Chapter 74: Women Viewed as Resources

Mutation?

Cai Zhenlong suddenly felt a bit envious; should he also try it out?

The journey there was slow, but the return journey was no longer human!

Therefore, it only took them a little over half an hour to return to the town.

Liu Mu placed the lady, who was wrapped tightly in a raincoat, into a building that was relatively intact, then looked back at the three young men who were so exhausted they had collapsed to their knees, "Youth is a fine thing; they kneel the moment they're told to."

Cai Zhenlong, who had been carried back by someone, yawned, "Brother He fell behind at the second mountain peak."

"Don't worry about him. Get the people settled first, and you guys boil some porridge to help them regain their strength," Liu Mu walked into the intact kitchen.

It turned out this family used a wood-burning stove; no wonder there hadn't been an explosion.

Naturally, there was no firewood left, so Liu Mu found a cement stove reinforced with iron hoops, dug out two large earthenware pots used for soup, and lit some coal chunks.

"You guys keep watch; I have other things to do."

She set down a bag of rice, but her leg was grabbed by Yang Pingxi, who was sprawled on the ground, his tongue lolling out as he panted, "What is it?"

She shook her leg, but surprisingly, she couldn't shake him off.

"Tu men, chong tu..."

Liu Mu tilted her head and glanced at Cai Zhenlong, "Translate."

Cai Zhenlong, who was currently moving the ladies to a dry area, immediately asked, "Xi Zai wants to ask, what should be done about the poison they have in them?"

"That?" Liu Mu said indifferently, "It will be excreted in a few days. Young people, you must believe in the powerful immunity brought by the miracle of Evolution. Just take good care of them."

Cai Zhenlong hurriedly pressed, "When do we start mining? We've already discussed it; we keep our word, we'll help you dig coal from now on."

"Sure, I'll have Uncle Fugui come by later to sign labor contracts," Liu Mu would never refuse labor, "Don't worry, you'll get paid. If you want a share of the profits, that's fine too; say a few nice words to Uncle Fugui, and he'll negotiate it for you."

"Hey, the talking is done, let go, young man!"

Yang Pingxi didn't let go, "Se tu... zhong me pan?"

"He's asking you what to do about his tongue? It's become like this, and now he can't even eat properly. And Mangzai, his mouth... Shunzi, hold it in, don't leak water yet, you'll make the floor all wet and it'll be hard for them to lie down."

"I, I don't want to either, it's so, so cold," after carrying two women back, Yang Shun had curled up in a corner, and a large puddle of water had already pooled around him.

"You say you despise him, but you still need him to purify the rainwater outside to boil porridge," Liu Mu laughed, then looked at the other two and thought for a moment, "You guys study yourselves; there's bound to be a way. Don't worry, you won't starve to death from missing a meal or two."

Liu Mu said this irresponsibly, then kicked Yang Pingxi two meters away, "Why are you grabbing a woman's leg for no reason? How rude!"

Perhaps he had never been treated like this by a woman in his life; the poor, introverted college student's face turned beet red, and the key was that he had finally bitten his long tongue.

After Liu Mu left, she went straight to the previous building. To make it harder for the two groups to disturb each other, this small building was specifically chosen on the west side of town, far from the Mine.

Returning to the previous place, she could feel a tense atmosphere even outside the building.

Good grief!

Three corpses were laid out in a row outside.

When Liu Mu entered, she saw two groups of people in a standoff.

One group was townspeople holding iron pipes and bricks, and the other was the migrant workers led by Liu Fugui and Li Gang.

The three corpses outside were all townspeople.

Liu Fugui and his men had guns, but these townspeople seemed determined, firmly believing that the former wouldn't dare kill them all, so they stood their ground with stiff necks.

"Quite lively, aren't we?"

Liu Mu's arrival directly shattered that fragile stubbornness. Her gaze was cold and sharp as she suddenly raised her voice, "Niu Boyi, are you a dog-thing that eats shit?"

