Chapter 72: Unlucky Shen Villagers (2)

They lost so much food, and everyone felt heartbroken about it.

Those who had their food stolen chased after the thieves for hundreds of meters but couldn’t catch up, so they returned cursing and grumbling.

“These damn thieves! They even steal our food.
I wish they choked on it,” grumbled Old Lady Wu.

Her family’s food had been stolen the most.

Since they couldn’t retrieve the food, they had to continue on their journey, hoping that once they reached the capital, the prince would surely find a good place for them.

However, misfortune struck again.

When they stopped to rest in the evening, another incident occurred.

After finding a suitable place to rest, they ate a simple meal and went to sleep.

As usual, Shen Lizheng arranged for five people to take turns keeping watch.

However, after the others had fallen asleep, those five individuals, like before, started to doze off.

Nothing had ever happened during the night, so they naturally assumed that nothing unexpected would occur.

Therefore, when a group of people quietly approached, the nearly two hundred residents of Shen’s village remained blissfully unaware, sound asleep.

Under the moonlight, it was possible to see a large number of people quietly approaching from a distance.
Their greedy gazes were fixed on the resting place of the villagers of Shen’s village.

And what caught their eyes, in addition to the food, were the children soundly sleeping next to the adults!

“Ah! They’re stealing the children!” a woman’s scream jolted the sleeping individuals awake.

The woman desperately clung to the child who had almost been taken away.

The intense pain in her arm made the child cry out in agony.

“Wah-wah-wah~~ It hurts, it hurts so much,” the child repeated over and over again.

However, it was precisely this sharp cry that completely woke up the people of Shen’s village, who were still in a daze and unaware of what was happening.

When those people saw that everyone was awake, they knew that if they delayed any longer, they would lose even what they had already taken.

Someone quickly made a decisive decision and shouted, “Everyone run!”

After speaking, the person who was still struggling with the woman for the child dropped the child, grabbed the bag on the ground, and turned around to run.

The woman held onto the child, who had almost been taken away, and cried bitterly.

At this point, the other people who had already reacted also began to shout loudly.

“Stop the thief! My family’s food has been stolen!”

“My grandson is missing, he must have been taken away by those people just now.
Everyone, please help me find my child!”

For a moment, cries of sorrow, pleas for help, and angry shouts mixed together creating a chaotic noise.

They only knew how to sit and cry, failing to utilize the precious time to chase after the thieves.

By the time they stopped crying and tried to retrieve their lost food and children, the culprits had already scattered and fled in all directions.

But clearly, other people were not as lucky.

In the dim night, they had no idea where to find those people.

The woman who managed to retrieve her child felt immense relief.
Luckily, she woke up upon sensing the commotion, ensuring her child was not lost.

However, others were not as fortunate.

The household of Old Lady Wu, who had already suffered multiple disasters, was in chaos.
They had chosen to rest on the outskirts of the crowd, finding it too hot and stuffy inside.
Unfortunately, this made them the prime targets for the thieves.

Her young grandson, only six and a half years old, was snatched away by a swift figure right when she heard the shouts.

But she hadn’t even realized what had happened, and by the time she had reacted, her grandson was gone.

In addition to Old Lady Wu’s family, two other families lost their children.
The rest lost the most food.

“Damn it, they’ve already robbed us in the afternoon, and now they’re back.
These black-hearted scoundrels!”

The quiet night was completely disturbed by the noise.

Old Lady Wu and the other two families who lost their children couldn’t find their children and had nowhere to vent their grief.

Suddenly, they remembered that they had someone on night watch.
Where was the night watchman?

Just now, there was a thief who came by.
Why didn’t the watchmen wake them up beforehand?

If they had been awakened, this wouldn’t have happened.

Old Lady Wu got up from the ground in one roll and blurted out, “Whoever was on night watch tonight, you owe me for my grandson.”

The other families who had lost their children and food finally found a way to vent their anger and began to gather around the night watchmen.

The five night watchmen were dumbfounded when they saw this and were afraid that they would be blamed for the incident.
They quickly tried to excuse themselves.

“It wasn’t us.
It’s already the latter half of the night, so it should be the other five people on watch.
This has nothing to do with us,” they said.

“It’s not our fault either.
The people who were on watch before us should have woken us up when they finished their shift, but they didn’t,” they continued.

Both sides insisted on their own explanations and were unwilling to take the blame.

Old Lady Wu saw that her own son was among the night watchmen tonight and went up to him and gave him two slaps.

“You bastard, your own son was taken away, and you were sleeping on watch.
I’ll beat you to death, you scoundrel!” she shouted.

As soon as she delivered those two slaps, it was like she had opened a strange button, and everyone else followed suit.

They didn’t care about who was right or wrong anymore.

Everyone rushed forward and beat the ten people who were supposed to be on watch tonight.

It wasn’t until dawn that this farce slowly calmed down.

The tension in everyone’s heart loosened, and they sat on the ground in a daze.

They had made such a fuss all night, but they didn’t have the courage to say that they wanted to leave alone.

If they couldn’t even protect themselves when they were together, how could they protect themselves when they were alone, especially when they had so much food with them?

At this moment, they realized how lucky they were to have traveled with Shen family.

They thought that they would be safe from bandits since they were getting close to the prefecture, so they didn’t try to convince Shen’s family to stay with them when they said they were going south.

A woman who had lost her child sobbed and said, “In this year of famine, what’s the point of stealing children? It’s just adding another mouth to feed.”

A voice explained, “They have no food left, they’re capable of anything.
Have you forgotten about those bandits who resorted to cannibalism?”

As soon as those words were spoken, the people who had lost their children broke down, crying uncontrollably.

They had initially thought that someone without children had taken their children to raise them, which would at least mean they were alive.

But if they were being treated as food…

On the other hand, the journey towards the south with the Shen family was relatively calm, but trouble awaited Shen Yu’an and her family as they further their trip.