Chapter 155： village

An hour later, Wen Fu and several villagers returned without success. Not only did they not find the horses and mules, they also failed to find the pigs and cows that the Jiangjia villagers had put into the forest.

Old man Jiang sighed, but soon stopped worrying about it.

As long as people are around, it’s good. Those things are just external possessions. You can buy them later when you make money.

It was not until evening that all the people in the cave were freed.

People from Jiangjia Village returned to the village one after another.

When Uncle Jiang learned that his younger brother and his family were also going back to the village, he sighed and said goodbye to his younger brother with tears in his eyes.

But as soon as he entered the village, he found that the entire village had been burned down, and not a single house was intact.

The villagers sat beside the ruins and cried loudly, and some even criticized Jiang Sanlang and his family.

“If it weren’t for them, how could we have encountered such a disaster?”

"That's right! Our village was fine when they didn't come, but now it's fine, it's all over!"

Jiang Jiu couldn't listen anymore and said angrily: "That's enough! Didn't you go to the next village to have a look? Or go to a village further away! Is there any village like ours without any casualties? If my brother hadn't run all night Come here to warn me, you would have died in the house! How can you still mourn here?"

“Hmph! A bunch of white-eyed wolves!” Uncle Jiang snorted coldly: “My nephew shouldn’t have saved you!”

Jiang Dahu sighed, "Okay, okay, don't cry anymore. At least everyone is here, and all the family members are here. Let's quickly think of ways to build a house. It's about to get cold. What's the use of complaining here!"

“Build a house? What if the bandits come again?”

“Yes, if the bandits come, won’t your work be in vain?”

Jiang Dahu glared: "Then the bandits won't come if you're just crying here?"

Uncle Jiang rolled his eyes: "It's up to you whether to build a house or not. The weather is getting colder and colder. When the time comes, just dig holes and live with blind rats. This will save you from having to work in vain when the bandits come!"

Villagers:…

Let’s talk about Patriarch Chen and Old Man Jiang.

Wang Dashan brought a message after returning.

“All the bandits have gone to the county seat!”

Wang Dashan took a sip of the water handed over by Jiang Cheng and said, "I saw with my own eyes that there were many people holding animal tooth flags, as well as mules, horses and carts. There were thousands of people in the crowd."

Old man Jiang frowned: "Going to the county town? Are they trying to attack the county town?"

Chief Chen also looked solemn, "No wonder the villages were raided. It turned out that they wanted to prepare food and grass before attacking the city."

"This is terrible. My Dalang Erlang and the others haven't come back yet. I wonder if they were captured by them." Old Man Jiang became more and more frightened as he thought about it.

Chief Chen: "Don't guess anything. Let's go back to the village quickly. If Sanlang and the others don't see anyone when they come back, they will definitely return to the village. We can't stay here for long."

“Okay, let’s go back to the village first.”

Everyone picked up their ceremonial bedding and the remaining food and got up, following Old Man Jiang and his family towards Chencun.

Jiangjiacun is twenty miles away from Chencun, but that's the official road distance. If you walk from the trail, it's more than twenty miles.

At this moment, it was completely dark, and they only dared to light two torches and move forward, one at each end to illuminate everyone.

No one in the entire team made any noise, even Wen Tian didn't make a sound, just because Mrs. Lin gave a bracelet to a villager and asked him to carry Wen Tian on his back while walking.

When they encountered villages along the way, they stayed far away, even the torches were extinguished, and everyone just kept one foot deep and one foot shallow while burying their heads on the road.

Finally arrived at Chencun in the middle of the night.

From a distance, the village was dark, and there was not even a dog barking.

Clan Chief Chen went to Old Man Jiang to discuss, "You can't enter the village at the moment. You have to let someone go to explore the situation first."

Old man Jiang nodded, "Okay! How about we go to the south **** first, which is far away from the village and has bamboo forests. If there are no bandits stationed, everyone can stay at my house first."

“Okay, let’s do it like this.” Patriarch Chen immediately nodded in agreement.

