A Western Doctor's Happy Farming Life

161. Chapter 161: Side Story of the Village

Translator: LiamHW

It was really a shocking news for Song Qinghan to witness burning a living people for the first time in his life. He thought for a moment, and still let out a sigh, saying, “Let’s go check that.”

For what he could know currently from the passer-by, the man who was about to be burnt was accused of criminal ‘Mongrel’.

Well, if the man did really have done something unforgivable, Song Qinghan probably wouldn’t say something to act contrary to the head villager. Yet if the man was innocent…

Song Qinghan clenched his fists tight and he knew that he himself wouldn’t act so indifferently just as these rubberneckers did.

Even Copernicus, the one who made great contributions to the whole world by putting forward a theory of geocentric model, was burnt to death because his opinion challenged the religious church. But currently this guy should be executed because of his identity as a mixed-race person and be vanished from this world?

Seeing that Song Qinghan stepping forward, Lu Sen suddenly approached and stopped him. “Childe, we’d better stay, the execution is quite cruel, and probably it will make you disgusted.”

Song Qinghan paused, then turned to look at Lu Sen. He didn’t miss the struggle in Lu Sen’s eyes and then he raised his eyebrows, saying, “What now? What bothers you since I am not even afraid of that scene at all?”

Lu Sen opened his mouth slightly, but he was choked by words in his throat. What could he say? Should he say that he had been through a similar experience so that he didn’t want to witness such a scene one more time?

If he really said so, probably Song Qinghan would ask him to return the service charge immediately, right?

He touched the pack filled with silver coins in his sleeve, and then finally plucked all his courage up, saying decisively, “Alright! Childe, this way!”

Seeing that Lu Sen was taking a deep breath while stepping forward like he was about to get involved in a fierce battle, Song Qinghan got rather confused,  and then he shouted behind Lu Sen’s back, “If you don’t like to go there, tell me the reason. And I am not that kind of a person devoid of human feelings.”

In fact, he was more curious about Lu Sen’s past rather than to be a indifferent rubbernecker making fun of a misery. His intuition told him that such a cruel matter was not that simple but complicated.

Lu Sen paused, and then turned his head and smiled faintly as his expression had already got its peace back. He waved his hand and said, “Nothing big, don’t worry about me, Childe. It just happens that sometimes I am timid towards the upcoming event. Nothing big!”

Song Qinghan shrugged and didn’t bother to ask again because he had already detected that the secret or truth might have been buried deeply in Lu Sen’s heart. The young man would never talk about it with others so easily except he was stimulated by something specific. So out of curiosity, he would really love to know whether the upcoming execution would be a catalyst or not.

By the time they arrived at the end of the village, almost all the villagers had already gathered there. The crowd was in a turbulence, much more exaggerating than the one which was rushing to a fair.

Within the circle formed by the villagers lay piles of wooden battens which were with crude structures. On the wooden battens hung a guy who seemingly was the one being called ‘Mongrel’ by the rest of them.

Fortunately, Song Qinghan got a pair of good-sighted eyes himself. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t see the clear look of that mixed-race person.

Sizing up and down on the mixed-race person, he muttered thoughtfully, “High-bridge nose, deep eye socket, curly hair and tall… seems to be a caucasian.”

Lu Sen seemed to get a rather good ears so he successfully caught the words Song Qinghan muttered about. He agreed while praising, “Childe, you’re so right! These are all the features the barbarians get. Typically, they got a pair of evil-like pupils. But they are not that foolish to send the ones who are so different from us here. Otherwise, won’t they try to expose themselves as spies by showing their green pupils on the street?”

Green pupils …… Song Qinghan nodded, he could now make a further confirmation towards his guess.

As all the villagers were judging at the mixed-race man at the center, an elderly who featured a white and long beard cleared his throat among the crowd and shouted, “Since all of you have gathered here today, let’s get it started! All of you should know why I gathered you here right? Since so, don’t talk any nonsense now. I announce that sacrificial rite begins.”

Seeing that the old man was ready to light the torch after saying that, Song Qinghan was shocked and couldn’t help saying, “Wait! At least tell us the reason!”

His words were particularly sudden and abrupt in such a silent atmosphere. However, when everyone intended to search where the voice came from, they failed to find Song Qinghan.

The old man suppressed his inner dissatisfaction and walked to the mixed-race man with a serious expression. He pointed at his face and uttered, “Three days ago, this person coerced Old Fang with the intention to sneak into our village. I happened to pass by Old Fang’s house and noticed that this guy was with a rather peculiar appearance, so I sent several villagers to take him down. I didn’t expect that this guy would see through my purpose and he dared to play tricks with us for two days and nights, and we finally took him down today!”

After that, he himself thought that he had already made everything clear, so he took up the torch, and re-ignited it.

Yet Song Qinghan acted as if he deliberately went against the old man and suddenly shouted, “How did he threaten Old Fang? Was he eager to obtain something valuable from Old Fang or what?”

Although he didn’t know if Old Fang really got something valuable to obtain or rob, he still knew that he who was called ‘Old’ and at the same time living in such a remote and poor village shouldn’t have got something treasure to loss.

