"Madam?"
"What madam?"
Several men exchanged glances.
Then one of them said, "Miss, are you really not an accomplice of that scoundrel Yang Hun?"
"If I were, would I waste my time asking about these things?"
The men seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
Then they continued, "Miss, Yang Hun is lecherous. He used to be domineering. As a cultivator, the people of Jiangning respected him to some extent.
"Previously, he wasn't as unscrupulous. Although he often molested women, he didn't go too far.
"But in recent years, for some unknown reason, his cultivation level has risen several stages. Because his spiritual power was extremely powerful, the former governor of Jiangning was very wary of him. Later, that former governor simply retired and returned to his hometown, away from this place of troubles.
"We don't know what means Yang Hun used, but not long after the governor left Jiangning, an imperial edict came from the capital, appointing Yang Hun as the new governor of Jiangning.
"From then on, the people of Jiangning became like fish on a chopping board, at his mercy.
"He was lecherous before. After becoming the governor of Jiangning, his behavior became even more out of control.
"He first took a fancy to unmarried girls. No matter whether their families agreed or not, as long as Yang Hun set his eyes on a girl, she had to be sent to the governor's mansion within three days. Otherwise, the whole family would be exterminated."
After saying this, Zhao Shuning indeed saw a few older men and women in the crowd secretly wiping their tears. It seemed that these were the parents whose daughters had been snatched away by Yang Hun.
"Since the girls have been taken into the governor's mansion, Yang Hun should have let their parents go, right?"
"Alas—he did let them go. But in the large city of Jiangning, many daughters were the apple of their parents' eyes. Of course, those parents didn't want their daughters to serve such a devil, so they fled with their daughters overnight. There were quite a few such families.
"But Yang Hun had prepared well in advance. We don't know who tipped him off, but on the night we fled with our daughter, we couldn't even get out of the city gate. Yang Hun didn't even show up, but a group of soldiers took our daughter away. Moreover, those soldiers even broke my wife's leg. The next day, when we returned home, our daughter couldn't leave, and of course we couldn't either. Even if we were in Jiangning, we wanted to accompany her.
"But when we got home the next day, there was already a seal on the door. Our family property had been seized by Yang Hun overnight."
After the two finished speaking, many others shed tears.
It seemed that the evils committed by Yang Hun were really countless.
"By the way, miss, why did you call us here?"
These people had been living under great pressure.
So when Zhao Shuning just asked a question, they seemed to have found an outlet and couldn't wait to tell all of Yang Hun's crimes.
Zhao Shuning understood their feelings as parents. So although she was very anxious, she still listened to them finish.
"I want you to help me find someone."
"Who?"
Zhao Shuning gently raised her jade hand.
An image of Zhao Zheng appeared in mid-air.
This was the latest appearance of her father that she had intercepted from the memories of those merchants.
Looking at the back figure in the image now, Zhao Shuning felt a lump in her throat.
She always thought that since they were all cultivators, she would surely have a lot of time to accompany them in the future. So before this, she had always been busy with her own affairs.
Zhao Shuning had been negligent.
She didn't know.
In Zhao Zheng and Lin Min'er's hearts, she was their whole world.
Although she had been filial over the years, the days she had really spent with her parents were really few.
"This man—"
Zhao Shuning said,
"This is my father. He appeared in Jiangning about three months ago. Something happened to him on his way to the capital. You've all lived in Jiangning for a long time. Have you seen him?"
Zhao Shuning secretly clenched her fists.
Actually,
She was afraid.
Afraid of hearing the answer she least wanted to hear.
"This man looks somewhat familiar."
After a while, an old man murmured such a sentence.
Zhao Shuning's eyes lit up.
She knew then.
It was right to gather these people together.
Her father wasn't in Yang Hun's good graces in Jiangning. Most normal families in Jiangning wouldn't want to have anything to do with her father.
So,
The people most likely to know her father's whereabouts should be these homeless and displaced people.
"Have you seen him?"
Zhao Shuning's figure almost instantly moved in front of the man.
She was so fast that no one could see clearly.
This girl was also a cultivator, and besides the surging spiritual power, there also seemed to be abundant mental power.
"I... I'm not sure."
The man who spoke was a barefoot doctor in Jiangning.
He had no fixed abode.
When he was young, he wanted to take the exam to enter the imperial medical academy in the capital to develop his medical skills.
But things didn't go as he wished.
His medical skills were really good, but he was illiterate and didn't understand the interests and deals in the officialdom.
So although he had excellent medical skills, he was driven out of the imperial medical academy.
Since then,
He had returned to Jiangning.
But his home in Jiangning had been sold when he decided to go to the capital. The money from the sale had been used as travel expenses, and there was very little left.
So this old man was, so to speak, forced to become a homeless doctor.
However,
The old man lived quite freely.
During his wandering days, he saw more clearly the hardships of the bottom - level people. They had no money to see a doctor and couldn't even distinguish some basic herbs. A minor fever could be fatal due to improper treatment.
The old man's surname was Miao.
Almost all the beggars in Jiangning had received his kindness. So they respected him very much.
"Miss, a few months ago when I went to the outskirts to gather firewood, I saw a man who looked about three - tenths similar to the one in this image."
Three - tenths?
That meant there wasn't much hope.
"May I ask your honorable surname, sir?"
"Miao."
"Mr. Miao, did you find him beside the road from Jiangning to the capital?"
The old man shook his head.
"I saw that man in the mass grave."
The mass grave.
Zhao Shuning staggered and almost fell.
The mass grave was the place where unclaimed corpses were discarded.
Could it be that...
Was her father really...?
"Miss, don't be too worried. Old Mr. Miao is a doctor. Since he mentioned this, it means that when he found that man, the man should still have had a breath left."
Zhao Shuning looked at the old man.
The old man nodded.
"Miss, I usually don't bother to remember the looks of dead people. But the man I saw may not be the one you're looking for. After all, there's still a big difference between that man and the one in the picture you showed me."