Nearly 100 miles to the east of Anlu County, it has left the range of the Jianghan Plain and entered the remnants of Dabie Mountain and Tongbai Mountain. Among the rugged hills, which are not very high, are scattered with countless elms, pines, and birches, which stand silently like silent sentinels, their bark like old and rough armor, and crawling with patina-like green moss.

Shrubs and flowers grow haphazardly on the ground, some unknown small flowers grow everywhere, exuding a faint fragrance, attracting swarms of insects, small squirrels squatting on the branches, holding full pine nuts and gnawing non-stop, sprinkled in the air of the setting sun, and from time to time a crisp birdsong sounds......

Everything was so peaceful and quiet, until a skinny man appeared!

He leapt from behind a huge fallen dead tree, stomped heavily on the fallen leaves and branches, and crackled with a sound that shattered the peace!

The birds flew in fright, the insects scattered, and even the little squirrels threw pine cones and retracted into the hollows of the trees.

After the thin man galloped, everything seemed to be calm again, and just as the squirrel tried to poke his head out, another man came running wildly!

It was the head of the Red Pavilion with a crossbow machine, it was Heifu!

There was no hand-to-hand combat, let alone any dialogue, and after Heifu abandoned his horse and went up the mountain, he and Ao chased all the way through the woods, engaged in a game of hunt and escape.

He stared at the front, Ao's figure was twenty or thirty steps in front of him, sometimes disappearing, sometimes appearing suddenly, sometimes disappearing. The man was very good at running away, and kept hiding behind tree trunks, so that the crossbow in Heifu's hand never hit him.

Heifu was initially worried about Ao's counterattack, but although he was carrying a concealed bow, he didn't seem to have any arrows with him......

They went up a gentle slope and down the other side, and Heifu's legs slowed and accelerated with the terrain. The ground was full of tree roots and stones, the cloth was too thin, and the bottom of the feet was painful, and he heard that some of the local Puyue people in Nanjun could walk barefoot in the mountains, as if walking on the ground, how did they do it?

The woods in front of him were getting denser and denser, and there were more and more obstacles, and Heifu could only let the branches whipped his cheeks, and one branch hooked the red curtain, leaving it on it, like a conspicuous flag, and Heifu didn't bother to take it.

The pursuit of the two lasted for nearly a moment, and when Heifu was accidentally stopped by a startled elk, he paused for a moment, thinking that he had lost Ao's traces again, and after turning a corner, he suddenly found Ao who was dragging his roots upside down and wanted to climb up a large banyan tree......

Did he want to hide in the banyan tree and let Heifu run on stupidly? It's a pity that the movement is a little slower.

Hefu was overjoyed, and immediately drew his sword and forced forward—in the middle of the chase, he had already shot out of his crossbow arrows......

The banyan tree grows at the top of this mound, and behind it is a deep ditch, and if you fall down, you will break your leg at least, and Ao seems to find that he has no way back, so he has to turn around, take the short knife in his mouth, and hold it across his chest, calmly watching Heifu's every move.

There are no tentative words, both sides know what kind of opponent they are facing, and they must not be distracted.

After a few breaths, Heifu first swung his sword and stepped forward, colliding with Ao's knife!

Zheng!

The sound of gold and iron frightened away more small animals, and also made Heifu discover that Ao's strength was not great, but his body was extremely flexible. His knife is short and he doesn't have an advantage in hand-to-hand combat, so he doesn't seek to attack aggressively when fighting with Kurofu, but is constantly dodging and retreating.

Heifu took advantage of the length of the two-foot sword, stabbed left and right, sealed any possibility of Ao escaping, and forced him to retreat under the banyan tree all the way......

Ao seemed invincible, and soon leaned against the banyan tree, panting, and Heifu immediately raised his sword and stabbed it violently!

Unexpectedly, at the last moment, Ao blocked Heifu's sword with a knife, and his body fell to the side violently, and his hand grabbed an inconspicuous banyan vine root! It's a jerk!

Heifu only felt that he was strangled by something in his leg, and then a strong force came, pulling him back and falling to the ground!

At the moment when Heifu was stunned, Ao continued to pull the tough vine root, don't look at others are not tall, but the strength is not small, Heifu is just like this, and the whole person hangs upside down! Hung on a banyan branch!

……

"Hunting geese all day long, but today the geese caught their eyes!"

At this moment, this is the sentence that Heifu can think of to describe his situation appropriately.

He was now two feet above the ground, with a rope noose tied to the qi root of a banyan tree on his head and feet, and at the ankle of his right foot, but at this moment it was tied into a dead knot.