Such an inquiry totally incurred the wrath of the old and white-bearded man, the old man was angrily shivering, and then he threw the torch fiercely onto the ground and raised his head, trying his best to search the one who spoke with his pair of blurred eyes. Yet he failed to find Song Qinghan once again among the crowd.

Song Qinghan was very clear that such provocative words at this time probably would make him be a target of public criticism. It would be fine if he was the only one among the crowd, but Hualian and Lu Sen were with him right now. So for the sake of these two innocent people, he had to disguise and try his best not to be found out by the others.

The white-bearded old man cleared his throat once again when he noticed the commotion in the crowd gradually getting louder, “Old Fang indeed gets nothing valuable, but if he succeeded sneaking into our village and kill us all secretly in the future. We, as residents of the Qingmu Region, are doomed to vanish!”

He was impassioned when he said so, trying to whip up the sentiments of hatred towards the mixed-race man and fan the flames. Indeed, he succeeded doing so. By the time he shouted, the rest of the villagers echoed in a same voice, “Burn him! Burn him! Burn him!”

Song Qinghan frowned, he stood dumbfounded as if he was facing nothing else but a heretical sect. At this moment he was in a difficult dilemma, he didn’t know whether he should keep on interrupting the evil event or take a measure to consider protecting himself first and pretended that nothing happened?

He inadvertently took a glance at Hualian and Lu Sen. He noticed that they weren’t shouting meaninglessly like the others else in the scene. Instead, there was a hint of worry between their eyebrows. He roughly understood their position and continued, “What if that wasn’t his intention? And he just happened to passed by the village and got a whistle stop, and decided to leave sooner after that? So what will the reason be for you to kill him?”

This time, as soon as the white-bearded old man heard the voice, he quickly raised his head and looked into the direction where Song Qinghan stayed. When he that the three of them were all equipped with faces of calmness, he fixed his gaze fiercely on them glaring at them as if he was about to jump into the crowd and tear them apart like a tiger did.

“Well, well, it seems that we got some unexpected guests here today! Hey you, if you are here to watch a show, we welcome you. But if you are here to mess up everything, I don’t mind loading more people on the fire, are you willing to perish with this guy?”

He said so, and then used the torch in his hand to knock on the wooden shelves. The clanking sound seemed to be a warning signal for Song Qinghan and the other two.

Song Qinghan sneered there when he noticed that all the villagers turned their heads curiously at the moment the head villager said so, and then he answered without being panicked at all, “To be honest, we just arrived here not long with Infanta Hening. We are not that know-it-all to several villages here, so indeed we do have something we are eager to know. That’s why we are here to question you out of our curiosity, and by the way we can report it to the infanta. If I do offend you by doing so, I hope you forgive me.”

That wasn’t his original intention to talk about Hening at first. Yet he just thought that if he did’t do so, probably these crazy people would really get three of them on the fire and ‘roast’ them.

As expected, when the white-bearded old man heard the word ‘infanta’, he took a sudden pause and sank into a while of pondering, and then he slowly uttered, “Since you don’t have any idea about the custom here, then you should just watch with less words, Lord. After all, not everyone is as kind as us.”

“Even though this guy just intended to pass by here,” the old man continued, touching his long white beard, “he should still accept his fate being like this. Because he who got the barbarian’s blood tie doesn’t deserve to live at all! We will be the ones who suffer the loss if we are tender-hearted to them! Well, he will die gloriously himself for the security of the whole village!”

Song Qinghan got tense. Noticing that the old man again ignited the torch, he pursed his lips, seemingly intending to speak again.

“Hey, Head Villager, will you listen to me for like some seconds?”

A horse voice sounded among the crowd. Song Qinghan fixed his gaze over the place where the sound came from, and then he saw there stood an extremely old man who could only stand by the other’s support beside him, the extremely old man tried his best to move slowly in front of the white-bearded old man, and then pay his respect with a slight bow.

The white-bearded old man seemed to have never expected that the old man would appear right at this moment, he frowned and asked, “Old Fang, what’s wrong?”

A flash of understanding flashed across Song Qinghan’s eyes when he heard this name.

It turned out that this was the so-called Old Fang who was coerced by the mixed-race man. Yet something seemed to be misunderstood from the expression of the extremely old man.

Old Fang sighed heavily, raised his head to observe the mixed-race man who was dragging out his feeble existence and wiped out the tears at the corner of his eyes, saying slowly, “Head Villager, he is not that kind of spy you mention, in fact, he was the one who saved me that day. If it wasn’t him who helped me apply the medical cream and carried me back home, probably I have been eaten by the wolves already in the wild field.”

It was obvious that the head villager had heard such a statement before, so his expression did not change at all. He then uttered expressionlessly, “I told you, this must be one of his tricks! You as an old and experienced man here in the village should know the fact that the barbarians are rather treacherous themselves.”

The head villager’s affirmative tone made Lord Fang hesitate, but when his gaze met the eyes of the mixed-race man, he still persisted his opinion, and then said firmly “He is with nothing evil, he is just a good and kind boy. It isn’t his fault to own such blood in his body. That’s why I show up here today, I don’t demand you to let him go, head villager. But I do hope you can at least keep him alive. Give him a chance to live no matter how you are about to punish him.”

“That’s not a request too hard for you, right?”