Liu Bixian, the master of the shogunate, has been very busy these days, at the beginning of the new year, there are many invitations to eat from all over the place, and he has pushed as much as he can. After a group of people had dinner in the restaurant, Liu Bixian declined the invitation to watch the opera, and under the escort of two sergeants, he took the old servant Liu Asi back to the residence in the front yard of the general's mansion.

In Liu Bixian's opinion, instead of going to watch the show with these vassal and elegant warriors, it is better to go home and soak in hot water to make Xiaocui's girl rub her feet more comfortable. Although Xiao Cui has been serving in his house for less than ten days, this girl's diligence, simplicity, tame and thoughtfulness make him feel very useful, and every time he is with Xiao Cui, he has a warm and cordial feeling in his heart.

As a 30-year-old man, alone outside, with such a considerate woman as Xiaocui to serve, it has indeed given Liu Bixian great comfort in life and emotion. Liu Bixian has made up his mind to include this woman in the room, and it is expected that with his appearance, status and knowledge, Xiaocui will not be unwilling, but it is just that the current national crisis is at hand, and it is inconvenient to do it.

When I went back to the house and entered the house, I saw a black light and a blind fire, and I didn't hear a gentle greeting as soon as I entered the door as before. Liu Bixian was a little surprised, and lit the candle in the dark, but saw that on the bed in the house, his washed clothes were neatly arranged, and there were two pieces of broken silver about six or seven coins on the clothes, but Xiaocui was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, Liu Bixian had a faint feeling of uneasiness in his heart, and he hurriedly asked Liu Asi to ask everywhere, but he didn't find anything. Liu Bixian thought about whether it was like Chinese New Year's Eve, when Xiaocui was invited to play by the women in the inner mansion of the General's Mansion, and asked Liu Asi to go to the Weeping Flower Gate to ask, but there was still no result.

After hesitating for a while, Liu Bixian personally came to the Weeping Flower Gate to find Xu Ying and Yang Ming.

"Did she go somewhere?" Yang Ming asked Liu Bixian and Xu Ying.

"Xiaocui, this girl's slave family knows that she has never been a playful person, and she has no acquaintances and relatives in this city, a girl's family, alone, where can she go to play?" Xu Ying shook her head and said.

Liu Bixian nodded.

"That's weird, where can I go?" Yang Ming said.

"The person is gone, but two pieces of broken silver are left......" Liu Bixian wanted to speak and stopped.

"Two pieces of broken silver?" Yang Ming asked strangely, "What does this mean?" ”

"Those two pieces of broken silver were cut for her by the student years ago......" Liu Bixian sighed.

"This ......" Yang Ming suddenly remembered the situation when he met Xiaocui in the backyard at night Chinese New Year's Eve, "Mr. Liu, there is a problem with this......"

Liu Bixian was silent.

"Sir, go and ask the county government over there, is there anyone out of the city today?" Yang Ming hurriedly said.

"I've already asked, more than an hour ago, two carts from Wufeng Silk Village ......left the city from Chaoxu Gate (East Gate)," Liu Bixian said gloomily.

"Send someone to the Wufeng Silk Village to see ......," Yang Ming said.

"The students have already sent someone and they haven't come back yet." Liu Bixian looked at Yang Ming with a hint of guilt in his eyes.

Xu Ying listened to the conversation between Yang Ming and Liu Bixian on the side, and was suddenly shocked in her heart.

"Could it be that Xiaocui ...... she," Xu Ying shouted.

Yang Ming waved his hand to stop Xu Ying from continuing, "Mr. Liu, let's find Xiaocui first." ”

"Maybe she was kidnapped by someone............ they drove at night, and they couldn't go far, please don't worry too much about Mr. Liu," Yang Ming said to Liu Bixian.

Liu Bixian nodded silently and smiled bitterly.

"Mr. Liu, please immediately let the barracks prepare a team of fast riders." Yang Ming said, "Let the county government send a few people who are familiar with the surrounding terrain to help......

Escorted by two sergeants, a county magistrate entered the Hanging Flower Gate, led by Xu Ying, dressed in short clothes, and a servant woman carrying a lantern, and walked briskly down the verandah to the backyard. The entire compound of the General's Mansion was dark, all the rooms were ordered by Xu Ying to turn off the lights, and the verandah seemed to be extending infinitely under the dim light of the lanterns, and I didn't know where the end was.

Enter the backyard from the aisle of the main house, out of the verandah, bypass the flower beds and rockery paths, there is an emergency light hanging on the locust tree in front, under the snow-white light, Yang Ming sits on a rattan chair and holds the control handle of the RQ-11B "Big Crow" drone with both hands, the SMA interface on the upper part of the handle is connected to the feeder, the feeder extends up along the trunk of the locust tree, and the part that exceeds the height of the emergency light is hidden in the dark.

