Chapter 496 - 408: Someone Died Again

"Someone died?" Zhao Jun was taken aback. "Who died?"

Zhao Jun wasn’t too surprised. There were a few elderly people in the village who were getting on in years and in poor health. It would be normal for one of them to die of old age or a sudden illness.

But Li Ruhai said, "Elder Ghost Jiang is dead!"

"What? Elder Ghost Jiang?" Hearing Li Ruhai say Jiang Hua was dead, Zhao Jun was shocked. Others might not know, but he certainly did. In his previous life, that Elder Ghost had lived all the way to the new millennium.

’For him to die now, it must have been an unnatural death!’

Suddenly, Zhao Jun thought of Zhu Dashan. He recalled that when Zhu Dashan had come to his house the day before, he’d mentioned that Jiang Hua was going with him to set some explosive traps for that Black Bear.

With this thought, Zhao Jun quickly turned to Li Ruhai to confirm, "Was he killed by the Black Bear?"

"I don’t know!" Li Ruhai said with a look of frustration. "I went home for lunch, and not long after I got back to school, my teacher came in for work and said Elder Ghost Jiang was dead. As soon as I heard, I rushed right back."

In those days, schools didn’t provide lunch, so everyone, whether teachers or students, had to go home to eat.

What really annoyed Li Ruhai was that this major incident had occurred in the village right after he’d left Yong’an Village at noon. Missing out on the initial wave of information left him antsy and restless.

"Let’s go!" Zhao Jun raised his hand and pointed toward the village. The two of them hurried down the road into Yong’an Village.

The moment they entered the village, Li Ruhai disappeared without so much as a word to Zhao Jun.

Zhao Jun, however, headed for the Li Family’s home. After all, they had a lot going on today, and he wasn’t as thoughtless as Li Ruhai.

"Jun!" As Zhao Jun was walking, he heard someone call his name from behind. He turned and saw it was Jin Xiaomei.

At that moment, Jin Xiaomei was carrying two triangular net bags in one hand and a large liquor jug in the other. The jug had a ten-kilogram capacity and was filled to the brim with loose white liquor.

"Auntie! Let me take that." Zhao Jun called out and hurried over to Jin Xiaomei, taking the liquor jug from her hand as soon as he reached her.

Jin Xiaomei shook her hand, which was aching from the weight of the ten kilograms of loose white liquor.

Then, she separated the two net bags, holding one in each hand, and said to Zhao Jun with a smile, "Jun, how come you’re back so early today?"

"Well, our family has things to do, don’t we?" Zhao Jun replied. "So I came back early to help you out."

Hearing this, Jin Xiaomei was very pleased and smiled. "You’re such a good kid."

Zhao Jun chuckled. As he and Jin Xiaomei walked toward the house, he asked, "Auntie, I heard Elder Ghost Jiang passed away."

"Oh! Yes, that’s right." Jin Xiaomei was surprised and looked at Zhao Jun. "How did you know? It only happened this afternoon. Did the news already travel to the Forest Farm that fast?"

"No," Zhao Jun said, glancing around before telling Jin Xiaomei, "I saw Ruhai on my way back just now. He’s the one who told me."

"That troublesome kid!" Jin Xiaomei said irritably. "Look how busy we are at home, and he’s still running around spreading gossip."

Zhao Jun smiled and didn’t continue to badmouth Li Ruhai. Instead, he asked Jin Xiaomei, "Auntie, what exactly happened? Wasn’t Elder Jiang’s health pretty solid?"

"Well... I only heard a snippet at the convenience store, so I only got half the story," Jin Xiaomei said with a frown. Her family had a ton of things to do today, and there were still over twenty people at their construction site helping to finish up.

’In a situation like this, who has the time to run around gathering gossip?’

"Mom! Mom! Brother Jun!"

Zhao Jun looked over at the sound of the voice, and a thought immediately flashed through his mind: ’Here comes the one with the inside scoop!’

But unlike Zhao Jun, Jin Xiaomei’s gaze toward Li Ruhai was full of hostility.

"Brother Jun!" Li Ruhai rushed over, not speaking to Jin Xiaomei first but instead asking Zhao Jun, "Do you know what happened with that Elder Ghost Jiang?"

Zhao Jun glanced at Jin Xiaomei beside him. Seeing the cold glint in her eyes as she stared at Li Ruhai, he turned back and answered, "I don’t know. My auntie doesn’t really know either."

"That’s great!" Li Ruhai, completely oblivious to the oppressive feeling of a gathering storm, just caught his breath and started rambling. "Mom, Brother Jun, that Elder Jiang was done in by the Black Bear."

Hearing it was just as he’d thought, Zhao Jun pressed, "What exactly happened?"

"You know how a Black Bear got into the Zhu Family’s cornfield? Well, Elder Ghost Jiang went to check the explosive traps he set." Li Ruhai began to recount the story he’d gathered. "This morning, the two old men went with their guns to check the traps. When they got there, they saw a Big Black Bear lying on the ground. They figured the bear had been killed by the explosives, so they went over to flip it and gut it.

"But who would’ve thought? That Big Black Bear got up and pounced on them."

After hearing Li Ruhai’s account, Zhao Jun pressed on, "And what about Elder Zhu? Is he alright?"

"Brother Jun, let me finish!" Li Ruhai seemed to be enjoying himself; he was the one who had deliberately paused just now.

But seeing that the looks Zhao Jun and Jin Xiaomei were giving him were a little off, Li Ruhai quickly added, "Elder Zhu is seriously injured. His son borrowed a car from the Forest Farm and is taking him down the mountain right now."

As soon as Li Ruhai finished speaking, Jin Xiaomei asked, "They went early in the morning, so how come the news only got out in the afternoon?"

You had to hand it to him, Li Ruhai really knew a lot. He directly answered Jin Xiaomei’s question: "The Black Bear beat Elder Zhu half to death, and he passed out. When he came to, he started crawling back. He crawled all the way to South Land, but since it was high noon, there was no one in the fields. He kept crawling toward the village, and it wasn’t until he was almost there that the Village Chief’s wife saw him and rescued him."