Datang, Taihe five years, September Yimao, the beginning of the Xu.

Jiannan Road, Xichuan, Chengdu Mansion, Xuanhemen.

It was getting dark, the gates were slowly closing to the beat of the curfew, and a soldier in armor was leaning his back against the wall, occasionally stretching out his hand to the torches planted beside him.

In late autumn, the sky over Chengdu Mansion at night is dotted with stars, the breeze gradually rises, blowing away the clouds in the night sky, and a crescent moon hangs lazily in the sky. The soldier leaned his spear against the city wall, took out a piece of cold bread from the inner lining of his bosom, and gnawed it silently.

Jiannan Province was originally rich and prosperous, and then from the Anshi Rebellion, Tubo invaded Hehuang, and even pulled out several states in Xichuan, and many times the army came to Chengdu, so the people's livelihood withered. Jiannan Province was divided into two, with two major feudal towns, Dongchuan and Xichuan. And Xichuan is the military town of the western anti-Tibetan and southern imperial edicts.

Nanzhao entered the Kou for only two years, and Shuzhong was operated by the new Jiedu envoy, forcing Nanzhao to return more than 4,000 people who had been plundered before to return to Chengdu. Now that Xichuan has more money and food, the northern soldiers have come to help, and the newly recruited recruits have also begun training. For the people of Shuzhong, there is gradually hope for the future.

I have been standing in the city for most of the day today, and I see that I will be able to go to the beginning of the year to change shifts and rest. At this time, the pinna of the guard's ears suddenly smelled the horse's hooves, which provoked the soldiers to look at a few people who were sitting and resting, but they were all at a loss. The gates were closed, and there was a curfew in the city. Without the order of the festival, it is impossible to enter and leave the city, where is the sound of horses' hooves?

The man looked out of the city wall, and by the faint moonlight, he vaguely saw a black horse galloping on the official road not far from the Xuanhe Gate, heading straight for Guo outside the Chengdu Mansion.

The black rider got closer and closer, and the man squinted and looked closely, and found that the rider was disheveled, holding a wooden fork in his hand, wearing his hair and feet, hiding a knife looming at his waist, and the pouch on his body moved with the wind.

Tibetans?

At this time, the Tang Dynasty was far less than when it was in the heyday of the Kaiyuan Dynasty, and there were three towns of Fanyang, Wei Bo, and Chengde to divide Hebei, and they could rebel at any time; There is a Hui Yu Sai's appearance is detached, and Tubo is always watching Guanzhong, and he has long been the number one henchman of the Tang Dynasty.

This suspected Tibetan cavalry made the garrison instantly alert, and he hurriedly beckoned the other sergeants on duty to the battlement.

After the Changqing Alliance, the Tang and Tubo armies had been suspended in Xichuan for several years. Chengdu Mansion is deep in the hinterland of Xichuan, and the front line has never heard of the resumption of war, is this Tubo cavalry not a scout? But he came straight to the city gate with such fanfare.

Is it a pawn?

The man had doubts, but he didn't think much about it.

A soldier on duty was armed with a repeating crossbow, and it only took a breath to load three crossbow arrows. With two more flicks of his fingers, the crossbowmen quickly rushed to the arrow stack directly above the city gate, just waiting for the Tibetan cavalry to approach, ready to attack.

Who knew that the Tibetan rider suddenly held up a token, because the night was dark, and he couldn't look carefully for a while.

The rider shouted in a Tang dialect with a Shuzhong accent: "On the order of Li Jiedu of Jiannan Xichuan, report the affairs of Victoria, and open the city gate quickly." ”

Victoria?

The soldier and a few on duty looked at each other, and for a while their faces were full of suspicion, and they didn't dare to make up their minds.

戌正.

Jiannan Road, Xichuan, Chengdu Mansion, Jiedu Embassy Mansion.

The heart of Chengdu Mansion, the Jiedu Embassy Mansion, also known as the Shuai Mansion, is located in the Jiande Fang Yacheng in Chengdu Mansion, located in the very center of Chengdu Sixteen Fang.

