Where the ropes were tied, the flesh split open with long, deep slits.

The village head's face was dark and unreadable. He dragged the two men in front of the seven dead thieves and made them identify whether their "boss" was among them.

The two men shook their heads.

The village chief put away his whip, angrily wiping the bloodstains off on the sand. Hearing that their leader wasn't among them, he immediately stood up and said, "Should I take a few men and go after them?"

"Don't go." The village head shook his head. "There are few people who can fight, it's dangerous, and besides... it's not like there's no law yet."

Especially now that it is only thirty miles away from Heqing County.

"Are we just going to let them get away with this?!" the village chief gritted his teeth. "Old Wang, I can't swallow this insult."