The Little Demonic Cultivator in the Courtyard: Borrowing 100,000 Japanese Pirates to Heal

This resentment is invisible to others.

Perhaps only Xu Jiande can feel it.

Of course, this is actually a good thing for Xu Jiande, as it allows him to quickly improve his strength.

When we returned to the courtyard, it was already completely dark in the courtyard.

The lights in every house had long been turned off, except for a faint glimmer of light coming through the crack in He Daqing's window, probably because Sha Zhu was making noise again.

Xu Jiande pushed open the door and entered the room. Bai Ling was still awake and was sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for him.

"How is it?" Bai Ling asked.

"The people are alive, but they can't get out for now." Xu Jiande took off his clothes and draped them over the back of the chair. "The detention center over there by the military police has two or three hundred people locked up. The Japanese have gone mad now, and we can't get them out."

Bai Ling remained silent for a while.

She knew many people who had died at the hands of the military police, so she was no stranger to such places.

After a moment of silence, he asked Xu Jiande what to do next.

"We can only wait," Xu Jiande said after thinking for a moment. "No one can touch the military police this month. We'll think of something when things calm down a bit."

Bai Ling nodded.

She knew what Xu Jiande meant by "finding a way," and she also knew that now was not the time to take action.

If that were the case, Liu Haizhong would have died long ago.

But there was nothing I could do; I was at their mercy.

After lying down, Xu Jiande lay on the bed but did not fall asleep immediately.

He began to mentally calculate the strength of the military police guards, their shift change patterns, and whether there was any possibility of sneaking in to rescue them.

This possibility wasn't for saving Yi Zhonghai, but rather to see if there was a chance to rescue Bai Ling if she were arrested.

But upon closer examination, it is quite difficult.

……

The next morning, Xu Jiande went to open the rice shop as usual.

To be precise, it meant taking the door panel off and standing at the door for a while so that the neighbors could see that the rice shop was still open.

As for how much rice he can sell, even he himself doesn't know now, so although he hasn't raised the price, he only sells fifteen catties of rice.

This resulted in a looting frenzy.

Jiande stood in the shop for two hours and only sold the limited quantity of 15 jin of coarse grains available in the morning.

For the remaining hour and a half, he simply stood at the door, staring blankly at the empty street.

Around 10 a.m., he put the door panel back on, told Aji to continue guarding the store, and said he would go to the main store later, and then go to training in the afternoon.

The so-called training, of course, is to continue learning how to identify resistance fighters.

Going to the main store was just a matter of trying one's luck.

When Xu arrived at the main store, the door was open, but the inside was empty, with nothing on the shelves.

The shop assistant behind the counter saw him and waved his hand before he could speak, saying, "Manager Xu, don't ask anymore, there really isn't any left."

Xu Jiande stood there, looking at the empty shelves, and remained silent for a while.

"The whole city is gone?" he asked.

The shopkeeper sighed and lowered his voice, saying, "In the upper district alone, there are no more than five shops still selling grain, and the price has increased eightfold. Even those five shops won't have enough stock for more than a few days. If you have any grain stored at home, be careful with it and don't sell it."

Xu Jiande nodded, left the main store, and walked back along the street.

The scene on the street is completely different from what it was a few days ago.

At first, there were just more people queuing outside the grain store than usual, and occasionally you could hear people complaining that grain prices were rising too fast.

Later, the grain stores started limiting purchases, allowing each person to buy only two or three jin (1.5-1.5 kg). Those at the back of the line couldn't buy any and had to go home empty-handed.

Later, there was no place to queue anymore, and some grain stores simply closed their doors, with the words "No Grain" posted on their doors.

It was never driven again.

What you see on the streets now are people selling their children.

When Xu Jiande turned onto Dongsi Street, he saw a woman squatting by the roadside. She was about thirty years old, wearing a tattered gray cloth jacket, and her hair was tangled up in a mess.

Standing next to her were two children, a boy and a girl. The boy was about five or six years old, and the girl was even younger, about three or four years old.

