By the time Ye Qing spoke, his hand had already seized the man's wrist. As he finished speaking, he forcefully twisted, breaking the man's arm.
"Ah!" the man screamed wretchedly, struggling in vain to escape Ye Qing's grasp.
Ye Qing grabbed his other hand and did the same, twisting and breaking it too. He then proceeded to similarly shatter both of the man's legs before stopping.
"If we were on the battlefield, you lot would have been dead long ago!" Ye Qing said, looking at them grimly. "Now, I can't decide your fate. However, you must pay the price for what you've done!"
Ye Qing went over and opened the cage, lifting out the two children. The kids obediently kept their eyes shut, but Ye Qing could feel them trembling.
Ye Qing threw the man into one of the cages, and as soon as he was inside, the wolf dog pounced on him, tearing at his flesh.
The man continued to scream in agony as he scrambled into a corner of the cage, curling up his body. But he was too large to escape the dog's reach, and his horrific shrieks did not end.
Ye Qing broke all four limbs of the remaining four men, then threw them into the cage. The dogs' barking was thunderous, and the men's wails were endless, as they lacked even the strength to fight back.
Ye Qing went over to the little girl and took off one of the men's clothes, wrapping her wounds. But still, the blood would not stop, and her condition seemed precarious.
"Do you have any bandages or anything?" Ye Qing turned and asked the two children.
"In the house." one of the children replied.
Ye Qing ran into the house with the girl in his arms. Inside, everything was in disarray, with plenty of bloodstains on the ground. There were also five children kneeling, gazing in complete bewilderment at Ye Qing, not understanding what had just occurred. Fear was etched on each child's face as they just watched from a distance, none daring to stand.
"Where are the bandages?" Ye Qing asked urgently.
"Over there," the child who had followed inside pointed to a table nearby.
Ye Qing hurried over, opened the table, and found a small first aid kit. Thankfully, it was well-stocked with supplies for dressing wounds.
Having encountered similar situations on the battlefield, Ye Qing had plenty of experience with first aid and staunching bleeding. He poured some medicine powder on the girl's forehead and tightly bandaged it, eventually stopping the bleeding.
Seeing that the little girl was out of danger, Ye Qing let out a long sigh of relief. He then looked at the five children still kneeling on the floor and the two he had just saved standing not far behind him, their eyes filled with fear but also a glimmer of hope.
Each child was skinny and worn out, tearing at Ye Qing's heart. In each of their eyes was endless terror; too young to understand what safety meant.
But the two children Ye Qing had rescued at least knew that Ye Qing had beaten the bad people who used to bully them. So, in their immature worldviews, Ye Qing was a good person!
Looking into the children's eyes, Ye Qing's own welled up with moisture. He placed the little girl on a sofa nearby and said, "It's okay now, it's over. Nobody will bully you anymore!"
The children were still looking at Ye Qing, with five of them remaining on their knees. Without the instructions of the men who used to command them, they dared not stand.
Ye Qing went over and picked up each of the five children. They were all frail, nowhere near the weight they should be for their age.
"Is it just you guys?" Ye Qing asked.
The five children were too afraid to speak, but the two that Ye Qing had saved were a bit braver and replied, "There are a few more in the basement… they… they did something wrong and were not allowed to eat…"
Ye Qing rushed to the basement, which was pitch dark and filled with the stench of decay, including the smell of rotting flesh.
Suppressing the urge to vomit, Ye Qing turned on the light. The sight in the basement made him freeze in place.
The basement was small, seemingly excavated later on, hence the dirt walls. The floor was covered in wet mud and occasional pools of septic water – no place for humans to live.
Yet, in this space, seven or eight children were huddled together. The eldest was no more than twelve, the youngest just four or five. Each bore a look of horror on their face, and when the light hit them, their first reaction was to quickly turn their heads away, as if even this faint light was too blinding for those who hadn't seen it in so long.
In another corner of the basement, three children were by a septic pool, desperately drinking the filthy water. It appeared their thirst had become unbearable.
Ye Qing felt as if his heart were being wrenched, holding back his fury, he gently said, "Children, come out, quickly come out!"
No one dared to move as Ye Qing was not one of the men who usually managed them, and they were unsure if they should obey him.
"Come out, the bad people are gone, you don't need to be afraid," Ye Qing reassured softly.
Finally, an older child hesitantly stood up and staggered over to him.
Ye Qing supported him. The boy was about eleven or twelve years old but weighed no more than thirty kilograms. Emaciated with concave cheeks, he looked almost ghastly.
