Lin Xing rubbed his wrist, which had just been pinched by the other person, feeling a burst of pain.
At the same time, the voice of the cat doll rose in his heart, "Stop meddling, Lin Xing. This is Great Zhou, where everyone has their own skill."
"With your current half-baked kung fu, you can bully elderly men like the one before, but you can't defeat strong men like this."
Lin Xing continued to observe the man who had suddenly appeared.
If the old man who had previously tried to chop him with a firewood knife in the courtyard seemed to be just an ordinary farmer, then the burly man in front of him, dressed in strongman clothing, looked like a professional thug.
"My current strength in the Great Zhou World is probably at the peak of the elderly level, and this person is at least at the strongman level. I'm definitely no match for ordinary brawls."
"Unless I actively seek a life-or-death struggle with them, think of a way for them to kill me, then use time reversal to fight this person to the death repeatedly. Maybe..."
But as an upstanding superpower user, Lin Xing would never rashly engage in a fight to the death with a stranger, so he just thought about it and immediately snuffed out this restless idea.
Watching the other party grab the little girl and lift her up, Lin Xing asked, "What are you going to do with her?"
The man who had repelled Lin Xing turned around, the scar on his face twisting like a centipede, as he said indifferently, "Her family can't pay the God's money anymore. This is our village's own business, don't meddle."
Having said that, he glanced at Lin Xing's strange attire and warned, "Kid, I don't care what demon you're serving, we don't welcome your kind here. Before it gets dark, don't let me see you still in the village."
The little girl being carried on his shoulder was calm, mentioning flatly, "My dad said he would go gather the money, and he would definitely come home to pay the God's money."
The man with the scarred face laughed and said, "Your dad sold all the fields to exorcise demons for you; I think he's already tired of you being a drag, he must have run away and abandoned you this time."
Watching the other party walk out of the courtyard in a blink of an eye, Lin Xing turned to the doll and said, "Miss Bai, what is this God's money?"
Bai Yiyi replied, "I'm not a know-it-all. How could I possibly know the rules of any random village?"
"However, by the name of it, it's probably something like temples and Taoist sects collecting money from this village."
If it were modern society, Lin Xing would have called the police when encountering such an issue, and if the situation was serious, he might even record a video with captions, such phrases as shocking the nation, unexpected, not a small scale, infuriating...
But at this moment in the Great Zhou World, Lin Xing found himself a bit at a loss, because he didn't even understand what was actually happening in front of him.
Therefore, Lin Xing stepped out of the courtyard, wanting to find out where this place was, what God's money was about, and what would become of the little girl who couldn't pay it.
However, Lin Xing's inquiries met with villagers, whether it was the white-haired elderly or ordinary villagers, who all seemed wary of him, this stranger.
From this line of questioning, Lin Xing had only learned that the village was called Jiang Family Village.
He also noted that the village lacked any electrical appliances and modern facilities, and all the villagers seemed to show signs of excessive labor and malnutrition, everything looking much more like an ancient village.
Clearly, as Wei Zhi had once mentioned, the developmental level of Mirror World might be far behind the modern society Lin Xing came from.
After being turned away by another elderly person, Lin Xing said helplessly, "Why are these local villagers so exclusionary?"
The doll replied, "It's normal to have defenses up. They already called you a demon servant; it's because you dress so strangely in their eyes, it's odd that they'd entertain you at all."
Lin Xing looked at the patient's garb he was wearing, thinking, "Next time I come to Mirror World, I should change into something less conspicuous."
Passerby villagers glanced at Lin Xing, who was talking to the doll, and quickly led their children away.
Just then, a sudden bang rang out in the distance, villagers closed their doors and windows one by one, as if fearing something.
Lin Xing was slightly startled when he heard the noise: "What's that sound?"
He ran toward the source of the noise, and shortly after, he heard cries for help.
He saw a thin girl lying on the ground, her face swollen.
A bulky-faced man was grabbing her hair, dragging her outside the courtyard without regard for her cries and struggles.
An elderly man was kneeling on the ground, continuously kowtowing and pleading with the man, but he was being held back by another man.
"Please, sir!"
"She truly isn't an Evil Woman. My son and grandson have already gone to fight for the Commander, and I'm left with only this granddaughter. Please, show mercy and spare her..."
The man in front of him kicked the old man, impatiently saying, "To capture the cult's Evil Woman, all women from age ten to thirty must be taken to the city for interrogation. This is the Commander's military order. Are you going to defy the Commander?"
The old man didn't answer, only clinging to the other man's leg, desperately pleading.
Around them, it seemed that many villagers in the earthen houses were startled by the noise, then quickly shut their windows and doors, plunging into silence.
For a while, only the cries of the old man and the girl could be heard.
In Lin Xing's eyes, what first caught his attention were the two men's outfits that resembled old military uniforms, and they each carried an old-fashioned rifle on their backs.
Lin Xing didn't know much about firearms, but he had seen many war films set in olden times, and the rifle felt like a centuries-old, long-barreled one to him.
He originally thought that the Great Zhou World was in an ancient society, but he didn't expect such an underdeveloped world to already have guns.
"Hey, Lin Xing, what are you doing?"
Seeing Lin Xing setting him down, the cat toy exclaimed, "You're not going to get involved in this, are you? In times of chaos, warlords grow like weeds, and this kind of thing happens everywhere..."
"Everywhere?" Lin Xing turned his head, his eyes seemingly sparkling, "Then my superpowers finally have more room to be useful."
Looking at how he suddenly perked up, the emotion in his eyes appeared not as anger, but to the toy, more like anticipation or even excitement.
Although it had long heard Lin Xing talk about righteousness, punishing the wicked, and saving the world,
Bai Yiyi suddenly realized at that moment that Lin Xing's understanding of and emotions about such matters were subtly different from what she had imagined.
"Damn it, didn't those quacks treat him properly?"
The toy sighed inwardly, trying a different approach to persuade him: "Don't be crazy, they have guns, you'll get shot dead."
"That would be great." Lin Xing laughed and walked toward the other party, "If they manage to kill me, things will be a lot simpler."
He waved his hand to block the way, looked at the military ruffian dragging the girl, and said, "Let her go."
"Get lost." The broad-faced military ruffian pointed his rifle at Lin Xing's head, and when he saw that Lin Xing was still undeterred and kept moving forward, he chuckled and pulled the trigger.
Accompanied by a bang of a gunshot, when Lin Xing regained his senses, he had returned to several minutes earlier.
"Just as I thought, ruthless killing, now things become simple."
For Lin Xing, a life-and-death battle was indeed much simpler than any sparring, brawling, or exploration.
He didn't have to worry about right or wrong anymore. All he had to do was find an opportunity to kill his adversary during the process of being killed over and over again.