Chapter 320: Kicked an Iron Plate
A horse-drawn carriage swayed and bounced along a flat, wide road.
The driver was an ordinary-looking middle-aged man, the kind you wouldn’t notice in a crowd.
Inside the carriage, a woman of about the same age held two children, humming a lullaby.
Fuzai’s eyes were closed. The lullaby was making her a little drowsy, and the carefree little one simply fell asleep.
When she woke up again, the carriage had stopped.
The large hand that had been on her neck was gone. Fuzai opened her eyes and found her hands tied behind her back.
The other girl in the carriage was in the same situation, but she was still unconscious.
Fuzai blinked, peering outside through the carriage curtain as it fluttered in the wind.
There were many people outside, seemingly waiting in a line. She also saw a tall city wall.
’Are the traffickers planning to sell us inside the city?’
Fuzai muttered to herself. She wiggled her hands, but the rope was tied too tightly for her to break free.
Before long, the curtain was thrown open. Fuzai quickly shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep. A moment later, the carriage shifted with a new weight, and it started moving again.
"Dear, did you use too much of the drug? Why aren’t these two kids awake yet?"
The man driving the carriage replied casually, "Maybe I didn’t control the dose. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter if they go crazy or stupid."
"That may be true, but what if the client sees their potential and wants to train them? That’s a different price."
The woman grumbled, but what was done was done. She changed the subject.
The man would chime in from time to time. Fuzai listened quietly, piecing together the information she needed.
’So these two really are human traffickers. Hmph, just watch me destroy their entire operation!’
’By messing with me, these bad guys have really picked the wrong person!’
Recalling the traffickers’ talk about the drug making people stupid, Fuzai stealthily opened her eyes a crack. When the woman wasn’t looking, she popped a small sugar pill into the unconscious girl’s mouth.
It was one of the pills Yu An had prepared for the family, made with Divine Spring Water. A single bottle could hold dozens of them.
Fuzai had been flying in the sky in her beast form and wouldn’t have been caught otherwise. She only came down to save someone because she saw the two traffickers grabbing an unconscious little girl.
Unfortunately, she had underestimated the wickedness of people. The moment she appeared, she was knocked out by a drugged cloth.
Fortunately, her body was tough. Having eaten food irrigated with Divine Spring Water her whole life, she woke up in no time.
The carriage swayed into the city. Fuzai kept quiet, planning to catch all the traffickers in one fell swoop. When she found her Female Mother, her Female Mother would definitely praise her!
The thought of a kiss from her Female Mother as a reward, plus the chance to show off her heroic deeds to her brothers, almost made Fuzai burst out laughing.
’Hold it in, hold it in! Can’t alert the enemy!’
It was bustling outside, with all sorts of things for sale. Smelling the aroma of food wafting in, Fuzai started to feel a little hungry.
She wasn’t one to let herself suffer. She suddenly opened her eyes, startling the woman.
Before the woman could press the drugged handkerchief to her face again, Fuzai tilted her head and said, "Hungry."
The woman froze. "St-stupid?"
Fuzai stared at her intently. When the woman didn’t react, Fuzai’s lip trembled and she started to cry. Her wail was so loud it alarmed the pedestrians outside.
"Is that a child crying?"
A passerby looked around. "It sounds like it’s coming from the carriage. Sir, is that your child crying?"
The driver quickly replied, "Yes, yes, that’s my child. She slept the whole way and must have woken up hungry."
The moment he finished speaking, Fuzai scrambled over with her flailing little arms and legs and threw herself onto the man’s back. "WAAAH... hungry..."
The man was almost crushed into spitting blood. He couldn’t understand why a little kid who looked to be under three was so heavy.
He didn’t immediately stop the carriage to hold the child. Plus, Fuzai was exquisitely cute and looked nothing like the man. The passersby instinctively suspected she had been kidnapped.
"That child is so cute, but the father is... so plain. He couldn’t be a kidnapper, could he?!"
"Stop him! Quick, stop him! Don’t let the kidnapper get away!"
The carriage was forced to a halt. The man hurriedly hugged Fuzai. "Hey, what’s everyone talking about? This is my child. My baby takes after her mother."
The woman from the carriage quickly emerged. She was much better looking than the man, and you could faintly see she had been quite beautiful in her youth. The crowd’s suspicions instantly halved.
When the woman explained that the child was simple-minded and only knew how to cry "hungry," their remaining doubts vanished.
Fuzai was not happy about being called a simpleton.
She reached up, rubbed her eyes, and then pointed at a nearby restaurant. "Hungry!"
’Spend some money to avoid disaster,’ she thought. ’Just fill my belly and I won’t hold this against them.’
The carriage had stopped in a perfect spot, right next to one of the best restaurants in Tianhuan City.
It was clearly not a place ordinary people could afford. The man had intended to shut her up with a steamed bun, but Fuzai refused, crying and fussing ceaselessly.
A passerby couldn’t stand it anymore. "How much can a little child eat? One dish will probably fill her up. Looking at your clothes, you don’t seem to be poor. You can’t even spare one dish for your own child?"
The two were career criminals and excellent at disguises. When kidnapping pretty children like Fuzai and the girl in the carriage, they had to pretend to be from a well-off family.
The two were not a married couple. They had deliberately formed a "beauty and the beast" pair to make it easier to kidnap pretty children and dispel any suspicion from passersby.
After all, if a child was ugly, you could say they inherited their parents’ worst features. But if they were beautiful, you couldn’t just claim it was a genetic mutation or a sign of incredible ancestral fortune.
Just then, the restaurant manager, who had been watching the commotion from the doorway, came out. "What a lovely child. Tell you what, on my authority, I’ll give your family a 20% discount."
Hearing this, the man figured a small child couldn’t eat much anyway and prepared to carry her inside.
Just then, the other child in the carriage woke up. Tongtong opened her eyes in a daze, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings.
Just as she realized she’d been kidnapped and was about to cry for help, Fuzai swiftly grabbed her hand.
"Hungry," she said, pointing at the restaurant. "Food-food."
The little girl in front of her looked a bit dazed and slow, but her sparkling eyes didn’t look foolish at all.
Only then did Tongtong notice two people staring intently at her, as if assessing how she would react.
She was a smart kid, too. She yawned, said nothing, and held out her arms to be picked up.
The woman dabbed at the corners of her eyes. "I must be a laughingstock to you all. My children are beautiful, but they’re both simple-minded. My husband and I came to Tianhuan City to earn more money to get treatment for the two sisters."
The crowd was instantly filled with sympathy. Some kind-hearted people even opened their wallets and donated generously.
They had made as much as they would from selling one child in an instant. The two of them found it a bit surreal. Urged on by the crowd, they hurried into the restaurant with the children.
The manager specially arranged a quiet spot for them. They casually ordered two dishes, and the man swallowed hard. "We haven’t even delivered them, and we’re already making money?"
If he weren’t bound to his client, he’d be tempted to find a better line of work!
These two kids were good-looking. When they were young, they could be used in sob stories to gain sympathy. When they were a little older, they could be sold to a brothel for another huge profit!