Niu Boyi, who had been lying in another building, was woken up by Liu Mu's shout. He rushed over with a bark, smashed through a wall with his head, and bit off a man's arm the moment he opened his mouth.

"Heh, I've been in the game for decades, and no one has ever dared to threaten my people. Did I not make myself clear?!"

Liu Mu flickered, kicked the man in the lead square in the chest, and sent him flying into the wall. The latter spat out a mouthful of blood, his limbs twitched, and he stopped moving.

The screams started and then stopped.

On this side, Niu Boyi shook his head, and the man whose arm he had bitten off was also sent flying.

The bloody arm lay on the cement floor, still twitching.

One person and one dog, in one swift sequence, scared the townspeople so much they didn't dare move.

Never mind the townspeople, even Liu Fugui and Li Gang felt a jolt in their hearts; Liu Mu's ruthlessness had once again reached a new level in their eyes.

"We, we didn't mean, didn't mean to do anything..."

A townsperson knelt down, and the whole group of townspeople wilted. They voluntarily threw down their weapons and squatted on the ground with their heads in their hands.

Liu Mu sneered and tilted her chin toward Liu Fugui, "What's the explanation?"

"These animals were using women to sacrifice to the Mining Tunnel. Damn it, they got exposed and wanted to kill us to silence us. Luckily, Boss, you came back just in time."

Liu Fugui's gun barrel didn't waver in the slightest. Liu Mu asked, and he hurriedly explained the cause and effect briefly.

"Using women to sacrifice to the Mining Tunnel? What, does burning a few women make the Mining Tunnel produce more coal?" Liu Mu grabbed a man at random, pinched the back of his neck, and asked, "When did this start?"

The man who was grabbed trembled, his legs shaking, and he hurriedly begged for mercy, "It wasn't me! My mother died of Mine Sickness, I don't have any sisters, and I don't dare take a wife, just for fear of being targeted by them. Really, I'm just a bachelor!"

"Answer my question!" Liu Mu pressed the man against Niu Boyi's sharp teeth, which were still stained with the previous person's blood and flesh, less than ten centimeters from the man's eyeball.

"Twenty, twenty-three years ago, the Mine always had accidents when it first opened. The master the coal boss brought in said the Mountain Ghost didn't want to let its things be taken away, so it had to be sacrificed to."

"With human lives?"

"At first we used other things—incense, paper money, cattle, and sheep—but it was no use. The mined tunnels would collapse the next day, and many people died. Seeing that things were getting out of hand and the coal boss wanted to withdraw his investment, the clan leader said that if the coal boss left, we would only be poor for generations to come..."

"Later, I don't know who suggested that we could use young boys and girls to sacrifice to the Mountain Ghost, but everyone was reluctant to part with the boys, so they tried with young girls first, and the result..."

"The result was that they really could mine smoothly for a while, so they started using women as sacrifices, right?" Liu Mu found it funny, yet she couldn't laugh.

Before the apocalypse, she had seen plenty of instances where women were treated as resources for exchange; the more patriarchal the place, the more this was the case.

In rural areas, how many families used girls to trade for wives for their boys? It was called "marrying into a family" to make it sound nice, but in the end, they didn't care about the girl's wishes at all. As long as the boy in the family took a fancy to the girl in the other family, they could engage in an Exchange Marriage.

There was even a specific term for this, called 'Exchange Marriage'.

As long as a woman was single, she could never escape the fate of being a 'resource' for her entire life.

Liu Mu remembered a short video blogger saying that after she got married and returned home to live for half a year, three separate groups of people actually came to propose marriage, telling her to divorce her husband and remarry back home.

The key was that the men being introduced were not exactly sound, good men; they were either disabled or old bachelors with bad habits.

What was even more terrifying was that this blogger's daughter was already in high school, and she herself was already over forty years old.

As for those "good sons" who get their elderly mothers to swindle old men out of their pensions, there are quite a few of them too.