He stopped in his tracks and looked towards the source of the sound in the moonlight.
A black shadow was being chased by a group of dogs, stumbling towards the direction of the Mo Family. But in the blink of an eye, it collapsed.
The Mo brothers had not gone far and ran back together, walking towards the fallen black shadow.
The dogs were humane and would only bark to drive away strangers to the Mo Family if they did not attack. They would not bite.
The eldest brother rushed forward first to lift up the fallen person.
As a martial artist, he had good night vision. He examined the stranger in the moonlight but did not recognize him.
At this time, Mo Jiuye also came over. After seeing clearly who it was, he was somewhat shocked.
Seeing his expression, his brothers could ascertain that this person was an acquaintance of their ninth younger brother.
"Ninth younger brother, who is he?" asked the eldest brother.
"He is Zhou Laoba, the government official sent to escort us to the northwest. He's quite decent. Let's carry him back first to see what exactly is going on," said Mo Jiuye.
As the closest place was their second uncle's yard, the brothers carried Zhou Laoba to the side room.
In the bright oil lamp light, they scrutinized Zhou Laoba carefully.
He was much thinner than when they parted from the Mo Family. His originally ordinary face was covered in healed whip marks, his lips were chapped, and his whole body looked as if he was dead.
Having followed He Zhiran to study some medical knowledge, Mo Jiuye first felt Zhou Laoba's pulse. Although it was slightly weak, he could still feel it.
As for why Zhou Laoba lost consciousness, he could not conclude.
Logically, He Zhiran should be able to ascertain Zhou Laoba’s condition clearly with one look. But He Zhiran was currently sitting the month after giving birth and was in no state to check Zhou Laoba’s body.
Mo Jiuye had a brain wave and thought of his uncle.
Although He Ziming was hailed as a specialist in gynecology, he was still a doctor and could not have only specialized in women’s illnesses.
Mo Jiuye said in a low voice, "Who will go get my uncle?"
"I'll go," Meng Huaining voluntarily stepped forward.
He had already stated his stance today in front of his father-in-law, so he would naturally go all out for the Mo Family’s affairs.
Soon, Meng Huaining brought He Ziming over.
After He Ziming took Zhou Laoba's pulse, he said, "His body should have gone without food for days, and he also has internal injuries."
When it came to internal injuries, no one understood better than the Mo brothers.
They were all martial artists and were often internally injured on the battlefield.
Mo Jiuye reached out and ripped Zhou Laoba’s shirt open. Besides being emaciated, there was nothing wrong with the front of his body.
He carefully turned the person over, and countless whip marks entered his eyes.
The whip marks had scabbed over. But from the depth of the scabs, one could see that the person wielding the whip was exceptionally strong.
This was the rhythm of whipping someone to death.
Without a doubt, the internal injuries He Ziming mentioned came from these whip marks.
Mo Jiuye looked at He Ziming, "Eldest brother, I'll have to trouble you to treat him."
"Let me apply acupuncture first to rouse him and get him to eat something. That should make him feel better. Internal injuries are no trivial matter and need to be nursed back to health slowly," said He Ziming.
He Ziming worked quickly. As soon as he finished speaking, the silver needles in his hand accurately pierced Zhou Laoba's acupoints.
After about the time it takes to burn one incense stick, Zhou Laoba finally woke up groggily.
He scanned the room and eventually fixed his gaze on Mo Jiuye.
"I...I'm not dreaming right? I finally got here alive."
Mo Jiuye did not answer him immediately, but brought over a bowl of water to Zhou Laoba instead.
"Drink some water first, then slowly tell me what happened."
Zhou Laoba wanted to reach out to take the cup of water Mo Jiuye handed over. But he felt that he had no strength in his body at all.
Mo Jiuye still had a decent impression of Zhou Laoba and Peng Wang, who were responsible for escorting them. Even though Zhou Laoba and his sister-in-law had that misunderstanding back then, it was after all a misunderstanding, and he was not petty enough to hold a grudge over that little thing.
He personally held the water up to Zhou Laoba.
"I'll support you. Drink some water first."
After a few sips of water, Zhou Laoba finally felt his throat was not so dry.
He spoke urgently,
"Mo Jiuye, hurry and hide with your family!"
Mo Jiuye frowned and asked, "What happened?"
Zhou Laoba was still very weak at this time, but he felt the matter was urgent. If he did not say it out early, his suffering would have been for nothing.
"Twenty days ago, the chief and our group of officials responsible for escorting all of you were successively arrested and thrown into a dungeon.
There, those people tortured us and interrogated the entire process of escorting your family’s exile.
We are just trying to fill our stomachs with jobs at the government office. Where would we have seen such ferocious people before? We told them everything about escorting all of you to the northwest when pieced together. "
"Do you know who caught you?" Mo Jiuye did not ask about the contents of their confession. He could guess without thinking that in order to survive, those officials would say anything whether true or false.
He was not worried about the rest. He was only concerned about the matter of them rescuing his eighth brother midway. Those officials were fully aware of that.
"On the night we were caught, I vaguely heard the two guards mention Prime Minister Xue while chatting.
Those two people talked without any intention of hiding things from others. The chief guessed that they might want to kill us to keep things quiet.
Sure enough, what we feared came true. Soon after, a large group of people came and whipped us without explanation.
At that time, I was the furthest inside. When someone blocked me, I could turn my back to face the whips lashing my back.
I watched my brothers collapse one by one, and I pretended to faint like them.
Fortunately, I had that foresight. After whipping us for a while, someone said to check if we were still alive and continue beating us if we did not die.
At that time, I could no longer hear the groans of my brothers. I could only pretend I was dead to grasp any chance of living.
Fortunately, those people did not check very carefully and did not notice anything wrong with me when I held my breath. "
At this point, Zhou Laoba started sobbing loudly.
"When I climbed up from the mass grave after those people left, I found that my brothers had all passed away...sob...sob..."
Hearing that Zhou Laoba's brothers had all passed away, Mo Jiuye also felt extremely anguished.
"What about Chief Peng? Did those people beat him to death too?"
Zhou Laoba nodded as he wept, "The chief was beaten the most severely because he refused to talk about the Mo Family's situation.
Those people were determined to obtain more information from him since he was the head in charge of the escort.
When those people came to silence us, the chief only had one breath left. After we were dumped at the mass grave, I went to check on the chief and found that his body had already stiffened...sob...sob..."
At this point, Mo Jiuye fiercely hammered the table next to him and gnashed in anger, "These vicious, inhumane bastards!"
