In the seventeenth year of Zhenguan of the Tang Dynasty, Jiaohe County, Xizhou, Liuzhong County. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

One hundred and thirty miles northwest of the county seat, a small village on the edge of the valley, a lamp like a bean in the low thatched hut on the edge of the village, illuminating a handsome seventeen-year-old boy, his name is Hou Jun, through the dim light, you can see the angular lips slightly growing hair, he sits there with a momentum of not being angry and self-imposing, although the wind and snow are mixed outside, hitting the paper window fluttering sound, you can vaguely hear the occasional creaking and creaking sound from the snow on the thatched roof, he is unmoved, and he does not even raise his eyelids.

"Ghost weather! I wish people were dead. He muttered.

A woman in her early thirties, who walked in from the outhouse with two bowls of gruel, couldn't help but tremble slightly, and the gruel that spilled from the bowl was drenched on her cotton skirt, which was a little faded but made of fine materials, and her hands were also burned.

Hou Jun looked up at her, in the past month, the morning dew of Lingnan and the dry wind and sand outside Yumen Pass, and the wind and snow in Xizhou have invaded each other, but there is no trace on her face, it is still so white and delicate, and it is a little exquisite. If there is a change, it is only that her originally slightly chubby body has lost a little weight, but it looks healthier.

On the roof, strings of old cobwebs hung in the dark, floating gently with the agitation of the window paper, very depressing. He was talking about this dilapidated house. Mura Zheng looked at people as low, bullied him into despair, and assigned him and her two shoddy thatched huts near the edge of the village. Do even robbers who kill people and oversell goods be treated better than me?

Thinking of this, he couldn't help but sigh lightly.

The woman's hand rubbed her own cotton skirt and sat down at the square table across from him. One bowl of gruel per person, that's all they have for tonight.

"Let's make do with some food, it's just these two bowls", she opened her mouth and looked at Hou Jun—a young man she had never looked at before, but now he was sitting there like an old man, enjoying her waiting, and a nameless anger suddenly surged up, how could it have been like this before?

In the evening, as soon as they settled down in the village, the village brought them food for dinner, and they grabbed only two handfuls of old brown rice and left. And she, who has always been a person who comes to eat and stretch out her clothes, has been busy since the village is gone: the firewood for the fire is pulled out from under the snow outside the courtyard, the water is with ice stubble, and when washing rice, her well-maintained tender hands seem to have been stripped of a layer of skin, and she has always hoped that Hou Jun will come over to help her, in this kind of difficult time, those things before are nothing.

Hou Jun saw that the ring finger and little finger of her right hand were burned red by the porridge that had just been spilled, and now she still pretended to have nothing to do with the inferior coarse porcelain bowl in front of her, and sipped it silently, retaining a little grace in her crampedness. Liu, where has he suffered such a sin? From Chang'an to Lingnan, from Lingnan to Xizhou, the northwest wilderness of the Tang Empire, she, a young and beautiful lady who was once a member of the first rank of the dynasty, only lacked those confiscated jewels, and the others were not lacking.

"This house...... I'm afraid it'......," she said cautiously. The voice fell, only to hear a click, Hou Jun knew that it was the only dead tree on the east gable outside the house that could not bear the destruction of the wind and snow, and fell, it should be rubbing against the gable, the sound of dead branches and falling snow, the door leading to the outside of the house and the door frame seemed to shake a few times. Not far from the house, someone shouted with a little excitement, "Hey, the trees are down!" ”

I really don't know how the fall of a tree can make some people so happy, and the prisoners who are imprisoned in the deep prison all day facing the bars will suddenly see a leaf floating in from the bars, will they also be excited for a while? The people outside the house were the same as them, the prisoners sent by the empire to enrich the western state, and after arriving here, their prisoner status was erased and they could live as civilians.

The condition is that they are not allowed to leave this place, and they must engage in the affairs arranged by the state, and they can never leave their jobs and leave without permission, from this point of view, they are still inferior to civilians, but to be a normal person with a regular job, and no longer a prisoner, think about it is too happy? That's just the way it is. That's what they're here to do – to feed the Empire.

In the evening, a deputy shepherd came from Liuzhong County in the snow, but Hou Jun did not see the dignity of the pastor, this is an imperial official who specializes in managing the pasture, depending on the size of the pasture, the grade of the pastor is also differentiated, but they are not as high as the fifth grade. The shepherd had already explained to the prisoners that there was a pasture in the valley about eight miles from the village, and that from tomorrow they would be assigned a group, and that the men on duty would be to work on the horse farm. There are many horse farms in the empire, and that is the basis for the empire to conquer the four directions. The heavy armored cavalry of the Tang Empire came and went quickly and had strong combat effectiveness, which has always been a nightmare for many people.

