Lu Ye glanced at Feng Pingyuan, who immediately stepped forward and announced loudly, "Esteemed guests, someone has taken advantage of our full moon banquet to attempt to disguise themselves and sneak in for free food, as well as… to steal valuables.
Please carefully check your family members around you. See if anyone has been impersonated. If so, your true family members might be suffering somewhere!"
The villagers' alarm bells immediately rang, and each household began to search among themselves.
"My man has a birthmark on his backside! Husband, come, come, take off your pants! Let your wife have a look!"
The man walked a few steps away, turned his back to everyone, and with a resentful expression, began to unbuckle his belt.
"My man has bad breath. Husband, come, open your mouth, let your concubine smell it."
Haa— The man exhaled a breath of stale air, making the woman stagger a few steps back, dizzy and lightheaded.
Oh dear… it truly was her husband; the breath was as overbearing as ever.
"My son only has four toes on his left foot. Come, son, take off your shoes!"
A young man immediately took off his shoes and socks, flung up his left foot with a swish, his four toes spread wide. A fierce foot odor instantly swept through the entire banquet.
"My dad's old teeth are almost all gone. Dad, open your mouth, son will take a look!"
Abba, abba… the old man curled his lips, revealing his gums, his sight unimpeded.
…
After a long while, two more tricksters who were trying to get free food were exposed.
As the guests had just sat down, Zhou Donggua and Gamedai's Mother walked over, dragging a bruised and swollen person. Following them was Big White Wolf, panting and sticking out its tongue.
This person had been lurking suspiciously outside the kitchen door, peeking and looking around. Baoyu had immediately pounced on him without a word.
Donggua and Gamedai's Mother rushed forward and began a flurry of punches and kicks, instantly giving him a taste of the women of Hongshu Village.
"Hey! Isn't that my man? He said he was going to the kitchen to get an extra bowl…"
"That's not your man! Your man is barely half his height!" someone immediately retorted.
Heaven! What kind of eyesight is that? Seeing one's own husband through the eyes of love makes him appear tall and grand?
Immediately after, Bao Grandpa and Lightning also walked (crawled) over. Lightning still had someone coiled around its tail. This person’s eyeballs were rolled back, their body twitching, clearly indicating they had been severely dealt with by Lightning.
Lightning's appearance instantly captured everyone's attention.
Normally, only families who were close to Lu Ye’s could often witness Lightning’s prowess. Most villagers had only heard of it and hadn’t had the opportunity to admire it so closely.
This great silver snake was truly beautiful and yet incredibly terrifying.
Lightning slammed the person to the ground with a bang, then, coiling its serpentine body, it proudly crawled to Bai Sheng's side under everyone's gaze. Then, raising its head, it surveyed everyone disdainfully.
A few children slowly crept closer to it, squatting down with wide eyes, looking at it from head to tail, over and over again, to their heart's content.
Bao Grandpa took a puff of his pipe and said leisurely, "This person was preparing to poison the well water!"
"My heavens!" everyone exclaimed.
This person intended to poison them all?! They would have to diligently kick him a few times when they had the chance. Well water was so precious, it couldn't be destroyed by anyone! This person was trying to cut off all their lifelines!
"He was impersonating my grandpa!" a child with a teapot lid hairstyle cried out.
Bao Grandpa reached out and grabbed the person’s face, also tearing off a thin, human-like skin mask.
The crowd exclaimed again.
"Speak! Where did you hide my grandpa?" the teapot lid child stepped forward, kicking the person’s face fiercely a few times.
The person, rolling their eyes, opened their mouth but couldn't speak at all.
Feng Pingyuan announced loudly, "Please rest assured, everyone, we have already sent people to find your true family members. They should be fine because these freeloaders, after poisoning us, would still need them to take the blame. Therefore, there is no need to worry, the full moon banquet will continue!"
Thus, the guests returned to their seats and began to eat ravenously, forgetting their worries.
As for the families whose family members had been impersonated, they ate even more enthusiastically. Since Steward Feng of Chief Lu had said their family members were fine, they must be fine.
Eating this meal could save them several meals at home. They had to seize the opportunity. Once missed, they would have to wait for Chief Lu’s wife to have her second child, and it was unknown if she would even have one.
These five impersonators were all rogues hired from other villages by Zheng Wei, so they didn't know martial arts.
Zheng Wei felt that having a peasant play a peasant would make it more convincing. Furthermore, with their disguises, it was very easy to sneak into Hongshenpo.
The peasants of Hongshenpo would absolutely never have imagined that they would use disguises to poison them secretly and without anyone knowing.
Therefore, this time, he did not have his own subordinates personally appear. The Death Guard camp had already lost more than twenty death guards. If they lost a few more, then their ten years of training would have been purely providing free labor to Hongshenpo.
And so, Lu Ye’s family gained five more free laborers.
Gamedai’s Father and Little Ma’s Father and others threw the five into the prison cell where the assassins were being held.
Inside the prison cell, more than twenty black-clad assassins, reeking of foul odor, saw the five newcomers. They were unfamiliar and didn't seem like their kind, so they were too lazy to bother with them, only staring at them with fierce, cold eyes.
Being stared at intensely by more than twenty stinking men, the five rogues instinctively clutched their chests. These "stinking" men… they wouldn’t do anything to them, right?
At this moment, the five regretted their decision immensely.
If they hadn't agreed to the masked men and gotten involved in this mess, they would still be lorded over in their respective villages.
Those mysterious masked men had found them, saying they would give them fifty taels of silver each, have them disguised, and then sneak into the villagers of Hongshu Slope to secretly poison the well water and food, vowing to kill the family surnamed Lu.
In such difficult times, they had already killed many people for food. Therefore, for fifty taels of silver, disguising themselves and poisoning a family seemed both safe and worthwhile.
Thus, the five staked out in two nearby villages for seven or eight days and finally found their impersonation targets.
On the day of Lu’s family’s full moon banquet, the disguise artists sent by the masked men helped them with their transformations.
Who knew that the people of Hongshu Village were all cunning as foxes. From the moment they entered the courtyard, they felt as if many eyes were watching them, making their spines tingle and their steps falter.
Those masked men had clearly told them that disguising themselves would be very safe and that they could walk in openly. However, the moment they entered, they were stared at so much that they couldn't even swagger, let alone walk with a little swagger.
They suspected that the people of Hongshu Village had seen through them as impostors at a glance.
They were already restless, and then unexpectedly, those who had been impersonated inexplicably appeared at the scene.
Damn those masked men! Didn't they say they had handled all of them? Wasn't this deliberately setting them up?!