Hello, Welcome to Merit Supermarket (SUPERMARKET)
Between the Jin'an District and Fengpu District, there was a small mountain village. According to the data, this was the location of the trafficked woman.
Although this place couldn't be considered completely desolate, it was indeed not a prosperous village. The road between the village and the town was usually only traveled by villagers, but today, three outsiders appeared on this road.
"You're just guilty! Otherwise, why not let me take a look?" The nearly seventy-year-old man let out a blood-curdling cry.
In front of him was a group of fierce-looking villagers, led by Liu Laosan from the village.
"I said there's nothing here! What are you making such a fuss about? You didn't take care of your own daughter, and now you want to blame us for her disappearance? Old man, don't think I won't hit you just because you're old!" As he spoke, he swung the hoe in his hand forcefully.
The hoe nearly hit the old man's head, but instead of apologizing, the villager laughed maliciously.
The two elderly people were terrified and filled with anger, but the three of them—two old and one weak—were no match for the villagers.
"Grandpa, Grandma! Let's go report this to the police! I don't believe the law can't deal with them!" The underage girl was trembling with rage.
However, she didn't realize that as she spoke, the eyes of several villagers lit up.
They stared at the girl like wolves that had been starving for three days spotting a plump, tender fawn, and eager to snatch her away from the two old deer in the next second.
The grandmother clearly noticed the malicious looks in their eyes. She tugged at her husband's sleeve and whispered, "Old man, let's leave here. The three of us are no match for them."
They did want to find the woman, but that didn't mean they were willing to risk their granddaughter's safety.
Judging by the behavior of these people, they might end up losing their granddaughter before they even found their daughter.
Reminded by her words, the old man also noticed the villagers' gazes and felt a chill run down his spine. He wished he could gouge out their eyes!
But his wife was right—they couldn't stay here any longer, or their granddaughter might also "disappear".
Gritting his teeth, he said angrily, "You just wait! Let's go!"
Unfortunately, while it was easy to come, leaving wouldn't be so simple.
Seeing their prey about to escape, a few impatient villagers tried to block their way.
"Hey, old man, I have a crazy woman at my house with the surname Wen. Why don't you come and take a look?" someone quickly approached them.
When he got a close look at the girl's fair and full face, his gaze became even more lecherous and disgusting.
"By the way, my crazy wife looks a lot like this girl. Why don't you come to my house and see for yourself?" As he spoke, he reached out his hand toward the girl.
The grandfather pulled his granddaughter behind him, while the grandmother tightly embraced her, with their eyes wary as they watched the villagers closing in.
The moment the man reached out to her, the girl felt as if darkness had suddenly enveloped her vision.
But when she saw her grandparents fiercely protecting her, her fear transformed into a surge of raging anger.
In truth, she hadn’t come here completely unprepared.
In her pocket, she carried a folding fruit knife.
If they continued to press her like this, she would…
As the group of villagers surrounded the three of them, a black cat suddenly appeared above their heads. With a swift sweep of its tail, slap slap slap—deep red marks appeared simultaneously on the faces of the villagers.
"Meow meow meow meow meow!"
‘Filthy humans, prepare to meet your doom!’
The black cat perched on the girl’s shoulder, baring its sharp teeth and glaring with fierce, slit-like pupils, making it look like a miniature black panther.
The villagers, who had been struck by the cat’s tail, staggered back a few steps. When they regained their composure and saw the black cat's provocative demeanor, coupled with the mocking laughter of their fellow villagers behind them, they were overcome with rage and lunged at the cat.
Seeing them charge forward, the girl decisively pulled out the fruit knife from her pocket and shielded her grandparents behind her.
However, this situation clearly wasn’t hers to handle.
The black cat moved with incredible speed, with its claws slashing at the villagers who lunged at it. In no time, their faces were covered in bloody scratches.
While its claws were busy, its tail wasn’t idle either.
The black cat’s tail suddenly elongated to more than twice its original length and was now covered in a green glow.
This time, the tail’s attack was far more vicious than before.
The areas struck by the tail quickly swelled up, becoming both painful and itchy, causing the villagers who were hit to writhe in discomfort.
They clutched their scratched faces while trying to touch their other injured spots, only to accidentally brush against the areas struck by the tail.
Howls of pain and curses filled the air.
After attacking several people, the black cat finally grew impatient and let out a call into the air: "Meow meow meow meow!"
‘Dog-human, how long are you going to keep hiding!’
