Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Now that she had found her man and rescued him in time, Qin Yiling could finally relax.
She added more firewood to the fire to keep it burning. Gradually, her eyelids became heavier and she started to doze off.
Only the crackling of the firewood was left in the quiet ravine.
**
At the same time, the villagers were in an uproar at the foot of the mountain. The moment that the tiger’s roar had sounded, everyone had come out of their houses.
Their village had been here for over a hundred years. Occasionally, they would hear the cries of wolves, but the roars of tigers were rarely ever heard. At least, among the current generation, no one had heard it before.
“What’s happening?”
“What have they done in the mountains?”
“Exactly. How did they end up provoking a tiger?”
“That thing is ferocious.”
Liu Shitou wiped the sweat off his forehead. “We don’t know either. We had just entered the outskirts of the mountains when we heard the tiger’s roar. We were so scared that we immediately went down the mountain.”
“You guys have no idea how scary it was. The sound of the tiger felt very close by, so we must have been near it.”
“Luckily, we ran fast. Otherwise, we would have become the tiger’s meal.”
The members of the rescue team shared their thoughts one after another, their faces still showing traces of lingering fear.
Liu Shi looked at the silent village chief and couldn’t help but ask, “Sir, what should we do next? Ah Ze is still on the mountain.”
He and Yan Ze were bosom buddies who grew up together, so he was still very anxious and worried. But with the danger of the tiger in the way, he also couldn’t risk the lives of his fellow villagers.
“You still want to search for him? Are you tired of living? That’s a tiger we’re talking about!”
One of the mothers of a rescue team member protested. Actually, just going up into the mountains at night was already very dangerous, but on account of the Yan family, she had not objected much.
But now, even the tigers in the mountains had come out. This was no joking matter.
Then, another middle-aged woman chimed in, but her words were filled with malice.
“The way I see it, Yan Ze is most likely dead. First a bear and now a tiger. How did he run into all of them? He’s just unlucky. We can’t possibly let the whole village suffer from his bad luck too.”
“I say, Wang Guihua, keep your mouth shut. Ah Ze is blessed, he will definitely be fine.” Another kindly woman–Zhou Xiuhua, the mother of Liu Shiqiang and Qiang Zi–couldn’t take it anymore and retorted.
Everyone knew that Wang Guihua was just someone who constantly fawned over Lord Yan’s second wife. Ugh, ‘second wife’ was a nice-sounding term, but to put it bluntly, she was just a concubine who had climbed her way up.
What was there to be smug about? If it wasn’t for Xiao Wan’s difficult labor where she had passed early, that concubine wouldn’t even stand a chance.
Well, that concubine that Wang Guihua liked to kiss up to was none other than Yan Ze’s stepmother. It was commonly said that having a stepmother meant having a stepfather too. This saying couldn’t be truer for Yan Ze right now.
He was clearly the young master of the house, yet he was reduced to being treated like an outsider.
Wang Guihua was indignant and immediately started shouting back.
“What? Did I say anything wrong? Yan Ze is ill-fated in the first place. Whoever gets close to him will get jinxed to death! Why should the whole village suffer with him just because of his own bad luck? In any case, I won’t send my son there to die.”
Zhou Xiuhua spat at Wang Guihua unceremoniously. “You make it sound as if your son’s so capable but who cares if he even goes or not.”