I had thought Yu Longting might not take it well, but unexpectedly, he looked at me with a face full of tender pampering and even patted my head, "Go ahead, you have more affinity with people than I do."
"Alright, I'll go check on that uncle."
I approached the farmer and crouched down, "Uncle, you're safe now..."
Actually, this uncle was the most pitiable, with all his close relatives deceased.
Zhang Shuying was willing to help, but he was an outsider after all.
He was only concerned about whether the Tree Infant would bring severe consequences to the village, aiming to capture the Tree Infant to safeguard Ancient Water Village.
This man had nobody by his side to offer comfort or to bandage his wounds.
Not to mention, there was a mutilated corpse in the house waiting to be dealt with.
Regardless of how resilient someone is on the inside, it's hard to bear all this.
"Don't... don't come any closer..." the farmer trembled, showing resistance towards me as well.
I simply squatted down to keep eye contact at the same level, so as not to cause any psychological pressure, "I won't come over, take a good look, I'm not a bad person. I'm just an ordinary person, I was with Zhang Shuying just now, that's the Gu Sect's Third Master Zhang."
"Are you a friend of... Master Zhang...?" the farmer finally regained some sanity, looking at me in a daze for the first time.
As he saw my face, the terror on his own faded a bit.
I nodded, "Yeah, I'm friends with Zhang Shuying. May I ask, does your village have a market? Where is the beef and pork slaughtered in your market?"
"There is a market, the slaughtering place should be at..."
The farmer began to let down his guard and fear towards me, and under my gentle persuasion, he slowly named two places.
One was for slaughtering chickens to the east, and the other for pigs to the west.
I felt sympathy for the one-armed farmer in front of me, located his cellphone, and found the number for the health center in his contacts to call someone over to help.
I then took out a red ribbon, planning to give it to the uncle for self-defense.
Yu Longting handed me a blue Spirit Talisman, "Use mine, it's hard work for you to do Life and Death Embroidery."
"Oh, okay." Knowing he was worried about the difficulty of making the Life and Death Embroidery, I happily accepted and gave the Spirit Talisman to the farmer.
After explaining how to use it to him, I left the farmhouse.
Yu Longting was in charge of the east, so we went to Slaughter Chicken Field.
Slaughter Chicken Field was actually a slaughter point for free-range chickens run by a household in Ancient Water Village on Taobao.
It was nearing nightfall, around five-something.
At the entrance, there was only a Gatekeeper squatting down, eating, who saw us approaching.
The Gatekeeper was especially vigilant, "You two look unfamiliar, what are you doing here?"
"We've bought your free-range chickens on Taobao before, thought they were delicious, and we want to create a brand of Ancient Water Village saltwater chicken."
I took the initiative to make up the story, knowing that if we told him we were here to catch the Tree Infant, the Gatekeeper would surely drive us away.
Upon hearing the reason I fabricated, the Gatekeeper frowned, "Outsiders? Wearing a Taoist robe?"
"This Taoist robe was lent to me by Master Zhang who thought I was a person of fate. Look, doesn't it seem familiar? Especially this cuff, see the golden Silkworm Gu pattern? Isn't it very familiar?" I brought up Master Zhang.
His reputation indeed proved to be useful.
The Gatekeeper carefully examined the pattern on my Taoist robe, and his expression softened, "This has to be discussed with the boss. The boss and the chicken slaughter workers have finished for the day. You should come back tomorrow."
"Is that so? But this place is so remote, it took us so long to get here! Since we're here, can we take a look inside?" I had no money on me, naturally, so I relied on exploiting Yu Longting.
Yu Longting handed me his entire wallet, even saying to me, "There isn't much cash, just five or six hundred, but all my bank cards are in there. The cards don't have a pin, I'm giving it all to you..."
"Say less, don't flaunt your wealth in public, we don't need much to bribe a chicken farmer." I covered Yu Longting's lips and gave him a white look, lowering my voice to warn him.
Then I took all the cash from the wallet and bribed the Gatekeeper, "A little something, consider it tea money for you, sir."