Standing far away outside the martial arts hall, you can hear the sound of fighting coming from inside. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info This is also quite an amazing thing, because this town is in a relatively peaceful area, and the surrounding neighbors are not belligerent, so this martial arts hall is basically unattended on weekdays.

Although there are countless ventilation windows leading to the outside, you can still feel the inexplicable heat at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

Sweat ran down her cheeks and dripped into her chest under the collar, and her eyes blurred her vision, but Lobita was already staring at her opponent, Jamila. In his hand is a dwarven sword, the blade of which is finely sanded and makes it shine in the light.

Despite Jamila's promise not to use magic, it's an unequal contest.

Due to the heavy weight of the sword, Lobita decided to focus on defense and quietly wait for the opponent to attack. He held his sword horizontally in front of him, vigilantly watching for Jamila's every move. But I didn't expect Jamila to rush directly at a not fast speed like that! The intense glare from the poles of the staff handle in his hand dragged out two long ribbons, allowing Lobita to see Jamila's trajectory more clearly. He was armed with a long sword and waited for him.

Jamila was still a few steps away from Lobita, suddenly stepped on her toes, and with the strength of her ankle, she spun her staff, and swept straight over, Lobita immediately tilted her broadsword to the left, and her left hand was ready to quickly draw her gun and shoot.

"Shhh Lobita couldn't dodge, and hit him hard, and his left shoulder suddenly felt a pain in his heart, and he burst out to donate blood. Unexpectedly, this glare suddenly turned into an entity when it came into contact with the human body, of course, if it weren't, Lobita would have died from burning his heart.

Lobita endured the pain and swung downward, hitting the handle of the staff, while the other party pushed the left side of the handle of the staff, and the staff swept over again, hitting the ribs of Lobita's right body, Lobita took several steps back, and fell to the ground.

"If you go to the battlefield like this, you're just cannon fodder." Jamila sneered mercilessly. "On the battlefield, if you encounter a one-on-one duel in an open and honest duel, it is simply thankful."

Lobita didn't reply, but stood up with her sword propped up, then thrust her sword straight down, stomping it with her foot until it sank into the board. Then he drew his short knife and rushed towards Jamila.

"One last stand? People who are very ambitious. "This time it was Jamila who went on the defensive. Lobita rushed forward and crouched directly to dodge the sweep of Jamila's staff, and stabbed the dagger at Jamila. But unexpectedly, Yami stretched out his hand and pinched Lobita's wrist holding the knife, and quickly threw the staff back, hitting him in the back, and he fell to his knees. In the end, Yami stretched out his leg and kicked Lobita hard in the face, and Lobita, who was completely collapsed and had no strength, was kicked a few meters away.

"Well, it's over." Jamila put away her staff and was about to turn around, when she suddenly felt something hit her, and then she was surrounded by red gas, and a wave of fatigue hit her, and she fainted.

After a long time, Jamila woke up, with a pair of eyes that were still drowsy, with an expression of disbelief, looked at Lobita, who was not lightly injured, and said, "What did you do?" Shouldn't you have fallen to the ground? ”

"He was kicked out by you, but instead of falling to the ground, he stuck his short knife into the ground to stabilize his body, then pressed his heel against the hilt of the broadsword he had inserted earlier, stopped, and pulled out his gun and fired a tranquilizer bullet." The master sitting next to them was the first to explain.

"Really?" Jamila cupped her forehead, reminiscing about a series of wonderful movements she had never seen. "You've grown a lot. As long as I am concentrating, I can predict the trajectory of the bullet based on the opponent's shot. This is a passive buff from a slight overflow of Time Power. I've shown it in our previous fights. But you

It always seems to be able to take advantage of me. Maybe you'll be able to become a warrior on your own. ”

"Not only is it a shot, all my movements have been seen through by you." Lobita avoided her praise and furrowed her eyebrows unnaturally.

"But. It seems that I should not pay for the compensation for this floor. In this way, if you do a few more days of hard work for the master, you will lose his floor. Jamila looked at the blushing Lobita and secretly smiled evilly.