Huo Yunxi, who had been referred to as the "dog-human", twitched the corner of his mouth slightly. However, after seeing the black cat being surrounded, he stepped out of the shadows and whistled at the aggressive villagers.
Their attention was quickly drawn to him.
Before they could even wonder who this man was, Huo Yunxi charged into the circle, crouched down, and swept his leg out, knocking everyone to the ground.
Seizing the opportunity, the black cat pounced on the most aggressive one among them and delivered a series of "loving" Cat Punches.
Each punch landed squarely on the man’s face, and with a few thwacks, he was knocked unconscious.
The scene left the girl and her grandparents utterly stunned.
Since when were cats this powerful!
After dealing with the villagers, Huo Yunxi and Wu Tuan didn’t linger. They quickly led the grandparents and their granddaughter away from the scene.
The other villagers wanted to give chase, but seeing the people lying on the ground moaning in pain, they eventually gave up on pursuing them.
After leaving the village, Huo Yunxi didn’t stop. He led them further for nearly half an hour, and the group took refuge in a dense forest.
"Alright, we’re safe here." he said as he stopped in his tracks and fixed a sharp gaze on the three people before him.
That look made the old man feel as though they had just escaped the Tiger’s den only to fall into the wolf’s lair.
Fortunately, there was a highly perceptive Black Cat with them.
Wu Tuan stood by the girl’s feet, with his voice no longer fierce but sweet and cooing, instantly softening the girl’s heart.
She picked up the Black Cat and held him in her arms with her cold cheek pressing against the warm fur.
"Thank you, kitty. If it weren’t for you, we might not have made it out." she said as she realized how careless they had been.
The danger hadn’t fully registered earlier, but now she felt a wave of fear.
What good would a small fruit knife have done? She might have been disarmed if she tried to use it, and it could have provoked the villagers, leading them to take their anger out on her grandparents.
The more she thought about it, the more frightened she became, and her eyes welled up with tears.
Wu Tuan nuzzled the girl’s soft cheek and then let out a few low meows directed at Huo Yunxi.
Though he couldn’t understand cat language, Huo Yunxi immediately grasped the meaning: "He’s already infiltrated. We just need to wait patiently."
He? Who was he?
Facing the trio’s confused expressions, Huo Yunxi softened his scrutinizing gaze and sat down on the ground to explain. "My companion has sneaked into the village to help find your daughter."
The elderly couple looked up abruptly with their faces filled with shock.
The girl frowned as her expression shifted from gratitude to wariness. "Why are you helping us?"
They had only just met today. Why would he go out of his way to help them find someone?
Huo Yunxi didn’t mind the probing look in her eyes. He plucked a weed from the ground and chewed on it as he leisurely explained, "We didn’t know you’d be here. We came to figure out what’s really going on."
"A month ago, the Chashan City Public Security Bureau submitted a list of abducted individuals to the central government. The central authorities then instructed the relevant municipal units to retrieve the people on the list. That list was obtained by my companion for the police."
"We originally came to Xiaocheng for another matter, but we accidentally found out that there had been no action taken here, so we decided to investigate."
As it turned out, when they arrived, they happened to witness the Wen family—the grandmother, grandfather, and granddaughter—being harassed by the villagers.
Jiang Chenyi immediately recognized them as the family of the abducted woman.
While the villagers were distracted at the entrance, Jiang Chenyi had Huo Yunxi take Wu Tuan to rescue them while he infiltrated the village alone to search for the missing woman.
"So, you’ll wait here. If he finds her, he’ll return." Huo Yunxi said.
The man looked up as his deep eyes fixed on the three of them. "Now, you can tell me where you got your information. I want to know exactly where the breakdown occurred."
Was it during the transmission of the order? Or was it the unit that received the order but failed to act? Or perhaps it was the "united" villagers here?
At this moment, Jiang Chenyi was standing outside a house and holding a compass in his hand.
This was the compass he had obtained through a transaction at the supermarket using the aura of those three individuals. It could track people related to that aura.
He had been chasing for a while and finally arrived near his destination.
However, according to the compass's indication, the person he was looking for was not inside the house but outside.
Holding the umbrella in one hand and the compass in the other, he once again stepped forward to head toward the side.
After passing through a vegetable field and a pigpen, he stopped in front of a warehouse about fifty meters away from the house.
The needle pointed to the warehouse, clearly indicating that this was where they had hidden the woman.
Jiang Chenyi glanced back.
The commotion at the village entrance had already subsided. If he wanted to take the woman away with him, he needed to act faster.
The warehouse door had a lock, but it wasn't locked; it was simply hanging on the door.