Such a small trap, for those who are familiar with the mountains and forests, does not take a moment to lay. Heifu suddenly realized, it turned out that Ao chose this place to fight, in order to deceive himself into the set?

Hefu turned his head to look and found his sword out of reach. But don't panic, he still has a knife cut into the toe of the leggings, which is the last hope for Hefu to get out......

"Pavilion Chief Heifu, don't move."

But Ao was also cautiously approaching Heifu, and the bow had been drawn and mounted with a crossbow shot at him by Heifu, which Ao had picked up from the ground.

Heifu had no choice but to temporarily give up touching the knife, spread his hands, looked at Ao Dao, "You want to kill me?" ”

Ao had a thin face, a small beard under his chin, and was about twenty years old, and Heifu had not expected that he would be so young.

He cautiously kept a distance of five steps: "Don't hide it from the pavilion chief, if you don't kill it, I'm afraid that after you get out, you will continue to hunt me down, and when the time comes, I'm afraid I won't have such good luck." ”

Heifu didn't want to beg for mercy either, and sighed: "Then let's do it." ”

He didn't expect that his time-traveling career would end so quickly, and being a police officer is really a high-risk profession. I should have been instigated just now, this person ran away, it's a big deal to be punished, why chase so hard?

Ao smiled again: "But the reputation of the head of the Heifu Pavilion, even I have to admire a little, if you kill it, there will be one less strong man in the world, isn't it a pity?" ”

"So don't hide it from the pavilion chief, kill or not, I'm still hesitating."

"You're a strange man."

Heifu looked at Ao: "Whether you kill or not, can you answer me three questions first?" ”

Ao seemed to know Heifu's plan very well, but he still bowed his head and said, "But it doesn't hurt to ask." ”

"First of all, who are you?"

"I'm just a small scholar who fled from the Chu State, a mediocre cultivator who made a living in the Qin State."

"Hahaha, Ao, don't pretend at this time."

Hefu thought it was funny: "I have heard a saying that the talented are in the world, like an iron cone in the bag, and their sharp views are immediate!" With your ability, how can you become a fugitive? How could it be that he had been in Qin for more than a year and had been unknown? ”

It is true that a "dragon slaying knife" like Han Xin, which can only be used to slaughter the world, is likely to be downtrodden in daily life.

But Ao is different, this person's strategy, martial arts, and strain are extremely fast, if ordinary people have such talent, no matter in Chu and Qin, they can mix well. Ao must have had some special reason to hide himself among the cultivators, not to attract the attention of others, until when necessary, it was revealed, and the whole county was shocked.

"You started with the murder case, carefully planned, and you can walk in front of the government at every step, and the strategy you use has a faint art of war in it, and you actually led half of the Qin officials in Anlu County by the nose. In the end, he did not hesitate to use his body as bait to tempt us to chase you, how could such a wise and courageous person be a mediocre cultivator with no food and clothing? ”

Heifu stared at the most difficult opponent he had ever seen since he came to this era:

"If I'm not mistaken, Ao. You're a trained and mission-driven Chu spy! ”

……

The bowstring in Ao's hand strained sharply, then relaxed again.

He admired: "The pavilion chief is worthy of being a cadre who has repeatedly solved major cases since he took office, not only approaching step by step, tracking me down, but also guessing my identity, I am really admired!" Yes, I was ordered to infiltrate the Chu spy in Anlu County, and I have hidden my identity for more than a year, and now that the matter to be investigated has been ascertained, I naturally want to return to China to restore my life! ”

"And so it was!"

Heifu felt the blood pouring down his head, his fists clenched tightly.

"The second question, with your skills, you can escape quietly at any time, why do you have to take a few other cultivators with you until now, and even use your body as bait to buy time for the six people who can't ride horses, who are they? Is it also a fine work of the Chu State? ”

At the mention of this, Ao's face was a little gloomy: "The pavilion chief guessed wrong, they are just ordinary people who can't survive in the Chu State." ”

"At the beginning, I crossed the river among these fugitives from the Chu State and hid my identity. After coming to Qin, everyone found out that there was no rumored good day, and there was not much difference between Qin and Chu. As a person who died in the state, it was so difficult to be treated as equals in a foreign country, so everyone regretted it and wanted to flee back to the state of Chu, although it was not much better, but at least it was his hometown and relatives. ”

"It is not difficult for me to leave alone, but if I abandon them and ignore them, and they are found afterwards, everyone will have to serve their sentences together. I didn't want others to suffer for me, so I wanted to bribe the prison gate and forge a test for us, but he would regret it halfway......"

That's how the whole case started.

