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n” We have done that already,” sighed little Zimo putting the nefarious gifts back into the box that Xiao Hua picked out of the hole that they dug in the backyard. ” We tried to complain to that woman on the first day when that thing,” he tipped his chin at the broken shaft. ” was left in front of the house, we understood the importance of the situation and immediately went to look for her.”

n” Then what did she say?” asked Xiao Hua, he didn’t have any good impression of the new village head either just as the old one she was too haughty and her way of working was simply too annoying. She didn’t listen to a thing that mers have to say, she only cared about one thing and that was —— having a pristine reputation.

nNeither Little Zimo nor Li Hanjing said anything causing Xiao Hua to frown.

n” I am asking what did she say?”

nLi Hanjing gave a hard sigh. ” What else will she say? She said that we were overreacting, that it was just an overly enthusiastic admirer of yours and instead of acting like that we should give her a chance so that she will stop doing things like sending gifts to our doorstep.”

n” I told her that she was crazy,” Little Zimo snarled from the side as he slammed his hands on the table. ” But she only laughed at me and asked me to calm down, then she went ahead and started talking about our past background and said that something like was what we should have expected and should be used to before kicking us out after insulting us thoroughly.”

nHe huffed and crossed his arms in front before continuing. ” We thought that we can go ahead and you know to complain to the Yamen but the officers in yamen are also women, I don’t think they would have heard a single thing that we have to say, instead of catching the culprit they would have locked us up instead. You know how they are, don’t you brother Hua? Always protecting women became they are the sole runners of this country.”

nXiao Hua heard everything that Little Zimo and Li Hanjing has to say before his face turned sombre and he gritted his teeth so hard that they started to make a churning sound. ” This is so unfair! I am being treated like I am some sort of toy that can be touched and squeezed anytime and yet I am being asked to stay silent. Why is it always me?”

nHe just wanted a normal life was it too much to ask? Can’t this psychopathic woman not leave him alone? ” First it was a peeping cat and now a pervert, I don’t know about others but I am feeling really unsafe at the moment.”

n” I understand, Hua Hua,” said Li Hanjing nursing his temples as he picked up the frilly ribbon-like thing that was tied to the gifts. ” Whoever this is, they don’t like they want to stop anytime soon. I think we should keep an eye open and hire a few more mammies to guard the door at least they will be able to catch someone.”

n” I don’t think so,” said Little Zimo with an eye roll. ” Like you said brother Hanjing, the pervert doesn’t want to stop so obviously they will try to look for other options to get their sick gifts inside the house, I say we ignore him …act like we don’t care and just stick to our routine, it’s not like the gifts they are sending are harming us? We will just dump it in the backyard if we find something like this and be done with it. After all worst come to worst, what can they send, right brother Hua?”

nXiao Hua wasn’t willing to let the culprit go like this much less turn a blind eye to everything but then he thought about the words of the Village head and grounded his teeth. Even if he didn’t want to give up, so what? Who was going to listen to him? He had no choice but to keep silent for the time being.

n” But if this keeps on, I am going to tell Yu Dong.”

n”Sure, you can but I don’t think that the situation will escalate to that point.”

nThree weeks later.

nThe situation did escalate a lot and by lot, Xiao Hua meant to the point where he was almost dragged to the Yamen, thankfully his brothers were alongside him and stopped the village head from putting the entire blame on his head.

nBecause someone found a dead body in front of the mers’ house.

nYup, it wasn’t an everyday thing where you walk out of the house and you step on a dead body that was mutilated to the point that it was enough to blow someone’s hair off their head.

nEven now Xiao Hua wished he could chop off his leg and throw it somewhere. If not for little Zimo making him some sweet strawberry milk he would still be standing in the courtyard screeching like a bird whose tail was stepped on.

nHe sat in the living room while the village head and elders discussed the matter of finding a corpse in the village out of nowhere.

nEvery single one of their suggestion was crazy enough to make his hair rise.

nThis was not his first time seeing a corpse, he has seen a lot of mers being killed off by their buyers and returned as nothing but a cold body but the mer that was left in front of his house was killed in such a gruesome manner that he could feel his stomach churn.

nThough the mer who died was the one who became an enemy of him at his first meeting, Xiao Hua swore that he never ever met that mer alone again and he was more or less of a very delicate mer and there was no way he could have killed a mer like that.

nOf course, when he first met Ke Lixin he wanted to beat the crap out of him and then light his body on fire but there was no way he would have acted upon his desires just because he wanted to.

nHe was possessive and he knew that when Ke Lixin told him to stay away from Yu Dong, Xiao Hua has been furious and hated it when he made such bold claims about Yu Dong as if he owned her but he wasn’t a murderer and he was a firm believer of if you want to kill someone destroy their pride instead of their face.

nSo, instead of fighting with that mer, he simply knocked him unconscious and threw him into a mud-filled puddle but that was the end of their small cat fight.

nHe may or may not have stuck a paper that read ‘ I am a fool’ on the forehead of Ke Lixin but that was because he wanted him to wake up to the reality that was the most he had done and the level of his brutality only reached up to there, over that anything was a big no, no for him.

nKe Lixin must have woken up and gone back home because Xiao Hua went back to the puddle to check whether the mer was awake or not and he was stirring awake when he got there. After that Ke Lixin never returned and Xiao Hua thought of his chapter as closed, done and dusted, that was what he thought until this morning.

nHe raised his head and looked at the villagers from the neighbouring pack covering Ke Lixin’s body with a white sheet and then transferred his body on an old cart before dragging it away.

nXiao Hua took an uneasy breath ignoring the cries of Ke Lixin’s daddy. He has given his alibi and there wasn’t one but at least twenty villagers who were in the bar when Ke Lixin was kidnapped from the village and apart from that time too he has been with either Yu Dong or his friends from the bar, in the night he returned home along with Yu Dong on Aunt Wang and Aunt Cai’s ox cart, so there was no way the blame could be shifted to his head but the one thing that has shaken him to the core was the sight of Ke Lixin’s severed tongue that was wrapped in a small bow kept in an open box like it was some sort of gift and honestly, just the very sight of it was enough to make Xiao Hua fell queasy with nervousness.

nBecause even if someone believed it or not he knew that this murder was the job of that psychopathic stalker.

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