Ryu raised his eyes and glanced at him quickly, but there was no expression on his face, so he calmed down a little. From now on, the man and the earth, the guy in front of her, who she has always regarded as a thorn in the eye and a thorn in the flesh, turned out to be her only reliance, she thought of her twelve-year-old son, Hou Wushuang, her eyes were red, and she sighed lightly.

Suddenly seeing Hou Jun sitting cross-legged on the opposite side, his eyes flashed, and a gust of wind threw something at her, Liu almost screamed, subconsciously protecting his head with both hands, after the wind, although he did not feel pain in his head and face, he felt a grievance for no reason, and tears had already gushed out silently.

There was only one pair of bamboo chopsticks left in Hou Jun's hand. The oil lamp on the table flickered for a while before it stabilized. He noticed that the bowl of porridge in front of Liu Shi had drunk a small half, and she didn't use chopsticks, which meant that she gave herself the relatively thick porridge.

"This won't be her style, it will be so kind", it is really fresh, compared to the shame she imposed on herself before and the cold Mo of her father who came to it, and the disdain that those slaves in the courtyard of Chen Guogong's Mansion in Chang'an City seemed to be respectful but actually revealed all the time.

Liu finally saw that by a wooden cabinet against the adobe wall behind her, a scrawny mouse was still wriggling with wooden chopsticks, and it was freezing outside, and it was sneaking here to find food and drink. Liu's face flushed, she thought it was coming at her.

Ever since she embarked on the path of exile, Liu felt that she had become a frightened bird, and she got up and went to the innermost room, where she fell asleep silently with a burst of stumbling and undressing, and did not finish the bowl of porridge.

The wind and snow are as old as ever, this is the first day they arrived in Xizhou, will this ghost weather indicate that they will live without people and ghosts after they arrive in Xizhou?

Hou Jun and his concubine Liu, both sinners.

According to the law of the Tang Dynasty, the punishment is divided into five levels: flogging, rod, imprisonment, exile, and death. They are exiles, only slightly better than the death penalty.

Hou Jun was sent by his father to Zhongnan Mountain to learn martial arts at the age of thirteen, if it wasn't for his father's crime, maybe Hou Jun would have been living in Zhongnan Mountain, that is a wonderful place, as the saying goes, it is too good, not as good as Zhongnan. Its mountains and rivers are inside and outside, thousands of peaks and blue screens, and even if it snows, it is different from Xizhou.

Another person quietly walked outside their house, and he didn't need to listen to it to know that he was beating their firewood idea, and took it without telling him, but the thick snow on the ground exposed his whereabouts, and he may have gone to cook, but the man took the firewood but didn't leave, Hou Jun'er listened to the man tiptoe to the window, and saw that the window paper was gently stabbed open, and a thief's eyes peeked into the house through the window paper hole, Hou Jun didn't move, and he couldn't help but throw the remaining wooden chopsticks on the table, and now his identity is different, Everything has to be low-key. But I really don't know what else can be remembered in this little hut.

As soon as Hou Jun got up, he heard the man panic and stepped on the snow and left. He plucked the chopsticks with the mouse from the earthen wall, opened the door and wanted to throw it, but after a moment's thought, he went to the stove and threw it in, where there was still an unfinished firewood and charcoal.

The group of men and women who arrived in Xizhou yesterday evening, a total of 60 men and women, all came from Lingnan, and at the behest of Emperor Taizong, they sent prisoners from all over the country to enrich Xizhou. In the past, there were many Han people in this place, who were officials, soldiers and their families and descendants in the Han and Wei dynasties. This place was renamed Xizhou after his father commanded the army in the thirteenth year of Zhenguan in the thirteenth year of Layue, as the general manager of the Jiaohe River March.

Hou Junji, Chen Guogong of the Tang Dynasty, Shangshu of the Ministry of Officials, was once a member of the Tang Empire, one of the twenty-four heroes of Lingyan Pavilion, did not stand in the right line, and when he was executed, he had only one request: to leave him a son, and continue to be the ancestors of fireworks. Emperor Taizong not only left one of his sons, Hou Jun, but also a wife, Liu. Hou Junji's wife, that is, Hou Jun's biological mother, is long gone, Hou Junji straightened the Liu family and gave birth to a son named Wushuang, but at this time Hou Wushuang had accompanied his father to sleep.

