In the past, the entire Jiaozhi area, including Wangnan, actually fell under the jurisdiction of the Central Plains court.
The Central Plains imperial court set up counties, counties, or other institutions here.
However, after losing the war and signing the treaty with the foreign devils, all this became a thing of the past.
Jiaozhi is now a foreign land for Kyushu people.
Therefore, Yin Xiu and Ma Xiaoyu had never thought before that Wangnan was an important military town, not an ordinary township.
Looking from a distance, what appeared in front of them was not row upon row of undulating houses, pedestrians and carriages coming and going, but tall and mottled city walls and closed city gates.
When he got closer, Yin Xiu discovered that the mottled spots on the city wall were patches one after another.
Probably when the Chinese attacked here, the cannonballs fired opened many holes in it, so these traces were left.
The city wall is of course indestructible, but the heart of a stone-hearted person appears very fragile in the face of cannonballs.
Sometimes even if you are hiding behind the city wall and listening to the shelling, the original will to resist will often dissipate before the wall collapses.
Yin Xiu also learned later that the Faguo people set up cannons and only fired two rounds at the city wall facing south, knocking off some of the walls. This military town, which had high hopes, opened its doors and surrendered.
Before Yin Xiu and Ma Xiaoyu reached the city gate, they already noticed someone hiding behind the battlements and watching them, but they had no intention of showing up.
It wasn't until Yin Xiu was about to call the door that a soldier with very old clothes and a gray beard poked his head out and looked at them mysteriously for a while, as if he wanted to see something from them. .
After finding nothing unusual, he shouted to Yin Xiu and the others: "Hey, no one is allowed in today, let's go!"
"Where do you want us to go?" Yin Xiu shouted.
"Where to go?"
The veteran touched his nose and said, "You can go anywhere, just don't come in. We don't welcome outsiders here."
"Huh?"
Yin Xiu frowned, "I heard that aren't the folks in Jiaozhi the most hospitable?"
"You heard it wrong. Even if it is, it was in the past."
The veteran whispered: "Maybe it happened last week."
Seeing that Yin Xiu and Ma Xiaoyu were still motionless and had no intention of leaving, he couldn't help but urge: "Let's go quickly, bypass this town, there is another town twenty miles south."
"But..."
Yin Xiu looked bitter, looking very helpless and anxious.
"But what?" The veteran was very curious.
"But..."
Yin Xiu stretched out her hand and gently covered Ma Xiaoyu's belly, "My wife, I am more than three months pregnant."
Ma Xiaoyu was stunned at first, eyes widening, then narrowed his eyes slightly, trembled at the corner of his mouth, and finally looked down at the veteran with shyness, and then put his hand on Yin Xiu's lower back.
"Oh, sir..."
Yin Xiu straightened her back immediately and her eyes turned slightly red.
"Accidents are all accidents."
"Even so..."
The veteran thought hard.
In the end, I still didn't see any unstable factors in Yin Xiu and Ma Xiaoyu.
What danger could a young couple, one of whom was a delicate and pregnant woman, pose?
And seeing Yin Xiu's eyes bright red, the veteran also knew that the man would not shed tears easily, so he finally sighed.
"Wait a minute, I'll come down and open the door for you."
The veteran muttered and walked slowly down the tower.
Originally, the city gate should be able to be opened from above. Two soldiers, one of whom held the iron chain, hung it on the winch and pushed it at the same time, could open the city gate.
But at this time, people in the town were in panic, and everyone who could run ran away, so that even the soldiers deserted and disappeared.
Only the veteran still works as usual, because this is his job to support his two grandchildren.
Although the salary is not much, there is no arrears all year round, and a piece of pork is given during holidays. This is the best treatment.
It is precisely because I am lonely that I cannot bear to see others being homeless.
There are not many people in the town anyway, so what does it matter if one or two more people come out?
He slowly removed all the debris blocking the door, and then finally opened the door.
"Come in." The veteran waved his hand, obviously not taking Yin Xiu and the others seriously.
Of course Yin Xiu liked this ordinary feeling, he nodded and said: "Thank you."
He took Ma Xiaoyu's reins and walked slowly inside with the two camels.
