Chapter 26: The Calamity Arrives

  Li Guoting carried the bag of silver coins and slipped out of the brick kiln under the cover of darkness. He still had some misgivings, so he stood at the entrance of the kiln and listened for a moment to the movements inside. Feeling that Ma Fei and Zhao Erhu would not do anything rash, he walked towards the small path ahead with peace of mind, intending to wait there for Ma Fei and Zhao Erhu.

  After waiting for a long time, he saw two black shadows running towards him from afar. Li Guoting held the bag of silver coins and carefully hid behind a tree, vigilantly watching the two people. When they were about to run in front of him, he finally made out that these two men were his own brothers, Ma Fei and Zhao Erhu.

  "Have you let him go, Second Brother and Third Brother?" Li Guoting flashed out from behind the big tree and asked directly.

  Ma Fei and Zhao Erhu were running forward, unaware of the person who suddenly appeared from behind a big tree by the side of the road. They were startled by the sound and were about to raise their hands in defense when they looked up and saw it was their elder brother Li Guoting. Only then did the two of them put their minds at ease.

  "Let them go, let them go. My second brother and I sent the two of them back to their hometown." Zhao Erhu looked around nervously at his own back, as if there was something following him.

  "What? Send me back home? How can I go back home? Are you...?" Li Guoting's face was full of questions, and before he could finish speaking, Ma Fei hastily took over.

  "Hey, big brother, Second Tiger is getting anxious and can't even speak properly. How are we going to send them back home? Are you daring enough to send those two back to their homes? Isn't that just asking for trouble?" He said, "We're sending those two back to their homes."

  "Yes, yes, they were sent back home." Zhao Erhu said with a lingering fear.

  "Let it go, we're just asking them for some pocket money, they did what we said and gave us the money, so let's not make things difficult for them." Li Guoting said.

  "Big brother, I and second brother didn't make things difficult for them," Zhao Erhu said.

  "It's all right as long as no trouble is caused. Let's hurry along." Li Guoting said cautiously after turning around to take a look.

  "Third brother, let's follow big brother," Ma Fei said.

  Li Guoting slung the bag of silver dollars over his shoulder and, along with Ma Fei and Zhao Erhu, walked quickly forward under the cover of night.

  Mr. Feng's family, from Old Master Feng Shiyu to the three hired workers, waited in the guest room for news after he left with the bag of silver coins and headed towards the bamboo forest as instructed by the kidnappers.

  One of the coolies spoke up, "The master can't just send the silver dollars away, he should report to the authorities. If he reports it, maybe by now the police from the government office have already arrived. Maybe they can even catch those kidnappers."

  Another long worker disagreed with him, saying: "Old Deng, this is not a good thing to say, now the outside world is in chaos. Bandits are everywhere, those guys, which one is a good person? They are all death gods under Yan Wang's command, knife-wielding men who behead people. If they take a fancy to you, you won't have a good day. Another thing, those bandits won't just be one or two people, I think they're so bold and dare to tie people up at the entrance of our city, that's also a group of people. You go report to the officials, can their informants not hear? If they can hear, can the young master and old Wang still be alive? Pig brain!"

  Another long worker said, "Yes, those bandits are not to be trifled with. They won't wait for the arrival of government troops before taking action. Those people are just here to extort money. If you give them money, they usually won't harm anyone. In our place, there was a case of bandit kidnapping last year. The master of the house paid the ransom and the person was released."

  "Pshaw, you're a wicked idea! I'm just a poor woman, don't mention silver dollars, even if they dig out my heart, as long as my child is fine, I'll be willing." The old lady spat at the face of the laborer who had just suggested going to report to the authorities and said angrily.

  The three long workers all fell silent, the one who had just been spat on by the master's wife wiped his face with a handful of spittle stars, hung his head down, pulled out a dry tobacco pipe from his pocket, pinched a small amount of tobacco from the tobacco bag, put it into the copper pot on the pipe, lit it with flint and steel, and started puffing away in a low voice 'huff huff'.

  The dim kerosene lamp emitted a faint black smoke, quietly illuminating the few people in the center of the guest room. They all stopped talking and waited for Feng Shiyu to return.

  Feng Shiyu carried the bag of silver coins to the edge of the bamboo forest mentioned in the kidnapper's letter, and in the darkness, he found the old elm tree. He walked under the tree and looked around, hoping to see the kidnapper and his son Feng Dengke. Wherever his eyes went, except for the night wind blowing through the bamboo leaves with a rustling sound, it was just a vast expanse of rice paddies reflecting the starlight. There wasn't even half a person's shadow.

  He turned back in disappointment, carefully placing the bag of silver coins under the old elm tree, and pressed it firmly into the ground with his hands, as if he was afraid that the bag of silver coins on the ground would fly away. Feeling that the bag of silver coins on the ground was indeed well-placed, he finally let go of his hand, and then he 'thudded' to kneel under the old elm tree, clasped his hands together, and bowed his head to the old elm tree like a Buddhist monk.

  "Bandit grandfather, I've brought the silver coins for you, please release my son quickly. He's my only child and without him, I won't be able to live on. Please show some mercy. Don't harm my son, he's still just a kid and doesn't understand things. If we've offended you in any way, I'll kowtow and apologize for it. Just please release my son."

