According to the information confessed by the captured horse thief, Huo Xingyi killed more than 500 horse thieves, but not all of them rode horses. The nest of the horse thief is known only to a few cronies, and the rest of the horse thieves are kept outside all the year round, so the seven living ones who caught it have no idea where the nest is.

But since it is a horse thief, the plundered gold, silver and copper money will never be less, and even a large number of women and horse thieves' families will be taken captive, so that it will be counted to say that there are thousands of people, and the horse thieves cannot all be taken away, and it is impossible to kill and abandon, only to withdraw the main personnel, and then hide the nest, let the remaining personnel hide in the nest to eat and drink, wait for the limelight to pass, and then re-emerge from the rivers and lakes.

But right now, there is no life, no death, no corpse, no one talking about the nest, and there is not even a rumor, it is inevitably too clean, and it even makes people wonder that Guo Peng behind the horse thief can do so well? Unless Guo Peng is born with talents, how can he make more than 500 undisciplined horse thieves disappear.

Thinking of this, Bai Liyan (Wei Xian) said:

"Brother Tang, I have a plan below, and I don't know if Brother Song can adopt it."

"Wei Langzhong, but it doesn't hurt to say it."

"There should be a horse thief's family and a captive woman in the horse thief's lair, and the horse thief can't take them all away, so why don't we set fire to the hills at the junction of Guangxin, Dingyang, and Lincheng to force him to flee."

"Shhh...... This plan is good, but how to smoke out a dry of people in the huge mountain forest, if you put a big fire and burn the entire forest, you can also force a dry of people out, but it is not what we want to hurt the innocent. ”

There is an irregular hill at the junction of Dingyang, Guangxin and Lincheng, which is more than 30 miles long, and the nest of horse thieves is most likely to be placed here. Sending dozens of people to search for a huge territory is simply looking for a needle in a haystack, even if there are royal guests who are proficient in scout skills, it is impossible for a few people to see through the entire forest.

What's more, the horse thieves have been entrenched here for seven or eight years, and the camp is not leaky, so they may have found some caves in the mountains and hid in them to live happily.

Even with the smoke method, it is difficult to cover the entire forest for more than 30 miles, unless a fire burns the entire forest, which is obviously unlikely.

At this time, Bailiyan said:

"If you want to live, you can't do without water, food, and breathing. The horse thief's nest must have reserves, but water and breathing can only be provided by the outside world.

Now we just need to find all the water sources in the mountain, and then set fire to smoke near the water source, so that we can lock down an area, force the nest ** people to escape, and then dig out the nest. ”

"Well, that's a great plan." Tang Zhao affirmed Baili Yan's strategy, and then said: "It's just that if you find a nest, the horse thief will not get rid of it." Horse thieves can still make a comeback and loot villages again, which is also a palliative rather than a cure. ”

"Brother Tang can rest assured, as long as he digs out the nest, and then publicizes it widely, so that Huo Xing, the leader of the horse thieves, knows that the nest has been taken out, and a dry of gold, silver, jewelry, wives and concubines and women have been captured by us, his heart will be angry.

Then we will hold a celebration banquet again, and trumpet that all the horse thieves have been annihilated, and Brother Tang and Brother Song and others will then disperse, secretly assembling and standby, and at that time, Huo Xing will not come to take my head to vent his personal anger! ”

Since the horse thief has escaped, he can't find it if he wants to find it, but so many family funds are hoarded in the nest and can't be easily taken away.

But if the horse thief's nest is brought to an end and the news is released, it is a good determination, the territory that he has worked hard to manage, the gold and silver that he has stolen, and the woman disappears overnight, and no one can swallow this breath. At this time, if the royal guest retreats from the deserted village, the horse thief is bound to take revenge.

Presumably, Guo Peng has been raising horse thieves for many years, and seeing that the royal guests have withdrawn, and the horse thief and Bailiyan have become mortal enemies, how can Guo Peng miss this opportunity, and he must not order the horse thief to fight back.

Of course, considering the weak defense of the lair, it is easy to see that it is definitely not the main force of the horse thief, and no matter how stupid the royal guest is, he will not be unaware of this truth. If they were widely informed, and then let the royal guests leave, of course, the horse thieves would also think that this was a trap set by Bailiyan, deliberately trying to provoke them and lure them to attack the deserted village, and then gather and annihilate them.

Therefore, after digging out the horse thief's lair, it is still necessary to let out the word, the main force of the horse thief has been annihilated, and at the same time, he will quickly find out the surrounding situation.

The horse thief must still be in the area of Guangxin, Dingyang, and Lincheng, but he can't figure out where for a while, but if the horse thief wants to know the news of the market, he must cast his eyes in the city, and even do not rule out direct contact with Guofu.

When the news of the nest being dug up spreads, even if Guo Peng is calm, he has to send someone to contact Huo Xing to stabilize Huo Xing first.

As long as the eyeliner is laid in advance, once the royal guest knows that Guo Peng and the horse thief secretly communicate with each other, Guo Peng's head will not be able to keep even if he is his godfather Guo Pan. At the same time that Guo Peng was killed, he found the whereabouts of the horse thief along the vine, and without waiting for the horse thief to retaliate first, he directly killed the horse thief first, and then caught the horse thief off guard.

In this world, not only politicians are good at assassination, if they don't want to be known, they can also kill people silently.

Tang Zhao then explained the plan in detail to Song Jie, Fang De and others, and decided to act according to the plan.

In the night of the same day, more than 80 people were sent one after another, divided into ten roads, and eight people were in a group to pierce into the hills from the east, south, west, and north directions to find all the water sources.

At the same time, men under 45 and above 16 in the village were concentrated in the training and prepared to enter the mountains to suppress bandits.