……

The residents of Dumar were still immersed in the explosive news of Mirosławku's reprisals for colluding with the Kaiser court to suppress the underground organization, and were unaware of the significant increase in patrols in the city in recent days. The soldiers who had been dormant in the barracks poured out, not only setting up many checkpoints in the commercial and trade areas, but also soldiers with guns standing on the roofs of every house. The road leading to the entrance to the city wall was originally full of traffic, but now it is also occupied by the army, and people and other people are forbidden to enter.

This was of course a sign from Margauk, who, after receiving Jamila's information, sent a reconnaissance cavalry to investigate the situation and contacted the ambassador to the principality for information. After detecting all sorts of clues, he realized that Mikhail might really be brewing, if not as Jamila had said - the Cossack cavalry was already on the ground day and night, but it was urgent. On the one hand, he vigorously searched for the underground organization and forced Mirosławku out of Dumar, in an attempt to cut off the possibility of an underground uprising. On the other hand, he made full preparations for war and asked the emperor for support. But while doing all this, it is also necessary to get rid of possible inner ghosts.

"Kerick, I heard that Lobita is your servant?" Margauk sat at his desk with a large stack of papers stacked beside him. His face was full of exhaustion and anxiety, and one eye was drooping, as if he was half-squinting at Kerick, who was kneeling on one knee in front of him.

Beads of sweat dripped, and his kneeling legs trembled slightly. When the Governor suddenly asked him to come to the Governor's Palace, after the city was under total lockdown, he knew that something was wrong—under normal circumstances, a middle- and lower-ranking officer of his calibre would not have been summoned by Kerick himself. But I didn't expect it to be related to his servant.

"Yes, Lord Governor. Lobita was entrusted to me by his father and has remained with me as my servant. ”

"Huh? And you gave him to a little girl as a servant, didn't you? Margok pressed the questions, leaving Carrick with no room for ambiguity.

"Yes. That was a few days ago. A man in a cloak at the time, I don't know her gender. But she knows magic, and it seems mysterious. I thought she might be a high-class person, so I agreed to his request. Kerick weighed his words word by word, trying to be full and accurate, without flaws.

"Yes, she knows magic, and her identity is not for you to speculate. However, she is a person who is in collusion with the underground organization and wants to take advantage of the chaos to plot to overthrow our rule over Dumar. You know that? I suppose that your poor little servant is now following the little girl in the saddle and in the service of Dumar's "recovery." ”

Kerick raised his head and secretly observed Malgook's expression, and found that the opponent was carelessly playing with the backgammon pieces made of green jade on the table, and the hard jade chess pieces smashed on the copper chessboard, making a crisp sound, like knocking on ice jade.

"My lord, I really don't know what this little girl is, and the aura she exudes all over her body scares me. But in my opinion, Lobita is a man who keeps to himself. He has never had a deep grudge against the Kaiser court. I think he has no reason to rebel against the royal court, let alone the strength to be accepted by the underground organization. With every word Kerick spoke, he paused for a moment, trying to protect himself while saying a little for his servant.

"Good. I don't want to speculate on the psychology of a little ghost, and I don't have time to worry about his possible role in the rebellion. It seems to me that you, Kerik L. Miyan, are a loyal man, and you are not destined to betray us, because we share the same philosophy - that those self-interested businessmen who smell of copper in their bones, and that it is the greatest blasphemy against Malawi to let them have power and a voice. Many years ago, your Grand Duke Dumar made this mistake, and we helped him clean the gates. Now, those filthy seeds, who have completely forgotten what it means to be frugal and abstinent, want to make a comeback and put their financiers in power. Now is the time for us to share our hatred, and I want you to shed your blood for the Kaiser Court. In this case, your picket will be called the Self-Salvation Army. You have gathered together the fundamentalist Dumar compatriots who once hated the rich merchants. We need to stick together. And those who are usually dissatisfied with the Doge's Palace, you can kill them or lock them up. ”

"I am honored to have been entrusted with such a task. But let me dare to ask, do we have any special mission for the Self-Salvation Army? Kerick was in mixed moods at this time, he knew that his credibility in Dumar would not win many people to join him, even those in Margouk's mouth, and he was not willing to risk being cursed to join him. And he himself is not willing to slaughter his compatriots and add to the crime.

