The moment she asked, all the girls in the room began to cry. Indeed, their homes were not here, and they had all been abducted.
Of course, the kidnappers had taken a fancy to all of them.
After confirming the fact that they had been abducted, Miss Chu's suspicions of Huang E's strange behavior were immediately reduced. Perhaps she was just panicking after the disaster. The two girls had been placed together by the kidnappers. The man had always been naked, and the two of them were together … Perhaps the two of them really did have some secrets, and that was only natural. It was not easy for a girl to maintain a clean reputation, so she had to be more forgiving when it came to covering up for others.
Therefore, when Chu Suzhen led the girls out of the room, she felt that Shi Chuan and Huang E's conversation in the courtyard were very suspicious. For example, when Huang E appeared, she would desperately avoid them and deliberately keep a distance from them … Chu Suzhen pretended not to see it.
The tragic scene in the courtyard immediately made the girls vomit. Seeing that they were vomiting more than she had before, Miss Chu's mood improved a little. She shouted, "Shi … Langjun, take care of these girls who have woken up. I'll go and wake the rest of the children."
Shi Chuan nodded. Before he could say anything, Huang E quickly interrupted, "Sister Chu, don't worry. I'll gather them into the main room. You can go and do what you need to do."
Miss Chu led the servants into another room. When she entered, she thought of the girls who had just woken up. When they saw the scene in the yard, they were just as frightened as she was. As for Huang E, why was she so calm all this while? Miss Chu couldn't help but mutter in her heart, "At such a young age, she's like a demon! Such a tragic scene, even the man in the yamen was shocked to see, but she could calmly talk to people by the door. I don't know what kind of family can raise such a Daji? "
After walking through a few rooms, the abducted girls had all woken up. Miss Chu walked into the last room. In this kind of running back and forth, every time she walked out of the room and returned to the courtyard, Miss Chu would always be frightened and nauseated by the tragic scene in the garden. She couldn't help but feel her legs turn to jelly, and she couldn't help but want to escape the courtyard. But she still ran around, trying to save the unconscious girls.
While she was running from room to room, Shi Chuan was very dedicated to his duty. He found a red tasseled spear out of nowhere and stood guard in the courtyard with it.
What was even more miraculous was that even Shi Ya had used the excuse of settling his companions and was unwilling to step into the courtyard again. However, Huang E, that little girl, did not seem to care about the corpses strewn all over the ground and the thick stench of blood. She kept holding Shi Cheng's free left hand and chatted with him.
The conversation between the two of them was intermittent. When Huang E saw that there was someone in the courtyard, she would vigilantly stop talking and smile at the approaching person. Sometimes she was dressed in a daze, so her reaction was always half a beat slower. As for Miss Chu, she thought nothing of it. All she wanted was to wake up all the girls as soon as possible and … escape the compound.
The servant went to fetch water again. While waiting for the cold water, Miss Chu anxiously paced back and forth in the room. Occasionally, she heard a few words drifting over. It was a voice that said, "Your story sounds like …"
Miss Chu hurriedly stopped in her tracks, but the sound could no longer be heard. After hesitating for a moment, she walked to the window and looked out through the crack.
This Daoist temple was rich, so the windows were covered with silk gauze instead of paper. The silk gauze could not be pierced through, so Miss Chu could only look out through the crack. She saw the two people in the courtyard opening and closing their mouths, but she could not hear a single sound.
Miss Chu recalled — as one of the most talented women in Haizhou City, she had read many miscellaneous books. She also knew a little about the rumors surrounding the Drum Gallery and the Echo Wall. After some consideration, she began to slowly retrace the path she had taken. When she reached a certain spot in the house, another sentence drifted into her ears. It was Huang E's voice. "… Only by saying it this way can …"
Miss Chu moved her body slightly. Her ears only moved a few centimeters before she could hear nothing again.
Miss Chu stood in the same spot, moving her ears left and right as she adjusted her posture. After a short pause, the young girl's voice reached her ears again. The voice was soft, as if someone was whispering into her ear. "… You promised. You promised to take care of me … The heavens sent you to save me. You can't leave me behind … I prayed to the gods and Buddhas countless times behind your back. I never expected that there would be a god three feet above your head. You really came and let all the kidnappers suffer their retribution …"
At that moment, the voice came to a sudden halt. Miss Chu hurriedly walked to the door and saw a servant carrying a bucket over.
There were three girls lying in the last room. Miss Chu appeared absent-minded as she worked. Thankfully, after a long period of practice, she was already familiar with the task. By the time she mechanically woke up the three girls and led them to the courtyard, Shi Dalang had already disappeared. At the entrance of the central room, Huang E was holding a girl's hand as they sat on the threshold and chatted. That girl was the youngest of the abducted girls. She was the seven-year-old girl that Chu Suzhen had once carried.
Without waiting for Miss Chu to ask, Huang E immediately explained, "Shi Dalang went to take a bath. The blood on his body has formed scabs and he feels uncomfortable. He smells bad, so I got him to quickly change into new clothes."
Just as she finished speaking, Shi Dalang, who was wearing an ill-fitting and comical outfit, rushed out with an account book in his hand. "I found it, I found it. This is their account book. All the abducted girls are recorded in the account book. We can check according to the account book."
After a short pause, Shi Dalang said regretfully, "Unfortunately, they are all recorded in code. We need to decipher them."
Miss Chu's eyes lit up. "Really? That's great. Let me take a look."
Huang E waved at Shi Dalang. "Dalang, you're wearing the wrong clothes. Squat down and I'll straighten them for you."
Shi Dalang meekly walked over and squatted down to let Huang E straighten his clothes. He raised his other hand high and handed the account book to Miss Chu.
Miss Chu took a look and saw that it was filled with words that she could not understand. For example, this line said, "Ren Shen Yi Mao Bing Wu Wu Wu Chen Huainan Dong Huang Zhou Yang Luo Huang Er …"
"What does this mean?"
"The time, location, the person who handled it, the number of abducted girls, the amount paid to the person, the location of the pickup point along the way, and how much was spent. The account book only needs to record these things. We can deduce them one by one. Then, we can verify the date and location of the girls' disappearance. We can immediately find out where their hometowns are."
Miss Chu heaved a sigh of relief. "Great. We can help these children find their loved ones."
The reason why Chu Suzhen was so happy was that most people in this day and age lacked geographical knowledge. In this era, maps were military secrets of the country. Not to mention commoners, even officials would not have access to maps unless they reached a certain level of administrative rank.
To commoners, it was already good enough for them to know the name of their hometowns and the famous county cities nearby. And the names of their parents were taboo for their children. As juniors, not only were they forbidden to say their names, but they would also have to leave a stroke when writing the same character during the imperial examinations. This was to show that they were abiding by filial piety.
When she rescued the girls, Miss Chu had interrogated them one by one. Indeed, most of them could not say their father's name. The youngest girl, who was about seven or eight years old, did not even know her surname. All she knew was that she was called Yiniang (Huan Niang).
Now, with this account book, even if the abducted girls could not say the name of their hometown or the street where their parents lived, it was possible to deduce the location of their abduction based on the dates of their disappearance.
Chu Suzhen counted and raised her head in surprise. "Eighteen. There are eighteen girls recorded here, but there are nineteen children in the courtyard. What happened? One is missing — no, two. Shi Dalang, your name isn't in the book either?!"
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