Xiao Ye never expected that in order to save the pure water of Bailong Lake, Xu Wangliang poured several large buckets of Bailong Lake water on the vine grass planted in the middle of the mountainside every day.

When the second caravan carrying saltpeter returned to Shiguantun, the first thing the escort sergeant did was to find the royal secretary and strongly ask to bring more branches of the Coptis tree back to plant, otherwise the terrible poisonous weeds would go up to the top of the mountain.

Later, the Coptis tree was planted on the top of Bailong Lake, which was also caused by the heavy metal water, and the branches and leaves were vigorous, which gave the handymen a good place to shelter from mosquitoes.

Five days later, Xiao Ye and his party appeared outside Qingfeng Valley, but because the Tartars had just attacked the area of the Gravel Fort, the Ming army here had already closed the passage out of the grassland, and had not yet released the opening.

In addition to the fact that scouts came and went from time to time, the caravans returning from the grassland to the border wall were all detouring to the Tieshan Pass, two hundred miles northeast, where the border between Suzhou and Ningxia was located, and the imperial court was stationed with heavy troops.

The tall pass with a civil structure was built more firmly than when Qin Shi and them came, and the dark artillery on the wall made Xiao Ye think about getting up a little bit of luck.

Hiding in a bush outside the pass, Xiao Ye took the binoculars and looked at it for a while, and saw that the suspension bridge at the checkpoint was hanging high, and the soldiers were well defended, and couldn't help but sigh, this time if you want to sneak into Gansu Town, I'm afraid it will be difficult to get your wish.

Tieshan Pass, listening to the name, you know that it is not so easy to enter, especially if you are carrying all kinds of weapons, even if you want to hide, there is also the possibility of leakage, once it is detected by the defenders, it will be a big trouble, maybe Jiang Jie will smell the smell of bad things.

One of his own affairs is related to hundreds of households, and he took the sergeant to Tieshan Pass in disguise, but anyone with a brain can think that it must be no good thing, and maybe a crime of colluding with horse bandits will fall on his head.

Thinking of this, Xiao Ye had the idea of retreating, he had been hiding here for three hours, and he didn't see a caravan or even a random merchant arrive at the checkpoint, it is estimated that he has received a notice, but he just doesn't know.

Leaving the two guards to continue to watch, slipping down from the heights, Xiao Ye turned left and right in the bushes, and walked into the sparse low woods.

In the low woods, the war horses were tied together with chewing iron, the guards and sergeants gathered in one place and were munching on jerky, and there were a few sergeants on the sentry in all directions.

Taking the water bag handed by the guard, Xiao Ye poured two sips, this damn weather is really hot and sultry, and there is no cloud in the empty sky except for the blazing sun.

Leaning on the small tree and sitting down, Xiao Ye pondered for a while, this time he may have come to Gansu Town recklessly, there is no exact information, even if he arrived in Gansu Town, in case Jiang Jie is not there, wouldn't he have to continue to wait?

But now that he has arrived here, he went back empty-handed, and Xiao Ye is still very unwilling.

Just when he was entangled, he didn't expect that as the commander of the Suzhou Weidu, Jiang Jie was ordered by the commander Huang Guangpin to inspect military affairs in the Qingfeng Valley Pass barracks.

Soon after his son Jiang Qinggui got married, he also followed Lao Tzu to Qingfeng Valley to see the world as an experience; By next month, Jiang Qinggui will rush to Beijing to participate in the imperial examination.

At present, in Qingfeng Valley, there are 5,000 infantry troops and 1,000 horse troops stationed in the barracks, and these troops drawn from Wuguan Town are used to guard against the border army of the Tartars.

What Xiao Ye didn't expect was that Jiang Jie and his son Jiang Qinggui were in the military camp opposite.

Jiang Jie went to the barracks early in the morning, he wanted to have a good relationship with the supervisor of the army, although it was necessary to give gifts from time to time, it was more important to follow the left and right.

