Farm Girl's Manor
Chapter 661: The Person Behind the Band of Robbers (2)_1

Chapter 661: Chapter 661: The Person Behind the Band of Robbers (2)_1

But no one expected that although the twelve children indeed entered the mountain together, an accident occurred on their way in...

When Mo Yan followed Xue tuanzi’s guidance to the location where the twelve children disappeared, it was only through the subtle clues left on the ground that she was able to understand through her abilities that the children had encountered a group of extremely ferocious people here.

These people were all armed with knives and swords, and for some unknown reason, they tied up the twelve frightened crying children and took them deep into the mountain.

Based on Xue tuanzi’s description, Mo Yan guessed that the group was probably preparing to descend the mountain to rob—it would explain the weapons. They must have caught the children by accident and, worried that the children would spoil their "good deed," decided to tie them up. Perhaps they are even now considering selling the children to human traffickers to make a fortune.

About the robbers’ target for robbery, other than her own, Mo Yan couldn’t think of a second one. Aside from her household, the rest of the village was ringing with poverty; those robbers wouldn’t be satisfied with just stealing a few chickens.

If the situation was indeed as she suspected, the innocent children had been implicated by her own family, and Mo Yan felt an even greater responsibility to rescue them with all her power.

The trail left by the bandits was clear— even without Xuetuan, with Little Flower’s tracking ability, they could easily find their hideout. But since those people were armed and probably not strangers to robbery, Mo Yan didn’t dare to lead the villagers to follow Little Flower; she feared that, if they were found, a conflict would ensue and the villagers could get hurt.

Mo Yan thought about ways to rescue them and felt that it was unlikely the bandits would act in broad daylight; the most probable time would be tonight, which meant she probably had just an afternoon to save the children.

As they searched, the group called out the children’s names loudly, their voices echoing again and again in the mountains, but there was no response, nor were there sounds of firecrackers from any other direction.

As time gradually passed and with a little more than an hour before sunset, everyone began to feel anxious. Once it got dark, finding the children would become an even greater challenge.

Moreover, nighttime was when wild animals came out to hunt, and they were even more worried that the children might become prey to these creatures. Such an outcome, unthinkable to the children’s families, would also leave an indelible shadow on the searchers’ hearts.

"Yanyan, has Little Flower found any clues?" asked Mo Qingze, observing Little Flower sniffing around.

Mo Yan hesitated for a moment, then shook her head: "If we had started looking right when the children disappeared, Little Flower might have found them. Now, we can only hope to find some traces the children left behind first. If we can find those, perhaps we’ll discover something."

In truth, Little Flower had already found a rough direction, but this was something Mo Yan wouldn’t let her father or the other villagers know; this was for their own good.

This answer was within Mo Qingze’s expectations. After hearing it, he just nodded without saying anything. The other villagers seemed a bit disappointed, gazing into the vast and somber mountains, losing much of their hope for finding the children.

When the sun dipped below the horizon, leaving only half a red face visible, the villagers, who hadn’t even had time for lunch and were now both tired and hungry, discussed the matter and decided to give up the search and head back to the village to assess the situation.

Mo Qingze wanted to persuade everyone to keep going but was stopped by Mo Yan: "Dad, we’ve been searching all afternoon and found nothing; we might have gone in the wrong direction. Continuing aimlessly like this probably won’t yield results. It’s better to go back first and see if others have found any valuable clues."