This lock wasn't meant to keep outsiders from entering but to prevent those inside from escaping...
He carefully removed the lock and quietly pushed open the warehouse door. As soon as the door opened, Jiang Chenyi was hit by a foul stench.
When the door was fully opened, the scene inside came into view.
A filthy woman, wearing only a tattered long dress, sat on a wooden plank bed. The dress was in tatters, as if it hadn't been washed in a long time.
As soon as he stepped inside, the woman, who had been fidgeting with her fingers, suddenly looked up with her gaze fixed in his direction.
Her senses were sharp. Even though she couldn't see anything, she could still sense the presence of someone.
Upon realizing someone had entered, the woman began to tremble violently with her eyes glaring fiercely in his direction and muttering something incessantly under her breath.
It was clear that the woman was mentally unstable.
Seeing this, Jiang Chenyi covered himself with a thin layer of Merit before approaching—Merit had a calming effect, of course, provided the person's heart was good.
Sure enough, with the Merit present, the woman wasn't as agitated as before and even dared to reach out in Jiang Chenyi's direction.
The young man didn't shy away from her filth. He took her hand and sat down on the bed with her, with the large Black Umbrella covering both of them.
"Do you want to go home?"
It was unclear which word had triggered the woman, but she opened her mouth to scream. However, before she could make a sound, Jiang Chenyi covered her mouth: "Shh, if you're too loud, you'll attract the bad guys."
After being touched by the Merit, the woman's agitated nerves were instantly soothed.
But her earlier scream had already drawn attention from outside. By the time the Black Umbrella covered them, hurried footsteps could be heard approaching.
"What's that woman yelling about?" The man's voice was filled with curses.
Hearing the man's voice, the woman trembled even more violently.
Jiang Chenyi patted her shoulder and made a shushing gesture: "Don't speak, and they won't see us."
It was unclear whether the woman didn't hear him, didn't believe him, or was too mentally damaged to react, but she seemed unresponsive to Jiang Chenyi's words.
Yet the young man knew for certain that she had heard him.
The man outside had been cursing his way over. Upon seeing the warehouse door wide open, he let out a strange cry and quickly barged inside.
At that moment, Jiang Chenyi and the woman were sitting on the bed. Although the woman was trembling violently, she indeed hadn't made a sound.
Jiang Chenyi looked down and saw the woman biting her lower lip so hard that it had started to bleed.
In the man's eyes, the warehouse was empty, and the tattered, filthy bed was devoid of anyone.
"Ran away? Damn it! That woman actually ran away!" The man's cloudy eyes widened, and the swollen parts of his face twitched slightly.
"What do you mean, ran away?" A slightly younger voice sounded from behind the man.
At this moment, Jiang Chenyi noticed that the woman was trembling even more violently.
It wasn't just fear; he also saw a deep hatred in the woman's somewhat dazed eyes—a hatred so profound that it was even deeper for the newcomer than for the man who had just entered.
When Jiang Chenyi saw the young man appear, he couldn't help but frown.
The young man didn't look very old, probably around fifteen or sixteen, and his appearance wasn't bad. However, the sinister and lecherous look in his eyes ruined what would have otherwise been a decent face.
Moreover, the young man's face bore a certain resemblance to the woman's.
Jiang Chenyi wrapped an arm around the woman's shoulders. The foul stench emanating from her body kept wafting into his nose, but he acted as if he didn't smell it as his expression remained unchanged.
His action was timely because, upon seeing the young man, the woman became so agitated that she almost lunged forward.
The bed beneath them shifted slightly. Fortunately, the two men thought the woman had disappeared and quickly ran out, otherwise, they would have definitely been discovered.
After they left, the woman's emotions calmed down again with her eyes as still as a stagnant pool of water.
Only when those sounds completely faded did Jiang Chenyi take the woman away from this dreadful place.
The woman had issues with both her legs and couldn't walk like a normal person, so Jiang Chenyi had to support her as they slowly made their way out.
The Black Umbrella could only conceal their figures, not their sounds, so Jiang Chenyi tried to walk with her on the cement ground and avoiding the grassy areas that could make noise.
The journey was relatively smooth.
But as they approached the village gate, they encountered a group of villagers, all robust young men.
The moment Jiang Chenyi saw them, he knew things were about to go south.
He glanced at the woman, whose pupils were trembling violently, a clear sign of extreme fear.
The woman opened her mouth, and just as she was about to scream, Jiang Chenyi decisively struck her, knocking her unconscious, then hoisted her over his shoulder.