The marshal's mansion is a three-entry courtyard, occupying half of the square, divided into three halls in the front, middle and back. The front hall has five rooms wide, nine frames deep, the hall is the I-shaped hall, the top of the hill is built, and the hanging fish is decorated on it, and the grass is provoked. Directly above the front of the main hall, there is a gold lacquer ebony plaque hanging, and the three big characters of "Chengdu Mansion" are written in gold letters, which are written by Li Deyu, the current festival envoy, when he took office last year. In front of the gate and in the house, there are nearly 100 guards from the Shuai Mansion and the Ya Soldiers.

In the front hall, there is a rosewood table, the width is two zhang, the whole map of the military Xichuan is placed on it, there is a timing copper leak next to the table, and the copper leak of all the official residences in the whole city is in the same tone as this copper leak. The festival made Li Deyu wear a three-grade purple round-necked robe, embroidered with a large branch ayaluo, a scarf on his head, and a thirteen gold and jade belt around his waist, on which a goldfish bag symbolizing status was hung with a crimson string, which shone under the swaying candlelight.

Li Deyu anxiously paced back and forth in the center of the front hall, looking out of the hall from time to time.

In the palace, the marching Sima Li Huaishen, Yu Hou Wei Rong, the tooth soldier Zhonglang general Yang Zong, Huayang County Lieutenant Yu Zangjian and other more than a dozen generals and officials accompanied, the palace secretary Ling Hu and the festival judge Liu Zhan, also ready to write new manuscripts. All of them had solemn faces and did not say a word.

They are all waiting for news from Victoria.

Victoria, which has always been the territory of the Tang Dynasty, is the gateway to the Kang District, and belongs to Jiannan Road. After the Anshi Rebellion, Tubo took advantage of the situation and invaded several states in Xishan, including Victoria, and now it has been 67 years since its fall. Its city faces the river on three sides, and it is 400 miles away from Chengdu Mansion. Jiangyang in the south, I don't know its extreme; It is bordered by Longshan Mountain in the north, and the snow is like jade; Looking east at Chengdu, if at the bottom of the well; To the west, there is the endless Minshan tundra.

"Xiangyi, hasn't he sent someone to deliver the letter yet?" Li Deyu spoke in a hurried tone and asked Yang Zong, the general of the Yabing Soldiers.

Yang Zong, a native of Hequ Luzhou, the word Xiangyi. This young general, with a thick mustache and a bright light armor, has prominent cheekbones and a bearded face. After serving as a general of Hequ for eight years, Yang Zong was transferred to Xichuan last year, and he was quickly promoted to the rank of general of the tooth soldiers.

There is no need to think about it, Yang Zong also understood that the "he" in Li Deyu's mouth referred to Zhang Yijun, a secret stake planted in Victoria City, so he gave a negative answer.

Since the beginning of the year, there has been a rumor in the royal city of Tibet, under the rule of the Buddhist Zanpu Chizu Dezan, the Bon followers of the Luo have been slaughtered, and at the same time, there are many factions in the Tubo royal court, and the powerful minister Wei Danajian and other Shang relatives have attacked each other.

Zhang Yijun came to report not long ago that due to the turbulent political situation in the Tibetan borderlands, the contradictions with Luo Qi were also becoming more and more sharp. At the same time, the undercurrent of forces in the city is surging, and there may be great changes.

Yang Zongzheng looked at Li Deyu with a solemn face with concern, stood with his hands, and said with a serious expression: "Eh...... Li Gong, a month ago, Zhang Yijun reported that he would send someone to report on September 2, and the matter would be on the day of Bingchen. And now the day will pass...... There is still no news, could it be...... The dark pile is as old as last year, and it has been exposed? ”

Li Deyu shook his head slightly, even if he didn't know how to observe words and feelings, he could see that Li Deyu's expression was full of anxiety.

"Marquis Wei Yu, why hasn't the scouts sent by Chenshi reported yet?"

"Back to Gong Li, hurry up, I think it's almost time to Chengdu Mansion." Wei Rong bowed and replied.

Li Deyu closed his lips tightly and looked out of the hall, his masseter muscles moving slightly.

"If Zhang Yijun really exposes his identity, everything will be over."

Two quarters.

South Tubo Province, Victoria, Xuecheng County, somewhere.

