Chapter Sixty-Two: Wild People in a Wild Land
As long as there was food to be had, the villagers would not let any opportunity slip by. When they saw Gu Xiaoyao and her companions already digging for field mouse burrows, some of those who had been resting began to follow behind, searching for burrows themselves.
Some of the more understanding villagers recognized that the burrows marked with branches had been found by Gu Xiaoyao, and, not wanting to be shameless, refrained from digging them up. Yet there were always those who, thick-skinned and unwilling to search for their own, preferred to poach the burrows others had already marked.
“Wow, the field mouse in this burrow is really fat—it must weigh a whole pound!” exclaimed a group of men, sickles in hand, who had worked together to dig open a burrow and seize the plump rodent inside.
They stared hungrily at the chubby creature in their hands, Adam’s apples bobbing as if they could already taste the meat.
“Hey, you lot have no shame! My sister-in-law found that burrow, so how could you just dig it up for yourselves? Don’t you have eyes and hands to find your own?” Dahua, seeing them taking advantage of Gu Xiaoyao’s efforts, could not hold back her anger and scolded them harshly. Full-grown men, yet still trying to steal from others—truly shameless beyond belief.
“Dahua, that’s not right,” retorted one of the men. “There’s no name carved above this burrow. Why shouldn’t we dig it up? I think your family’s just biased toward her because you’ve eaten a bit of her meat. We found this burrow fair and square.”
These men were cunning; they knew Gu Xiaoyao’s reputation for fighting and had come in a group, armed with sickles, just in case she tried to start something.
“You’re all too much,” Gu Xiaoshu snapped, his heart aching as he watched them dig up several marked burrows. “My sister marked those burrows herself, and yet you dare to claim them and spout such shameless words. You’re worse than children.”
He looked at the fat field mice with longing, thinking that if they took them home, plucked their fur, gutted them, and hung them in the kitchen to smoke, they could slice off a bit to fry whenever they craved meat.
“Bah! You’re the shameless ones, claiming a burrow just because your sister stuck a twig in it. Unbelievable,” the men retorted. They were notorious in Lotus Village, often grouped with the likes of Chu Qingsong—birds of a feather.
Gu Xiaoyao saw how righteous they sounded, pointed at the twigs she’d used to mark her burrows, and addressed them coldly, “Every one of these field mouse burrows is marked by me. If you dare remove my marks and dig up my mice again, your fate may be the same as this.”
She placed her foot on a stone and stomped. Instantly, the stone was driven into the hard earth, split cleanly in two.
The men, who had been so full of bluster only a moment before, stared in shock at the stone now embedded in the ground—broken in half.
Even men, when forced to back down, must utter a few harsh words. But before they could voice their threats, trouble arrived in the form of people from another village.
“Well, well, who would’ve thought folks from Lotus Village would come out here to clear land! What a rare sight! What are you beggars doing here?” The speaker was the village chief of Great Valley Village, Lotus Village’s long-standing rival, a hulking man with a mocking, sarcastic tone.
As soon as the Lotus Village chief saw the men from Great Valley Village—all carrying hoes—he tensed, gripping his own tool tightly.
“What are you doing here? This land is for Lotus Village to clear. The land for your village to dig isn’t here,” he said sternly.
The villagers of Lotus Village, busy working in the fields, all looked up, wary and alert, as if expecting trouble from their rivals.