Both children were skin and bones, with frighteningly large eyes and deeply sunken eye sockets.

The girl had a straw tag hanging around her neck, and underneath the tag was a piece of paper with a few words scrawled on it.

Xu Jiande stopped and glanced at the note.

"Three pounds of coarse grains can be exchanged for one child, five pounds for two."

Damn, this price is unusually low.

When the woman saw someone stop, she looked up, her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but then she swallowed it back.

Her eyes were red and her face was covered in tear stains, but she had already cried all her tears.

She didn't ask Xu Jiande to buy her child; she just looked at him with an expression that was hard to describe as either expectation or fear.

Xu Jiande stood there staring at the straw marker for a long time.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver coin, and squatted down to place it on the ground in front of the woman.

Then he said, "Take the child home."

He stood up and continued walking. Behind him came the woman's suppressed sobs and the two children's soft voices asking their mother who the man was. Their mother said he was a good person.

But this silver dollar won't last long. Most importantly, we might not even be able to buy food with the money.

So he went back and told her to come to his shop to buy rice the next day. Of course, he mentioned the name of his rice shop.

Upon hearing this, the woman thanked Xu Jiande again and made the two children kowtow.

Xu Jiande hurried back to the shop and told Aji that a woman might come to buy rice the next day, so he should save five jin for her.

Aji said he understood.

Afterwards, Xu Jiande walked home. Whether it was contagious or not, the number of people lining the roadside increased along the way.

As I turned into the side street of Nanluoguxiang, I saw a middle-aged man squatting against the wall, with nothing in front of him except a straw marker in his hand.

There was no slip of paper or price on the straw marker; it was just a lonely straw marker.

Xu Jiande glanced at the man's face and recognized him. He was a carpenter from the next alley, who had previously repaired doors for his rice shop.

The carpenter recognized him too, but neither of them spoke.

Xu Jiande hesitated for a moment, thinking that he still had a silver dollar in his pocket.

So I gave it to him, and this time I didn't mention selling rice.

He walked over quickly, and even from a distance, he could still sense the other person saying thank you.

Back in the courtyard, as soon as I stepped into the courtyard, I heard Jia Zhangshi cursing at her own door.

"I can't live like this anymore!" Jia Zhangshi's voice was shrill and hoarse, like an old cat whose tail had been stepped on. "We can't buy grain, and money is worthless. Rice prices have tripled, and we still can't buy it. This is driving us to our deaths!"

She cursed a few times, then her voice suddenly lowered, as if she had suddenly remembered something frightening.

Xu Jiande glanced over there. Jia Zhangshi was standing at her own door, one hand on her hip, the other pointing at the air and cursing.

She was halfway through her rant when her gaze fell on Xu Jiande as he walked into the courtyard. Her hand, which had been pointing at the air, recoiled as if pricked by something.

Her mouth was still open, but she swallowed the rest of her words. Her lips twitched, and she turned around and walked into the house, muttering something under her breath as she went.

So low that only she could hear it.

Xu Jiande ignored her and went straight back into the house.

Bai Ling has already prepared lunch.

It was supposed to be lunch, but it was really just half a pot of cornmeal porridge and three cornbread buns. The porridge was much thinner than yesterday, so thin you could see the bottom of the bowl. The cornbread buns were also smaller.

It was mixed with rice bran, so it was dark in color and tasted rough on the throat.

Bai Ling sat at the table, holding half a cornbread in her hand, eating it in small bites.

When Xu Jiande returned, he looked up and asked him how the store was doing today.

"We're out of rice." Xu Jiande sat down at the table, picked up his bowl of porridge, and took a sip. "The main store is gone too. There are no more than five shops in the whole city still selling grain, and prices have gone up many times in recent days. We won't last much longer."

Bai Ling remained silent.

She looked down at the half-eaten bowl of thin porridge and remained silent for a long while.

She didn't really feel it deeply, since she was with Xu Jiande and they had coarse grains to eat, and they were full.

Xu Jiande thought for a moment, then said, "I saw people selling children on the street."

"..." Bai Ling.