Chapter 642: Escape

Screams, roars, and agonizing cries constantly echoed from within the county yamen, which had now descended into complete chaos. Everyone had forgotten their original purpose for being there. They rushed in, exhilarated, doing things they had always wanted to do but never dared.

"Food! Grain! It's all white flour! No coarse grains!" Hearing shouts from the west wing, the crowd surged en masse towards that direction. The old man who had been the first to consume the county magistrate's flesh also wanted to follow, but he stumbled and fell to the ground. He tried to scramble back up, but a foot landed on his raised right hand. With a crunching sound, he let out a loud scream, his blood-stained mouth wide open. However, his shriek was utterly insignificant amidst the surrounding clamor. As more feet trampled over him, his cries quickly faded away. Those walking by only felt the ground was slightly soft; they noticed nothing else.

Amidst the dense crowd were Yang Xiaohai and his wife, Zhao Xiumei. They hadn't intended to enter; they were simply pushed forward by the surging throng. By the time he wanted to leave, they were surrounded by people, making escape impossible. Pale-faced, he desperately held Zhao Xiumei's hand, trying to get out of the human current. "Hold my hand tight! Don't let go! If you do, we won't be able to find each other again!"

After struggling to push through the crowd in all directions without success, Yang Xiaohai suddenly remembered something. He pulled out a piece of rotting wood 'ruyi' from his pocket, which his Senior Brother Li had given him, and which contained a human tongue. As he raised the object and waved it towards the people on his left, the previously agitated crowd froze in place, their eyes filled with confusion, as if they had forgotten what they were doing.

"Follow me! Let's go this way." Yang Xiaohai bent low, navigating through the dazed crowd, moving towards the wall. With that object, Yang Xiaohai exerted immense effort and finally managed to break free from the crowd. Still shaken, he glanced at the chaos before him, then pulled Zhao Xiumei and hurried towards the inn.

"Husband, what's going on? How did it turn out like this?" Zhao Xiumei was clearly terrified by the pandemonium. "Just moments ago, it seemed like a satisfying act of bringing villains to justice, but now everything had completely spiraled out of control."

"I don't know either. Just don't worry about it too much, let's leave quickly! It's too dangerous here!" Although he said this to his wife, Yang Xiaohai, having experienced many things, felt that the old woman was responsible; without her, none of this should have happened. Yet, he couldn't say she had done anything wrong. She had indeed helped the suffering by acting on behalf of heaven. She was truly doing good deeds. He wasn't well-educated, and he couldn't figure out what was going on. All he wanted now was to take his family and leave this troublesome place.

When Yang Xiaohai rushed back to the inn, he saw the three mischievous children squatting on stools, diligently guarding the old woman's ceramic jar on the table. "Hurry! Catch up!" Yang Xiaohai shouted to them in a desperate hurry, then dashed towards the stables behind the inn.

"Niangniang?"

"Oh, forget Niangniang! She has immense powers; she won't die! If we don't run now, we'll get dragged into this!"

The carriage was quickly pushed out, and Yang Xiaohai drove it, beginning their return journey along the way they had come. "This place looks too chaotic. I'd better take a long detour and avoid it," Yang Xiaohai thought to himself.

However, just as his carriage was about to leave the county town, he saw several strangely dressed people leading horses, blocking the road. Initially, Yang Xiaohai thought they were just travelers like himself, but when he saw the badges on their waists, his face turned green with fear. They were badges of the Bureau of Celestial Surveillance. He knew from his Senior Brother Li what the Bureau of Celestial Surveillance was and the way its agents operated. "Turn... turn... turn around!"

Yang Xiaohai quickly turned the carriage around, furiously cracking the whip on the horse's back, hoping to exit from another side. However, when he returned to the entrance of the county yamen, seeing the scene before him, he nearly burst into tears. The very people who had been looting moments ago were now outside, forming a large circle, listening to someone speaking from within, their cheers and affirmations occasionally echoing out. It wouldn't have mattered so much if they were just talking, but they had also blocked the main road leading to the other exit.

"Grandpa Shidu! We are your personal servants, your loyal bodyguards! We will follow your every step, never leaving your side!" Following a powerful shout, others repeated the words, and everyone pulled out white cloths, tying them around their heads. Yang Xiaohai looked at their white headscarves with a mix of grief and indignation, then glanced at the one on his wife's head, and with great frustration, he reached out and pulled it off her. Only now did he realize that all of this was likely the old woman's conspiracy. He had just been blindly following her, thinking she was a good person!

"Hmph, just as I suspected. The more remote the place, the more likely these cults are to stir up trouble!" Hearing a voice from the other side, Yang Xiaohai turned his head and saw a man with a hunched neck and sinister eyes, perched on the roof of the adjacent inn like a mythical roof beast. Yang Xiaohai remembered him; this man was one of the Bureau of Celestial Surveillance agents from earlier. Just as Yang Xiaohai looked, the 'roof beast' reached into his robe, pulling out a mummified child's corpse. It was tied with a red string, wore a red bellyband, and had a cinnabar dot on its forehead. He then flung it directly under the eaves.

When he saw the mummified corpse's hand begin to move in mid-air, pulled by the red string, and simultaneously noticed the white-headscarved crowd surrounding them, Yang Xiaohai was utterly terrified. "Get... get out! Leave the carriage!"

Just before the conflict erupted on both sides, Yang Xiaohai decisively led the others into an adjacent alleyway. From his time as a beggar, Yang Xiaohai knew that nothing was more important than one's own life. The sounds of fighting and shouting constantly erupted behind them, forcing Yang Xiaohai to keep leading them deeper into the alley. Finally, after scaling a wall and entering someone else's courtyard, the sounds of battle considerably diminished.

"We'll wait here until everyone outside finishes fighting, then we'll leave," Yang Xiaohai explained to the others in the courtyard, keeping his voice as low as possible. The three mischievous children blinked, and eventually, one of them suddenly spoke, "Niangniang..."

"Shh! Don't shout! It's precisely because of your Niangniang that we're in this situation!" Yang Xiaohai said anxiously, then reached up and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Perhaps due to his anxiety, he felt the surrounding temperature getting hotter and hotter.