About two days later, sneaking into the mountains and Yuke successively fed back the news, Fang De fell back to the village, and based on the information of all parties, a total of more than 20 large and small streams and small river branches were found, of which 15 places and 8 streams were more turbulent. The distribution is relatively even, there are tributaries in the southeast, northwest and northwest, and it is difficult to judge which water source is the stream leading to the horse thief's lair.

"Brother Fang, among the twenty-three water sources, which ones are the smallest?" Bai Liyan asked carefully.

"There are two streams to the southwest, which are believed to be no more than a foot wide, and the narrowest of the other streams are more than two feet, and more than three feet are small streams. Wei Langzhong asked about this, but he already had a clever plan? ”

Bai Liyan nodded slightly, and said lightly:

"I suspect that one of the two streams to the southwest must lead to a horse thief's lair."

"How can Wei Langzhong decide?" Song Jie said.

"The water source is too large to hide the cave, and the water flow is too large to cause waterlogging, so it is unlikely that the horse thieves will live by the river.

The hills are full of springs, and the water of the streams mostly comes from the water of underground springs, so if the horse thief has a nest in the mountains, he must choose a dry place to live, and if he lives by the river, even if the water does not fill the hole, it will seep water all year round.

People can still tolerate it, but horses are bound to get sick over time, so only the water flow is acceptable, and there is a gentle slope around the horse where the horses are placed, is the place where horse thieves are entrenched. ”

If there are caves in the hilly areas where people can be hidden, most of them are underground karst caves with serious permeability, and people can adapt to living in a humid environment for a year or two, and suffer from severe rheumatism over time.

And people can endure, horses can't endure, and more than 200 war horses are not a small number, how big a place can be hidden, even if they can be hidden, they can't hide for a while, horses are not people, they need to be often stocked and trained, and it is easy to breed skin diseases and even foot-and-mouth disease in the cave in captivity all year round.

The southwest of the hill is just the southeast of Dingyang City, which is located in an open plain, and no one cares about a wasteland. These horse thieves can sneak out of the horses on weekdays to feed the horses, wait until they are fed and go to the field to do evil, and then hide in the mountains and old forests to live happily for a few days.

After a detailed explanation of the reason, Song Jie, Tang Zhao, Fang De and others felt that it was reasonable, and at this time Song Jie said:

"Now that we have figured out where the horse thief is, I will immediately dig out the nest."

"No, wait two more days."

Bai Liyan said categorically, Tang Zhao asked puzzledly:

Why is that? Since it is expected that the nest of horse thieves is here, why not make a move, and what if the remnants of the nest and others are transferred and fled. ”

"Think about it, the horse thief has been operating in the mountains for seven or eight years, and I have been looking for it for almost a month, but I have not found the location of the lair, how can there be no secret whistle eyeliner to monitor it. On the way back, such a secret whistle will definitely pretend to be villagers and tenants along the way to monitor you, and even near the deserted village, there are secret prison cells of the villagers of the horse thieves and overseas Chinese offices. If we had done it immediately, wouldn't we have told them that our nest had been discovered?

Therefore, it was necessary to wait for two days to stabilize the horse thief and calm his heart, and at the same time seize the time to prepare, and set out from the deserted village at night two days later to raid the horse thief's lair. ”

Fang De and the other eighty people must have caused the horse thief to take precautions when they entered the mountain, and immediately took action to tell the horse thief's lair that the lair had been exposed, giving them time to evacuate the lair. Therefore, dragging on for two days to confuse the horse thief is easier to achieve the suddenness of the attack.

"Brother Song, if there is an unknown eyeliner within two days, just keep an eye on it. On the day of the operation, arrest and interrogate them again, so as not to startle the snake and give the horse thief's nest a chance to take precautions. ”

"Well, what Wei Lang said is reasonable, in my opinion, this plan can be done."

After making a plan, the deserted village began to prepare intensively to go into the mountains to suppress bandits. There are no more than ten people who know the core plan, and even if the whole village is in turmoil, the horse thief will not know what the deserted village is planning.

A large number of straw bales and firewood were loaded into carts, and at the same time, pine oil and tung oil were bought from Guangxin as fuel. Even if he was told by the horse thief himself, he didn't know what Bailiyan was going to do, and even wondered if he was preparing for the opening of the kiln in the deserted village.

Every move of the deserted village was transmitted back to the Guangxin Mansion every day through the Gongfu's eyeliner, and Jiang Min was even more confused when he learned that Bailiyan purchased pine oil, tung oil and other burning things from the city.

"Mr. Chen, Mr. Wei kept saying that he wanted to kill the horse thief that day, but there is no movement to this day, you see that he is buying pine oil again, what is this going to do?"

Chen Yunfeng frowned and said:

"With only more than 150 royal guests and hundreds of villagers, how can we wipe out hundreds of horse thieves, and I can't understand it now."

Although Chen Yunfeng is a scholar, he is behind the gate and is proficient in the art of war, but Chen Yunfeng can't understand all kinds of abnormal actions.

At this time, Wang Jiu said:

"Lord, did Wei Xian want to open the furnace, so he prepared a lot of firewood, grass and grease for the purpose of igniting the fire."

Chen Yunfeng glanced at Wang Jiu sideways, shook his head and said:

"No way. According to eyeliner, several small kilns have been built in the village in the past few months, which is not enough to fire porcelain in large quantities. Moreover, the kiln is mostly smoldered with firewood, and there is no need for forage and firewood, let alone pine oil. Wei Xian gathered so much forage, firewood and grass, it must be for arson, but he couldn't figure out where he was going to set the fire. ”

Chen Yunfeng could think that Bailiyan wanted to set fire, but he couldn't think of why Bailiyan set it on fire and what the purpose of setting it on fire was.