Chapter 53 – The Angry Villagers

“From now on, your name will be Er Gouzi (Second Dog),” Xiaojiu said.

The former “Brother Biao,” now “Er Gouzi,” nodded in humiliation.

“I heard you were looking for me?” Xiaojiu continued her deathly interrogation.

Er Gouzi hurriedly begged for mercy. “Auntie, I was wrong, I failed to recognize Mount Tai when it was right in front of me!”

With that, he slapped himself twice—pa pa.

Xiaojiu simply stood there, watching him quietly.

“I’ll talk, I’ll talk! It was the young master from the Li household. He paid us to come to Taoyuan Village and capture you.” Er Gouzi quickly confessed.

“Li household? Li Qiang?” Shen Zhiyuan asked.

Er Gouzi nodded frantically.

“He found out that Xu Hao and his sister were in your village, and… and he said that since you took the person he wanted, you should take his sister’s place instead.” When Er Gouzi finished speaking, he wished he could just die on the spot.

In an instant, the fury of everyone around erupted to its peak.

He could see the group of fierce-looking people beside the little girl, eyes blazing, their hands gripping knives, itching to strike.

“I… I was just taking money to do a job! I’m not the real culprit!” Er Gouzi shouted desperately.

“Beast! You beast!” the old clan leader’s cane pounded the ground with a bang bang.

Their village chief was only five years old.

And this Young Master Li dared to say something like that…

Thinking further, wasn’t Xu Hao’s sister about ten years old?

“He’s worse than a beast! Worse than a beast!” The clan leaders were so enraged their vision went black and their whole bodies trembled.

The villagers who were already sharpening their blades rushed to support the clan leaders.

“Clan leader, I’ll go to town right now and butcher him.” Liu Dazhu had already thought it through—after all, he was just a bachelor with no children, and his old mother would surely support him. Today, he was willing to risk his life to chop that Li fellow into pieces.

“Clan leader, we’ll go too. If we don’t slice two taels of meat off him today, I’ll take his surname,” Zhao Dalang said, his fists clenched so tightly that the muscles on his arms bulged as if ready to burst through his skin.

The others all wore fierce expressions, shouting about going to hack him to death.

Shi Xian had also heard Er Gouzi’s words.

His face was dark as he planned to find out the Li household’s address later and personally take Li Qiang’s dog life in the dead of night.

The little children didn’t fully understand what Er Gouzi’s words meant. They thought Li Qiang simply wanted to kidnap the village chief in revenge for her taking Xu Hao’s sister.

Jiang He tiptoed and tugged at the sack in Jingxin’s pack. “Sack him! Sack him! Beat him! Beat him!”

Jingxin quickly yanked her bag back—this kid had surprising strength.

How on earth had the Medicine God Valley produced such a vicious little brat?

“That scumbag, and he even dares to take revenge.” Shen Zhiyuan summoned Shen Qi, the bodyguard her father had left her, and ordered him to go back immediately and inform her father.

A’dou and Zhao Hu, seeing the village chief squatting there lost in thought, asked quietly, “Village chief, are you thinking of… doing it tonight…?”

As they spoke, they made a throat-slitting gesture—who knew where they’d learned it.

“No, killing is against the law,” Xiaojiu shook her head.

“So you’re just going to let it go?” They didn’t believe it for a second—this was nothing like the village chief’s usual style.

“Of course not. Killing is illegal, but we can kill legally,” Xiaojiu said happily.

System: ‘You’re just an elementary schooler—what kind of TV shows and books have you been watching?!’

Xiaojiu replied in her mind, “What I mean is borrowing someone else’s knife to do the killing. My cousin said, when you don’t like someone and don’t want to dirty your own hands, just find their weakness and use someone else to take them out.”

System: “Are you sure your cousin isn’t some kind of outlaw?”

Xiaojiu: “Of course not. My cousin is beautiful and kind.”

System: “…”

“How can you kill someone legally? Village Chief, do you have a way?” A’dou’s eyes sparkled.

It was the first time A’dou had ever heard of legal killing, and his curiosity was through the roof.

“We need to find Li Qiang’s weakness and hand it over to the county magistrate, or to the Li family’s enemies, so they can take care of him. We should be law-abiding good kids,” Xiaojiu explained.

Zhao Hu was completely baffled—he couldn’t understand why they had to make things so complicated when they could just put a sack over the guy’s head in the middle of the night. What weaknesses? A fist was much more straightforward.

A’dou, however, understood and fully agreed with the plan.

“But do you know if Li Qiang has any weaknesses?” A’dou asked.

“The Li estate has a lot of corpses buried there. We just need to find a way to expose them to the authorities or to the Li family’s enemies, and that should do the trick.”

The last time Xiaojiu went to the Li estate to rescue Xu Hao’s younger sister, she noticed the flowers in the garden blooming unusually brightly. She couldn’t resist taking a second look and, out of curiosity, used her spiritual sense to check what kind of fertilizer they used—planning to grow some in her own yard. Well, what she found was shocking: buried beneath the flowers were human corpses.

“Unless the Li family holds some kind of banquet, even if we dig up the bodies, no one except the Li family would see them,” A’dou said.

“That’s something we need to ask Shen Zhiyuan and Wang Zherong about—whether the Li family is planning a banquet soon. Then we can figure out a way to sneak in.”

After Xiaojiu finished speaking, she turned to the furious crowd and said, “Everyone, don’t be impulsive. We already have a plan.”

Hearing this, the villagers immediately crowded forward.
“Village Chief, what’s the plan? If there’s anything we can do, just say the word—we’ve got plenty of strength.”

“That’s right, Village Chief, don’t worry. Leave it to us.”

“Yeah, later we can slice a bit of meat off that Li fellow and feed it to Da Huang.”

Before the man could finish, the clan elder smacked him hard a few times with his cane.

“How dare you speak such filth in front of the Village Chief? If your mouth’s dirty, we’ll sew it shut.”

The man who was hit finally realized he’d said something inappropriate in front of the young female village chief. He quickly slapped himself a few times.
“Pah, pah, pah! My bad—this mouth really has no gate, anything just slips out.”

The crowd was buzzing with comments. If Xiaojiu had said “Let’s get him” right then, they would have stormed the Li estate immediately.

Xiaojiu raised her hand to quiet them, and told them to take Ergouzi and the others to the ancestral hall.

“When dealing with an enemy, we must strike with one blow that kills. Charging in to beat Li Qiang isn’t a wise move—we need to make sure he can never recover, to make him pay for the evil he’s done. Stay in the village and wait for news. I have it arranged, and if I need help, I’ll come to you. Now go.”

The villagers, hearing this, agreed that the Village Chief was right—it was better to make sure Li Qiang could never rise again. They had been too simple-minded.

Seeing that the Village Chief had just returned from running around outside, they guessed she must be tired. They quickly said, “Village Chief, go rest. If anything comes up, just say the word.”

After showing their concern, they left in small groups.

From far away, their voices could still be heard:
“The Village Chief really thinks things through. Why aren’t our brains as sharp as hers?”