"In the near future, maybe in a few days, maybe in a few months, we have a big battle to fight, and if we lose, Dumar will suffer as well. What we need now is to unite all the people of Dumar and make them fight for their cities. Let them know that it is glorious to die for this war and for the city-state, and that Orlando will escort their Heroic Spirits back to the Temple of True Spirits. If they plot a rebellion, they will defile the gods and end up destroying their own city-state! Then, they will be put to death, and their families will not be spared. ”

"Bah-", Malgauk slammed a chess piece onto the chessboard, echoing the midday bell from the Grand Bell Tower.

Kerick knew that in the event of such an emergency, his transfer from the military center was almost a foregone conclusion. Sure enough, Margauk immediately announced that he would be temporarily relieved of his post as garrison counsellor in view of the heavy workload and heavy responsibilities of the Self-Salvation Army. This means that he will never appear at the regular weekly military meetings again. And the headquarters of his self-salvation army will also be located in Wengcheng, far away from the real military center.

"Well, rest assured, when you leave this position, you will be replaced by someone as competent as you - your colleague, Lucas, who will take over the security of the entire main city."

"Lucas is far superior to me, and I'm sure he'll do a better job." Kerick saluted Margauk and left the room. He knew that this Lucas, the lower knight of the Kaiser royal court, was an out-and-out executioner. This cold-blooded monster of the same bloodline as Margok may be the person Malgok needs most. However, his servant was suspected of defecting to the enemy, but he was not greatly implicated, which also surprised him a little.

After Carrick left, Margauk began to look through the secret letter that had just been sent before he had time to see it. One of the letters appears to have been written by an undercover agent. The situation of Mirosławku in Kukunad, as mentioned above, seems to be not with Jamila and them, but has gone to a town with the guards and asked Margauk what to do next.

After reading the letter, Margauk laughed, and said as if talking to himself: "Then what can be done, force them to a place where the Dumar people smell bad, and then kill him, no." ”

"That group must have thought so." He took a quill from the pencil case and began to conceive of his plan.

Lobita, who was far away in Kukunnad, didn't expect her former master to protect herself. At this time, he was in the middle of a break in practice, and he stared at the master's towering nose with two symmetrical white whiskers on the bridge of his nose, and a nose ring on one side of his nose, which looked very funny. The old master paid no attention to Lobita's impolite gaze, and told him about meeting Jamila.

"I was a kid at the time, so that was a long time ago. It's been about two hundred and ten years now, and you know, we dwarves have lived more than a little bit longer than humans. At that time, Dumar was not a place for Pistor, but was actually a city-state principality under the control of the defunct Empire of Plethal, and it was just a relatively large city. Oh, you know that better than I do, so I won't go into it. ”

"A mysterious thing happened to our old Kukunnad at that time. The Great Copper Mountain, which we have always been proud of, is located in the northeast of present-day Kukunad, where we have unearthed countless treasures and built the breathtaking Great Copper Mountain Tower. And this mother mountain was suddenly razed to the ground one night, and there was no violent shaking of the mountain, no noisy sound, and it disappeared. When we woke up at dawn the next day and found a beam of sunlight shining through the window, we realized that the tall copper mountain, which could shelter the morning sun, had evaporated from the world and disappeared. ”

"We learned from the mouths of a few workers who came home from the mine at night that it had disappeared in the middle of the night, and the workers thought they had drunk too much. Moreover, except for these workers who came back in the middle of the night, all the other miners, along with all the mining equipment and the tower, which symbolized the craftsmanship and wisdom of the dwarves, were gone. ”

When the old dwarf said this, his face was terrified, as if the supernatural event more than two hundred years ago was still vivid. Maybe every person who witnessed it at that time would have such a look. He took a deep puff of his cigarette and continued.

