Chapter 43 Wolf Hunt

With Wang Lizheng taken away, there was no man in charge of the Wang family. The funerals for Wang Laoer, his son, and Wang Jiaojiao were rushed.

They were supposed to hold a wake for three days, but they only held it for one day before hastily burying them.

The villagers who went to offer condolences were few and far between, except for Wang’s relatives.

Time flew by, and three days passed.

For the past three days, the villagers of Changhe Village had been living in fear.

After the Wang family father and son were found dead in the back mountain, the villagers were afraid that the wolf pack would really come down from the mountain. Every night, the doors and windows of every household were tightly shut, and even during the day, there were not many people working in the fields.

The threat of the wild wolves had not been resolved, and they didn’t know how many wolves were hiding there. How could the villagers calm down to do anything else?

Seeing that three days had passed without any incident, the villagers finally breathed a sigh of relief.

However, they still spoke of Humpback Mountain with fear.

In their spare time, Zhu Shi, Tian Shi, and the Wang family became the hottest topics of conversation among the villagers.

Three days later, people from the county government came again.

This time, Constable Yu brought a team of nearly a hundred people, specifically for the wolf hunt.

These people included constables borrowed from neighboring counties, as well as a dozen experienced hunters recruited from the local area.

The team of over a hundred people, armed with bows and arrows, broadswords, spears, and other hunting tools, marched into Humpback Mountain.

At first, the expedition went smoothly. When they reached a relatively flat forest in the mountains, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by a pack of wolves.

What was even more terrifying was that the number of wolves was not just a few, but dozens.

Even the experienced hunters were shocked. Constable Yu had brought only about a hundred people, while there were dozens of wolves.

The disparity in strength meant that they had no chance of winning. Several wolves charged forward and launched an attack.

The appearance of the wolf pack was too sudden. Constable Yu and the wolf hunting team didn’t even have time to draw their bows and arrows, and they could only fight hand-to-hand.

Soon, several constables and hunters were injured, and even Constable Yu was not spared, his arm was scratched by a wolf, bleeding profusely.

This team, except for the recruited hunters, the other constables were okay at catching petty thieves, but they had no experience hunting wolves.

Just when everyone was desperate and ready to fight to the death, the wolf pack, for some unknown reason, suddenly began to retreat in an orderly and rapid manner.

In the blink of an eye, the wolves disappeared into the forest.

The wolf pack’s previous siege of them seemed like a dream to these people.

The survivors, covered in dust and dirt, quickly descended the mountain.

Fortunately, although they were injured, they were not serious.

And everyone who had gone up the mountain returned safely, a blessing in disguise.

This grand wolf hunt could be said to have ended in failure before it even truly began.

The villagers, who had been eagerly awaiting the results, were not met with the news of the wolves being wiped out, but rather the discovery that there were actually dozens of wolves hiding in Humpback Mountain.

Constable Yu and his team had not only failed to catch the wolves, but they had almost not returned. The villagers were terrified.

Constable Yu comforted the villagers a few words, asking them to wait for the county government’s notice, and then left with his men in a hurry.

The villagers gathered at the foot of the mountain, carrying unknown fear, gradually dispersed.

After a stick of incense, Qin Ruo slowly came down from Humpback Mountain.

When she returned home, Old Lady Qin was in the courtyard, washing rice to prepare dinner.

Qin Zimu was squatting in front of the earthen stove, carefully making a fire.

“Qin Ruo, where have you been? Did you hear? Constable Yu and his men encountered a pack of wolves in the mountains.”

“My goodness, I’ve lived in Changhe Village all my life, and I didn’t know there were so many wolves in our back mountain.”

“Qiu… Ah Ruo, you shouldn’t go into that mountain anymore. We should find another way to make a living…”

Old Lady Qin kept chattering, as if she had opened a floodgate.

She accepted Qin Ruo’s name change quite quickly, but she couldn’t get used to calling her by the new name for a while.

Old Lady Qin thought about how Qin Ruo had been to Humpback Mountain countless times before, and she couldn’t help but break out in a cold sweat when she realized that there were so many wolves hidden there.

Qin Ruo simply hummed in response, without saying another word, and walked towards her room.

Old Lady Qin, who was washing rice, stopped her hand, and her old face fell.

After that day, she had tried to mend the relationship between her and her granddaughter, but Qin Ruo had always been lukewarm towards her.

These days, Qin Ruo had been staying indoors, doing some simple basic exercises in the courtyard in the morning and evening, and then going into the space to increase the intensity before going to bed.

This made Old Lady Qin, who was watching from the sidelines, feel uneasy. Although the original Qin Qiuxi would also do some daily exercises, she had never seen the few sets of movements that Qin Ruo was doing recently. She felt a strange feeling in her heart, but she didn’t dare to interfere with Qin Ruo now.

Before, Old Lady Qin had been focusing all her attention on Bao Gen’s matter. After the incident was over, she finally realized that Qin Ruo seemed to be different.

It was as if she had suddenly been supported by a mysterious force and had suddenly become more confident.

Qin Ruo could understand the laws of the Great Sheng Dynasty and read and write, which didn’t surprise Old Lady Qin.

It was because the original Qin Qiuxi had also read a few books.

A year before Qin Huaizheng disappeared, he had brought back a mysterious young man to the house, who stayed for half a year.

Qin Huaizheng never mentioned the young man’s identity.

The young man looked like a celestial being, but he was a man of few words.

Somehow, the young man and Qin Qiuxi got along very well, and he personally taught the original owner to read and write.

Back then, the young man even drank Qin Qiuxi’s tea as a sign of respect for her as his teacher.

Old Lady Qin was somewhat dissatisfied with this, feeling that it was useless for a girl to learn these things.

What good was it to know how to read and write and know some martial arts? She couldn’t become an official!

Wouldn’t it be better to clear the land and farm, and earn some money?

When Qin Huaizheng was around, she only dared to say these words to herself in her heart, and she didn’t say them out loud.

“A woman should follow her husband, and after her husband’s death, she should follow her son.” Old Lady Qin was adamant about this.

These days, Old Lady Qin had been thinking about it over and over again, and the most she thought about was whether the young man had secretly come to see Qin Ruo again and taught her some new methods?

Old Lady Qin’s mind was racing, and even Qin Zimu could see it.

But he pretended not to understand, and he kept his head down and focused on making the fire.

In Qin Ruo’s space, the pack of wolves that Constable Yu and his men had encountered in the mountains were trembling and lying around Qin Tiao Tiao’s feet.

The group of snakes that had attacked Wang Jiaojiao were also roaming freely on the grass.

Qin Tiao Tiao’s face was full of scratches, and his little mouth never stopped.

“Master, there are snakes and wolves, can you stop putting everything in here?”

“You said that my silver has to be earned through legitimate means and can’t be used for now, why don’t you just hand over these wolves?”

“Don’t you want this silver?”

“Master, don’t you love silver anymore? You’ve fallen from grace!”

“You’ve already brought the wolves in, why did you let them out to scare them? You keep bringing them in and out, isn’t it troublesome?”

“Look, you didn’t even get a single copper coin, and you went through all this trouble, are you just bored?”

Qin Tiao Tiao kept chattering, getting more and more excited.

Qin Ruo felt like her ears were about to develop calluses.

She felt like she had instantly seen another version of Old Lady Qin in Qin Tiao Tiao.