Chapter 856 - 857
The gang wasn’t small, numbering over twenty people. Ye Ziping looked them over and saw that although their fighting prowess wasn’t strong, they couldn’t be compared to those who had come out of the penal colony.
However, if such a group charged into the Yang residence, Ye Ziping speculated, the Yang Family would probably not even leave behind a chicken feather.
For now, the urgent task was to lead the people to somewhere nearby, as they were quite far from Quanya County. Otherwise, how could they rob?
That cheap wench, Yang Chuxia, dared to drive his mother and younger brother out of Yangshu Village. It would have been tolerable if she had just driven them out, but she even had them thrown in jail, claiming his mother had died of illness. Who really knew how she died? It could very well be that little wench bribed someone inside to harm his mother and brother.
They had ended up in such a filthy place, and yet she didn’t let them be. It was truly detestable.
He was determined to make the Yang Family pay. The fact that those horse bandits last time didn’t succeed was infuriating.
Alright, Ye Ziping had come out with those from the penal colony and hadn’t gone off on his own after their release but had joined the gang to become a pirate.
He was cunning and articulate, gradually gaining the approval of the leader and holding quite a position within the group.
Most of the pirates didn’t have families, but he did, so he thought of checking on his mother and brother to see how they were doing.
But when he sneaked back to Wangquan Town, he found his mother and brother were no longer in Yangshu Village. He had to deceive a village child to find this out.
Later, he went to Hua Village, but the people of Hua Village didn’t even let him inside their homes and chased him away. With no other choice, he returned to the town, and by coincidence, he rented the same courtyard where Ms. Hua Junior and her son had stayed when they secretly returned to Wangquan Town. After asking around in detail, he finally found the Jade Seduction Pavilion in Wangshui Town. Only when he arrived in Wangshui Town did he realize the extent of his folly, for the people in the Jade Seduction Pavilion told him that Procuress Hua and her son had been arrested by the authorities for offending someone.
You could say that Ye Ziping was quite a filial son. Even then, he didn’t give up on searching for Ms. Hua Junior, risking the danger of being captured by the authorities to inquire in the county town, only to be further stunned by the news that his mother and brother had died—they had recently passed away.
It would be one thing if just their deaths were the issue, but as criminals, they didn’t even receive a proper burial; he had no way of knowing which set of bones on the mass grave site belonged to them.
Ye Ziping was filled with rage!
At that moment, he thought of returning to Shandong, intending to encourage the pirate chief to sail south to raid Wangquan Town, and seize the opportunity to take revenge on the Yang Family.
But outside the county town, at a tea shop, he encountered a group of horse bandits. Just by listening to their conversation, he knew they were no ordinary bandits.
On the spur of the moment, he began cursing the Yang Family and mentioned their wealth, managing to catch the bandits’ attention. They took the initiative to ask, and of course, he told them everything he knew.
That was the genesis of the horse bandits’ attack on the Yang Family.
However, to his dismay, upon returning to gather information, he learned that the bandits’ attempt had been unsuccessful. Given that, he had to think of another plan.
The county they were in was separated from Quanya County by three other counties. They were all paupers, without a single horse. If they were to head south, they’d probably have to steal along the way. By the time they reached Quanya County, it would be at least April or May.
He had to quickly persuade the group to move, for when he thought about the Yang Family growing richer each day while his brother and mother’s bodies remained lost, he was unable to eat or sleep.