At noon, the sun was as strong as midsummer, and the grass was already wilting and lodging, and the ground was steaming with hot mist.

Zhao Ning, Ouyang Yong, and the three black-clothed guards came to a small town not far from the Ulan Butong Grassland, and they were responsible for exploring Dugu Jun's news in the Yanzhao Land area. After inquiry, some people said that they had seen a caravan in the land of Yanzhao, and there seemed to be a young man with a similar appearance to Dugu Jun in it, the young man was pale, as if he was seriously ill, and a sword hung from his waist.

Zhao Ning and Ouyang Yong were overjoyed when they heard the letter, and immediately chased the caravan route that the man said all the way to the small town outside the Saiwai.

But when they entered the town, they found that there were no human figures in sight, a few weeping willows that had been sunburned and depressed barely held out a shade, and a few large dogs stuck out their tongues and shrunk in the shadows, their eyes closed and drowsy. In addition, after patrolling the town, several bodies were found, and many houses were broken down or broken windows, and were damaged.

Zhao Ning felt strange and saw a hill to the south of the town. The stony slopes are sparsely vegetated and almost treeless, and the east-west ridges are dotted with sour jujube trees growing in stone crevices, with large areas of brown rock exposed.

Ignoring the heat, he climbed to the top of the hill and took out his binoculars to look around. There is little vegetation on the slopes, and there is a large abandoned quarry pit halfway up the mountainside, and the unfinished stones cover half of the slope. The hillside is close to the road, and the townspeople who are building new houses must have taken a lot of stone here.

After observing the surroundings for a while, I saw that the sky was vast and wild, and I didn't find anything abnormal. Zhao Ning was really hot, so he ran to the bottom of the hill.

The mountain blocked the direct sunlight, the valley was very cool, and the mountain breeze passing through the valley took away the sweat all over his body, and Zhao Ning was in good spirits.

Suddenly, he heard movement halfway up the eastern part of the hillside, so he took a few steps to hide behind a half-human-high rock on the side of the road, and looked up at the eastern part of the hillside.

I saw an old man and a young man walking over from the east side of the hillside, and Zhao Ning saw that he finally saw someone, so he hurriedly came out from behind the rock and saluted the old man.

The old man began to see a person suddenly appear, and his face was as frightened as earth, but when he saw that the person who came was polite, he was relieved.

After inquiry, Zhao Ning learned that this town had just been looted by a team of horse thieves on the grassland yesterday, and the people in the town were either killed, captured, fled, or hidden, and their belongings were also looted. There was also a caravan that was also robbed, and even the people and goods were robbed by horse thieves. Horse thieves and raiders were mainly sold to Turkic, Goguryeo and other nobles as slaves.

As soon as Zhao Ning heard that there was a caravan, it was estimated that it was the caravan that he had been tracking, so he asked the direction in which the horse thief went, and immediately rode after Ouyang Yong and the others.

After a day and a night of non-stop pursuit, the next morning, I finally discovered the horse thief camp in the far side of the grassland through a telescope, so as not to alarm the horse thief. Zhao Ning dismounted in a nearby birch forest to rest for a while, ate some dry food, drank some water, and then tied the horse to a tree and let the horse also eat grass and rest. Leave a black-clad guard in the woods to watch over the horses. Then he and Ouyang Yong and the other two black-clothed guards quietly lurked over.

They slowly approached the 800-meter place of the horse thief camp, lay in the grass and carefully observed the horse thief camp through binoculars, and found that the number of horse thieves was about 80 people. The looters were kept in a large tent in the middle of the camp. There are two cordons on the periphery of the camp, and seven or eight sentry posts have been set up on each cordon, and the security is still relatively tight.

"The white clouds are floating in the blue sky, and the horses are running under the white clouds." This lyric describes the grassland very meaningfully, making people sound like they are in the scene, and the blue sky, white clouds, and endless prairie are indeed beautiful. Zhao Ning used to think so, but now he feels that it is not so wonderful on the grassland.

The sky on the grassland is very blue, and there are indeed large white clouds. But the taste of lying under the blue sky and white clouds is not pleasant. When there were no clouds to cover it, the sun shone directly, and Zhao Ning was hot and sweating profusely. As soon as he unbuttoned his clothes, a white cloud floated over to block the sun, the temperature dropped immediately, the breeze that had just dropped the heat became biting, and the sweaty underwear immediately stuck to his body. Ten minutes can make people experience the cold and summer seasons, and Zhao Ning and the others lie on the grass and feel that time is difficult.