Last year, Zhu Ning, the king of Anhua, launched a rebellion, which was put down in less than a month, and then the great eunuch Liu Jin was involved, as well as 64 members of his traitorous party; In addition, Liu Liu and Liu Qi revolted in Bazhou in October, which once threatened the area around Beijing, and now the imperial court has transferred the border army to Bazhou. These alerted the young emperor.

Therefore, the supervisor sent by the imperial court patrol in Qingfeng Valley this time was Zhang Zhong, a close confidant of Emperor Zhu Houzhao, and this was a figure that the border army generals couldn't see before.

If it weren't for the fact that Huang Guangpin had to be dispatched in Gansu Town according to the system, how could he Jiang Jie have the opportunity to get close to this red man around the emperor.

Jiang Jie was busy with official business all day, and Jiang Qinggui, who was left in the back camp, was caught blind, and he didn't dare to sneak back to Gansu Town.

There is a way that there are people in the court who are easy to do, Jiang Qinggui relied on the name of Lao Tzu to say hello to Xiao Wei who was guarding the pass, and rode out of the pass with the scouts who went out, accompanied by more than a dozen family guards; After the horse galloped across the suspension bridge, the squeaky suspension bridge was immediately pulled high.

After leaving the checkpoint, the five border scouts left quickly, and Jiang Qinggui took a group of guards, carrying guns and bows, and ran slowly in the direction of due north; Less than twenty miles out of there, there was a large meadow puddle, and although it is now estimated that the puddle is dry, there must have been a lot of hares nearby.

Jiang Qinggui would be even happier if he encountered scattered wild wolves, the fire/gun diagonally inserted in the quiver in his saddle, but he had never really opened meat.

As for the Tartar, he had been in the Valley of the Breeze for several days, and he had also looked at the wall, but he had not seen any trace of the Tartar ranger, and besides, the telescope in his guard's hand was not for play.

Jiang Jie's home guards for his son, all of them are military men with high martial arts, even fire/guns are invincible within eighty steps, even if they encounter a Tartar, they can get out safely, and at a distance of more than 20 miles, they can run back to Guanli with a cup of tea.

The appearance of Jiang Qinggui and his entourage, Xiao Ye quickly knew, stood on a high place and looked at it with a telescope for a while, and was surprised to find that it was this guy who ran out.

"Could it be that Jiang Jie arrived in Qingfeng Valley?" Xiao Ye, who was suspicious, turned his head to look at the pass in the distance, clenched his fists a few times, gritted his teeth and put away the binoculars, "Go, masked, follow,"

Yao Yao was behind Jiang Qinggui, until this guy reached the depths of the meadow and crackled with fire/gun hunting, Xiao Ye then commanded the sergeant to surround him from afar, and when he was about to show his figure, the scout hurriedly ran over.

"Lord Baihu, there seem to be people in the meadow, hiding quite hidden, the small ones almost ignored the past, the number is between twenty and fifty people, the weapons are very miscellaneous, there are long fires/guns," the scout reported in time, so that Xiao Ye suppressed the thought of rushing up, raised his right hand and waved back, and the guards and sergeants who had dispersed on the left and right began to retreat by pulling the reins of their horses.

Looking at the sun, the time is still early, Xiao Ye wants to know, who is the person who fell to the ground, and dares to fight the idea of commanding the servant.

I have to say that Jiang Qinggui's luck was really bad, he chased the hare at the edge of the meadow, and gained a lot of harvest, and unknowingly entered the depths of the meadow.

Unexpectedly, in the depths of the meadow, there was a fierce horse thief hiding in it to rest.

Since Zhao Heishan suffered a big loss in Gansu Town, he has been haunting the grassland to recuperate, and by the way, he robbed some merchants; He injured more than a dozen brothers in Gansu Town, although in the end the Huang family came and gave him ten guns/guns and two thousand taels of silver tickets, but where could he swallow this breath.