"And then we naturally fell into an endless panic. Adults worship the gods and pray day and night. And among our children there are various models of horror stories. Even some daring children went on an expedition to the area where the Great Copper Mountain is located, but they found nothing. Later, it became popular that not all of the children who went on adventures made it safe, and that some of them disappeared and were erased from our memories. Because after checking the miners' record book, the adults were horrified to find that the thick record book only recorded the names of those survivors! What the names of the rest of the people were, and which tribe they belonged to, we all seemed to have forgotten. So people blocked the road from the city to the former site of the Great Copper Mountain. And always in fear. ”

"Then Jamila, the enigmatic girl, came to us. She claimed to represent the will of the Moonblade Tiger God, and came here to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the Great Copper Mountain, to calm everyone's panic, and to show the god's edict. We've heard of the time-keeper deity, but we're suspicious of the oracle because not many dwarves believe in it. But with the mindset of trying, we showed her the way and gave her a good ride. ”

"She walked alone on the road to the Great Copper Mountain on the day of the full moon. We were all curious to speculate about what she was going to do. And one of us had a child with good eyesight who observed the movement of the moon. There are two moons in the sky, one deep and one shallow, sometimes full and sometimes absent in the clouds, as if there is a law. And in the end we all saw that they were swinging like a pendulum! And so it spread to the hundreds, and the whole city observed this strange phenomenon, and they cheered and shouted, thinking that a miracle had come. ”

"That's at this time. The entire moon was shrouded in mist. It was completely dark, and I couldn't see my fingers. When people put out their stove lamps one after another, they found that there was nothing in the east, and a black and dark thing that could not be dissolved suddenly blocked people's sight - the big copper mountain is back! ”

"Well, those miners should be saved too, right?" Lobita was as fond as if he were listening to an anecdote.

When the old dwarf heard this, he gently removed the pipe from his mouth, closed his eyes, and there was a drop of turbid liquid in the corner of his wrinkled eyes, and his eyes suddenly looked behind Lobita with some hollowness.

"They? They had long since been sucked into the cracks of time, crushed to pieces, and there was no evidence of their existence in the world, and I still have not been able to remember the names of the missing dwarves, and no family has been able to tell if there is one less miner in their family. Since I was an only child at the time, many people said that I might have siblings working in the mines, and then there was no trace of my presence in the world - but who knows? ”

"Old fellow, this is the first time I've seen you look like this, or have you been so sentimental since I left Kukunad?" Jamila suddenly appeared behind Lobita, holding a bag of food and a thin strip of pickled turnips in her mouth.

"Yes, these are too sad. Let's talk about how Jamila met me and how she told me her secret. The old dwarf suddenly grinned again and picked up his pipe, and said to Lobita in a playful manner.

"Alright, you were a little rabbit at the time, and you fell into the river while you were playing, and if I hadn't happened to be a short distance downstream and rescued you, you would have to go all the way down to the sea." Jamila mercilessly uncovered the dwarves' old roots. "Then you seemed to adore me, and pestered me to tell you how I did it." Jamila suddenly took a bite of the turnip, and the remaining half fell into the bag, while she chewed on the bitter and salty thing with a happy expression.

Lobita suddenly felt a little embarrassed, firstly, his previous actions were the same as those of the old dwarf, and secondly, this Jamila, who seemed to be a lady of celebrities, actually ate in such an indecent way, and he saw the whole time. But in his eyes, this greedy girl seems to be more cute.

……

Mirosławku's fidgeting place in the town's tavern was a bit of a fidget, and despite his cautious experience, his instincts, after years of hard work, told him that "he might be being watched." So he sent his guards outside to keep watch, leaving two of his most elite attendants with him.

After a while, a young man summoned a bottle of wine and placed it in front of him: "Slow use." He was unceremonious, and drank it all in one go, a bottle of water. After drinking, he squinted his left eye slightly, and with his right eye, he saw a small note attached to the bottom of the bottle. The note read, "Get out of here!" There are at least a dozen assassins out there staring at you! ”

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