Courtyard House: Home Alone

The warehouse was actually a cave, with two sentries at the entrance and a large iron lock hanging on the door, which looked very sturdy.

Lin Yifan first dealt with the sentries at the door, then simply twisted the rusty iron lock. With a clang, the lock fell to the ground. He pushed open the door, and a musty smell and faint sobbing sounds came out.

The warehouse was dimly lit, with only a small window letting in a faint glimmer of sunlight.

By the light, Lin Yifan could see a small wooden cage on the left, inside which two young female students were huddled. The cage on the right was larger, containing about a dozen young women.

Their clothes were disheveled, and their faces were full of fear and exhaustion. When they saw Lin Yifan suddenly appear at the door, they trembled with fear, hugged each other tightly, and made suppressed sobs.

"No...don't come any closer..." one of the girls in a blue school uniform said in a trembling voice, barely audible.

Lin Yifan softened his voice, trying to make his tone sound gentle: "Don't be afraid, I'm here to rescue you. I've already dealt with the bandits."

As he spoke, he slowly walked into the warehouse, his gaze sweeping over the two young girls.

They looked to be only fifteen or sixteen years old, a time when they should be carefree studying on campus, yet they suffered such a fright here.

The young women on the other side all looked to be around eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old. They were all dressed in rags, with disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes filled with fear. Clearly, they had suffered a lot here these past few days.

Hearing Lin Yifan's words, they were all stunned, their faces full of disbelief, and no one dared to speak for a long time.

Seeing this, Lin Yifan didn't urge them. He simply walked to the wooden cage, casually broke the lock on the cage door, and opened the cage door: "Come out, everyone. It's safe now. Come down the mountain with me."

The crisp sound of snapping latches broke the silence inside the cave. A slightly bolder woman, supporting herself against the thick wooden bars, slowly stood up and tentatively walked to the cage door. Seeing the sentry lying on the ground outside, and then looking at the blood-stained dagger in Lin Yifan's hand, she finally believed that he wasn't an accomplice of the bandits. She burst into tears, crying out, "Really... someone really came to save us..."

Her crying caused the other women to break down in tears as well, releasing all the fear and grievances they had accumulated over the long period.

Lin Yifan stood aside, quietly waiting for them to calm down. Only when the crying gradually subsided did he speak, "We need to get down the mountain as soon as possible. If we're too late, something might happen. Everyone, pack your things and come with me."

The two female students slowly walked out of the cage. The girl in the blue dress, who was in the lead, bit her lip and bowed slightly to Lin Yifan: "Thank... thank you for saving us."

"No need to thank me. We're not completely out of danger yet, so we need to get out of here quickly." Lin Yifan shook his head and led the way out of the cave. The rescued women helped each other and followed behind him, step by step, out of the dark cave.

Upon arriving outside the cave, Lin Yifan turned back to them and said, "Wait here for a moment. I'll go check what's in the warehouse. You'll need to eat something, otherwise we won't even make it down the mountain."

Without waiting for their response, Lin Yifan turned and walked back into the cave. When he scanned the cave with his spiritual power, he found dozens of sacks of grain, as well as more than a dozen boxes of bullets and grenades piled up in the corner.

He stored everything in his spatial storage, then left the cave and led the group slowly towards the front of the mountain. Under the cover of night, he used his spatial storage to move the bandit corpses along the way to the foot of the cliff at the back of the mountain.

Along the way, the women followed Lin Yifan closely, and none of them went astray. Soon, the group arrived at the entrance of the Hall of Righteousness. Lin Yifan stopped and looked back at the young women, discovering that there were fifteen people in total, including two female students.

So he pointed to the kitchen next door and said, "That should be the kitchen. You guys split up, a few of you go and make something to eat, and the rest of you go and look around where the bandits live next door to see if you can find any clothes to wear."

The women quickly did as instructed; some nimbly entered the kitchen, while others headed towards the nearby wooden hut.

Lin Yifan then went to the best room at the back, which should be the residence of the bandit leader, Drill Monkey. Pushing open the door, he smelled a strange mixture of tobacco and alcohol.

By the light of the moon shining through the window, Lin Yifan saw an old pear wood eight-immortal table in the room, a wide bed against the wall, and a wooden cabinet with peeling paint standing at the head of the bed.

He used his spiritual power to scan the area and quickly discovered a stack of silver notes, a considerable amount of silver dollars and gold bars hidden in the drawer of the wooden cabinet, as well as a small booklet recording the various informants and the distribution of the spoils.

Lin Yifan didn't look at them much and directly put them into his spatial storage. Then he went to the bed, kicked open the footsteps in front of the bed, and saw a hole under the footsteps. He didn't go down, but with a thought, he put the seven wooden boxes underneath into his spatial storage.

Then, he turned around and went out of the house. As soon as he got to the front, he smelled the aroma of rice wafting from the kitchen, which meant that the women had almost finished cooking.

Upon arriving at the kitchen, Lin Yifan noticed that the women had all changed into cotton-padded clothes and trousers. Although they didn't fit well, they were much better than what they had been wearing in the warehouse.

They all stared at the two large pots, swallowing hard.

Lin Yifan said, "It's hot in the kitchen. Once the food is ready, you can eat here. After you're done, you can all go home."

After saying that, he took out four envelopes containing two hundred dollars each from his backpack (space): "Here, share these with you. They might be useful in an emergency on the road."

He held it in his hand for a full three minutes, but none of the young women, including the two female students, reached out. They looked at each other and slowly lowered their heads.

At this moment, a slightly older-looking man said, "Young master, you're still young and don't understand! Do you think people like us can go back?"

"However, we still have to thank you. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be able to die if we wanted to. Now, we can at least have a decent meal before we go." After saying this, he knelt down.

Lin Yifan quickly dodged to the side, only then realizing that these people had been abducted to the mountain by bandits quite some time ago. In today's society, it's indeed...

The woman kowtowed before getting up, wiped away her tears and said in a low voice, "We were all taken from our homes by bandits and brought up the mountain. Our homes were looted by the bandits long ago, and our relatives are all gone."

The rest either came from families too poor to go back, or they had been kidnapped and brought to the mountains for so long that their families wouldn't accept them anymore, and going back would only mean certain death.

As she spoke, the woman behind her began to sob softly again, and the two female students also turned pale, clutching the hem of their clothes tightly, unable to speak—their families were still raising ransom, but they had been kidnapped to the mountain for two days, and even if they went back, the future would be full of rumors and gossip.