Damn it! Let’s smash the darkness together!

Chapter 1457 - 206: Guiding Envoy

"Sir, this is Xisha Square."

Yang Su stepped onto the light white translucent muddy snow, and pointed to the village nestled in the valley by the river not far away.

Xu Shu nodded and looked up.

The whole of Xisha Square is composed of a large number of wooden stilted houses built along the river, arranged in a staggered, densely packed pattern, with clear river water flowing beneath them.

At first glance, it almost seems as if the entire village is built on the river, with water, village, and mountain forming a line.

Rather than a village, it might be more intuitive to call it a mountain stronghold.

This should have been quite a picturesque scene, but to Xu Shu’s regret, numerous vacant and tilted houses, dense and strangely shaped hanging objects, filled the Jiangnan Water Village-like scenery with clutter and dilapidation, completely ruining its original beauty, and everywhere exuded the sour stench of poverty.

Even more regrettably.

Even when Mayor Liu personally came to this mountain village to inspect the people’s condition, the local villagers not only failed to come out happily to welcome him, but actually dared to close their doors and windows one by one?

The timid villagers pretended to be dead, while the bold ones occasionally peeked through the door cracks, but quickly hid when meeting Xu Shu’s gaze, with no intention of greeting him.

This made Xu Shu immediately frown deeply.

Excessive!

It’s really too excessive!

It’s as if they haven’t put me, Mr. Xu... oh no, haven’t put me, Mayor Liu, in their eyes!

"Go call your village head, I want to personally interrogate him!" Xu Shu angrily said.

"Ahem, that’s enough~ We better investigate ourselves." Xiao Ya discreetly poked Xu Shu’s waist. She thought, it’s one thing to deceive the orphans and widows on the way, but do you really intend to hold a court trial here? You might as well just wipe out this hundred or so households; that would be simpler.

"I feel this place seems quite hostile to outsiders." Thinking this, Xiao Ya suddenly added.

While speaking, she pointed to one of the few houses with open doors not far away.

Inside was a couple around their forties, working together to grind cooked beans into paste with a millstone.

The millstone consisted of two round stones, with the stone on top able to rotate.

Beside them, a pair of siblings put cooked beans into a mortar, pounding them with a wooden pestle repeatedly until the beans turned into paste.

The sister looked just over ten years old, while the brother appeared to be only five or six, with both being lean and dark-skinned - their actual ages should be older than they seemed, but due to adverse impact, they looked much younger.

At this moment, the grinding couple was staring fixedly at Xu Shu and the others with extremely wary and even hostile eyes.

As if at any slight careless move, the male and female homeowners would pick up the rake and firewood knife at hand and rush out to fight.

Such looks naturally attracted Xiao Ya’s attention.

Xu Shu stroked his chin, thoughtfully saying, "Red bean paste? You say Xisha, yet these fine sands... Is your accent a bit heavy? Eight pressures!"

"Ah? What... what pressures?" Yang Su was momentarily stunned, unable to react to Xu Shu’s words.

Xiao Ya secretly rolled her eyes, inwardly annoyed.

This person... How to put it, is he mentally unstable?

Clearly at times he is so serious, able to display stunningly brilliant behavior, and just moments ago his impassioned speech even brought tears to my eyes, yet sometimes he’s just so... so...

Xiao Ya was taken aback, feeling a sudden void.

As a knowledgeable "mechanical expert", she was momentarily at a loss for words, unable to find a suitable adjective to describe Xu Shu, and could only curse inwardly.

You, kid, are you reliable or not!

Xu Shu ignored Xiao Ya’s doubts, saying to her in a honeyed whisper: "Little Ya, have you noticed?"

"Hmm?" In her angry thoughts, Xiao Ya was momentarily startled by the question, "Noticed what?"

"That little widow is lying again."

Xu Shu chuckled, quietly observing Yang Su and her daughter, then said, "Didn’t she say before that the people in the village were good to her, often helping her? Yet I don’t see that. Look at the family grinding bean paste; their hostile eyes are clearly directed at her!"

"Oh?"

At Xu Shu’s words, Xiao Ya became serious, employing her skill of "careful observation."

Then, she noticed the intricacies within; the couple’s eyes, seemingly fixed on Xu Shu, were actually not focused on him at all, intentionally or unintentionally casting side-glances at Yang Su.

"It’s really true... How did you discover it?" Xiao Ya asked.

"I looked with my eyes."

Xu Shu looked a bit confused at Xiao Ya, thinking about what she meant by how he discovered it. He wondered why she hadn’t noticed, thinking to himself: Isn’t she the Judgement Department’s brainy chief inspector, Ouyang Suxian?

A few days without meeting, she’s become like this! Cannot even see through this? Really a waste of growing that big pair of... ahem, a waste of those Casilan big eyes!

Thinking this, Xu Shu’s eyes rolled, gesturing to Yang Su, "Alright, next, this Mayor will personally go deep among the people, undercover to inspect public sentiment. If there’s nothing else, you may return home."

Yang Su asked with slight surprise, "Mayor Liu, don’t you need us to lead the way? It’s rather chaotic here, not easy to navigate..."

"No need for more words, I have my own decision, see you home," Xu Shu’s tone was non-negotiable.

Seeing this, Yang Su could only nod and lead the way from the front.