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At this moment, Jiang Sanlang and his crew were fighting the bandits.

The fight was taking place in a bamboo forest, and they were falling back while fighting.

The bandits outnumbered them several times over, and they were incredibly fierce, so much so that they would even kill each other in a frenzied state, completely disregarding any consequences.

Jiang Sanlang’s side had never experienced this kind of battle strength, and their morale immediately plunged by half.

Seeing the situation was unfavourable, some of the villagers from Jiang village abandoned their comrades and fled into the woods, disappearing in an instant.

Chen Zhu was infuriated, “Damn it! What nonsense! I risked my life to save them, only to save a bunch of ungrateful wretches!”

“Retreat!” Jiang Sanlang waved his hand: “Run into the forest!”

With ten people from their side suddenly running away, if the rest didn’t run, they would only be waiting for death.

So Jiang Dalang, Jiang Erlang and Jiang Sanlang swiftly led the villagers to flee into the forest, temporarily unable to care for those at the cave’s side.

The bandits bellowed as they pursued all the way till nightfall.

By the plank road, the number of bandits down the road did not decrease, but instead, it seemed to have increased by one or two hundred.

Seeing this, Clan Leader Chen and a few others frowned, pacing back and forth with their hands behind their backs in the cave, quite agitated.

“What should we do?” Jiang Dahu, the village head of Jiang Village was scratching his head.

Clan Leader Chen sighed: “We can only take one step at a time. For now, our priority is to secure the entrance, we can’t let the bandits come up.”

If they were attacked by the bandits, everyone would become sitting ducks, none would be able to survive.

“Alas, we have no other choice.” Jiang Dahu also sighed.

Yingbao counted the people in the cave, about two hundred more or less, the majority of whom were the old, weak, women and children.

These people were now split into two sides, the Jiang Village on one side and Chen Village and the refugees on the other.

Jiang Village was more populous with over a hundred people, occupying most of the cave, with the chickens, geese, and goats they had brought along running around randomly.

Yingbao was sitting comfortably between the two gourds, observing the surroundings, having a hunch.

If it continued like this for a few more days, without food or water, there would be no need for the bandits to attack, the people in the cave themselves would start to fight.

Even now, certain villagers from Jiang Village glared fiercely when they looked their way.

In their view, the bandits were brought upon by the refugees, and tracing back to the root, they were drawn here by Jiang Sanlang’s family.

Even if Jiang Sanlang had saved their entire village, some people in Jiang Village would only take it for granted.

“Baobao, keep these pancakes,” Chunniang and Dahuang’s wife had been making pancakes for half the day, and used up most of the flour.

Had there been more firewood in the cave, they would have baked all the flour to distribute to their family members for safekeeping.

Yingbao received five pancakes and stuffed them into her small bag.

Each person in the Jiang Family was given five pancakes, which was their last dry food.

Jiang Jie and Jiang Wu gave their pancakes to their sister to keep, saying they would eat them when they were hungry.

Chunniang tried to give a few pancakes to Xiu Zhenniang, but she declined them. “I still have plenty of food here, save the pancakes for the children.”

Xiu Zhenniang not only had food but also a full water bag. The servant, Wen Fu, had fetched the water early in the morning, which was enough for her and her four servants to eat and drink for a day or two.

As for Lin family’s members, Xiu Zhenniang couldn’t and didn’t want to take care of them.

Seeing that Xiu Zhenniang refused to take them, Chunniang gave up and gave ten pancakes to Mrs Lin from Wen Family.

Now Lin had learned to behave herself. She took the pancakes, thanked them and divided them. She gave three each to her two daughters, kept two for herself and shared the remaining two between the two maids and the servant.

As night fell, Clan Leader Chen and Jiang Dahu arranged for someone to keep watch at night to prevent a surprise attack by the bandits.

However, the night was quiet and the bandits didn’t make a move.

The next morning, the villagers were surprised and delighted to find that the number of bandits at the foot of the mountain had halved.

This happiness didn’t last long when they suddenly heard someone exclaim: “They have destroyed the plank road!”

The plank road leading downwards was broken and destroyed, leaving only the wooden rafters nailed to the mountain wall.

“Oh, heavens! What are we going to do!” Someone cried out in despair.

Without the walkway, there was nothing but a precipitous cliff below. There was no way for them to go down.

Clan Leader Chen and Jiang Village’s leaders hurried over to inspect the situation. They found most of the walkway had been dismantled, even the wooden pegs nailed into the cliffside had been burned.

With the walkway destroyed, were they all destined to be trapped and starve to death in the cave?

With so many people hiding in the cave, the most urgent problem was water, never mind other necessities.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t raining either, so collecting rainwater was out of the question.

Without water, none of them could survive more than five days, even if they had brought up enough food.

Everyone became frantic, quickly checking their belongings.

If only they had some ropes. They could have used them to climb down the cliff.

Yet, after pooling everything together, the ropes they found were not enough for everyone to descend safely.

“What can we do, Clan Leader?” Jiang village’s people were the most terrified because they had already run out of water.

Jiang Dahu strolled over to Chen Zhu with his hands behind his back, “Brother Chen, we need to think of a solution together.”

But what could Chen Zhu do? He turned his gaze toward the old Jiang.

Old Jiang and his wife remained calm, as he remembered bringing two large bundles of rope. The question was where they were now.

Yingbao saw her grandparents looking for the ropes, quietly pulled two bundles out from underneath the covers. “Here they are.”

Jiang Liu was overjoyed, “Oh, Yingbao, how did you manage to hide the ropes under the covers?”

Yingbao: …

She had no other choice but to remain silent.

Everyone felt a slow sense of relief seeing the two large bundles of rope at Old Jiang’s.

With so much rope, they could surely reach down to the bottom of the cliff.

Now that they had a means to escape, the destruction of the walkway seemed less devastating.

What’s more, they wouldn’t need a guard shift at night and everyone could sleep peacefully.

By afternoon, another batch of bandits had left, with only around sixty or seventy remaining.

Old Jiang spat in disgust, grumbling angrily, “Paying tribute to your ancestors…”

Realizing that his words were inappropriate, he quickly spat again, pacing back and forth in the cave to alleviate his frustration.

In a corner of the cave, Yingbao was quietly feeding Youyou water from a broken pottery bowl.

An old goose squawked and squeezed its way to Yingbao, pecking at the bowl in her hand.

She pushed its head away, but it persistently followed, its eyes filled with desperation.

Having no choice, Yingbao surreptitiously poured a bit more water into the pottery bowl for the old goose to drink.

Before long, a goat ran over with a kid in tow, bleating and butting at Yingbao, almost knocking her over.

Yingbao gritted her teeth and glared at them, reluctantly pouring some more water for the mother goat and her kid.

With the goats still drinking, more arrived, circling Yingbao and nudging her with their heads when she didn’t pay them attention.

This made the two little puppies unhappy. They barked angrily at the goats, bounding around, driving them to the other side of the cave.

Despite that, these goats kept looking towards Yingbao, bleating, and eager to approach.

Dahuang and Xiaohei stood protectively in front of Yingbao, baring their teeth at the goats, and producing low threatening growls.

Yingbao stroked their heads, breaking off a small piece of bread and stuffing it into their mouths.

With water in short supply and not even enough for people to drink, it was impossible to provide for the livestock. Only thanks to Yingbao’s constant refilling was her gourd not completely empty.

But she needed to be careful, her great-aunt and mother had already noticed the gourd, growing suspicious as to why there was always water in it.