"There is nothing we can do about it."
Yin Xiu still feels some pain in her lower back, "If I didn't say this, he wouldn't let us in."
"Use Qinggong!"
Ma Xiaoyu rolled her eyes at him, "He is alone, are you still afraid that he will beat you down?"
"Then when we go in and meet others, we also use Qing Gong? And these two animals don't know how to do Qing Gong."
Yin Xiu grinned and said: "If we go in now, we are just tourists in the eyes of others. If we are really forceful, I am afraid it will cause another big riot."
Although Ma Xiaoyu knew that Yin Xiu's considerations were reasonable, there was still frost on her face.
At this time, Yin Xiu suddenly came close to her ear and said: "If, I mean if, you are innocent and have an accident, then..."
"There won't be any."
Ma Xiaoyu knew what he wanted to say.
"I don't want to say whether I will ask you to give me the chance of an accident, but there is."
Ma Xiaoyu glanced at him and said, "I will also use my inner strength to force out what you gave me."
Yin Xiu spread her hands helplessly, "Then I definitely don't want you to have an accident."
"You better be."
The old soldier heard what the two were talking about. He just thought that the two of them had encountered something terrible on the road, so he comforted him and said: "Don't worry, there are so many accidents. It will be safe when you get here..."
After a pause, he swallowed the second half of his sentence - this town is not safe at the moment.
I don’t know if letting this couple enter the city will harm them.
But everyone has his own life, right?
The old soldier shook his head, and when he was about to go back to the tower, Ma Xiaoyu stopped him.
"Old man, I wonder if you have ever seen this person?"
"No." The veteran didn't even look back.
"He was also with another guy who looked like a fortune teller."
"It's my first day on duty. I've just been on duty. I haven't seen him before." The veteran's feet were already on the steps.
Stupid!
Yin Xiu blew a silver dollar. This loud, crisp sound immediately attracted the veteran.
He still didn't look back, "Whether I recognize you or not, if I turn around, this silver dollar will have to be given to me."
"If you recognize them, two."
Yin Xiu smiled and handed over the piece of paper with only Ren Qi's portrait remaining.
The veteran took the paper, squinted at it, and randomly widened his eyes.
"Does this man carry several swords?"
"Do you recognize him?"
Yin Xiu dug in his pocket, not looking at how many he had in his hand, and stuffed them all into the veteran's hand.
"Of course I recognize it."
The veteran was not polite and hid a few silver coins in his body, smashing them in his mouth while thinking about it.
"That is a really scary man. To be honest, old man, I have been guarding the gate of this city for twenty years and I have never seen such a scary person.
He didn't mean to scare you or kill you, he just walked like this.
However, there is an evil aura about him that cannot be concealed. Even if he is just walking and doing nothing, you can still feel that he is an extremely dangerous person.
It was like someone who had just robbed a house, killed a whole family, and then drank a cup of tea among the corpses everywhere as if nothing had happened, and then walked out slowly. That man, it gave me chills down my spine. ”
Yin Xiu nodded. From this point on, he knew that the veteran was not making it up. Only someone who had met Ren Qi could describe his first impression of him so appropriately.
And the old man seemed to have some kind of inspiration, so that he could sense more emotions and temperament from Ren Qi than ordinary people.
But this is nothing commendable, because there are always many smart people in the world, but how many of them can really stand out?
Most of the strangers are just buried and live their lives in mediocrity.
"Besides this terrifying swordsman, there are two other people following him. One is the fortune teller you mentioned, wearing sunglasses, a mandarin jacket, and a white cloth bag on his back, right?"
Seeing Yin Xiu nodding, the veteran continued.
"There is another one, a monk."
They all matched up. Just as Qiu Xiaosi said, the ones who took away Ren Qi and Liu Banxian in the teahouse and went to Qianfo Temple with them were the monks sent by the great monk of Southern Xinjiang.
"The three of them stayed in this town for one night, then changed their horses and left the city the next day. They seemed to be in a hurry."
"Besides their whereabouts, did you find anything else?"
"Something else?" The veteran frowned.
"Yeah, anything goes."