Autumn nights are cold and cold, so sleeping outdoors is not an option. Many people don’t even have bedding. If they freeze all night, they won’t get sick. It’s best to have a place to shelter from the wind and rain. So Wang Dashan and a villager ran into the darkness, first going to the south **** to check if there were any bandits.

They came back less than half an hour later, and said to Old Man Jiang without words: "It is true that there are no bandits on Nanpo, but your house was burned down."

Old man Jiang was stunned for a moment, and his heart ached to the point of bleeding, "Are you all burned?"

Wang Dashan nodded, "Uncle Jiang's house is fine. Only the kitchen was burned down, but the main house was not damaged much."

Chunniang breathed a sigh of relief when she heard this.

Old man Jiang was silent for a moment and said, "Then let's go to the south **** quickly." It was already late at night, and it would be dawn in an hour or two.

“Okay, let’s set off quickly.” Patriarch Chen took the lead and walked forward, feeling quite unhappy.

Even the Jiang family’s house in Nanpo was burned down, but what about our own house? Alas, what a disaster.

The group soon arrived at Jiang’s house in Nanpo.

Through the moonlight, the once neat large tile-roofed house has become dilapidated.

The Jiang Sanlang family is fine. Although the kitchen was burned down, only a corner of the three large tile-roofed houses was destroyed. As long as a few tiles are repaired, there should be no big problem.

Chun Niang ran into the house first and saw that the house was in a mess. There were ashes and burn marks from the fire on the ground, as well as discarded rags. The earthen kang in the house was also in a mess, as if many people had slept on it. .

All kinds of leftover bones and food scraps were thrown all over the floor, even on the kang.

What makes Chun Niang most distressed is that all the furniture and other items in the house are missing.

However, the floor tiles where the silver was buried in the corner of the room had not been touched, which made Chun Niang happy and worried, but she could not dig up and check at this time.

Find a broom in the yard to clean the earthen kang, spread the bedding brought back on the kang, and let my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, second sister-in-law, and two nieces go to sleep on the kang first, while I, my daughter, and my two sons crowded beside me.

They waited until tomorrow to discuss everything. After driving most of the night, they were almost exhausted and exhausted.

The other room was also full of women and children. Mrs. Wen, her daughter and nanny were crowded on the Yingbao Kang with many other women.

The men made bunks on the floor in the main room, barely surviving until dawn the next day.

It was already three o'clock in the morning. When Ying Bao got up, he saw two large iron pots in his yard, filled with two large pots of rice porridge.

Grandpa and Patriarch Chen sat under the eaves and listened to Wang Dashan's report on the situation in the village.

“There were no bandits in the village, but many houses were burned down.”

“Has anyone come back from the village?” Chief Chen asked.

Wang Dashan: “A few families have returned and are cleaning up their houses.”

Patriarch Chen stroked his beard and asked again: "My house was also burned down?"

“That’s not true, but several rooms in Third Grandpa’s house were burned down.”

Wang Dashan’s mother stretched out her head from the window and asked: “Da Shan, where is our family?”

Wang Dashan: “It was also burned.”

Dashan Niang frowned, but she was not too sad because her family built a house on the south slope. Although it only had a frame, the bricks, tiles and wood they bought were piled on the south slope.

Since the house in the village has been burned down, I simply won’t go back home. At worst, I will live in the wall frame and wait for my husband to come home and put the roof on it.

She also had the same idea as Li Dayong and Li Eryong's family, because they also built a house on the south **** and had not had time to build a roof.

When the bandits first came out, the blind old father refused to burden his children and grandchildren and insisted on letting them send him to the south slope. Then he stayed alone within the wall of the south **** and lived off the dry food and water left by his son.

Early this morning, Li Dao and Li He went to the wall frame of their home to look for their grandfather. Unexpectedly, their blind grandfather was not killed by the bandits, and there was no shortage of food.

Not only was there no shortage, but there was also a small bag of rice.

According to the blind grandfather, someone gave him a bag of grain and told him to live well.