Qi Family Village!!

Su Yao's ears instantly perked up, and her eyes went round as saucers:

"Eh? Upholding justice? Kill who? No, no, no—how are we going to uphold justice?"

Wang Lang set down his teacup and got straight to the point. "Qi Family Village. A village under Black Stone City, seventy or eighty li from here."

He paused, then added, "I heard there's a famine there."

Su Yao reacted quickly, her fox tail swaying lightly. "So you're going there... to distribute grain?"

Wang Lang did not answer, merely urging her, "Hurry up and eat your roast chicken. Once you're done, get ready to leave."

"I plan to see what exactly is going on."

After Wang Lang said that, Su Yao no longer found the roast chicken in front of her appetizing.

It was half an hour later by the time they had properly sorted out the supplies they had just moved into Listening Waves Mountain Manor. Then the man and fox left the manor.

Wang Lang had no particularly advanced movement technique, but his body had been tempered through a thousand trials and a hundred refinements. Even moving through the mountain forests on physical strength alone, he was absurdly fast.

With every step he took, the earth beneath his feet sank slightly, and his figure shot forward like an arrow loosed from the bowstring.

Su Yao turned into a streak of white, nimbly following at his side without falling behind in the slightest.

"Langzi, what are we doing? Charging straight in? Taking down all those heartless, wealthy scoundrels..."

Su Yao was brimming with excitement, swiping her claws through the air several times and raising faint sounds of wind breaking.

Wang Lang cut her off. "We take only grain. No killing, unless necessary."

"Huh? Why? Aren't they bad people?" Su Yao asked in confusion.

Wang Lang's voice was calm. "Kill one batch, and another will rise. If the village falls into chaos because of slaughter, that would be worse."

"So we only need to distribute grain. I'll pay them silver myself."

Of the five hundred taels City Lord Zhou of Qinglin City had given him earlier, roughly four hundred remained after his spending.

Naturally, those four hundred taels were all kept as silver notes.

Without a storage Magic Tool, who would carry that much silver on their person while traveling?

Su Yao seemed to understand, though not entirely, and asked no more questions.

She knew Wang Lang had his own reasons for doing things, and those reasons were often deeper than what she had considered.

Black Stone City lay northwest of Qinglin City, while Qi Family Village was to its east.

Wang Lang did not enter the city. He skirted around its drab gray walls, passing through forests and across wilderness all the way, waiting patiently until sunset before approaching the village.

They arrived as dusk settled on all sides.

What they saw was even more shocking than the old man at the tea stall had described.

The bark on several old elm trees at the village entrance had all been stripped away.

The fields were cracked like tortoise shells, their seedlings yellow and withered, flattened against the ground without a trace of green in sight.

Several thatched huts had collapsed halfway, yet no one repaired them. Their pitch-black gaps gaped up at the sky.

The village itself was deathly quiet. In the twilight, there was almost no cooking smoke to be seen,

Only scattered sobs and muffled coughing drifted from those ruined houses.

Wang Lang frowned.

Qinglin City was not exactly prosperous, but the people in its surrounding villages could at least barely scrape by.

How could the area around Black Stone City be so bleak when both belonged to Yuan Province?

His gaze swept over the dirt road at the village entrance.

There were actually disorderly footprints there, along with wagon tracks—not the traces of ordinary villagers coming and going.

Looking more closely, he could faintly make out several crude sheds around the outskirts of the village. Though there was no one in sight, there were signs that fires had been lit.

"Soldiers were stationed here," Wang Lang said quietly.

Su Yao sniffed lightly. "Mm. The human scent is mixed up, and there's blood too... There were quite a few people, but it seems they've withdrawn now?"

"They surrounded it without sealing it off." Wang Lang's voice turned cold. "They intend to trap everyone here until they die."

The high-walled estates at the western end of the village stood out especially sharply in the dusk, with blue-brick walls, gray tiles, and imposing gate towers.

