The backdrop can also be propped up.

336. Escape from the Huang Mansion 2

The person outside seemed not to have expected that there was someone in Huang Muyan's courtyard. After Lu Renkui finished speaking, he heard footsteps coming from outside the courtyard.

Lu Renkui listened to the footsteps; they went from heavy to light, as if they had run far away.

Lu Renkui ran quietly towards the courtyard gate. When she was a few steps away from the gate, she stopped and started walking slowly on tiptoe. At the same time, she held the broom horizontally in front of her and did not drop the branch in her hand.

Lu Renkui took two more steps forward, but still felt uneasy, so he moved to the left, leaned against the wall, and listened to see if the person was still there.

Then, Lu Renkui heard light footsteps outside the courtyard. The footsteps stopped for a moment and then started again. At the same time, Lu Renkui saw a gray-blue shoe step into the courtyard.

The shoe didn't look like a maid's shoe; it looked more like a man's shoe.

Just as Lu Renkui had expected, a man's head popped out. Lu Renkui took a second to confirm that he had never seen this person before, then swung the broom and used all the strength in his body to hit the man on the head.

It seems that the person initially intended to sneak a peek into the yard to see if anyone was there, but unexpectedly, as soon as they poked their head out, a broom hit them on the head.

After being hit by the broom, the man stuck his head back in. Taking advantage of the man's momentary daze, Lu Renkui immediately ran to Huang Muyan's room and locked the doors and windows—after all, all the valuables were in Huang Muyan's room.

After finishing all this, Lu Renkui picked up the broom and branches again, listened to the sounds outside, swallowed hard to keep himself calm.

Judging from the footsteps coming from outside the courtyard, Lu Renkui figured he must have walked around the courtyard, and the sound of doors opening and closing meant he had checked all the rooms.

The footsteps gradually approached Huang Muyan's room. Lu Renkui saw the locked door being shaken violently by the person outside, the creaking of the wooden door echoing Lu Renkui's heartbeat.

Seeing the person shaking the door, Lu Renkui quickly lifted the sheet that extended beyond the bed and hid under the bed, still holding the broom and tree branches in her hands.

The door was sturdy, and the lock worked. When the person outside saw that the door wouldn't open after shaking it for a long time, he turned to shaking the window instead.

The paper windows were rattling, but they didn't come down. Lu Renkui mustered his courage and crawled out from under the bed, just in time to see a finger piercing through the paper window.

It was so dark outside that you couldn't see inside the room, but from inside, you could see what the person outside was doing by the moonlight and the shadows cast on the window. Lu Renkui was still lying on the ground, looking up slightly as he saw the person retract their fingers and bend down, probably looking through the hole to see if anyone was inside.

But it's probably because the hole was too small, or the spot was bad, that the person outside couldn't see the whole room. So Lu Renkui saw him straighten up again, and then heard a rustling sound—the person was poking at the window paper with their finger again.

Lu Renkui crawled away from the window's view, stood up against the wall, and moved step by step to the window, watching as that finger poked through the window paper again and reached in.

Lu Renkui held her breath, and after the finger retracted, she moved quietly, trying not to make a sound, until she found an angle where she could see the people outside the window, but they couldn't see her.

Seeing the blurry shadow on the window paper slowly shrink, Lu Renkui raised the hand holding the sharp branch, gritted his teeth, aimed at the hole the person outside had just poked, and jabbed the sharp branch out.

A man's shrill scream came from outside. Lu Renkui hid under the bed again, tightly gripping the broom and the sharp branch, not daring to breathe.

When will Huang Muyan come back? Lu Renkui wondered.