  Feng Shiyu burst into tears and kowtowed several times in front of the old elm tree, then stood up and looked around again. The surroundings were still quiet, and he still didn't see anyone's figure.

  He could only walk disappointedly towards the village with a stumbling gait.

  As soon as he entered the house, his wife and the three long workers surrounded him.

  "Old man, is there any news about our son?" his wife asked.

  Feng Shiyu wiped away a tear and shook his head, saying nothing.

  "Where did you put the silver dollar?" his wife asked.

  "Hmm, let him go." Feng Shiyu replied.

  "The old master, as long as the silver is put down, nothing will happen. Those bandits took the silver and must have let the young master go. You can rest assured and wait at home." A long worker comforted Feng Shiyu.

  "Hmm, I hope those damned bandits will return our son." Feng Shiyu said.

  The whole family lost their sleep, and they could only hope that the bandits would release Xiaodong before dawn. So, they sat waiting for the rooster to crow and the sky to brighten up.

  Feng Shiyu and his wife couldn't sit still, their hearts burning with anxiety, so they walked to the village entrance to look around.

  The villagers got up early, and someone asked them what they were doing standing at the village entrance. Feng Shiyu didn't dare tell people that his son had been taken away by bandits last night, fearing that if the bandits heard about it, they would harm his son, so he said they were waiting for relatives from their maternal uncle's family, who would be arriving soon.

  So the old couple waited until the sun rose to its peak, nearing noon, but still didn't see their son appear.

  Feng Shiyu and his wife were really frightened, a sense of foreboding rose to their heads, so Feng Shiyu called the three long workers at home, telling them not to go to the fields to work, but to search around the village to see if they could find any trace of Xiao Dongjia.

  Three long workers split up and went in three directions outside the village.

  An hour passed, no news. Another hour passed, still no news. After waiting for three hours, a terrifying cry suddenly came from the abandoned brick kiln in the south of the village; "Someone's coming, someone's coming, murder! Murder!"

  The cry came from the mouth of a cowherd boy in the village. In the morning, the cowherd drove his family's water buffalo to the slope in front of the brick kiln to graze, and at noon, the water buffalo suddenly ran into the abandoned brick kiln. The cowherd followed the water buffalo and walked into the brick kiln, thinking he could pull it out. Just then, with the light shining through the skylight of the brick kiln, the cowherd saw the bodies of Feng Denglai, the young master of the Feng family, and Wang Shoulin, an old servant, who had been killed by Ma Fei and Zhao Erhu. He was so frightened that he ran out of the brick kiln and shouted loudly towards the village.

  The villagers heard the shouting and rushed to the abandoned brick kiln. Someone told Feng Shiyu, who was anxiously searching for his son in the bamboo forest outside the village, that someone had been killed at the brick kiln. The old man's legs trembled uncontrollably upon hearing this, as if he had been splashed with icy water; his teeth chattered loudly, and his body shook like a sieve. If it weren't for the villager who came forward to support him, he would have fallen to the ground.

  When Feng Shiyu and his wife arrived at the brick kiln where the incident occurred, they went in to take a look. They immediately fainted.

  Before my eyes, a tragic scene unfolded. Feng Dengke was leaning against the corner of the brick kiln wall, his eyeballs bulging out, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and he lay dead on the ground with a strip of cloth tightly wrapped around his neck. Looking at the old servant Wang Shoulin again, his whole body was covered in blood, lying on the ground, with a piece of cloth still stuffed in his mouth.

  Next to the two corpses, in another kiln of the brick kiln, that white horse was still standing there. The halter on its neck was pressed down by a pile of discarded broken bricks. The horse wanted to break free from the restraint of the halter, but unfortunately, the pile of bricks was too heavy. The white horse could only spin around in place, pawing at the ground with its hooves and neighing.

  Someone in the village rode a horse to report to the county government.

  The county magistrate personally led the police chief and a group of policemen to Chengguan Village, just three miles away from the county seat. After inspecting the scene where the kidnapping and murder took place, the county magistrate loudly declared to the crowd gathered around the brick kiln and the crying Feng family standing in front of him: "Since I arrived at this county, public security has always been good, and such a heinous crime has never occurred before. This county guarantees to all fellow villagers that we will do our best to apprehend the culprit and bring them to justice. We will not let the culprit go unpunished."

  At this time, the police chief walked up to Feng Shiyu and carefully inquired about his son being kidnapped by bandits, and also asked him to hand over the extortion letter written by Ma Fei.

  Someone in the village reported to the police chief that on that night, two half-grown children were seen wandering around at the entrance of the village. They didn't seem to be locals. Because it was dark and they weren't paying attention, they couldn't see the faces of the two people clearly. The police chief then recorded all this in a file and followed the county head back to the county government office.

  The police chief returned to the county government office, immediately summoned his subordinates, and according to the villagers' descriptions, roughly drew portraits of Li Guoting and Zhao Erhu, and wrote a wanted notice, ordering people to post it in all directions to capture these two suspects.