Chapter 158: What Was Inside the Bamboo Tube

"Ah!"

Perhaps not expecting me to speak suddenly, she let out an exclamation.

Judging by the voice, it was a girl. As she turned to look at me, she lost her footing and sat flat on the ground.

By this time, I had already stood up from my sleeping bag and looked down at her.

Aside from the bloody scars on her back, there was a numbered brand on her forehead showing the digits 799.

The girl's eyes were filled with terror before I could even say a word.

The food she had been holding dropped to the ground. Without any hesitation, she fell heavily to her knees and began kowtowing to me repeatedly.

"Please spare me! Please spare me! I won't run away anymore!"

Thud, thud, thud...

She used all her strength, seemingly terrified that if she kowtowed too gently, I would be displeased.

In a short moment, her forehead was already covered in blood.

I parted my lips slightly, frowning as I looked at the woman in front of me.

What on earth had she been through?

I took a step forward, intending to help her up, but the moment I touched her, her entire body froze in place as if she had received an electric shock.

"Don't hit me, don't hit me! I'll do whatever you want!"

The next second, she actually began stripping off her filthy clothes. "I'll listen to everything you say!"

Quick as lightning, I took off my own clothes and hurriedly covered her body with them. "Miss, what are you doing? I'm still just a kid, some sights shouldn't be seen."

After pondering for a moment, I took some food and water out of my backpack and handed them to her. "Eat and drink if you're hungry."

The woman seemed unable to believe her ears. When she looked at me, her eyes were full of questions.

It was as if she were asking me why I was treating her this way.

Looking at her appearance, an inexplicable ache gripped my heart.

I squatted down and smiled gently at her. "You should be a few years older than me, so it should be fine if I call you older sister. Sister, no matter what you've been through before, you're safe now. With me here, don't be afraid."

She looked at me, and tears streamed down the corners of her eyes, constantly dripping onto the ground.

Just as she was about to speak, however, I heard another burst of hurried footsteps. "You little beast! To run this far! You've given me a fine chase!"

I frowned, stood up, and looked in the direction from which the sound came.

I saw a man with a small braided queue, dressed entirely in white, his face full of an eerie expression, appearing before us.

Most importantly, there was a black nail embedded in his left brow bone.

A genuine member of the Golden Cicada Society. It seemed I was finally meeting the real masterminds from this point on.

"What kind of person are you?"

Seeing me, the man roared, then began sizing me up. His gaze swept from my body to the sleeping bag, and finally to the girl.

"Forget it, since you've come to this place, don't even think about leaving!"

The man in white walked step by step toward the girl and me.

When he reached me, he gave me a bizarre smile, took a bamboo tube out of his pocket, placed it in his mouth, and prepared to blow something out toward me.

Before he even had a chance to blow a breath, I lunged forward with a single step.

I slapped the bottom of the bamboo tube with the palm of my hand.

With a sharp *sizzle*, the man in white widened his eyes, looking at me in sheer disbelief.

Immediately afterward, blood dripped drop by drop from the bamboo tube onto the ground.

Without even giving the man in white another glance, I turned around and smiled at the girl. "Don't be afraid, I'm here. The bad guys who bullied you will not come to a good end."

The moment my words fell, the man in white fell straight to the ground, twitched twice, and went completely still.

After comforting the girl, I walked over to the thoroughly dead man in white, crouched down, and began searching his body with my hands.

I found a very bulky mobile phone. Upon second thought, it seemed like something I had seen on television—was it called a satellite phone?

Using his fingerprint to unlock it, I found a number in the contacts list labeled "Granny Feng."

I grinned and dialed it directly.

The call was connected very quickly, and the voice of a very young girl came through.

Although anyone who didn't know better would find the voice lovely, to my ears, it sounded like a death summons: "Little Ghost, how is it? Have you caught the person?"

Little Ghost?

I sneered. "Well, I'm terribly sorry, but your Little Ghost has probably truly become a ghost by now."

Upon hearing my voice, Lin Feng fell silent on the other end for a moment.

"Don't stay quiet now, old hag. We're going to meet again."

"Jiang Huai... you are courting death..."

I chuckled and didn't waste another word on her, hanging up the phone directly.

From the words and tone she had just used, I could tell that Lin Feng was currently right here within Wutan Gully.

Since she was here, we would meet sooner or later. The reason I called her was simply to let her know that I had arrived.

"Big sister, are you... alright?"

I originally wanted to take a step closer to the woman, but she instinctively retreated a step, looking extremely frightened of me.

"It's fine, it's fine. Don't worry, I won't harm you, and I won't come closer. I just want to say a few words to you."

Seeing that the woman made no further defensive moves, I tossed my backpack filled with food down by her feet. "The food and water inside are enough for you to get back to Majiazhuang. Just follow this road straight ahead. Once you reach Majiazhuang, find the town mayor and tell him to contact Wang Zihao."

"Tell Wang Zihao to bring people and search inward from the perimeter of Wutan Gully—first to rescue people, and second to capture all the bad guys."

The woman looked at me, somewhat bewildered.

"Although I don't know how you managed to escape, your journey here must have been very arduous. Can you tell me from which direction you escaped?"

At these words, the girl's body shrank back involuntarily, and she retreated several steps.

"Don't misunderstand! The place where you were imprisoned holds more than just you, right? Not everyone can escape the way you did. They need me to rescue them..."

After hearing my words, the woman's face revealed a look of terror, and she shook her head unceasingly. "You... you will die... call the police..."

"If I go out with you to call the police, it'll take too much time. Every extra minute could mean several people dying."

"How many people are there in the place where you were locked up?"

"Many..."

"We... I..."

She desperately wanted to tell me what the hellish place she escaped from was like, but she couldn't bring herself to say it.

"It's fine, just give me a direction. Besides, when you came over, did you see anyone else walking inward like I am?"

The woman shook her head. She told me the only reason she managed to escape was that, for some unknown reason, all the guards had rushed off toward a single location, as if something had happened.

When she said this, a premonition instantly arose in my heart: this matter was related to Song Zhong.