Ye Qing helped him out of the basement, and seeing this, the other children also mustered the courage to follow.
After helping all the children out, Ye Qing looked back and saw another child lying on the basement floor.
He called out twice, but the child did not respond. Ye Qing walked over, reaching to shake the child awake. However, what he touched was cold.
With a sinking heart, Ye Qing hastily picked up the child and felt for his breath. This poor child had already stopped breathing.
Looking at the child's frail face, Ye Qing finally couldn't hold back and tears streamed down.
He carried the child out of the basement. Outside, the other children were frantically eating the food on the table. Each of them didn't know how long they had been hungry, and they looked truly miserable.
Ye Qing watched these children, and his heart wrenched again.
He walked into the yard with the dead child in his arms, and several people were still screaming inside the cage. Upon seeing Ye Qing come out, they hastily turned to him, pleading for mercy.
"Brother, please let us go, we won't dare do it again!"
"I beg you, please spare us..."
"Brother, Brother, please spare us. If we offended you in any way, please tell us, don't let the dogs bite us anymore!"
Ye Qing looked at them, his eyes growing redder. Suddenly, he opened the cage and pulled all five people out.
"Brother, thank... thank you..." Zhou Wu said with a trembling voice, several pieces of flesh had been torn from his body by the dogs, and he looked dreadful.
"You don't have to thank me!" Ye Qing said coldly, "Because, you're going to hate me in a moment!"
As he spoke, Ye Qing picked up a machete from the ground and went straight to Zhou Wu, chopping off both his hands and throwing them into the cage.
The dogs inside, as if they hadn't eaten for a long time, tore his hands to pieces.
"Ah! Ah! Ah!" Zhou Wu's screams shook the sky as he roared, "Why... why are you doing this? What have I done to offend you? I have no quarrel with you, why...
why are you doing this to me?"
"Do those kids have a quarrel with you?" Ye Qing yelled furiously, holding up the child's corpse. "Did he have a quarrel with you?"
Zhou Wu looked at the child, then at Ye Qing, and said tremblingly, "He... who is he to you?"
"Does it matter?" Ye Qing screamed back, "What? He's not your family, so you can treat him as less than human? Then you're not my family, why should I treat you as a human?"
With that, Ye Qing swung the machete and chopped off Zhou Wu's ears, throwing them into the metal cage again.
Zhou Wu screamed again, his appearance too ghastly to bear.
Ye Qing didn't kill him but turned instead to do the same to the other few, amputating their hands, chopping off their ears, and feeding them to the dogs. What was left of them, even if alive, would be crippled for life!
In doing so, Ye Qing was actually holding back; had it been during his time in the army, these men would have been killed long ago!
After dealing with them, Ye Qing still had a pent-up anger in his heart. But in the end, he did not kill them.
Looking at the children grabbing food inside the house, Ye Qing sighed and quietly left the yard.
He went outside to find a public phone booth and called the police. After more than half an hour, a police car arrived.
Seeing the police car enter the alley, Ye Qing felt relieved and turned away.
Leading the police team was Deputy Captain Huang Yong from Shenchuan City's Donglin Branch Office. Huang Yong was truly shocked by the scene before him.
He had been a police officer in Shenchuan City, seeing several homicides each year and no shortage of dead bodies. But such a bloody scene was something he had never encountered before.
Several people had both hands severed and ears chopped off, lying on the ground wailing endlessly. Blood had dyed the ground of the yard red, and the wolf dogs in the iron cage kept growling, their ferocity stimulated by the scent of blood.
"Captain Huang, you have a phone call." A policeman handed him a mobile phone.
Huang Yong, struggling to fight off the urge to vomit, took the phone and walked aside: "Who is it?"
"Old Huang, it's me." A tense voice came from the other end of the call.
Huang Yong frowned slightly and spoke in a deep voice: "What's the matter?"
"Old Huang, the place you're at right now, it belongs to Brother Lin. If it's not too big of a deal, can you not blow this out of proportion?"
"I'm afraid that's not possible," said Huang Yong, looking at the bloody yard. "Even if we can suppress it on our end, you will likely still face trouble."
"Why?" The man on the other end was puzzled.
"You should see for yourself," replied Huang Yong gravely. "Has Boss Lin recently offended someone? Whoever did this is vicious and most likely targeting Boss Lin. I think you need to be careful about this!"
"How could that be?" The person exclaimed in shock. "In Shenchuan City, who would dare to move against Boss Lin?"
Huang Yong said dismissively, "Who knows? Maybe it's a calf not afraid of a tiger, with a forest this big, all kinds of birds are possible."