Chapter 20

Inside the carriage, Feng Yang slowly opened his eyes and looked at Yin Li, who had somehow fallen fast asleep against his shoulder.

Probably exhausted by the ghost encounter that night, Yin Li had started dozing off as soon as he got in the car. Before long, he was sleeping soundly against the window. The road was full of potholes, and the car jolted all the way along. Yin Li's head gradually rolled from the window onto Feng Yang's shoulder. Soft and heavy, his scorching breath occasionally brushed Feng Yang's neck.

The sensation was nothing like that of a cold, icy vengeful ghost.

Feng Yang absentmindedly curled his fingers. The silent Vengeful Ghost Talisman gave no response this time.

That ghost had already vanished completely, body and soul.

Nothing happened that night. Early the next morning, Chairman Yin took his wife and two children back to Beijing. Apparently, Old Master Yin was deeply worried about his grandson and granddaughter's safety and had repeatedly called to urge them home.

Before leaving, Yin Li clung to Feng Yang and refused to let go. He repeated over and over, "Remember to call me before you come to Yanjing. I'll pick you up. You have to come early. I'll show you around Yanjing."

Chairman Yin and his wife stood by the car, smiling as they watched the two boys struggle to part. Chairman Yin even invited Father Feng to open a Feng family hotel in Beijing.

Feng Jianguo and his wife politely declined with smiles. They had spent most of their lives in Songjiang Province, where all their relatives and friends were, and they had grown used to it. Beijing was a fine place, but not an easy one to settle down in. Feng Jianguo did not want to disrupt their peaceful life just to expand the business.

Seeing how unusually resolute the couple was, Chairman Yin said no more.

Meanwhile, after saying goodbye to everyone in the Feng family one by one, Yin Qing shyly walked up to Feng Fei and asked in a tiny voice, "Big Brother Feng Fei, when are you coming to Beijing?"

Feng Fei laughed heartily, thick-skinned as ever. "Once my little brother goes to college, our whole family will definitely take him to Beijing together."

Yin Qing hesitated, but still gathered her courage and said, "Then my brother and I will take you all out to have fun."

Everyone smiled as they watched the two interact.

It was rather strange. Feng Yang had been the one to save Yin Qing's life, but during these two days in Peach Blossom Village, Yin Qing had barely spoken with Feng Yang. Instead, she preferred trailing after Feng Fei.

Part of it was certainly because Feng Yang had been too busy with miscellaneous matters to look after Yin Qing. More importantly, compared with the polite Feng Yang, who seemed warm on the outside but cold within, Yin Qing instinctively wanted to get closer to the rough, straightforward, warmhearted Feng Fei.

She followed Feng Fei to carry water, pick peaches, feed dogs, and dig wild vegetables. This pampered young lady had never experienced such fun and interesting rural life. Of course, she had also rarely encountered a blunt, carefree rough man like Feng Fei.

Feng Jianguo and his wife thought Yin Qing was pretty, gentle, and cheerful, and they were quite pleased to see it. As for what Chairman Yin and his wife thought, that was harder to say. In terms of family background and status, the Feng family, merely local tycoons, could not compare to the Yin family, a powerful force that had crossed the river. Yin Corporation was, after all, a multinational conglomerate.

Fortunately, Feng Fei himself seemed utterly clueless.

After the Yin family of four left, Feng Jianguo and his wife also suggested departing. Feng Yang still had to fulfill his agreements with Wen Wan and Huo Yanran, so he could not leave for the time being. He suggested that his parents and older brother stay and simply treat it as a family vacation.

Feng Jianguo laughed and complained, "When other families travel, they go abroad. At the very least, they go somewhere like the Maldives or the South China Sea. Our family, though? We come to some poor mountain backwater to pick peaches and grow vegetables. With all this free time, we might as well go back to the village and visit your maternal grandparents!"

Feng Yang's heart stirred. He remembered how, in his previous life, he and the vengeful ghost had returned to their hometown to sweep graves and encountered that scholar water ghost in the river by the village entrance.

He was an old acquaintance, too. If there was a chance in this life, he could go back and see him.

And he had not tasted Grandma's braised carp in a long time.

At Feng Yang's insistence, the Feng family stayed in A City for another three days.

At noon on the fourth day, Feng Yang received word that some of the remains excavated from Peach Blossom Mountain had been identified. The police had already notified the victims' families to come identify the bodies.

Among them were Wen Wan's and Huo Yanran's parents.

Chapter 20

Wen Wan was the first to tip Feng Yang off.

The moment the girl's parents set foot in A City, she sensed two powerful bloodline connections. She immediately told Feng Yang and hoped to see her parents as soon as possible.

On Feng Yang's side, he had been using the filming crew as a cover to interview the families of victims who had arrived in A City one after another to identify the bodies.

Feng Yang had only done this because he wanted to approach the vengeful ghosts' families in a way that would not arouse suspicion and quietly fulfill the agreements. However, once the filming crew and livestream team came into close contact with those desperate, broken families, faithfully recording their agonized wails—like cuckoos crying blood—on camera, and even uploading videos of interviews with those families to the livestream, many things changed.

There were white-haired parents kneeling in the morgue, clutching photos of their daughters and weeping in despair; fathers in their prime who had traveled all over the country searching for their missing children, only to find a few bones in the end, then, overwhelmed by the shock, wanted to kill the traffickers for revenge; and young children left maimed after being rescued by the police, along with deranged women. Even though they had been thoroughly mosaicked, viewers could still feel the terror and despair crashing over them...

Scene after scene of inconsolable, hysterical grief once again made onlookers clearly realize the crimes of human traffickers. To satisfy their vile desires and greed, these people had not merely ruined the lives of young girls and innocent children. They had destroyed the happiness and futures of countless families.

Thanks to the nonstop follow-up coverage from Tao Xiaotao and the other two streamers, as well as various media outlets, the case drew increasingly widespread public attention. During that time, Sheep Village's residents and the arrested traffickers all claimed during interviews that they had nightmares after falling asleep, to the point that they did not even dare close their eyes at night and suffered greatly from mental torment. Everyone unanimously commented, "They did guilty things during the day, so they can't sleep at night." Some believed the traffickers were saying it to win sympathy, but their actions were simply not worthy of anyone's sympathy.