Chapter 1485: Chapter 1486: She Cooperates Immensely

“Heh heh, it’s just been so long since I’ve been back home, I got so excited I forgot.”

“Say one more word out of line and I’ll rip your tongue out! Get out of here and lock her up!” He received a kick to his backside, sending him staggering and dazed. “Move it!”

The man who climbed up from the ground realized he had misspoken, as if he had inadvertently revealed his home address.

He scrambled to his feet, dejected and too scared to retaliate. Stepping up to Rong Yan unhappily, he said, “Follow me!”

“Alright.” Rong Yan cooperated completely, following him as he headed inside.

The other two men, worried something might go wrong, also followed to keep guard over Rong Yan.

In the large yard, only the hefty man and a gaunt, skeletal man remained. The latter took off the hood covering his head.

His drawn face barely seemed to have any flesh, with an expression full of misery. His skin, marked by years of hard labor under the sun, looked as weathered as someone in their fifties. In truth, he was barely in his twenties.

He wiped the sweat from his brow, glanced at the burly man, and asked, “Big brother, we didn’t kill her, but we brought her back. What do we do next? Should we call the boss and check?”

The burly man, trembling slightly, dug into his pocket and pulled out two homemade cigarettes—throwing one to him and keeping the other for himself. He then fished out a lighter, shoved the cigarette into his mouth, and lit it.

The flickering flame glowed briefly. He inhaled deeply, releasing a thin wisp of smoke.

This type of cigarette was cheap tobacco grown in the countryside. Though called tobacco, it was really just leaves dried and rolled up. Easy to prepare, inexpensive, and smokeable—similar to a cigarette, though slightly harsher and more pungent.

For villagers whose yearly income was already meager, it was considered quite a decent pastime.

So practically every household—young and old alike—would take leisurely puffs of water tobacco during idle farming seasons, carrying a water cup to chat from house to house all day. When evening came, they’d simply head home to eat.

The two men smoked casually, puffing their way through most of the cigarette. Only then did the burly man seem to calm down. Suddenly, he said, “I want to let her go.”

“Huh?” The weathered man froze in surprise, almost dropping his water tobacco. “Big brother, what are you saying.”

The tall man murmured gravely, “I want to let her go. Earlier, I thought it all through—if I succeed in killing her, I’ll turn myself in. Whatever punishment awaits—whether it’s prison or execution—I’m ready for it. As long as I can exchange her life for money to save Qi, I’m willing to do anything. I had already made up my mind. Then who would’ve thought it wouldn’t work out? It got me thinking—maybe somewhere up there, Qi could sense what we were planning to do, and fate intervened to make her push over that trash bin and avoid her doom. Otherwise, why on earth would there be a big trash bin right next to her at that exact moment? If not for that bin, I wouldn’t have veered off; she would’ve been dead.”

The impatient man gradually calmed down as he listened, biting his cigarette hard and taking another fierce drag. He exhaled deeply, “…Then what about Qi? You’re just going to let her die? She’s still so young. She’s not like us. She always got top grades as a kid—she’s the only one in the whole village who managed to make it academically. Everyone in the village places their hope in her. If she leaves us, Mrs. Qi will cry her eyes blind. Her family only has a widow, an orphan, and her grandmother left. If Qi dies, they won’t survive either.”

“And you. Don’t you like Qi?”

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