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Soft and Delicate Wife, Online Snake Rearing 41

Discovering the Cellar! Conflict Erupts!

 

Guan Zixuan hurriedly rushed to Wei Yan’s side. “What happened?”

 

Wei Yan’s face was dark and sullen, but he did not answer.

 

Apart from the woman who was still howling, no one at the chaotic scene dared to speak. Everyone was avoiding eye contact. Even Da Zhuang, who had been bitten by the woman, only dodged, not daring to curse or even resist. He even wished he could disappear on the spot.

 

“Move aside, move aside!”

 

Shunzi pushed through the crowd, squeezing in with sweat dripping down his face. “What happened?”

 

Seeing him, Wei Yan seemed to snap back to his senses, and his anger finally erupted. “What’s going on? Who is she? Why is she in our village?”

 

The moment Shunzi’s gaze landed on the disheveled woman, his expression stiffened.

 

He hadn’t expected the woman he had brought back a few days ago to run out! And to even run straight to Wei Yan!

 

Shunzi instinctively glared at Da Zhuang.

 

What the hell was this guy doing? A few days ago, when he brought the woman back, Da Zhuang was the first to take her in. They had agreed to keep her locked up for a few months, especially making sure not to let her out while Wei Yan was around.

 

Yet he still managed to mess up something they had done so many times before!

 

“Judging by how you’re glaring at him, you must know what’s going on.” Wei Yan said coldly. “Shunzi, then you explain.”

 

What could he say?

 

“Brother Wei, I’m sorry. I let an outsider into the village.”

 

In front of everyone, Shunzi lowered his head in shame and apologized without hesitation.

 

“You weren’t here for a while, and the temperature dropped sharply. A lot of people came seeking refuge with us. Some obviously had bad intentions, so we drove them away. But some of the weaker women begged us, and Brother Zou and I couldn’t bear to turn them away, so we… we let them in.”

 

“She had a child with her. She needed to survive after entering, and there are still plenty of men in the village who haven’t married. I asked her if she wanted to find someone to live with, and she agreed.”

 

“A blind marriage and mute wedlock easily lead to conflict. She probably just got into a fight with Da Zhuang, which is why things escalated like this.”

 

As Shunzi explained, he shot Da Zhuang a meaningful look.

 

The latter quickly understood and immediately chimed in. “Brother Wei, I just had a quarrel with my wife. Look, she’s biting me like this, and I haven’t even fought back. I still want to live a good life with her!”

 

The surrounding villagers also spoke up in agreement.

 

Wei Yan’s gaze slowly swept over everyone present.

 

Shunzi still had beads of sweat on his forehead from running, but his expression was steady. Da Zhuang’s eyes were evasive, his words were stammered, and he didn’t dare to meet Wei Yan’s gaze at all.

 

As for the villagers closest to the center, they immediately averted their eyes guiltily the moment Wei Yan looked their way.

 

And then, there was another group of people who remained silent. They neither spoke nor chimed in. There was no curiosity or gossip in their eyes—they didn’t look like they were here to watch the commotion at all.

 

Everyone’s reactions were too strange.

 

Wei Yan wasn’t that easy to fool. His ability instantly sent Da Zhuang flying two meters away.

 

Suppressing the anger surging in his chest, he turned his gaze to the woman on the ground and softened his tone. “You tell me—what exactly happened?”

 

The woman, who had been about to chase after Da Zhuang and bite him again, froze at his words. A line of tears rolled down from her eyes.

 

The woman’s voice was hoarse as she spoke. “What’s the use of saying anything? Will you stand up for me?”

 

“If what you say is true,” Wei Yan said in a deep voice, “I will definitely stand up for you.”

 

Perhaps because she had not been held captive for long, the woman still held onto a final sliver of hope in her heart.

 

She stretched out her hand and pointed at Shunzi, her voice suddenly sharp and piercing. “It was him! He and a group of ability users killed my husband! Then they took my son and me up the mountain, treating me like an object for those bastards to pick from!”

 

“For my child’s sake, I endured it! But this bastard locked me in a room and wouldn’t let me out! I begged him for three days—three whole days without stepping out the door. It wasn’t until today that I finally found a chance to sneak out and see my son. Who would have thought… Who would have thought…”

 

At this point, the woman broke down in tears.

 

“He locked my son in another place! He didn’t give him a single bite of food for three days and starved him to death!”

 

“Brother Wei, don’t listen to her nonsense!” Da Zhuang struggled to climb to his feet. “I just wanted her to stay with me obediently, so I separated them. That little brat refused to eat anything himself—that’s why he died!”

