In years of famine and drought, their village even rejected fatty meat.

Chapter 510 Numbness

Despite her grief, Yu Cui asked Lü Ming for Lü Xiaoyu's location and then headed straight for the prefectural city with Lü Xiaoyi without hesitation.

One hundred kilometers is an insurmountable distance for ordinary people in this era.

But Yu Cui and Lü Xiaoyi, burdened with their own worries, felt no fatigue whatsoever, walking from afternoon until nightfall, and then from nightfall back to afternoon...

For more than ten hours, the two of them had hardly stopped walking. Finally, they arrived at the prefectural city this afternoon and planned to cross the city to reach the mass grave located in the south of the city.

The two men, who had not eaten a single grain of rice for more than ten hours, were pale, and their stomachs felt as if they were being burned by fire, making it unbearable.

But the physical pain was nothing compared to the grief in their hearts!

"Aunt Yu, Xiao Yi."

Just then, a sound came from behind them, but they didn't notice and just kept walking forward.

After walking for more than ten hours on their own two feet, their bodies were already exhausted, and they were only persevering with sheer willpower.

"Xiao Yi."

Fortunately, Chen Dao was fast and quickly caught up with the two.

Seeing the extremely anxious expressions on their faces, Chen Dao asked, "Xiao Yi, where are you going?"

"Brother Chen?"

Lu Xiaoyi finally noticed Chen Dao's arrival. He raised his tear-filled eyes and said, "My mother and I are going to find my sister."

These words seemed to touch upon Lü Xiaoyi's painful memories, and tears welled up in his eyes.

In fact, he knew perfectly well that Lü Ming was trying to comfort him yesterday.

He simply preferred to believe that Lü Ming had misjudged the truth—that his sister was already dead.

"elder sister?"

Chen Dao was taken aback, recalling Lu Xiaoyi's older sister, Lu Xiaoyu, who had been forcibly taken away by the Qingwang Mansion. Chen Dao and the others had once speculated that Lu Xiaoyu had probably died in the Qingwang Mansion, or if she hadn't, she would probably never be able to leave the Qingwang Mansion for the rest of her life.

But Lü Xiaoyi's answer at this moment clearly indicated that Lü Xiaoyu was still alive.

wrong!

If Lü Xiaoyu were still alive, Yu Cui and Lü Xiaoyi shouldn't be like this; they should be happy!

Where is your sister?

Chen Dao asked.

"South of the city, a mass grave."

"A mass grave?!"

Chen Dao, Chen Cheng, Zheng Qiuyan, and Qing Ying were all stunned. What kind of place was the mass grave?

Generally, only places where corpses are disposed of are called mass graves. Where is Lü Xiaoyu? Doesn't that mean... she is already a corpse?

Upon realizing this, the four felt a chill in their hearts. Although they had never met Lü Xiaoyu, they knew from Yu Cui and Lü Xiaoyi's descriptions that Lü Xiaoyu must be a beautiful and kind woman.

It's truly unacceptable that a woman's body was dumped in a mass grave.

"Xiao Yi, I'll carry you on my back!"

Chen Dao glanced at Lü Xiaoyi's pale face. Qingshui Village was more than a hundred miles away from the prefectural city. Young Lü Xiaoyi must have been exhausted from walking all the way from Qingshui Village to the prefectural city. So Chen Dao walked directly to Lü Xiaoyi, bent down and carried Lü Xiaoyi on his back.

"Qingying."

Zheng Qiuyan gave Qingying a wink, and Qingying immediately understood, carrying Yu Cui, who was exhausted and only persevering on the road by sheer willpower.

Then the group headed directly towards the south gate.

Leaving the city did not require strict checks, so the group quickly exited the south gate and arrived at the mass grave outside the city.

It's more accurate to call this a mass grave or a dumping ground for corpses than a mass burial site.

On the desolate, sparsely overgrown earthen slope, one corpse after another was carelessly dumped, and a foul odor permeated the air.

Some corpses were still wrapped in straw mats, while others... were left to rot in the wilderness, exposed to the sun and battered by the rain.

"elder sister."

Upon arriving at the mass grave, Lü Xiaoyi struggled to get off Chen Dao's back and ran to a corpse wrapped in a straw mat, tears streaming down her face like broken beads.

Yu Cui stumbled and ran to the corpse. The moment she recognized the face, she knelt down with a thud, her body motionless, her eyes numb, and only tears falling to the ground.

There is a kind of sorrow called "heart turned to ashes".

When a person is extremely sad, what they show is not hysteria, nor is it wailing; rather, it is numbness!

At this moment, Yu Cui was in this state. Having witnessed her daughter die in front of her, the pain in her heart had exceeded her own threshold of endurance. As a result, her entire heart was convulsing violently, and endless grief left her mind blank, like a corpse on the ground, devoid of any life.

Chen Dao looked up at the corpses scattered throughout the mass grave, a look of sorrow flashing in his eyes.

This is the reality for the poor in this world. While they are alive, they suffer endless exploitation and work hard day and night, yet they can't even fill their own stomachs.

Even in death, people cannot find peace. Those who have a burial plot and a coffin to rest in are considered lucky. The vast majority of people are simply wrapped in straw mats after death and their bodies are abandoned in a corner where no one cares.

Many people didn't even have straw mats. After they died, they were hastily carried to places like mass graves and dumped there. Their bodies were left to be exposed to the sun and eaten by wild dogs and crows.

"Young Master Chen, it seems that most of the corpses here are women."

The observant Zheng Qiuyan said that many of the corpses in the mass grave were unrecognizable, but their gender could still be determined from the size of their skeletons.

"Ah."

Chen Dao nodded expressionlessly, walked to Lü Xiaoyi's side, squatted down, and looked at the corpse in front of him.

The body's face was not damaged, and because the time of death was not long, one could still vaguely see Lu Xiaoyu's handsome appearance before her death.

"Xiao Yi, may I open the straw mat and take a look?"

Chen Dao asked.

Lu Xiaoyi did not answer; his grief had overwhelmed him, and he didn't hear what Chen Dao was saying at all.

Seeing this, Chen Dao didn't ask any further questions, but instead directly uncovered the straw mat covering Lü Xiaoyu's body.

As the straw mat was opened, Chen Dao's pupils contracted sharply.

Lu Xiaoyu's face was relatively intact, but her body...

His lower body looked as if it had been struck repeatedly by some heavy object, leaving it bloody and mangled, a sight that made one's scalp tingle.

The upper body was even more horrific; the flesh around the chest looked as if it had been ripped out, the fullness gone, leaving only an empty chest cavity, where the bones were even visible...

A hint of reluctance flashed in Chen Dao's eyes as he wrapped Lü Xiaoyu's body back in the straw mat.