He hadn’t wanted to knock her out earlier because her brain was already extremely fragile, and he feared that a blow might cause further damage.
But at this moment, there was no time to worry about that.
If they were exposed, Jiang Chenyi would have to use firearms to clear the way.
As they passed by the group of young men, Jiang Chenyi overheard their conversation and was utterly disgusted.
Though they only spoke a few sentences, he learned one thing from their words.
Most of these men’s wives had been bought, just like in Yu Min’s village!
Jiang Chenyi gave them a deep look before carrying the woman away.
But this place was now firmly etched in his memory.
By the time Wu Tuan found him and they returned to Huo Yunxi’s side, two hours had passed since Huo Yunxi had left with the grandmother and granddaughter.
He returned the umbrella to the Supermarket and revealed himself in front of the other three.
The sudden appearance of a living person startled the elderly couple and their hearts skipping a beat that they nearly fainted.
But when they saw the woman Jiang Chenyi had brought, they froze in place.
Even after more than a decade, even though the woman had been tortured beyond recognition, as her parents, they immediately recognized their child.
"Xiao Lu... my Xiao Lu..." the grandmother trembled as she reached out, gently brushing her hand over the woman’s weathered face.
Though she was not yet 45, the woman looked as old as her mother.
The girl had few memories of her mother, but seeing her grandparents’ reaction, she too felt a lump in her throat, and large tears fell to the ground.
"Mom..."
Jiang Chenyi interrupted their emotional reunion: "Save the tears for later. We need to leave now. They’ll definitely come looking for her once they realize she’s gone!"
The elderly couple snapped back to reality: "Yes, yes! This young man is right! We need to leave quickly!"
Jiang Chenyi continued to carry the woman on his back. To avoid being discovered by the villagers, they didn’t stop at the town’s hospital.
Huo Yunxi made a call to the Huo family, asking for two cars to come and pick them up.
When she heard him call for a car, the girl pursed her lips and finally mustered the courage to ask, "Where are we going?"
"The Huo family."
After instinctively answering the question, Huo Yunxi turned to face the girl's panicked and uneasy eyes, his tone softening slightly, "Don't worry, the Huo family has generations of military service; it's a military family. You'll be safe there, and no one will dare to barge in."
Hearing that it was a military family, the three of them immediately felt much more at ease.
Before long, the driver arrived, bringing Song Miao along.
"What happened here..." Song Miao, seeing the woman covered in injuries, instinctively began analyzing the sources of the wounds.
Even though she wasn't a professional police officer, having followed police investigations for years, she had picked up a thing or two.
Whip marks, blunt force injuries, wounds from being tied up for too long, and... Song Miao couldn't bear to look any longer.
"Let's go to the hospital first; we'll talk more there!"
Jiang Chenyi had originally only intended to investigate what had happened and never expected that he would end up bringing the person out himself.
Well, to be precise, sneaking her out!
He rubbed his forehead, then turned his face away before muttering softly to Huo Yunxi, "You take her to the hospital; I want to go take a shower first..."
It wasn't that he didn't mind, but the situation had been too urgent to care about such things.
Now that the surroundings were safe, he started to feel something was off. QAQ
Huo Yunxi suppressed a laugh.
After getting out of the car, he first took Jiang Chenyi to the nearest hotel and booked a room by the hour for him to shower.
As for the woman, her own family was taking care of her, and Song Miao was there too, so there was nothing to worry about.
As soon as Jiang Chenyi opened the door, he rushed into the bathroom, while Huo Yunxi opened a delivery app and ordered a few pieces of clothing.
Although there weren't many options, at least they were wearable...
By the time Jiang Chenyi came out wrapped in a towel, the delivery guy had just arrived.
Huo Yunxi didn't notice Jiang Chenyi coming out. He had just opened the door when he saw the delivery guy's strange look. He quickly turned around and was met with a flash of pale skin.
Jiang Chenyi was truly pale, the kind of pale that didn't tan. It hadn't seemed like much before, but now it was almost blinding.
The man's heart skipped a beat, and he slammed the door shut.
The delivery guy, who had almost been hit in the face by the door, glanced at the items on the delivery slip, and his look became even more peculiar.
"What's wrong?" Jiang Chenyi asked curiously when he heard the loud door slam.
But he didn't get a response from the person behind him.
Turning around, he saw Huo Yunxi with his head down and covering his face as if he had seen something he shouldn't have.
Jiang Chenyi: ?
What's there that shouldn't be seen?
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•
•───────•°•❀•°•───────•