Peaceful Sleep

"Ergou, give each of them one tael of silver."

She asked, full of confusion, "Who is Ergou?"

"You, of course. Who else?" Lin Xuan laughed.

Lin An immediately widened her almond-shaped eyes, reached out to give his arm a light pinch, and whispered indignantly, "I just helped you come up with a plan and made a great contribution, yet you turn around and call me that!"

Lin Xuan chuckled instantly, "Haha, isn't it just to avoid revealing our identities?"

"You are still not allowed to call me that."

Seeing the varied expressions on the women's faces, Lin Xuan said, "If you don't want to, then so be it. Take the silver and go back to your respective homes."

The first to speak was the woman from Li Family Village. She wiped away her tears and kowtowed heavily:

"The young hero is right, we... we are willing to go. It's all about survival; it's better than being pointed at and gossiped about every day, or being subjected to lynch law."

The others also wept and nodded, no longer hesitating:

"I will go too..."

"I only ask for a bite to eat and a place to settle down..."

After watching Lin An distribute one tael of silver to each of them, he walked to the granary opposite the living quarters.

The bandits had indeed hoarded some grain, though not much. It looked to be about a thousand catties, enough to feed everyone on this mountain for twenty to thirty days.

But since they were all dead now, this grain couldn't just be left here to rot and mold, could it?

Coincidentally, there were carts nearby. Lin Xuan skillfully loaded the grain onto two flatbed carts, then set fire to all the living quarters and corpses in the area.

The flames rose high, the sound of cracking wood constant, while the women who had been abducted huddled nearby, basking in the warmth of the fire.

Pushing the carts of grain, Lin Xuan called out to the women, "Take care of yourselves."

Afterward, he and Lin An transported the grain down the mountain.

With one flatbed cart each, it was just enough to transport the grain without needing a second trip. There was still a little left in the warehouse, but since the carts were loaded to their limit, Lin Xuan simply treated that portion as lost.

It was still the dead of night, and the faint glow of fire on Wolf Cave Mountain was particularly conspicuous from afar.

Lin Xuan had no intention of reporting the bandit leader to the authorities to claim a reward; he might end up being slandered as a murderer of innocent civilians.

Since this grain was now ownerless, it was only natural to bring it back to his own home.

The grain weighed about a thousand catties, worth roughly twenty taels of silver. Combined with the cash they had already found, the total haul from this bandit suppression was over fifty taels.

Fifty whole taels!

It truly lived up to the saying that killing and arson lead to golden belts. Back home, they worked the fields painstakingly; after paying all kinds of harsh taxes and levies on those twenty mu of land, and deducting the costs of food and clothing, how much profit could they make in a year?

Wiping out a bandit den in a single night was worth several years of hard labor.

In reality, they could have obtained more, but Lin An's tactic of burning the houses likely destroyed a fair amount of wealth.

However, Lin Xuan didn't feel it was a pity, because without using that method, he might not have been able to defeat that gang of bandits.

After arriving home, Lin Xuan closed the gate, dropped the bolt, and lay directly on the flatbed cart to rest.

"Finally, we can get a good night's sleep." Lin Xuan looked sideways at Lin An, who was still moving the grain, feeling a sense of relief.

Ever since being intercepted by bandits on the street, Lin Xuan had been on edge, his mind entirely focused on increasing his strength. Now that the great threat was eliminated, he could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

However, he had no intention of slacking off; his strength was still far from the point where he could afford to be lazy.

Lin An nodded, not looking particularly happy, "Indeed. I just wonder how long this peaceful sleep will last."

She could sense that the order of the world was becoming increasingly chaotic. When she first arrived in Liang City, there were hardly any bandits; now, they were everywhere.

Would there eventually be more bandits than civilians?

She didn't know.

Hearing this, Lin Xuan chuckled, "Don't you worry about that. With me here, I'll keep you safe."

With that, he jumped off the cart and began practicing martial arts in the courtyard. The moon was high and the stars were sparse, their light spilling over the two of them as they worked tirelessly.

The Eidetic Memory talent he had gained from killing the bandit heir was very suitable for studying.

Yet, Lin Xuan had never considered the path of the imperial examinations to change his fate. While it required fewer resources and he had some ink in his belly, he could probably manage to secure some minor official post if he tried.

But the return period was too long, and with troubled times approaching, it was best to possess the brute strength to break through all laws.

Before he could rest, the east turned white.

The women from Wolf Cave Mountain who had borne children for the bandits did not bring their children down the mountain.

At first, one woman abandoned her child. From the bottom of her heart, she loathed that child, viewing him as a mark of humiliation, a symbol of suffering—not flesh and blood, but a karmic obstacle, a demonic fetus.

He had brought her profound misery, and she felt he shouldn't be her child, nor should she raise him; raising a child for such people was an act of sin.

Therefore, she abandoned the child, cast aside the past, found a military household to marry into, and started this life, which had already been shattered into pieces, all over again.

Even though the child cried and shouted, snot and tears streaming down his face as he asked, "Mother, are you leaving me behind?"

It was of no use.

People are prone to herd mentality. Seeing one woman abandon her child, the other women also began to harbor the same idea.

For them, the children were truly a thorny issue; their feelings were a tangled web of love and hate. This mix of resentment and pity left them at a loss, so when they saw someone take the lead, they simply followed suit.

They wanted to go to the Qin Family and marry into military households to start over, but bringing the children along would be a burden and a drag.

However, there was one older woman, Li Cui, who was different from the rest.

Watching these mothers abandon their children, she couldn't help but mutter "Amitabha" under her breath, her heart aching.

"What a sin!"

She felt these children were innocent and was unwilling to leave the mountain, nor could she bear to watch them freeze or starve to death in this wilderness; the mere thought felt like a transgression.

Yet, she knew she had no grounds to blame or criticize their mothers.

The root of all this sin did not lie with them.

She intended to raise these abandoned children herself, teaching them to turn away from evil and toward good, so they might perform many virtuous deeds in the future.

This would serve to atone for the sins she had committed to survive while caring for the bandits, and it would also allow them to make amends for the sins of their fathers.

The other women had all descended the mountain, but she remained behind.

Once everyone had left, she went to the residential area that had been burned to ashes and ruins, using a wooden stick to sift through the debris in hopes of finding some money or valuables.

Her search actually yielded results; a moment later, an intact jade pendant appeared before her eyes.

Li Cui blew the ash off the surface of the jade pendant, and the soot drifted away instantly. She let out a surprised cry: "Isn't this... the jade pendant Wang Mazi accidentally found when he came to Rou Mountain?"

Wang Mazi was one of the bandits of Wolf Cave Mountain and also Li Cui's "husband." He had shown her this item once before, then hid it away, presumably because he believed it to be extraordinary.