"It's also that I didn't handle it carefully enough, I didn't expect that the head of the Heifu Pavilion would participate in the investigation of the case, and after the matter was revealed, it not only affected everyone, but also affected Shi Jun, who trusted me. I know that I can't save Shi Jun, so I can only rely on my own strength to give the fellow Chu people more chances to escape, and I can also make my heart feel less guilty. There is a man who can ride a horse who has to come with me, and unfortunately he died, and I only hope that the other six people can reach Yunmengze smoothly. ”

At this moment, Heifu was even more puzzled: "Ao, you are really a strange person, you are ruthless when you kill the prison gate and the wife of the hunter, but when you burn the stable, you spare the lives of the stables and others, and you don't even burn the ploughing cattle, and you seem to be soft-hearted......"

"Moreover, as a Chu spy, you should have given priority to completing the mission, and you could ignore everything else, but you left together to save the fugitives from Chu State, and repeatedly committed dangers. If you want me to say, you are really a Chu spy who is full of snakes everywhere, which is confusing. ”

"The pavilion chief also knows the allusion of the Chu State painting snakes."

was told by Heifu about his weakness, but Ao was a little proud: "Chu Shi has always acted like this, doing something and not doing something." ”

"Pavilion Chief Heifu, you should be able to understand this. I've heard people say that you once ruthlessly brought more than 100 people in the blind mountain to justice, but in order to help an innocent public servant, you gave him 4,000 yuan for nothing. It seems that you are also a person who paints snakes! ”

Heifu was stunned for a moment and laughed at himself: "That's right, I've also done a lot of contradictory things." ”

At this time, Ao seemed to have figured out something, and his expression relaxed: "Pavilion Chief Heifu, I have thought clearly, I still don't want to kill you." First, my mother clan is a descendant of the Ruo Ao clan who moved eastward, and you caught the tomb robbers who robbed the tomb of Dou Xin, and if the Ao clan owes you favors, I will pay them back. Besides, there are not many real scholars in this world, and if there are no you, wouldn't it be even more boring? Third, although I am a Chu spy, living in my own country and each with you, each is my master, but killing you is not in my mission. ”

"Still related to Ruo Ao's family?" Heifu never thought that there was such a relationship, but his mouth was hard: "You don't avenge the stone that was caught?" ”

"The pavilion chief is just performing the duties of Qin officials, I can't stand Shi Jun, I have affected him, and if I want to take revenge, I should also apologize for my own crimes." Ao is very clear.

Heifu laughed: "Then I really thank you for not killing, but ah, Ao, you have done another thing to add to the snake, you are really not a qualified Chu spy ......"

"The pavilion chief is right, to be a spy, I am not qualified."

Deliberately talking to Ao about useful and useless, Heifu was not idle, he kept adjusting his body, so that his body was sideways to Ao's eyes, so that he could not see the movement of his other hand, seizing the opportunity of Ao to relax, and quietly touched the knife on his toes......

Because he never put his life in the mercy of his enemies!

Two inches, one inch, the fingertips touched the iron ring of the handle of the knife, touched!

Heifu was overjoyed, however, just as he finally grasped the hilt of the knife and slowly pulled it out, the bowstring suddenly rang!

"Boom!"

Ao, who was still smiling and saying that he didn't kill Heifu just now, shot an arrow without hesitation.

"It's over!"

Heifu's pupils contracted suddenly in fear, and immediately, there was a sharp pain in the calf of his left leg!

Ao's archery skills are much stronger than Heifu's, and an arrow burrows into the leg flesh hard!

Heifu was in pain, the knife in his hand fell off again, and fell into the pile of leaves, he struggled and scolded: "Ao, Chu Shi wants to break his word? ”

Ao didn't have any arrows in his hand, so he put away his bow and said with a smile: "Pavilion Chief Heifu, I don't plan to break my promise, I just scrapped one of your legs, you are injured now, after you come down, cover the wound to stop the bleeding, don't continue to chase me." ”

He looked up at the sunset in the west: "I also know your intentions, deliberately delaying the time so that your companion can arrive. This is not a good place for small talk, Qin Chudang will fight in the near future, you and I will be on the battlefield, maybe we can meet again! At that time, they will each take Bingge as a greeting, and say goodbye to it! ”

As he spoke, Ao slowly retreated, and when he was more than ten steps away, he turned around and ran.

"Hey!"

Heifu didn't care that his leg was bleeding, and he shouted at Ao, "Are you really called Ao? Report your real name, see you on the battlefield in the future, I don't want to call it wrong! ”

"That's right, Ao, it's just my pseudonym."

He didn't look back, his body was nimble, and he ran wildly among the trees reflected in the setting sun.

"The pavilion chief can remember it, the one who left you alive today, Chu Zhong Liyi is also!"