Yang Ming operated the controller, so that the drone quickly climbed high, the LCD screen displayed the image from the infrared camera, the streets, people, and lights of Shunyi City shone in the infrared vision, and when the image range crossed the city wall, everything became gray.

The infrared camera captures the infrared imaging radiated by the object, and the cold winter wilderness outside the city, in the background temperature of minus ten or twenty degrees, as long as there are people or animals, it will show a contrasting image in the picture.

Yang Ming increased the speed of the plane to 80 kilometers per hour, flying in a zigzag route between the north of the city, the east of the city, and the south of the city.

"Where is this?" Yang Ming asked the catcher next to him who was staring at the screen with wide eyes.

"This ...... It seems to be the Yakuo Temple. The voice trembled in shock, "This temple is last year...... No, it should be said that it was a new ...... the year before last."

"Hmm." Yang Ming asked Na Kuai, "Are you familiar with the surroundings of Shunyi City?" ”

"Back to the general's words, the little ones are responsible for searching and arresting thieves in the township all the year round, and every one of them within dozens of miles outside Shunyi City is very ......clear."

"Well, look carefully." Yang Ming operated the drone and continued to fly forward, "Where is this?" ”

"General, this should be Matouzhuang." The catcher is gradually adapting to the infrared vision, and this time the answer is more crisp than the last time.

"Good." Yang Ming praised, "Let's continue to move forward...... where is this?" ”

"This is the blacksmith battalion!" Catcher replied cleanly.

"How far?" The drone does not have a GPS signal, so it cannot judge the distance, and because it is a zigzag search flight, it is impossible to roughly estimate the distance based on the flight time and speed.

"The blacksmith camp is twelve miles from the city." Catcher said with certainty.

"Almost, let's search carefully." Yang Ming said.

In less than two hours, almost three or four hours, half of which was night, they could not go far in two large carts, lit by torches.

Yang Ming continued to control the drone to fly in a zigzag course, looking for traces of the target in the vast field.

In the LCD screen, the image of the two big cars appeared, the torches in the front of the car were shining, and the strong infrared radiation generated by the burning of the torches made the image of the mule and horse pulling the car not so bright, and the infrared rays emitted by the human body temperature in the car through the canopy formed the image darker than that of the mule and horse.

"Found it! Where is this?! Yang Ming asked in a deep voice about the catcher.

Catching Kuai's eyes widened, and he carefully observed the surrounding environment repeatedly, "General, this is a dead willow tree!" ”

"How far?"

"Nineteen miles!"

Yang Ming nodded at Xu Ying, who was standing on the side, "Xu Ying, be careful." ”

Xu Ying was dressed in a short suit, wearing a cotton hat on her head, and a three-point strap hanging diagonally from her body tied to her HK416 rifle, and the muzzle of the gun pointed diagonally down at the ground in front of her body.

She picked up an army green rectangular canvas bag and carried it on her back, this is an AN\/PRC-155 dual-channel individual knapsack radio produced by General Dynamics C4 Systems, Xu Ying pulled the threaded headset from her left shoulder and placed it on her chest, and nodded to Yang Ming.

In front of the lobby of the General's Mansion, Liu Bixian and Fan Tongzhou stood on the steps, silently looking at the sergeant team under the steps, the lanterns hanging on the eaves were shaking in the cold wind, and the dim light shone on Liu Bixian's expressionless face. The person who went to Wufeng Silk Village to inquire had already come back to report to him, and there was no one else there except for two local men guarding him, and the shopkeeper surnamed Wang and the man from Shanxi had evacuated this afternoon, and took all the silver taels and account books with him when he left.

At the foot of the stairs, twenty armored sergeants stood beside their horses, armed with spears, sabers at their waists, and sentry bows on their shoulders. The person at the head is in good shape, his eyebrows are locked, and his face is unruly, it is the archer captain Xie Qingyuan. On either side of him, two county officials with iron rulers in their hands stood nervously.

There was a sudden sound of footsteps, Xu Ying walked out of the lobby door, Liu Bixian and Fan Tongzhou turned sideways, they saw the drape on Xu Ying's body at a glance, and the two couldn't help but widen their eyes.

The sergeant led the war horse to Xu Ying, Xu Ying held the reins, stepped on the horse pedal with her left foot, turned over, and stepped lightly on the horse's back. Xie Qingyuan, his sergeants, and the two catchers also followed and turned over on their horses.

"Follow me!" With a coquettish sound, Xu Ying rode forward on horseback.

Xie Qingyuan rode a horse and followed Xu Ying steadily, he glanced at the sergeant beside him, and the two sergeants rode forward and quickly guarded Xu Ying's mount left and right.

