Mangdang Mountain, which is forty miles wide, is the watershed between Suishui and Surabaya.

All the streams in the south of the mountain flow into Suishui, and the north of the mountain flows into Surabaya.

The complexity of the topography of this place can also be seen from the administrative divisions of later generations - Dangxian County in the south of the mountain belongs to the later Yu Province, Pei County in the north of the mountain belongs to the Su Province, and the narrow mountainous area in the middle belongs to the two provinces of Hui and Lu. It is simply a fringe area that does not care about the four provinces, and it has been full of thieves since ancient times.

However, such a vicious mountain area is not without civilized monuments - the mausoleum of King Liang Xiao, the younger brother of Emperor Jing of Han, is on the mountain.

Later, in Chen Lin's famous article "Yuzhou for Yuan Shao", he condemned Cao Cao for setting up "the general of the middle of the hill and the captain of the golden school", and the first example cited was "the handsome generals and officials, who came to excavate in person", and stole the tomb of King Liang Xiao.

Li Su rode on a sturdy war horse that Liu Bei had personally selected for him, wearing Xuan armor and holding a sword.

Several skilled Wuhuan cavalry soldiers walked ahead of him, and Guan Yu walked on his left. Dian Wei carried a double halberd on his back and a short knife as a throwing weapon, and explored the path on the high side of the mountain road.

Today's Dian Wei is still relatively poor, and he can't afford to build too many consumable halberds, so he can only use flying knives.

After waiting for Danyang, Li Su decided to find a blacksmith to build another batch, and in the future, Dian Wei could throw it as he wanted, and it would be no problem to use the halberd as a boomerang.

Li Su also had a hint of fantasy, hoping to meet some historical celebrities when he met fellow merchants on the official road over the mountain.

But this small probability event never happened, and the thieves encountered it as a matter of course.

The group had just entered the mountain for less than ten miles, and when they reached a steep slope of a mountain road, they had to lead their horses on foot first.

The thieves were obviously more experienced and knew the terrain better than they were.

As soon as the group dismounted, Dian Wei, who was exploring the path in the high forest, was the first to discover that there were thieves in ambush, and he hurriedly threw several short knives to kill the three thieves.

The bandits had to attack in advance, jumping down from the forest one after another, and more than a dozen hunting bows flew indiscriminately.

Guan Yu hurriedly blocked in front of Li Su, turned the long soldiers like flying, swinging at least eighty percent of the arrows, and the personal soldiers surrounded him with shields, but there were still two arrows that hit Guan Yu's shoulder pads and rib guards respectively, fortunately, the iron armor was solid, and ordinary soft bows could not shoot through at all.

The Wuhuan turquoise riders in the pro-soldiers immediately copied the bow and reflexed, and their archery skills were exquisite, and they shot more than ten thieves in succession. Soon, this group of thieves, who were at least two or three times larger than Li Su's personal army, was completely defeated.

Dian Wei's eyes were quick, and he chased forward as if he were walking flat, and caught back two thieves who had been hit by flying knives on their shoulders and did not die, and carried one back with one in his armpits, and handed it to Li Su for torture, one of whom seemed to be the little leader of the bandits.

"Where did you come from? Dare to intercept the officers and soldiers? Although Li Su was not interested in thieves, he still had to interrogate him for his own safety.

The little leader begged for mercy: "Lang Jun spare your life, we didn't know that you were an official soldier, but we saw a large number of horses from a distance, so we were greedy." When I got closer, I saw that you all had weapons, and I was already afraid. But this black man killed a few of us first, and we had to gamble. ”

"Hehe, are we still not right?" Li Su couldn't help but laugh, and continued to torture, "Don't talk nonsense, if you want to live, tell me the origin of your leader." ”

"We're just ordinary bandits, and we don't have a background...... If you have to talk about the origin, from Mangdang Mountain to Juyeze, most of the thieves in Pei County and Shanyang County are the remnants of Liang Zhongning, the commander of the Yellow Turban Canal, but that is already the leader of our leader. ”

Li Su nodded when he heard this, and he roughly knew it.

