Shen Tang asked: "What are you vomiting?"
Zhai Le's handsome face was pale as he explained in a low voice: "I was afraid that when you buried the body, the people nearby saw it. So, as soon as you left, they came over and dug up the body..."
Because he was drunk, Shen Tang couldn't figure it out for a while.
"What are you going to do with these?"
Zhai Le was no longer relaxed as usual. Even his pair of peach blossom eyes that always smiled dimmed a little. There was worry in the corners of his eyes. What he said was chilling: "I'm so hungry. What else do you think you can do?"
He pointed it out directly, and Shen Tang's eyes suddenly widened.
He was speechless for a long while.
"But, but that's a human..." Shen Tang looked at a loss and confused. She hesitated unconsciously and murmured softly, "How can a human... can't! That's a human, a fellow human, and buried in the ground..."
Qi Shan brought Shen Tang all the way to Xiaocheng. In order to suffer less and get more information, the route was not remote, and villages and towns could be encountered every one or two days. The lives of the people were very difficult, and they could only make do and keep the most basic bottom line.
Shen Tang knew that such a thing existed, but had never seen it.
But Zhai Le is different.
Zhai Le and his cousin Zhai Huan set out from the southeast. Relying on their good skills and tacit cooperation, they dared to go anywhere. They destroyed several bandit dens along the way and killed several groups of vicious criminals. Just as Zhai Le said, they were chivalrous and fought for justice.
It is easy to kill evildoers but hard to fill their stomachs.
He and his brother once passed through a village with only thirty-six households, most of whom were the elderly, the weak, women and children, and all the young and strong had been conscripted to fight in the war.
That day, a famous old man in the village passed away. He and his brother were staying in one of the farmers' houses. As night fell, he heard people talking outside the yard. Curious, he looked out through the window and saw the skinny Muramasa delivering bowls of meat soup to every household.
Thanks to his good eyesight, he could see that the peasant woman had a bitter expression.
There aren't many edible tree roots around here.
At first, Zhai Le didn't know what the soup was, so he asked his brother about it out of curiosity. To this day, he still remembers his brother's expression at that time: half of his face was stained slightly red by the candlelight, and the other half was hidden in the shadow, and the shadow appeared and disappeared with the faint flame.
He even had a terrible illusion - there was a bloody and ferocious beast lurking in the dark, which would take the order of his brother opening his mouth, jump out and devour him completely, chewing him into minced meat.
The oil lamp beeped.
My brother said indifferently: The living are always more important than the dead. The dead are already dead, but the living still have to live.
Zhai Le still didn't understand the deeper meaning of these words until the day he left the village, when another family held a funeral.
Zhai Le rode away on horseback, and accidentally turned his head to see the relatives of the deceased weeping as they buried the body in the grave that had been prepared in advance. However, before they could seal the coffin, Muramasa came over with his men to negotiate.
The distance was too far for Zhai Le to hear clearly what they said, but from their excited exchange which almost turned into a physical fight, it was clear that both sides were unhappy, and in the end the body was carried out.
Suddenly—
His brother's words kept circling in his mind.
He finally understood what had happened.
Zhai Le, who killed people without blinking an eye, almost fell off his horse that day and vomited all the dry food he had eaten the day before.
Ah, brother...
Similar things have never been uncommon.
Zhai Le: But...
Zhai Huan looked indifferent: "Before you are unable to help them avoid hunger, never criticize their behavior or interfere. Unless - you have the courage to sacrifice yourself like the Buddha who cut off his flesh to feed the eagle. Xiaofang, they have to live...
Zhai Huan's voice was as gentle as ever, but it also made Zhai Le feel an unprecedented sense of helplessness, the kind of despair that even his cousin, whom he had looked up to as a role model since childhood, felt helpless.
Zhai Le said gloomily, "My brother said that these people want to live more than anyone else, but the world wants them dead more than anyone else. They didn't hurt a living person, but just a corpse. What qualifications do outsiders have to say that they are cruel and inhumane? They can't say..."
Upon hearing this, Shen Tang stood still, looking at the three badly decayed and mutilated corpses at his feet, stunned for a long time.
Half a while—
She said, "That's right. Guan Yiwu said, 'When the granaries are full, people know etiquette; when they have enough food and clothing, they know honor and disgrace.' But these people don't even have 'full granaries and enough food and clothing.' Their stomachs are empty. Several people in a family can't even afford a decent set of clothes. How can they talk about etiquette, honor and disgrace?"
In this case, isn't it the greatest arrogance to comment on their behavior in terms of etiquette, honor, and ethics
Seeing that Shen Tang's expression was a little strange, Zhai Le raised his hand and pushed her arm, trying to wake up Shen Tang who seemed to be possessed.
Shen Tang took a deep breath and waved his hand, "I'm fine."
"Brother Shen, how do we deal with them? All..."
Zhai Le looked at the trembling thugs, raised his hand and extended his thumb, and drew a neat horizontal line across their necks.
A few of the hooligans saw this scene and vaguely guessed their own fate. They knelt down with a plop, and their heads banged against the ground, making a thumping sound that made people's skulls ache. They were so panicked that their legs trembled, tears and snot flowed, "Hero, spare us!"
There are also those who do not believe in it, such as the strong man in the lead.
He didn't think that Shen Tang and the other two had the guts to do that. They knew that his backer was the second in command of a bandit's nest, yet they still dared to kill him. As for Shen Tang's mention of picking a bandit's nest, he didn't think the two could do it.
He knew very well how big the bandit's den was.
Shen Tang said: "I wanted to kill him."
Zhai Le raised his hand and a knife appeared. He waited for Shen Tang's order and then he chopped up the gangsters with the knife.
Shen Tang added: "But it would be a pity to kill them all."
Zhai Le: "What a pity?"
Shen Tang sneered, "What can you do if you are alive? If you die, you can only be buried in the fertile soil. However, I feel uncomfortable letting this group of people live. Xiaofang, how are you going to deal with it?"
Zhai Le: "Kill him. You can't take him with you."
It wasn't just the two of them who had offended this gang of thugs today, there was also the white-haired old man who stood up, and those spectators who were just watching the fun were barely counted in. This time, letting the tiger go back to the mountains would be fine for the two of them, but those ordinary people would suffer.
Shen Tang asked: "You said... bring it with you? How do you bring it with you?"
However, Zhai Le had a different understanding.
Surprised: "Brother Shen, are you planning to recruit them?"
Kill them and bury them anywhere, and that's it. The cost is almost zero, but recruiting them is different, that's a huge trouble.
Shen Tang: “…”
When did she say that
Zhai Le looked embarrassed: "I am not deliberately poking at Brother Shen's sore spot, but one person is one mouth. There are 20 to 30 people here, which means 20 to 30 mouths. How much does it cost every day? Even if Brother Shen is kind enough to recruit them, are they willing to be loyal?"
Brother Shen himself is extremely poor.
So poor that he has to sell wine as a bartender!
What can we use to recruit and support these thugs
Shen Tang was still confused.
She didn’t know how the topic jumped to the point of recruiting thugs, she was just following Zhai Le’s topic out of curiosity about how to “lead” them.
"Wait, let me think about it."
Before he could figure out what was going on, the burly man in the lead sneered and spat, saying, "You want me to work for a pretty boy? Dream on! When I find out, all of you—"
puff-
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