"How could that be?" Qian Er swallowed hard, but he stubbornly shook his head, "It’s broad daylight, and just now she definitely had a shadow..."
"But..." the person who had clearly been right in front of them had disappeared in the blink of an eye?
"Thinking of taking me down?" Yang Ruxin appeared suddenly a few steps after the few men had walked away.
"Ah..." The three men were immediately scared into clinging to each other, then backed up against the wall, "Don’t... don’t come over here... Are you a human or a ghost..."
"What do you think?" Yang Ruxin’s face darkened, "Still dare to be dishonest, really asking for a beating." Saying that, she swung her whip, lashing out at them all.
"Granny spare our lives..." The three men hadn’t even been hit by the whip before they all knelt down, "We unrecognized ’Mount Tai’ in our ignorance..."
"Shut up!" After giving them a few lashes, Yang Ruxin stopped and put her hands on her hips, looking at them, "Will you resist anymore?"
The three men shook their heads in unison: "We wouldn’t dare..."
"Now I want to ask you, have you killed anyone? Violated any girls?"
"Fairy granny, we three just try to scrape by with what we eat. Since we have no connections or abilities, we couldn’t find work and were forced into this. Where would we dare to kill? We haven’t even hurt anybody, just filched a little money here and there..."
Yang Ruxin looked at them with a sarcastic gleam in her eyes: "So, you just dared to take advantage of your sister? Even thought about killing me?"
"That was just to scare you, we were thinking if you got scared, we could strip you of a garment and sell it for another piece of silver," Qian Er said, feeling very aggrieved, "We really didn’t think of doing something too excessive. As for killing you, we dared not, that was just us harboring a stroke of luck to subdue you and then run..."
Yang Ruxin looked at him mockingly.
"Granny, every word I say is true," Qian Er, seeing no reaction from Yang Ruxin and feeling increasingly uncertain, could only cry, snot and tears running down his face, "I truly had no other choice, with an eighty-year-old mother above and children waiting to be fed below..."
The other two were vigorously nodding their heads.
Yang Ruxin snorted with laughter: "I’ve heard that line before, but..." she said as she went over and kicked each one, "if your mother is eighty, shouldn’t you be in your fifties or sixties? Can’t you tell the truth without drafting a lie first?"
The three men cried out as they were kicked.
"Stop howling!" Yang Ruxin shouted angrily, "All sniffling and no tears, who are you trying to fool?"
Qian Er hurriedly raised his hand to check and sure enough, it came back covered in snot, leaving him no choice but to miserably and awkwardly turn around and wipe his hand on the wall.
The other two were much the same, obviously well-practiced at this.
Yang Ruxin rolled her eyes: "Stay away from me."
Qian Er could only laugh "Heihei" twice, retreating a few steps, with the other two quickly standing behind him.
"Setting aside whether or not I feel sorry for you, I want to ask, do you know the consequences of stripping me of my clothes?" There was a glint of cold light in Yang Ruxin’s eyes.
Frightened, Qian Er looked down, not daring to speak; of course he knew the consequences—it was equivalent to ruining a woman’s reputation, and thereafter she wouldn’t be able to find a good family to take her in. Even the weaker women might well take a rope and hang themselves.
"You say you’re nothing special, haven’t violated anyone, but what you did today, isn’t that tantamount to indirectly killing and violating someone?" Yang Ruxin’s voice turned colder, "By all rights, your crimes are punishable by death."