Scratching his stomach, he moved towards the jar and poured himself a generous amount of water before picking up the cup and drowning its content in one full gulp, once he was sure that he was sober enough to walk out of the room and walk to the outhouse without any trouble, he walked out of his room.
Feng Zihang only took two steps out of his room when his gaze fell on the dark figure that was digging out the golden taels that he has buried under the broken cabinet. Because carrying the taels was like inviting danger to himself, Feng Zihang looked around for a safe place in his house and finally buried the pouch under the cabinet that was sitting outside the kitchen, behind the main hall, he thought that the space he chose was the safest because the cabinet was heavy and no one would have thought about pushing it aside to get the treasure under it and somehow even if they found out about it the scarping and the scratching of the cabinet against the floor will wake him up.
Clearly, he was wrong.
The urge to pee and all of his drunkenness vanished in an instant as he looked at the figure and shouted, ” Oi! What are you doing? Stay away from that money, it’s mine!”
His shout startled the figure but instead of stopping and dropping the pouch, the black figure darted to the main hall and jumped out of the window that his mother has left open for the summer breeze. Feng Zihang gritted his teeth at the sight of the open window and his mother sleeping peacefully in her bed, to think that she was able to sleep so calmly despite inviting a thief into the house! What was she thinking?
Feng Zihang was angry but he didn’t have time to wake his mother up and fight it out with her, so he too jumped out of the window and rushed out after the figure that was running away with his fortune. How can someone find out about this treasure of his? Was it the Lin brothers? No, if they were the ones who found out about it they would have called the entire village to make a show out of it, they would never try to steal it. Those five brothers were men of morals, so this has to be someone else but who? It must have been someone from the town, surely, he brought the pouch with him and had a delicious meal at the most expensive restaurant in the town, surely someone saw him spending lavishly there and chased him to the village.
Seeing that the thief was running out of the village, Feng Zihang panicked. Whatever he will think of something later on —— but the most important thing right now was to stop that guy from running away from the village! So, forgetting his initial intention of hiding the golden taels’ existence from the villagers, he shouted, ” Thief there is a thief in the village he is running with the life savings of my family, someone stop him! Stop him before my family is degraded to the point that I am starved to death! Stop him!”
Villagers who were peacefully sleeping in their houses were woken up by the shouts and screams of Feng Zihang and immediately rushed out to see what was the matter, when they saw that there was really a thief running out of the village they chased after him. Old Chao who lived the closest to the village entrance was the first to reach the thief and stopped him from running out of the village and then the others quietly surrounded him but the thief was no rookie either, he too slipped past the circle that was surrounding him from all side and rushed out once again.
He didn’t reach far when another figure shot towards him and this time, he got hold of the pouch as he tugged it away from the thief. ” You… You have some really big guts to steal in my village huh?” The figure belonged to none other than the Village head who has rushed out of his house after listening to Feng Zihang’s cries. Like Old Chao, he lived at the entrance of the village and was able to stop the thief from rushing out.
The thief tried to pull the pouch back but by the time the other villagers were already there and they pulled the thief away from Village head Luo. They tugged and pulled causing the pouch in their hands to tear up slightly as soon as that happened, the thief with the mask over his face elbowed the villagers one by one and pulled the pouch until it tore down and golden taels started to shower down from it.
The sudden appearance of these golden taels scared the villagers who have never seen a golden tael in their life, their movements slowed down but the thief who knew what he needed to do was in a hurry as he crouched down but by then Feng Zihang has already arrived there and he pushed the thief away. ” Get lost, this is my treasure! No one is allowed to touch it, you hear me? Get lost!” With that, he crouched down on the ground and started to shove the money into his pockets with a fervent speed.
While he was doing all this he didn’t sense the stunned expressions on the faces of the villagers as they looked at Feng Zihang and then the taels in his hands.
