Sold immediately after wearing it? I took my family and fled the famine.

The village roads were littered with corpses. Jiang Xing ran through the blood, rushing towards any house he heard making a sound.

A man was tied to a pillar, his body covered in knife wounds. He wasn't dead yet, but he couldn't speak. Jiang Xing cut the ropes, and instead of standing up, he slid down the pillar and lay on the ground, panting.

"If you can walk, then walk." Jiang Xing said and ran out.

In the next house, a woman was hiding under the stove, holding a baby in her arms. The baby wasn't crying.

The woman's eyes were stinging from the smoke, and when she heard someone come in, she shrank even further.

"Come out! Run!"

The woman crawled out from under the stove, carrying the baby, and stumbled as she ran outside.

Jiang Xing heard the sound of weapons clashing in the center of the village; they were made of iron, not the kind of kitchen knives or wood-chopping knives.

She ran over and saw Ma Dadan leaning against a low wall, holding a broadsword in his hand. His face was covered in blood, and his left arm was hanging down, possibly broken. There were only two constables beside him. One was squatting on the ground, panting, with a chip in his knife; the other was standing in front of Ma Dadan, covered in blood, but still standing.

There were at least four or five corpses of yamen runners lying on the ground. The villagers surrounded the three men and roughly counted more than a dozen.

Jiang Xing rushed in, slashing down the nearest villager with a machete, stabbing the second one in the waist with a short knife, and before the third could react, the machete had already cleaved his collarbone.

A gap was torn in the villagers' encirclement. Ma Dadan saw her, paused for a moment, then gritted his teeth, raised his broadsword, and charged out with two constables.

The four men worked together from the inside, their knives flashing more than a dozen times in the night, and the villagers fell one after another.

He turned to run one last time, but Ma Dadan caught up and slashed him in the back with his sword, causing him to fall to the ground.

There was only one person left, the man who had stood at the village entrance and spoken to Ma Dadan during the day, the one who called himself the village chief. He was holding a kitchen knife, standing next to the millstone in the center of the village, his face pale and his lips trembling.

Ma Dadan raised his knife to strike.

"Spare his life," Jiang Xing said.

Ma Dadan's knife stopped in mid-air. He glanced at Jiang Xing and then sheathed it.

The man was forced to kneel on the ground, his neck held to Ma Dadan's knife, and he was trembling all over.

"Who are you people?" Jiang Xing squatted down, pressing a short knife against his chin.

The man gritted his teeth and remained silent.

Jiang Xing pushed the short knife forward an inch, the tip piercing into the flesh of his chin, blood flowing out and trickling down his neck.

"I'll ask you one more time. Who are you?"

The man's lips trembled, his eyes fixed on the blood on Jiang Xing's face, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints.

"I...we came from the north..."

"Where to the north?"

"Yongzhou... further north... to the northern border..."

Jiang Xing glanced at Ma Dadan, whose expression changed slightly—Bianbei, even further north than Yongzhou, was the first place to be hit by war this year.

"How long have you been here?"

"Two months...more than two months..." The man's voice trailed off, "No food...nothing at all...we're starving..."

"So you started eating people."

The man's lips trembled slightly, but he did not deny it.

"Who were those people before?"

"From Yongzhou..." the man said, "we were also refugees...we arrived more than ten days earlier than you...we..."

He didn't continue.

Jiang Xing stood up and glanced at Ma Dadan, whose face looked terrible and whose hands were still trembling.

"Kill him," Jiang Xing said.

Ma Dadan's knife fell swiftly and cleanly; the man collapsed to the ground, twitched twice, and then lay still.

The screams in the village had stopped; the survivors had all run away, and those who hadn't escaped were lying on the ground.

Ma Dadan squatted on the ground, staring at the corpses scattered all over the place, and didn't move for a long time.

"What are you thinking about?" Jiang Xing wiped the dagger on the dead man's clothes.

Ma Dadan looked up at her. The girl's face was covered in blood, her sleeves were soaked, and her machete was dull, but her eyes were so calm.

"Who exactly are you?" Ma Dadan asked.

"They were refugees, of course," Jiang Xing said. "How many of your men died?"

Ma Dadan counted the corpses of the yamen runners on the ground. Including himself and the remaining two, of the twelve yamen runners who set out, only three remained.

"There's another group of people who escaped outside," Jiang Xing said. "We can catch them before dawn."

Ma Dadan stood up and gripped his broadsword tightly: "Let's go."

The three quickly circled the village and confirmed that there were no living villagers left.

Ma Dadan walked at the back, glancing back at the village. The thatched and mud-brick houses still stood neatly in the dim moonlight, but the stench of blood wafted from them, lingering in the night wind. He turned away, no longer looking.

Uncle San and his men ran all the way to the main road, not daring to stop. Ox carts, handcarts, and wheelbarrows creaked and groaned, mixed with the sounds of footsteps and panting.

After running for about an hour, the road ahead became narrower and narrower, and the mountains on both sides became steeper and steeper.

Third Uncle surveyed the terrain and drove the oxcart to the foot of a cliff. The cliff was surrounded by stone walls on three sides and a thicket of bushes on the front, making it a natural hiding place.

"Go in! All of you, go in!" Shen Dehou called to the people behind him in a low voice.

The oxcarts and handcarts were pushed behind the bushes, and the people hid behind them, without lighting any fires or making a sound.

Third Uncle tied the ox to the innermost rock and stuffed its mouth with a rag to keep it from bellowing.

Zhang sat at the innermost part of the room, holding the calf, her eyes fixed on the way they had come.

My third uncle was squatting by the bushes, a pipe in his mouth, but it wasn't lit.

Shen Dehou stood at the front, clutching a wooden stick in his hand, his clothes soaked with sweat on the back.

No one speaks.

Behind them, those who had managed to escape from the village stumbled and ran along the main road.

There was no one to lead the way, no one knew which way to run, they just instinctively followed the footprints in front of them, running away from the village.

As dawn broke, they reached the vicinity of the broken cliff. They were too exhausted to run any further. Some collapsed by the roadside, some squatted on the ground panting while holding their children, and some were crying.

Jiang Xing, Ma Dadan, and the other two caught up from behind. They were fast and caught up with the refugees who had fallen behind in less than half an hour.

Ma Dadan walked at the front, still holding his broadsword in his hand. The blood on the blade had dried and congealed into a dark red lump.

He stood in the middle of the road and shouted, "Stop! Don't run!"

The survivors slowly peeked out from the roadside, from behind bushes, and from under carts.

Upon seeing that it was a yamen runner, he stumbled over and grabbed Ma Dadan's sleeve, refusing to let go.

"Sir...Sir...they're all dead...all dead..."

Ma Dadan pried the man off his sleeve, stood on a rock, and looked at the scattered crowd in front of him.

"Listen up! Anyone still alive, assemble here immediately!"

The crowd slowly began to move. Some called out names, some cried, and some squatted on the ground, sobbing, while others hugged their newly found relatives. Jiang Xing stood to one side, and Ma Dadan climbed down from the rock and walked to her side.

"Are there people ahead?" he asked.

"Yes. My men are up ahead," Jiang Xing said. "Hurry up and join them."