The girl's face was sallow and she was as thin as a rake, but her smile was sweet and charming.
Yin Xiu slightly curled the corners of his mouth, thinking that if Xiaoxiao had grown up normally, she would be this age too.
At an age when they should be in the prime of their lives, one is buried deep in the earth and the other is about to die, making it difficult for him to ignore the lives that are about to pass away.
"Do you want to live?" Yin Xiu asked softly.
"I want to!" The girl nodded vigorously, then hesitated. "But I have nowhere else to go besides the sea village. If I don't become a sacrifice, my brother will become one too. We are the only ones in the village without parents. If it's not me, it will be my brother."
She hesitated for a second, then shook her head. "I think I'd better not run away..."
Yin Xiu stared at her thoughtfully, "What if everyone in the village is gone? Can you escape?"
The girl stared wide-eyed at Yin Xiu, clearly shocked by the amount of information he had revealed.
Then she lowered her head dejectedly, "No... My brother and I were raised by the villagers. I agreed to be a sacrifice myself. They said that as long as I go as a sacrifice, everyone in Hai Village can be saved. I still can't leave."
"Thank you for your kindness in saving me tonight, brother. I'll go check on my brother one last time and then go back to the house."
Yin Xiu couldn't quite figure out what the child was thinking. Perhaps she was naive, or perhaps she was trying to salvage the situation with a spirit of self-sacrifice, but it was clear that the people in Hai Village had taken advantage of her.
"So you want them to be saved?" Yin Xiu followed behind the girl, walking through the night.
"Although there are some very bad people in the sea village, there are also some very good people. I am not sacrificing myself to save those bad people; I am sacrificing myself for those who have been good to me! I hope that those who have been good to me will not starve to death here." The girl spoke earnestly and seriously, clearly not as naive as Yin Xiu thought, and had her own thoughts.
"If you don't want to be the sacrifice, then don't." Yin Xiu crossed his arms and followed Ye Jia, looking into the distance. "I will be the sacrifice in your place."
"Huh?" Ye Jia turned around abruptly and stared intently at Yin Xiu. "Brother, you're quite handsome, but you're not very bright. You're not even from Hai Village, so why did you become a sacrifice in my place?"
As if remembering something, Ye Jia straightened her face and said seriously, like a little adult, "Being a sacrifice means you'll die!"
She looked serious and earnest, as if the naive one was Yin Xiu.
"I know." Yin Xiu pressed her head and turned her back. "I have my own plans."
He initially suspected that this place was an illusion, merely presenting things from the past. But after meeting Ya Ya's mother, he vaguely felt that this space was not so simple. If everything was something that happened in the past, then let him try to break the past.
The first to become a sacrifice was Ye Jia, a person from Hai Village. If it were him, would he have been able to see Li Mo in his early days, before his true form had even been formed?
After thinking about it, Yin Xiu felt that the plan was feasible.
Ye Jia stared at Yin Xiu with a complicated expression, clearly regarding him as a not-so-bright outsider.
Who would be willing to die for them upon meeting them?
Following Ye Jia as they wandered around the village, Yin Xiu met Ye Jia's younger brother, a little boy who looked timid and crouched in a corner. His hair, which hadn't been cut in a long time, was hanging down and was partially obscuring his eyes.
The small, thin figure huddled there, almost blending into the darkness, but its eyes were fixed on Yin Xiu with particular vigilance. As soon as Yin Xiu approached, it shuddered and darted to the other side to hide.
"Sorry, my brother is a little shy." Ye Jia shrugged, indicating her helplessness, then beckoned to her brother, "Come here, he's not a bad person."
The dark-skinned younger brother slowly crawled out from the corner and squatted down next to Ye Jia without saying a word.
He seemed to be the one who wasn't very bright, as if he hadn't been properly socialized. Every move he made exuded a wildness, making him more like a wild beast than a little boy.
But if Yin Xiu calculates his age, he may have just developed a sense of independence when he encountered the disaster in Haicun. He didn't have normal social interaction and communication, which is why he turned out this way.
Even though Ye Jia said that Yin Xiu posed no threat, he never let his guard down.
As dawn broke, a huge commotion erupted in the sea village, with someone screaming in panic, "Oh no!! The offerings! The offerings are gone!!"
"How come you three grown men can't even keep an eye on a little girl who hasn't eaten for days! You're useless!"
"Find them quickly! They can't leave Hai Village! They must still be in Hai Village!"
"I'll go to her house first. She must have taken her younger brother with her when she left. You all go door to door and check if there's anyone hiding them!"
The village was bustling with activity because the sacrificial ceremony was to be held that night. However, they had lost their offering. They had finally chosen someone who wouldn't cause conflict among the villagers as the offering, but now that they had lost it, they would be in even more trouble.
A flurry of hurried footsteps rushed to Ye Jia's dilapidated wooden hut, then pounded violently on the door. "Ye Jia! Are you in there?! Come out here!"
"What did you promise us! You said you'd obediently become a sacrifice! Come out now!"
"You little rascal! You dare to sneak away! Just wait till I catch you, I'll break your legs!"
With a roar from the man, the door of the wooden house creaked open.
The girl standing behind the door wasn't the one they knew, but a slightly unfamiliar and cold-hearted face that suddenly appeared through the crack in the door, startling the man into a cold sweat.
"What the hell are you! What are you doing at Ye Jia's house?!"
Another man quickly leaned close to the man's ear and whispered a few words, which brought him to his senses. "Heh, you're the pretty boy they were talking about, the one who suddenly appeared out of the sea? What are you doing at Ye Jia's house? Did you let her out?"
Yin Xiu stood calmly at the door, nodding without batting an eye. "It's me."
The other side was stunned by Yin Xiu's candid confession. This man had committed a crime, but instead of running away or hiding, he openly admitted it with a straight face, which immediately angered the other side.
"You think our Hai Village has been declining for the past two years and that we're easy to bully? You think you can just release the sacrificial offerings we painstakingly selected? You want to die, don't you!"
The man opposite him was furious. He was already irritable after losing the offering, but then he encountered Yin Xiu, a man with a stoic expression that was sure to provoke anger. He immediately started cursing and raised the harpoon in his hand to stab at Yin Xiu.
Before the harpoon could even pierce through, he was suddenly kicked out of the doorway and flew heavily to the ground, feeling dizzy and disoriented.
Yin Xiu stared at them coldly, "I'll sleep for a while and then come out to talk to you. Don't bother me."
Before the person on the ground could speak, he added in a sinister tone, "Dare to knock on the door again, and I'll make your entire sea village a sacrifice."
Then the door slammed shut, leaving only silence for the two bewildered people standing at the door.
This... this is the first time in all these years that Hai Village has encountered such an overbearing person.