Now the bandits at the junction of Yan and Henan are mainly the remnants of the Yellow Turban Army of Dongjun who were killed by Huangfu Song three years ago. At the beginning, Huangfu Song killed Qu Shuai Buji and Zhang Bo in Cangting, and beheaded 7,000 levels. Liang Zhongning, a small leader under Bu Ji, took the remnants to be a bandit, and he actually dared to call himself Qu Shuai.

But don't underestimate these remnants, in history, after Zhang Ju and Zhang Chun's rebellious soldiers went south to loot, they also quickly took the opportunity to become bigger, and some of them formed the later Qingzhou Yellow Turban Army.

Since you have seen everything, then kill it, and leave less seeds of infection for the Qingzhou Yellow Turban.

Li Su walked behind the two captives, drew his sword and quickly slashed them. It's just that the blade is narrow, and it only cuts an inch deep on the back of the thieves' necks.

The thief screamed and fell to the ground, and Li Su had to borrow Guan Yu's ring head knife again and personally mend the knife and behead him.

In the past few months with Liu Bei, he has also got two waves of mending opportunities. Although the martial arts are still very bad now, at least they have gradually calmed down when they kill people.

After finishing it, he threw the knife and instructed Dian Wei: "These two heads are also counted as your combat merits, Yun Chang told you that day, ten heads will be promoted to your tun chief, and now there are still five missing." ”

When Dian Wei heard that it was even a matter of killing bandits, he was immediately overjoyed: "Thank you for not driving!" ”

In Dian Wei's heart, he faintly looked forward to a few more waves of the Yellow Turban Thief remnants.

Chop five more heads, and he can lead a hundred soldiers!

……

It's a pity that since then, until he crossed the main ridge of Mangdang Mountain, he has not encountered any more thieves who dared to attack Li Su.

At noon, the group climbed the commanding heights of the official road, and in the afternoon it was downhill, and the spirit of the group was relaxed a lot.

There is a small town on the top of the mountain, which was originally made up of the tomb of King Liang Xiao, because there are good people living in this place within forty miles, and business travelers also rest here.

Li Su wanted to eat hot food, so he ordered him to rest in the village and town, and spend the hottest time at noon before hurrying.

Guan Yu personally checked the customs and verified the safety of the food he bought from the townspeople, and then handed it to Li Su.

It turned out to be a roe deer cut into small pieces, and it was stewed with some potatoes and beam noodles, like a thick gnocchi soup, and there was no saltiness.

When the group was eating, several equally heavily guarded business travelers and pedestrians arrived in the town, and saw that Li Su and his party looked very good, and they came up to get close.

A middle-aged man, who seemed to be the leader of the caravan, said in a disturbing voice: "This little Langjun, look at your outfits, there are officers and soldiers with tolerance, right?" Can you walk with us in a moment? A little mountain goods, please smile. ”

As he spoke, the other party gave him half a deer breast and a few pheasants, obviously trying to rub the bodyguard.

Li Su looked up and down and asked, "Where are you traveling and where are you going?" Why do you have to go to this Mangdang Mountain for business? ”

The merchant smiled bitterly: "In the next list, the surname Li is the steward of the Li family in Shanyang, and he goes to the East China Sea to buy some necessary goods in the clan." There is Juyeze in the north of our mountain and Yang, and there is Mangdang Mountain in the south, and there are thieves everywhere, so there is no way. Fortunately, there were many thieves, and the people who collected taxes from the government could not go to the countryside, so everyone settled in the dock and defended themselves. ”

Li Su secretly thought: It turned out to be people who lived nearby, so there was really no way, for example, there was no salt production in the mountainous areas, so buying salt must have to venture to the East China Sea.

He filtered the name of "Shanyang Li Family" in his mind, and asked tentatively: "In this way, your clan is also a local wealthy family, and there are many warriors?" Is there anyone named Li Dian - this morning in Dangxian, I heard a local merchant talk about this person. ”

Li Shan hurriedly replied: "Yes, there is this person, it is the nephew of our patriarch." However, Brother Dian is still young, and he likes to read, how can he be brave? ”

Li Su also did not answer: "We were sent by the imperial court to recruit troops to Youzhou, are there people with lofty ideals in your clan who are willing to serve the country in the army?" ”

Li Dan: "The whole family is here, but I'm afraid they don't want to travel far." ”

Li Su: "That's not reluctant. ”

This kind of self-defense is the same as Xu Chu, if you don't occupy his hometown, he won't do it with you.