In the afternoon, the sun was even hotter, and the two black-clothed guards were so sunburned that they writhed their bodies, and the seven or eight well-fed horse thief sentries were also drowsy. Ouyang Yong glanced worriedly at the horse thief sentry who was sticking to his post, turned his head and shouted in a vicious voice: "Don't move!" I can't bear this bit of hardship, what kind of black guard? ”

The two black-clad guards immediately stopped moving, but insisted that within ten minutes they would squirm like bugs again. Zhao Ning grabbed Ouyang Yong, who was staring at him, and whispered to the two black-clothed guards: "It's really too sunny, and there is no need for everyone to lie here in the sun for the time being." You two move down to the bush first. ”

The two black-clad guards dodged the sunlight like a plague god and retreated into the shade under the bushes.

"Squeamish!" Ouyang Yong snorted dissatisfiedly, looked up, and found that the horse thief had already taken a nap, and several horse thief sentries were also holding spears and chatting, and couldn't help but whisper: "Let's him?" ”

Zhao Ning glanced at Ouyang Yong, shook his head and said, "It's not good in broad daylight, do you think we have three heads and six arms, just a few of us to deal with more than eighty horse thieves?" We didn't have angel rifles with us, and if we rushed over in broad daylight, a few waves of bows and arrows would be enough for us to drink! ”

Ouyang Yong muttered in a dissatisfied voice, "Soft egg! ”

After staying up all afternoon, and finally waiting until it was dark, Zhao Ning asked the black-clothed guard who was watching the horse to come over. The five men were afraid of the loud horseback riding, so they decided to approach the horse thief's camp on foot.

The five of them were like monkeys released from a cage, running and jumping towards the horse thief's flank.

The horse thieves deployed two cordons, in order not to disturb them, Zhao Ning and the five of them went around a big circle non-stop, and only then did they detour through the two cordons of the horse thieves, and it was already dark. Zhao Ning and the others were sweating profusely, and they saw that no one was sitting on the ground and gasping for breath. After the sweat was eliminated and the breath was even, Zhao Ning suddenly shouted as soon as he raised his head: "It's broken, it's cloudy!" ”

Ouyang Yong and the three black-clothed guards hurriedly looked at the sky, the crescent moon that was hanging in the air just now was gone at this moment, and it was dark like an upside-down pot. The wind blew against the ground, and it became tighter and tighter!

"It's going to rain, it's really timely!" Zhao Ning jumped up all of a sudden, looking into the distance, and there was not even a bright spot around, only a faint light from the horse thief's camp in the distance. The temperature in the grassland at night is very low, and it must be frozen due to the wind and rain.

Zhao Ning and the five of them hurriedly approached the horse thief camp. Marching in the dark of night is like swimming in water with your eyes closed. The five of them lined up in a column to keep an arm's length apart, groping their way forward one foot deeper and one foot shallow.

"Password?" The sudden questioning sound on the left side in front of him frightened Zhao Ning, who was licking his wet fingers to test the direction of the wind, and fell to the ground with a "plop". I didn't expect that there was a horse thief lurking in this place.

"Password?" The side shouted again.

When Zhao Ning was lying down, he happened to lie on a pile of soft horse manure, and his face was all over his body, he thought about it and suddenly shouted loudly: "Boss, people are scary and scared to death, what the hell is your name on such a dark day?" I was so scared that I was lying on a cloud of horse manure! ”

There was a low laugh from the opposite side, and then a voice that couldn't hold back laughter continued to shout: "Answer the password, or you will release the arrow!" ”

"I forgot about you!" Zhao Ning shouted angrily, took out a dagger and gestured in front of Ouyang Yong's eyes, Ouyang Yong consciously climbed a few steps backwards and quietly touched the horse thief lurking post.

Zhao Ning's calm answer made the horse thieves on the side mistakenly think that they were his own people, so he asked as if he were homely: "Dude, why did you come back so late?" Did you go out and find a woman? The women who robbed this time are fucking old and ugly......"