The drawbridge at the city gate was lowered, and more than twenty horsemen rushed out of the city gate and ran towards the wilderness to the east. The two cavalrymen on Xu Ying's left and right were holding emergency lights, and the snow-white lights pierced the darkness in front of them, illuminating the ground within a range of dozens of meters as if it were day. The light of the emergency lights diffused back from the ground, reflecting Xu Ying's delicate body on horseback, and the flexible rod-like antenna of the lone piggyback radio on her shoulders fluttered with the sound of the horse's hooves.

The handlebar type holding the torch and leading the mule tugged the reins in front, and the two handlebar shapers skillfully mastered the balance and direction of the vehicle, and the cart creaked and creaked on the potholed road, the night wind whirled by, the torches shook brightly and darkly, and the road ahead was dark and changing under the jump of the firelight.

※In ancient times, the master of the big mule cart had to use three people, all on foot, two people holding the cart pole (commonly known as "Nayuan"), and one person leading the mule. The three of them must walk in unison, and the mule must follow suit. The royal ones are all wearing dark blue cloth coats, knee-length, with a bag tied around their waists, and a small white cloth gown inside, with two white sleeves on the outside, a few half feet wide. In summer, he wears a cool hat with few and long feathers. Although walking is as fast as flying, but the upper body does not move, only the sleeves and hats flutter with the pace, so there is the so-called "wind swings lotus leaves and a pillar of incense". Xueqiu's "Continuation of the Dumen Bamboo Branch Words" has a cloud of "Yong Catch the Rear Gearshifter": "The lotus leaf wind swings forward, and it is necessary to make a pillar of incense to the sky." ”

In the canopy, the shopkeeper of Wufeng Silk Village sat in a daze, holding a package containing the account book, and four men sat beside and opposite him, and in the middle of the carriage was a wooden box containing silver taels.

Wufeng Silk Village is the industry of Jin merchants, this Wang shopkeeper is also a member of the Jin Shang family, Jin Shang is a merchant gang supported by Houjin, Wang Shopkeeper and the Wufeng Silk Village he is in charge of inevitably undertake the task of collecting and transmitting intelligence for Houjin. But after all, the shopkeeper Wang is just a businessman, not a professional worker, and the businessman is profit-seeking, and making money is his ultimate goal. It was this time that the Houjin side sent a team to carry out intelligence and assassination operations based on Wufeng Silk Village, and the shopkeeper Wang resisted in his heart, but he succumbed to the other party's obscenity and had no choice but to do so.

At first, taking the opportunity of the merchants of Shunyi City to give gifts to Liu Bixian, Yin Zhangban arranged for the shopkeeper Wang to add Xiaocui to the gift list in the name of the slave maid, and then used Wufeng Silk Village as a contact point to pass on the information that Xiaocui had discovered. After the kidnapping and assassination of Yang Ming failed on the night of the twenty-ninth day, Yin Zhangban immediately fled, but instructed the shopkeeper Wang to come forward to clean up the mess.

Early the next morning, the shopkeeper Wang found the head of the county jail class and sent him a hundred taels of silver, and asked him to secretly cook Yun Qiu to extinguish his mouth. It was a common thing for this cell boss to kill a prisoner, and in the face of a hundred taels of snowflakes of silver, he naturally agreed. Who knew that when I asked in the prison, I knew that this female prisoner was the key criminal who assassinated the general, and the county magistrate and the general's mansion were staring at each other, and the cell head suddenly made a difficulty, thinking about it left and right, and he didn't want to spit out the silver in his mouth, so he wanted to take advantage of the New Year's Day when the county government and the general's mansion were on holiday to relax, so that the tricks would kill the prisoners silently. So he cut off Yunqiu's food and water, all kinds of yin damage and torture, slept at night and pressed the soil bag, and finally ran out of breath for two days, but he didn't expect Yang Ming to suddenly go to the prison and take the person away.

Shopkeeper Wang has been anxiously waiting for the news of Yunqiu's breathlessness for the past few days, but the news that he was waiting for was that he was taken away by the general's mansion. Seeing that the matter was about to be exposed, in a panic, he immediately packed up the silver account books in the store, claiming that he was returning to his hometown to mourn, and evacuated with the guys brought by Shanxi and Xiaocui, leaving only a few locally hired guys to take care of the store.

Now that it had been two hours since he had been out of the city, and the road had walked more than twenty miles, it was certain that he was out of danger, and the shopkeeper Wang breathed a sigh of relief, and remembered the silk goods that had been left in the shop and could not be taken away, and his heart could not help but feel a faint pain.

In a mule cart at the back, two boxes containing silver taels were placed in the center of the carriage, and two men sat on either side of the carriage to guard. At the back of the carriage sat a slender figure, her body and face hidden in the darkness, and as the body limped, the light of the occasional torch shone on her delicate face, reflecting two lines of tears under her eyes.