In any case, it is also beneficial to have a group of businessmen along the mountain road, not to mention that you can also receive some small gifts for nothing.

……

After resting enough, the group began to descend the mountain.

The road down the mountain was brisk, and Dian Wei walked all the way like flying, running ahead. He also picked the forests on both sides of the mountain road to walk, lest he walk with the large army and the thieves would not dare to start when they saw that there were too many people.

In this way, under Dian Wei's fishing law enforcement, he successively cut off the heads of three bandits, and Mei Zizi came back to report his merits.

Once, he even attracted a group of nearly 100 thieves, and the other party saw that he only had one, so he killed him, and Dian Wei stabbed several people, thinking that he would suffer a loss if he went on alone, and the head required by the tun chief was enough, so he went back to lure the enemy.

Guan Yu hurriedly set up a position for his soldiers to prepare bows and arrows, and shot over a dozen of them in one go, before rushing up to sweep the tail. Most of the remaining bandits were demoralized and scattered.

This scene made the people in Li Dian's caravan tremble: When did the officers and soldiers kill the thieves so actively? If the army of the Han Dynasty was like this, how did the remnants of the Yellow Turban survive these three years? It's long overdue.

In the end, more than 30 were killed, and only two Wuhuan archers on Li Su's side were slightly injured, and none of them died. On the contrary, the Li family's caravan killed one of the guards and injured several of them.

Li Shan begged bitterly: "Lang Jun, county Jun, Fu Jun, hurry up, don't lure the enemy." I have been traveling south and north for more than ten years, and I have never seen the officers and soldiers so brave and take the initiative to find thieves to kill. There are also five horses of coarse silk here, and we can't afford to die. ”

Only then did Li Su restrain Dian Wei and told him that when he arrived in Danyang, he would officially promote him to the head of the tun, and stop causing trouble.

Then Li Su helped Li Dan up and asked him not to kneel: "Some little things, why worry about it." By the way, I haven't asked you where to buy goods after leaving Mangdang Mountain on this trip? ”

Li Dan: "Let's go to the East China Sea to buy goods, and we need to buy more salt and Zuobo paper." Anyway, after passing Pengcheng, the road is too peaceful, let's go directly to the East China Sea by ourselves, and don't make the difference for those Pengcheng people! ”

Li Su: "That's just the right way to give you an extra ride - we also went to the East China Sea, I heard that there are many wealthy merchants there, and this time to recruit troops for the imperial court, we just need to find wealthy merchants to raise donations." Since you often travel this way, you should know which wealthy merchants are the most generous, right? ”

Li Su asked this question, also because he was afraid that Guan Yu and Dian Wei would doubt how he could predict Mi Zhu's existence. It's best to say it through Li Dan's mouth, so that it will be easier for him to push the boat down the river.

Li Shan trembled when he heard this: Is this official army going to fight the autumn wind or robbery? It won't be a hard donation, right...... Fortunately, I gave them some game and a few horses of silk just now, and let go of our Li family's small money.

Dead friends don't die poor.

Li Shan thought so, and hurriedly said everything he knew: "The wealthy businessmen in the East China Sea, of course, the richest are the Mizi Zhong family in Qu County, but if you want to talk about generosity, it is still the local tyrant Lu family in Quyang County." Since the Yellow Turban Thief, the young master of the Lu family has sold land every year, helped the poor, and made friends with wise men and heroes. ”

Li Su originally just wanted to induce the other party to say Mi Zhu, but when he heard that there was a young gentleman of the Lu family, he asked one more question by the way: "What is the situation of the Lu family?" What is the name of the head of the family? ”

Li Dan: "The old master of the Lu family has been dead for some years, it is Mrs. Tai who took the young gentleman to live, and the young gentleman's name is Lu Su, and he has not yet taken the word when he is young." ”