As soon as he pushed the door, the cold wind and snow came to his face, the firewood thief had left, the night was dark, and a series of footprints in his firewood pile and in front of the window had gradually been covered by fresh snow, Hou Jun heard a familiar voice, lowered his voice and asked, "Charcoal, is it you?" ”。

From the darkness, a horse with red body and four black hooves quietly came to his side, rubbing and rubbing his cold body on him, spewing a stream of white gas. "You're from Shanzhou? Oh, my God! He stroked the snowflake-covered fur of the horse, and felt several wounds, from stabs to scratches. The ribs are a little handy.

The wind and snow became more violent, and he looked around, and felt that it was not good to put it anywhere, so he simply took it into the hut, let it lie down by the stove, closed the door and went out, and found some thatch and put it in its mouth.

"Why are you here? How did you find here? He looked at the charcoal fire with pity and lowered his head to eat, "It's thousands of miles from Shanzhou to here!" Hou Jun felt that an old friend had come from thousands of miles away in the snow, and he was a little happy.

Liu Shi was alarmed, also dressed, and made a surprised sound after seeing the charcoal fire, saw Hou Jun wipe the dirt on the charcoal fire with a dry cloth, took the initiative to boil a pot of hot water, let Hou Jun dip the hot water to scrub the charcoal fire clean, and put a mattress that needed to be covered at night on the body of the charcoal fire, and looked at it for a long time, and the mood could not calm down for a long time.

This is a wild horse they encountered in the Chiling Mountains when they came to Xizhou through Xiping County, Shanzhou, at that time, the Tang Empire and Tubo, Tuyuhun often went to war, and some ownerless military horses wandered in the deep mountains and valleys. At that time, dozens of sergeants of the Heyuan Army were unable to catch it before and after, and at a glance they knew that this was not an ordinary horse, and they would not have been like this without going through a hundred and ten battle formations, and the mane had not been trimmed for a long time, and it was unkempt, and as soon as people approached, they suddenly started, and broke out from the crowds of people who were blocked in front and back, and they picked up more than a dozen people in a row. At that time, their group of prisoners who pulled the family with a mouth happened to pass by, Hou Jun and they were also called by the leader of the group of sergeants to help, who was responsible for escorting them, where did they dare to stop it, Hou Jun tried to get close to it, it did not run as wildly as just now, just lowered its head and gnawed on the weeds in the rocks on the hillside, and when Hou Jun approached, he only flashed a little vigilantly, and let him jump up.

Liu interrupted his thoughts, "Your futon was given to it, what should you do at night?" As he spoke, he reached over and held a piece of scorched object, and asked curiously, "What is this, it smells so good."

The mouse had been roasted to the outside and tender on the inside, and it was impossible to see what it was on the surface, Hou Jun said, "It was a crow I just hit", he took it, looked at the flash of light in Liu's eyes, and tore off a piece and gave it to her. said: "It's over after a while, what are you afraid of?" ”

"Wow, there are crows to eat! How do they look like they're four-legged? Ryu expressed skepticism as he put it in his mouth and chewed.

A noble lady, eating roasted rats is delicious, and it's interesting to think about.

They blew out the oil lamps and lay down on their beds. There are only two rooms in the house, only a curtain is hung between them, Hou Jun is lying in his clothes, and the Liu family does not say a word, and there is nothing to say, this is all a trick of fate, let them sleep together in this situation, the wind and snow outside the house, after thinking about it for a long time, they fell asleep in a daze.

I don't know how long it took, it was Liu's exclamation that woke Hou Jun up, only to hear the roof "squeak" pressed down, the air was compressed and walked away, a burst of things mixed with earth smoke, cold air, and snow foam made people cough involuntarily, he was hand-sick, raised his hand to block a purlin on his head from falling on their bodies, and supported it together with the roof, Liu rolled to his side, and said urgently: "Hurry up and find a way to get out", she was only wearing thin pajamas, I don't know if she was scared or cold, shivering. Outside, there was the intermittent shouting of some people in the wind, and it seemed that he was not the only one who had fallen the house.

"Go out and get cold?" Hou Jun said, "Sleep, it's better than outside, but I don't know how the charcoal fire is", he really didn't hear the movement of the charcoal fire, but he didn't want to get up to check, it was not so easy to go out and come back.

They huddled together like this, in the narrow space held up by Hou Jun, and continued to sleep in the middle of the night.

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