Yin Xiu cast an encouraging look, "I know that you always remember everything clearly and are observant of every detail. Whether it's the holes in your clothes or the dirt on your shoes, nothing can escape your eyes, isn't it? ?
From childhood to adulthood, from boyhood to now, from the time you realized the difference between yourself and others, in the past few decades you have often been proud of this ability, but many times you have forgotten it.
It's just that skills don't need to be remembered. You can only do it when you remember it. It is just an instinct. When you see a person or something, your instinct is stimulated, and it is as natural as breathing.
So, for now, all you need to do is take a deep breath, that's enough. ”
Yin Xiu's words not only did not put pressure on the veteran, but made him feel that some kind of enthusiasm that had dried up burst out again.
Those things that seemed to have died in a corner of my heart came to life.
The veteran's brows furrowed and his mind raced rapidly. It was only when it was about to turn into mush that he finally recalled something.
"After the three of them left, about one stick of incense time passed, a group of monks came to the door for no apparent reason."
Monk?
The veteran rubbed his chin, as if he wanted to break the skin.
"It was a group of monks, eight of them on horseback. Each one was covered under a navy blue robe, covering his head to his feet. His face could not be seen clearly.
However, I felt that those monks also had evil spirits. ”
"Evil spirit, monk?"
When Yin Xiu subconsciously asked this question, she felt that her question was a bit outrageous.
The veteran just shook his head and said, "They are probably not monks, because judging from their body shapes, they are really haggard.
Which monastery's warrior monks are not trained by eating meat and drinking soup? Such monks can only be those who chant sutras. To be honest, they may still be the same group of monks who practice asceticism.
Only those who don't eat a meal every three days and don't have a drop of oil in their dishes can have such a figure.
They came in a hurry, and I could see the smoke from a distance, and thought they were some official business.
Enemy attack? The battle has been over long ago, where did the enemy come from?
If the Chinese come, we open the city gate, squat on the ground, and they rob us all in the town. That will be the end of it, and we can leave before dark.
If people from the northern court come, then I will have to close the city gate, otherwise there may not be a single living person in the whole town.
Having said that, at that time I thought it was a messenger or an official, so I didn't take it seriously.
It wasn't until we got closer that we realized they were wearing monk's robes.
They came in a hurry and left in a hurry. It seemed that they came just for the swordsman and the fortune teller.
Before they entered the door, the leader's hand moved under his cloak a few times, as if he already knew that the swordsman and the others were gone, and then a group of people chased the swordsman in the direction without stopping.
It's really a hurry to come and go in a hurry. The journey is so stressful. ”
"So that's it."
Yin Xiu knew that the veteran had told everything he knew about the situation.
Moreover, the information he gave was very crucial. At least Yin Xiu knew about the situation that Ren Qi and the others might encounter.
It turns out that besides them, there are others who are tracking them.
"By the way, when they came, was there no drought yet?" Yin Xiu suddenly remembered to ask him this.
"How did you know?"
The veteran sighed, "There is nothing. At that time, the peach trees in the city were still blooming. They were beautiful and very happy. Now, they are all dead."
"The grass and trees are withered and flourishing, but every year there is spring."
Yin Xiu patted him on the shoulder and said, "The peach blossoms will bloom again next year."
"Maybe."
The veteran's brows were still squeezed together, "I just hope I can see the peach blossoms next year."
After a pause, he felt that he was acting too weak. Telling people such depressing things all day long would be annoying and look down upon. What else could he do?
Moreover, he suddenly remembered something.
The veteran couldn't help but said vigilantly: "You two, are you really just coming to the city to rest? Since you are just resting, why are you asking me about people?"
Yin Xiu didn't answer him, just got on the horse again, and continued walking to the town with Ma Xiaoyu.
Behind him, there was a sound of a sharp knife being unsheathed.
The veteran held a sharp knife in his hand and said, "Young man, if you want to do mischief in this town, you can give up the idea now, because I will not let you go."
Yin Xiu didn't look back, but just rode forward, "Don't worry, old man, we're just visiting relatives."
They gradually walked away, leaving behind the veteran whose palms were soaked with sweat to the handle of his knife. (End of chapter)