Almost at the same time, a masked soldier wearing a Tubo Rong armor, a felt hat, and a black-sheathed Tibetan knife at his waist hurried towards the lifang.

If the map of Victorian Xue Cheng in his arms is correct, the center of this workshop is where the Victorian Jie'er (Thorn History) Mansion is located.

Victoria is located on the border, the city has no more than 5,000 people, at this time it is past the curfew, there is no one on the street, and the door has long been closed. Outside the door, a few Tubo slave soldiers guarding the inner square were surrounding a nest of fires, roasting wolf meat "beep-beep", and the smell of meat was smelled from afar. There is a shortage of money and food in the city, and this must be a lonely wolf cub who came out of the city.

In the Tubo military system, its soldiers are all soldiers and civilians, and ordinary soldiers are slaves.

A barefoot slave stood up when he saw someone approaching. The slave saw that the man was seven feet long, his face was covered with a black cloth, his face was covered with a black cloth, he was wearing a Tibetan willow leaf armor, and his feet were decorated with eagle cloth boots, all of which were not worn by the slave, and he was not like the Han people, but he still stopped him in Tubo for the sake of safety.

The masked soldier silently took out a silver medal from his waist, on which something was written in Tibetan script, which seemed to be an identity document.

"I am under the command of the deputy envoy Xi Tan and open the door quickly!"

These slaves never knew the Tibetan language, but listening to the masked soldier also spoke the Tibetan language, although it had a strange accent, it was not suspicious, and the person who came seemed to have an order from the deputy envoy of Victoria. Then at the signal of the leading slave, two barefoot slaves got up and pushed open the door.

After the masked soldier entered the courtyard, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, and the slaves didn't pay attention to it, and their attention was all on roasting wolf meat.

The room was dead silent, the lights were dim, and the masked soldiers walked along the street for a while, and the door closed heavily behind them. Seeing that there was no one around, he suddenly turned sideways and flashed into a narrow alley.

The masked soldier pulled out a small piece of parchment from his bosom, and saw that every detail of the chamber was clearly depicted on it, including underground culverts and hydrological networks, as well as hidden alleys.

The house on the west side of this alley should be an abandoned Taoist temple that occupies a large area. Since Victoria was occupied by Tibet, the Taoist temples in the city have either been destroyed or completely deserted. Most of the Han Chinese in the city were driven into slavery, leaving only a small part to maintain production. Because of its close proximity to the border of Tangbo, Victoria is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and is a military powerhouse.

If the map is correct, this abandoned Taoist temple is next to the Victorian Jie'er (Thorn History) Confessional Mansion.

The alley was pitch black, and there wasn't even a lantern, but by the light outside the alley, you could faintly see a portico on the right, twenty paces ahead.

The masked soldier reached for the hilt of his sword at his waist, turned his head to look behind him, and when he made sure that no one was following, he moved forward.

Unlike the alley itself, the portico looks new, with a heavy pine door standing in front of you.

The masked soldier knocked on the door. Three quick strokes, two soothing strokes, and finally a heavy slap.

But after ten snaps of his fingers, there was movement on the other side of the door.

The masked soldier knew that he had been ordered to come this time, and if the information he had received before was not true, he would be in danger, but his intuition made him decide to take a gamble.

After another breath, the man on the other side of the door cleared his throat, and the wooden door opened. A bearded man in armor stood in front of him, his face flat, his eyes long and narrow, and his arms as thick as a beam.

The bearded man pointed the horizontal knife in his hand at the masked soldier and said in Tubo.

"The snow will eventually melt."

"The wind rises in Xichuan, and it is born from this." The masked soldier also replied in Tubo.

The bearded man withdrew his horizontal knife, slightly possessed it, and made a not-so-standard forked hand salute. He leaned to the left side again, allowing the masked soldier to flash in, then closed the porch and asked in a stiff Tang dialect, "Dare to ask the honorable name?" ”

The masked soldier tore off the black cloth, revealing a handsome angular face, the bright eyebrows on either side of the high nose bridge were dark and deep, a pair of sword eyebrows jumped over it, and the slender chin matched the long figure.

He lightly opened his lips and said softly: "Jingzhao Zhang Yijun ......"