 

“It was you! You starved him to death! You locked him in a room! He was so young—he cried, but no one answered. He wanted to leave but couldn’t! He called for me, but I couldn’t hear him! You heard him, and you did nothing!”

 

“You killed my husband and my son! You locked me up like an animal! Why don’t you just die?! Go to hell!”

 

The woman lunged at Da Zhuang again, biting into his arm viciously. Her frenzied state showed that she wanted nothing more than to drink his blood and eat his flesh. If given the chance, she would drag him down with her to the grave.

 

Now that the truth had been laid bare, Shunzi barely managed to explain, “Brother Wei, she’s an outsider! We’re the ones who’ve lived with you all this time! Don’t just listen to her one-sided story.”

 

“One-sided story?” Zheng Wenxiu said coldly. “I think every word she said is true.”

 

“You—!”

 

Zheng Wenxiu swept a glance toward Su Su and the others standing at the back, her words carrying deeper meaning. “Brother Wei, you saw what happened a few days ago too. If we hadn’t made it back in time, there would have been even more victims.”

 

“Zou Gaoming and Shunzi’s methods of robbery and murder are extremely practiced—this definitely isn’t their first time doing it.”

 

“In this village, there are probably many more women like her who were forcibly taken.”

 

Shunzi hurriedly said, “Brother Wei, that’s impossible—”

 

“Why not search and see?” Su Su suddenly interrupted.

 

Shunzi lost his composure. “Damn it! What does this have to do with you?!”

 

Smack! A hailstone the size of a fist smashed directly into his forehead!

 

Pang Cancan stood with her hands on her hips. “How dare you talk to my sister like that?! Le Rui, hit him again!”

 

“Alright!”

 

A dense barrage of hail pelted Shunzi.

 

Even Zou, a Tier 3 ability user, had been defeated by these two women. Shunzi, who always bullied the weak and feared the strong, didn’t even dare to fight back at this moment.

 

Wei Yan glanced at Su Su, who had spoken up, and made the final decision. “Search the entire village. All of you will come along. If I find out that anyone sneaked back…”

 

His expression darkened. “Don’t blame me for being ruthless!”

 

The villagers, trembling with fear, followed as Wei Yan led Guan Zixuan and Zheng Wenxiu in a thorough search.

 

They focused their efforts on the homes of more than a dozen single men.

 

They found no additional people.

 

Shunzi let out a barely perceptible sigh of relief. “Brother Wei, we really didn’t lie to you. That woman just now was the only exception. A few days ago, she truly agreed to go with Da Zhuang willingly. As for her son’s death, none of us expected such an accident.”

 

Wei Yan suddenly turned his head, locking eyes with this once-familiar yet now-strange young man.

 

“You’re saying her husband willingly let himself be killed? Her son willingly starved to death? And she willingly allowed herself to be locked up in the village?”

 

His tone was so forceful that Shunzi dared not speak further.

 

But at this moment, they had indeed found no other women, leaving the scene in an awkward stalemate.

 

Su Su’s gaze swept across the familiar houses before she suddenly asked, “What about the cellars?”

 

Cellars were uncommon in the southern regions—by all accounts, this village shouldn’t have any.

 

But Su Su knew that there were.

 

In her previous life, when she arrived at the now-abandoned Hot Spring Village, she had rummaged through every house, searching for food to survive the three-month snowstorm lockdown. By sheer luck, she had found a few cellars.

 

She hadn’t seen any people or bodies—only food and vegetables.

 

But she had only uncovered a few of them. The rest had likely been looted by Lin Weiran and his group.

 

Her words instantly cut through Wei Yan’s simmering rage.

 

He instinctively responded, “No one in the village digs cellars.”

 

Su Su stared at him in silence.

 

Three seconds later, Wei Yan’s face darkened.

 

“Search! Search again!”

 

The only ones to respond immediately were Guan Zixuan, Zheng Wenxiu, the indignant and eager Pang Cancan, and little Le Rui.

 

They found nothing in the first few houses—until they stepped into the home of another bachelor.

 

“Brother Wei, there’s really nothing in my house… Ah!”

 

The bachelor was sent flying with a brutal slap. In an instant, everyone felt the full weight of Wei Yan’s fury, and none dared to make any more excuses or try to stop them.

 

As they watched the team knock and probe around the seemingly empty house, Su Su took the initiative to enter the kitchen. Based on her past life’s experience, she moved the heavy water vat aside.

 

A pitch-black hole was revealed beneath it.

 

“Shit! Brother Wei, there really is a cellar!”