Faint barking, laughter, chatter, and even the music of strings and pipes came from inside their walls.

It formed a stark contrast with the ruin and deathly silence around them.

Wang Lang signaled Su Yao to be quiet, then moved like smoke and silently slipped behind a half-collapsed thatched hut.

The weak coughing of an old man came from inside.

He gently knocked on the battered wooden door.

After quite a while, the door finally opened a crack, revealing an old face like dried tree bark. Clouded eyes warily examined the outside.

At the sight of Wang Lang's burly figure, the old man visibly shuddered and was about to close the door.

"Don't be afraid, sir." Wang Lang lowered his voice and took out half a piece of dry rations from his clothes, offering it over.

"Wang was passing through and saw the village's miserable state. I wanted to ask what happened."

The old man stared at the rations, his Adam's apple bobbing, yet he did not dare take them.

Wang Lang directly pressed the food into his hand. Only then did the old man tremblingly open the door.

The room was dim. Aside from a broken bed, it was practically bare to the four walls. A thin child lay atop a pile of straw in the corner.

"What a sin..." The old man took a bite of the dry rations and began to recount the story through an indistinct mouthful.

Qi Family Village had eighty-three households. It had once been a village capable of supporting itself.

But after last autumn's harvest, an order came from Black Stone City, saying City Lord wanted to stockpile grain for war preparations. The taxes were raised by thirty percent.

That was not all. Master Qi, the village's wealthiest household head, volunteered to take on the task of collecting grain, claiming he wished to ease City Lord's burdens.

"That Qi the Skinner..." The old man gritted his teeth. "He emptied every village granary and did not leave behind a single grain of rice!"

"This spring's drought ruined all the crops. He went to the city to request relief, but when he came back, he said City Lord had ordered that the village had an epidemic and no one was allowed in or out..."

Wang Lang asked, "Those traces at the village entrance..."

"Sigh, those were left by Black Stone City's soldiers back then. They surrounded us for two months."

The old man began coughing before continuing:

"They said they feared the plague would spread. But what plague was there? Everyone died of hunger..."

"And all the young men in our village were conscripted into the city, supposedly for forced labor building the walls. None of them ever came back."

"Only the old, weak, women, and children remain. We're just waiting to die."

"Master Qi has grain in his home?"

"How could he not?!" The old man's eyes reddened. "The smell of meat drifts out every day! Even his dogs eat better than we do!"

"A few days ago, Widow Li went to beg for a bite to eat. The household guards beat her out, and the next day she..."

The old man could not go on, only wiping away tears.

Wang Lang quietly asked several other households as well. Their accounts were much the same.

One household had only a half-grown child left, both parents having starved to death. Whenever Master Qi was mentioned, there was nothing in that child's eyes but numb hatred.

With every household he questioned, the coldness in Wang Lang's heart deepened by another degree.

He had originally planned to buy grain with money. Four hundred taels in silver notes should have been enough to exchange for some life-saving food.

But now, it seemed Master Qi was not someone who could be dealt with through money.

Give a man like that money, and he would only see you as a fat sheep. He could turn around and summon Black Stone City's soldiers to arrest you as a bandit.

As for Black Stone City's city lord...

Under the official system of the Limitless Dynasty, cities were established beneath provincial prefectures, and City Lords were generally of the Fifth Rank or Subordinate Fifth Rank.

They were not major court officials, but in their territories, they were like local emperors.

City Lord Zhou of Qinglin City might have been corrupt as well, but at least he understood that a thin stream flows long. The people under his jurisdiction could still survive.

But this city lord of Black Stone City clearly wanted the lives of the people under his rule.

"Killing an official is a grave crime. But if the one killed deserves to die..."

Wang Lang touched the mask tucked inside his clothes. It was a damaged Nuo Mask he had casually picked up along the road. Only half remained, its face as ferocious as a ghost's.

That would make things easier later.