As he was talking, he suddenly heard a few short "woo" sounds, and then there was no movement, Zhao Ning knew that Ouyang Yong had succeeded.

Then, Zhao Ning, Ouyang Yong, and the three black-clothed guards took out their handballs and quietly approached the horse thief camp under the cover of night.

"Ready, drop the bomb!" Zhao Ning, who is used to being an artillery captain, also likes to shout orders when throwing bullets.

Zhao Ning and Ouyang Yong threw their hand bombs one after another into the horse thief's tent, and the sound of "boom" explosions was endless.

The fierce explosion and fire flashed between the horse thieves' tents with a rumbling sound, dazzling in the dark night sky, and the scorching waves of air swept the horse thieves within ten meters of the surrounding horses to the ground like autumn wind, and the explosion pieces sprayed everywhere made the horse thieves let out a ghostly wolf howl.

The five men ran around the camp of the horse thieves, throwing bullets as they ran, giving people the feeling of being surrounded by thousands of horses, and the horse thieves were blown up on their backs, flesh and blood flew sideways, and ghosts cried wolves.

Where have the horse thieves encountered such a bombardment, one by one they were frightened and descended to earth, and the war horses were also frightened and jumped around, uncontrolled, and the entire horse thief camp became a pot of porridge.

Zhao Ning, Ouyang Yong and others took advantage of the chaos to take out the angel crossbow, and shot the horse thieves accurately by the light of the camp, they hid in the dark, the horse thieves were in the light, and they made a mess, and soon the battlefield became a one-sided slaughter, the horse thieves were either blown up, or trampled to death by the frightened horses, or were shot to death by Zhao Ning and Ouyang Yong, in less than an hour, more than 80 horse thieves, including those sentry posts, were killed and wounded, and the rest of the souls were scattered and fled.

After the battle, Zhao Ning, Ouyang Yong and others entered the camp to rescue the captured people, among whom there were several caravan personnel, providing them with important clues, saying that they did meet a young man with a sword who seemed to be seriously ill on the road, with a pale face and a handsome appearance, but after they walked together for a while, they broke up with the young man not long after leaving the land of Yanzhao, and looked at the direction of the young man, it seemed to be Liaodong.

After getting this important information, Zhao Ning and Ouyang Yong were overjoyed and hurriedly rushed to the agreed meeting place, Yanmen Pass.

After Xia Xue and Ouyang Qian waited in Yanmen Pass for many days, the teams from all walks of life to explore the news slowly came to Yanmen Pass, and after analyzing the information collected, Xia Xue felt that the information provided by Zhao Ning and Ouyang Yong's group was the most valuable: Dugu Jun was more likely to go to Liaodong. The Huaxia people pay attention to the return of fallen leaves to their roots, and the Xianbei people are also a branch of the Huaxia people, of course, there is also this traditional thought. Because Dugu Jun is a Xianbei tribe, he knows that his time is short, and he may want to go to Xianbei Mountain, Liaodong, the birthplace of the Xianbei tribe, to worship his ancestors, and then retire to Xianbei Mountain in Liaodong and wait for death.

So Xia Xue sent Zhao Feng and a group of five people to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to pick snow lotus and saffron, and when she returned, she collected other medicinal materials along the way, and she copied the prescription of the antidote to Zhao Feng.

The rest of the personnel followed him to Liaodong to find Dugu Jun.

Due to the vast territory of Liaodong, in order to prevent Dugu Jun from running in Xianbei Mountain and causing everyone to run in vain and delay time, in order to improve efficiency and expand the search area, after discussion, Xia Xue decided to act in groups: he led a group to look for Dugu Jun in the Xianbei Mountain area of Liaodong, and the rest of the groups were responsible for the search of other routes and areas. It was agreed that after entering Liaodong, Shenzhou City in Goguryeo would be used as a secret contact point to exchange information.

The grouping method was still the same as before, Xia Xue divided the team into twenty groups of five people, and rushed to Liaodong to search.

Xia Xue, Ouyang Qian, Li Kang, Jiang Yong, and Song Gang were in a group.

After the arrangement, Xia Xue, who was resolute and resolute, immediately turned over and got on the horse, the war horse neighed, suddenly kicked up, and led Ouyang Qian, Li Kang, Jiang Yong and Song Gang to run towards Liaodong at a gallop.