 

“Go down and check.”

 

Guan Zixuan was the first to jump in.

 

Ten seconds later, his voice came from below, filled with fury and distress.

 

“There’s someone down here!”

 

“This place is too cramped! You guys stay up there—I’ll bring them up myself!”

 

A moment later, Guan Zixuan climbed back to the surface, carrying a frail, emaciated woman.

 

Wei Yan’s chest rose and fell violently.

 

He clenched his molars, wanting to say something, but his emotions surged too intensely, and in the end, he could only force out one sentence—

 

“Keep searching!”

 

After searching every household, they found a total of five women who had been imprisoned. Some were unconscious, others were mentally disoriented, and nearly all of them had lost the ability to speak.

 

Seeing their miserable state, Wei Yan suddenly turned around and punched Shunzi square in the face.

 

The air around them thinned instantly as an invisible force gripped Shunzi’s neck, lifting him off the ground.

 

“Whose idea was it? Zou Gaoming’s, or yours?”

 

Wei Yan was furious, disappointed, and even pained.

 

He had never imagined that the two young men who had once worked diligently beside him before the apocalypse would now commit such vile crimes!

 

“I left you to guard the village—is this how you guarded it?!”

 

Perhaps realizing that his crimes were beyond redemption, Shunzi, despite his face turning red from lack of air, still had the gall to sneer.

 

“Brother Wei, didn’t Brother Zou and I guard the village just fine?”

 

“The apocalypse came, millions died out there, but look at our village—everyone has food, clothes, and even wives. Their safety is guaranteed.”

 

“Haven’t we done a good job?”

 

Wei Yan seized him by the back of his neck and violently slammed him to his knees, forcing him to face the tortured women.

 

“Look at them! Look at what you’ve done! How dare you call this ‘doing a good job’?!”

 

Shunzi laughed. “Brother Wei, no matter what Brother Zou and I do, deep down, you’ll always look down on us. The only ones you truly value are those two college students by your side. They’re from your world—we? We’re nothing but trash to you!”

 

“The apocalypse is here! Why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves? Why should we cower in this village?”

 

“There are over a hundred bandit gangs in G City, committing all sorts of atrocities—killing, looting, and burning. And us? We just took a bit of protection money! These women should be grateful! If not for us, do you think their men could have kept them safe? They would’ve been slaughtered and taken by someone else anyway!”

 

“As for locking them up, that’s on you! If we weren’t afraid of you finding out, they could’ve roamed the village freely. Given time, they would’ve realized this place is a paradise in the apocalypse!”

 

Wei Yan’s grip loosened.

 

He staggered back several steps, his eyes sweeping over the familiar faces of the villagers.

 

“And you? Do you all think the same way?”

 

Some avoided his gaze, refusing to speak.

 

Others hesitated as if they wanted to say something but ultimately remained silent.

 

Finally, Da Zhuang stepped forward. “Brother Wei, I know you, a college-educated man, can’t accept that I locked up a wife. But I truly just wanted someone to live with.”

 

“When you first returned to the village, I followed you to rebuild the guesthouses. I remember chatting with you—you learned that I was poor, over thirty, and still unmarried. You patted my shoulder and said, ‘Just wait a little longer. Once the hot spring resort is developed, every household will have their own business. Once we make money, we’ll be able to find wives naturally.'”

 

“I believed that for a whole year. I worked myself to the bone for you, and just when the resort was about to open, the apocalypse hit. The village is safe and well-fed, but outside? People are dying like flies! No matter what, I can’t find a wife!”

 

“It was Brother Zou who found a way for us—he brought in survivors who had nowhere else to go. I provide food and shelter, and she just has to serve me. Isn’t that fair trade?”

 

Da Zhuang’s words echoed the sentiments of most of the villagers.

 

Wei Yan had been away most of the time, leaving village matters to Zou Gaoming. Over time, the villagers gradually adopted Zou Gaoming’s philosophy—the apocalypse had come, and the old rules no longer applied.

 

Even those who disagreed dared not speak up, much less report anything to Wei Yan.

 

They were afraid—afraid that if Zou Gaoming and his men found out, there would be retaliation.

 

Lying on the ground, Shunzi looked up at Wei Yan. His expression was eerily calm, carrying a hint of mockery.

 

“Brother Wei, look—this is what everyone thinks.”

 

“At the end of the day, this is our village. You and your friends? You just came back temporarily to start a business.”

 

“So let Brother Zou out. He’s one of us. He’s the one who truly thinks about this village.”

 

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Oluwaseun

The disappointment must be abysmal

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