I will lead the whole village to occupy the land and become the king.

Village chief Li hurriedly brought his people back to the village. Just as he learned about the situation from Jiang Dacheng, bursts of noise came from the village entrance.

When Mrs. Wang heard that the people from Dingshui Village had returned, she ran so fast that her shoes fell off. When she reached the village entrance, she kept shouting, "Jinhua, Wang Jinhua! Are you back? I'm your mother!"

"Mom!" A sallow-faced, thin, and burly woman suddenly jumped out from the crowd at the entrance of Xiahe Village. "Mom! I thought I would never see you again..."

The mother and daughter hugged each other and cried bitterly, but unfortunately the scene was so noisy that no one paid much attention to them.

Village chief Li and the village chief of Xiahe Village stood face to face with their own villagers.

"Old Wu, what's going on with you? Aren't you fleeing famine?" Village chief Li spoke first.

After all, they have come to their village, so there must be something going on.

Village Chief Wu's eyes welled up with tears. He reached out to grab Village Chief Li's hand and said, "Old Li, it's absolutely right that you didn't flee the famine! Look at our village. When we left, there were over 500 people, but now there are less than 300 left!"

If he hadn't said it, Village Chief Li hadn't noticed it. But as soon as he said it, he noticed that although there seemed to be a lot of people coming from Xiahe Village, they didn't match the population of their village. Just now, when he glanced over, he thought there weren't so many people coming.

"What's going on?" Village Chief Li asked quickly, already having a guess in his mind.

Village Chief Wu rubbed his eyes with tears streaming down his face. "We ran into bandits! Those damn bastards stole all our food and killed people. They wanted to take the women and children from our village too. We fought desperately to save these few people..."

As he told the story, the people in Dingshui Village were filled with fear. Fortunately, they did not flee from the famine, otherwise they might have been robbed or killed.

Jiang Qinyu felt only irony when she saw this scene. In her previous life, it was this group of people who pushed the people of Dingshui Village forward to block the knife. In this life, there were no people of Dingshui Village to accompany them, and they suffered heavy losses as expected.

So what are they doing back now?

"Then you..." Village Chief Li had the same doubts.

Village Chief Wu wiped his eyes and said, "We are now desperate and have finally escaped back. I heard that you didn't leave, so I wanted to borrow some food from you..."

As soon as the words "borrow food" were uttered, the faces of the people in Dingshui Village immediately changed.

The people in Xiahe Village are really calculating! They actually want to borrow food from them?

But will I ever be able to pay it back after borrowing it?

"Old Wu," Village Chief Li's face turned cold. "You know better than me what kind of harvest it is now. Do you think we have enough food? Forget about lending you food. We don't even know if we can survive this winter!"

He absolutely could not agree to lend them grain. Once he did, they would have no hope of keeping the grain.

"No, Old Li, please lend us some money for the sake of our friendship over the years! Otherwise, how are we going to survive?" Village Chief Wu naturally began to use moral blackmail.

Village Chief Li scoffed at this and said, "Don't say that. I'm not that capable of taking care of the lives of so many of you. You should find another way!"

After saying that, Village Chief Li said to Chen Shao and Liu Yazi, "Tell the night watchmen not to fall asleep at night and keep an eye on the village!"

"Yes!" Chen Shao responded loudly.

When Village Chief Wu and the people of Xiahe Village saw this, they immediately started crying and shouting.

"Do you still have any humanity? How can you stand by and watch someone die without helping?"

"My child has been hungry for three days! What's wrong with you giving him some food?"

"We borrowed it, and it's not like we won't pay it back. Who are you guarding against?"

"It's just..."

The people of Dinghe Village were almost laughing at the rogues' remarks. Aunt Qin stood beside Mrs. Wang and pointed at the people of Xiahe Village and said, "Are these the people you asked us to go to in the first place? Pah! You still expect them to protect us with people like them? We're lucky they don't come and rob us!"

Jiang Qinyu heard this from behind and secretly gave Aunt Qin a thumbs up. What she said was absolutely correct!

In the previous life, weren’t the people of Dingshui Village pushed to block the knife and robbed by the people of Xiahe Village?

"What are you talking about? Didn't we go to escape the famine? Besides, didn't the village chief agree to lend us grain?" Mrs. Wang looked embarrassed and held Wang Jinhua's hand with a guilty conscience.

She didn't dare to tell anyone that there was food in the village, otherwise who knows what would happen.

But she had made up her mind not to let her daughter go again. As long as her daughter lived with her at her parents' home, she would at least have something to eat.

"Oh, now you know how to say this? Who was it that insisted on dragging people to flee the famine? If it weren't for your eldest son, you would be the same as the people in Xiahe Village now, right?" Aunt Qin did not tolerate her and ruthlessly exposed Wang Po's face.

"Aunt is right. We were too stupid to think about the dangers on the road to escape famine. Aren't we back in time?" Wang Jinhua smiled apologetically and pulled Wang Pozi to stop talking.

Wang Jinhua was not stupid either. The time she spent fleeing famine had made her understand many things. Her in-laws did not take her seriously at all. When they encountered bandits, her husband died, and her brother-in-law and sister-in-law both wanted to push her to take the blame!

Fortunately, she was smart and finally saved her life. However, her sister-in-law from her husband's family was kidnapped by bandits, and her brother-in-law had one leg chopped off and died on the road due to excessive blood loss.

The other members of her husband's family either ran away or disappeared, and her parents-in-law also died at the hands of bandits, and her husband's family was completely disbanded.

On the other hand, Village Chief Li firmly rejected Village Chief Wu's request to borrow food, insisting that there was no food in Dinghe Village, and asked them to return to their own village quickly and think of ways to survive.

"Your Xiahe Village also has mountains. Our village believes that 'as long as the mountains are not dry, we can survive'. You just need to be diligent and go to the mountains to find food and water. You will be able to survive anyway." Village Chief Li pointed a way to Village Chief Wu.

The mountains on the other side of Xiahe Village are in the same mountain range as Yunshan. Since they can find food and water in the mountains, there is no reason why the people of Xiahe Village cannot.

Village Chief Wu was annoyed and glared at Village Chief Li, "Are you really not going to lend us food no matter what?"

"We have no food, how can we borrow it? We can't starve ourselves and give food to you, right? If it were you, could you do it?" Village Chief Li retorted bluntly.

Village Chief Wu wanted to say, "You won't die if you go hungry for a few meals," but he didn't want to offend anyone. After his expression changed several times, he said stiffly, "We're sorry to bother you. We'll go back now!"

The other people from Xiahe Village wanted to say something more, but were suppressed by Village Chief Wu, and the group walked back in a mighty procession.

Wang Jinhua was kept by Wang Pozi. There were also several other families with daughters who married out in Xiahe Village, and they left their own daughters and grandsons behind. Village Chief Li didn't say anything.

But after the crowd dispersed, Village Chief Li called Grandpa Jiang and several other members of the supervision team to come and find Jiang Qinyu.

"Niece, do you think there will be any follow-up to this matter? Should we make some preparations?"