Chapter 50: Discovering the Kidnapped Child

Chapter 50: Chapter 50: Discovering the Kidnapped Child

Gou Ya raised her head as instructed. The skin on the tip of her nose and her left cheek was scraped and covered in dirt. She looked like a complete mess.

Deng Yuyuan gently washed her wounds with water and asked a male educated youth to call the barefoot doctor over to take a look. Gou Ya tried to stop her, but Deng Yuyuan refused to listen this time.

"These are injuries on your face. If we don’t treat them properly and they leave scars, it’ll be troublesome."

Although such scars could easily be removed by a minor cosmetic procedure when she grew up, Gou Ya was already highly sensitive. If the scars remained for now, there was no telling how insecure she would become.

The barefoot doctor instructed Gou Ya not to go outside before her wounds healed, and especially to avoid the sun. Deng Yuyuan had her stay home to play with Tuantuan. Coincidentally, Zhang Ci Hao had been busy with who-knows-what lately and visited much less frequently. Without a childcare genius around, they had to make up for it in numbers!

As for Deng Yuyuan herself, she woke up fully refreshed, practiced a routine of the Eight Pieces of Brocade in the yard, and headed up the mountain again.

After just three days of absence, the small cave had become quite unfamiliar. Deng Yuyuan’s expression instantly turned cold.

The people who had taken up residence in the cave were smart. They had even put up a disguise to make it look uninhabited—which would have worked, had someone else not already done the same.

Seeing that her own disguise had been altered, Deng Yuyuan first exchanged for a military butterfly knife from the Farm Game Mall. Gripping the knife and a flashlight, she pushed the tall grass aside and shined the light inside at maximum brightness.

CAW.

CLICK CLACK.

Inside the cave were two muscular, honest-looking thugs and two tied-up children. One of the children lay collapsed on the ground, his head bleeding.

Did this count as her stealing the female protagonist’s fateful encounter? Deng Yuyuan felt a profound sense of helplessness, as if she had just been forcefully dragged into someone else’s mess.

"A pretty, weak woman?" The two thugs’ expressions shifted from alert to relaxed the moment they laid eyes on Deng Yuyuan. They let out lecherous laughs, completely unrestrained. "Oh, a little prey delivered herself to our doorstep. Come here and let us have a kiss, sweetheart, and we’ll spare your life."

The thugs exchanged a glance. One stayed inside the cave, while the other swaggered over. He completely disregarded Deng Yuyuan, assuming she was just some village girl who had wandered in by mistake while gathering firewood.

Deng Yuyuan’s gaze shifted slightly. The wooden memorial tablet she had carved was still in its original place, indicating that they hadn’t been here for long. She had previously hollowed out a corner of the cave and placed spices and daily necessities in a crevice of the stone wall. The burnt campfire had also been simply cleaned up, making the place look like a cave briefly used by hunters in the past.

Deng Yuyuan hid the butterfly knife in her sleeve, displayed a perfectly timed expression of fear, took a few steps back, and turned to run.

"She runs pretty fast." The thug licked his lips lecherously and shouted into the cave, "Stop guarding those two little brats. They can’t run far anyway. Let’s go catch that woman together. She looks mighty fine."

The other thug figured he was right. Just one glance at that woman had snatched his soul away. In that split second, he had even entertained the thought of keeping her as a plaything forever instead of selling her. He roughly yanked the unconscious little boy up from the ground, tied him securely with a rope, and tossed him back beside the young master of the Meng Family. The young master was already scared witless; he stared blankly at the ground, teeth chattering, completely frozen.

"Hmph. If I come back and find that you two have escaped..." The thug glared at them with a warning in his eyes. "I’ll break your arms and legs and throw you out to be beggars. Since you love running outside so much."

Neither child made a sound. Knowing that they had been thoroughly intimidated, the thug grabbed a bundle of rope with peace of mind and rushed out.

Deng Yuyuan continuously used the terrain to loop around the first thug, giving him the illusion that he could catch her as long as he cleared the nearby obstacles. Seeing the other thug quietly coming up from the side to outflank her, Deng Yuyuan slightly increased her speed and ran further away. She first needed to draw both men away from the cave, observing them through her peripheral vision.

Both thugs had steady footwork; they were trained martial artists. One wielded a knife, while the other carried a rope. If Deng Yuyuan wanted to kill both of them by herself, she could only bet on them underestimating her enough. As long as they clung to the idea of capturing her alive, she would make sure they never returned.

After widening the distance, the two thugs split up again, still intent on catching her in a pincer movement. While the distance between them was still too large for them to support each other, Deng Yuyuan grabbed a branch and kicked herself up a tree.

The two thugs began to sense that something was off. This woman dared to climb the mountain alone; she definitely had some skills. However, climbing a tree might work against wild beasts, but against humans, it wasn’t nearly enough.

But no one expected that as soon as Deng Yuyuan scaled the tree, she immediately leaped down onto one of the thugs. The glinting silver blade sliced straight across his carotid artery, killing him in a single strike.

Spurts of blood splashed across half of Deng Yuyuan’s face, making her look like a vengeful Asura.

Deng Yuyuan picked up the knife that had fallen from the corpse’s hand and looked at the thug holding the rope. Realizing the situation had gone south, he tried to bypass her and rush back to the cave. Deng Yuyuan relentlessly intercepted him. Before he could retaliate, she threw a bottle of liquid at him, landing a direct hit.

Shattered clay shards pierced his flesh, and his clothes were soaked with the potion. Valuing his life, he realized Deng Yuyuan’s skills were far beyond that of an ordinary person. Fearing she was a professional scout hired by the Meng Family, he didn’t dare face her head-on. With a quick dodge, he disappeared into the mountains.

Seeing the direction he fled, Deng Yuyuan raised an eyebrow.

GASP. The AI game customer service was also stunned by this development.

Deng Yuyuan exchanged for a shovel and first overturned the soil where the potion had spilled, using the dirt to cover up the scent. What she had just splashed wasn’t poison or a knockout drug, but a rare yet obtainable veterinary aphrodisiac used in rural areas. Exchanged from the Farm Game Mall, its quality and quantity were guaranteed. It would undoubtedly cause wild beasts to track down their "crush" from miles away.

And the deep mountains, where the thug had blindly fled in panic, just so happened to house a wild boar nest.

"Amen. May the Bodhisattva bless him, may God bless him, may the Buddha bless him. What a sin," the AI prayed.

For the umpteenth time, Deng Yuyuan complained, "Can’t you just let me put real-world items into my farm warehouse?"

"Give me a hundred gold coins, and I’ll open a backdoor for you," the system replied.

That was incredibly extortionate.

A willing victim takes the bait. Deng Yuyuan obediently paid the fee and stored the military butterfly knife into the farm warehouse. She then picked up the dead thug’s knife and rubbed it against his wound a few times to coat it in blood, altering the injury so it no longer looked like a clean, one-strike kill.

After all, she was just an ordinary educated youth; how could she possibly have such formidable skills?

Carrying her axe, she retrieved the bamboo basket she had tossed aside earlier and hurried back to the cave.

The little boy with the head injury was already running a fever. Deng Yuyuan tore open her sleeve, briefly wiped his wound, and bandaged it.

"The one who’s still awake, get into the bamboo basket yourself and adjust your seating position. I’ll carry you down."