There is another bigger group of horse thieves on the grassland outside Tieshan Pass, led by Lu Yidao, whose real name is unknown, Zhao Heishan has to hand over 10,000 taels of silver to Lu Yidao every six months, or use horse fur to offset it, and the silver ticket that has just arrived is no longer in his pocket.

As for the horse thieves who didn't want to pay the money, several fierce ones were killed by Lu Yidao, and the captured horse thieves were cut off by a knife, and they were built into a Jingguan, and their bodies were left to the wild wolves on the grassland.

Lu Yidao had thousands of horse thieves under his command, and I heard that there were more than a dozen horse thieves in the east who also surrendered to his blade, and after Zhao Heizi paid the tribute, he didn't have much money on hand.

I thought that in the second half of the year, if I worked harder, I would be able to get more money and goods from the caravan and retail merchants, so that I could survive the next winter.

Horse thieves like them are generally disguised as retail merchants in winter and infiltrate the side walls, and those who have money find a county town to spend the winter happily, and those who don't have money are unlucky, and it is good luck to hide on the farmer's kang and be depressed for a winter.

Unexpectedly, not only did they not find the caravan this time, but they encountered the Tartar cavalry, and after several pursuits, he ran into the Gobi Desert to escape the pursuit by virtue of his proficiency in the terrain, but his brothers were killed and wounded several times.

Even now he still has strips of cloth wrapped around his head, and the horned bow of the Tartar is so powerful that it almost pierces his head with an arrow. The fire/gun in his hand, in the face of the fierce pursuit of the Tartars, was not aimed at all.

Don't dare to go to the east, there is Lu Yidao's territory, and to the west in the remaining veins of the Altai Mountains, a group of red-haired Tartars have appeared this year, the momentum of slashing is really more ruthless than his Zhao Heizi, and the fire/gun in the hands of people is also sharper, Zhao Heizi knows that he can't be provoked, so he can only wander around in the north of thousands of miles.

"Peng, Peng," the low and scattered fire/gunfire made the cranky Zhao Heizi sober up, shook his head vigorously, looked through the gap in the barren grass for a while, grabbed the knife with his left hand, and quietly waved his right hand.

Behind him, more than forty horse thieves were squatting in the grass, the reins in their hands were tightly clutched, and the war horses lay down obediently beside them, snorting from time to time, but there was no other sound.

The barren grass that was nearly one person high, and the person hid inside, and there was no trace of him after a dozen steps.

Seeing the leader's gesture, the horse thieves widened their eyes excitedly, patted the neck of their war horses, and then the war horses got up and shook the grass clippings on their bodies, sniffing the abuse that appeared on their masters from time to time.

"Damn, the fat sheep is here, surrounded, and no one can be let go," the vicious Zhao Heizi, with very sharp eyes, saw Jiang Qinggui who was surrounded in the middle in the distance, and knew that the Lishui in the second half of the year had landed, and commanded the horse thieves to rush out.

The horse thieves who scattered in all directions, although half of them were wounded, surrounded these inexperienced guards, it was a matter of hand.

"Peng," Jiang Qinggui, who was holding the fire/gun, aimed at the sturdy hare twenty paces away is a shot, and the gun sounded and the rabbit died, making him suddenly triumphant, and laughed loudly in his mouth; There were more than a dozen hares and wild children hanging on the saddle of those guards, and none of them had been hit by him so far, which made Jiang Gongzi quite angry, and now, he let out a long breath.

Just as he was about to beckon the guards to pick up the rabbits, Jiang Qinggui suddenly found that the guards around him were pale, and some of them couldn't even hold the fire/gun steadily.

"Hey, Lao Wang, go pick up the rabbit back," Jiang Qinggui, who was puzzled, said loudly to the head of the guard, and was quite dissatisfied with his words, as soon as I made a move, you wouldn't be scared like this.

"Young master, let's be afraid that we will meet a horse thief," the old Wang, whose face was white, looked at the horse thief who came more than a hundred steps away, but he didn't dare to raise the fire/gun in his hand.

The hare was shot in the head from a hundred paces away, and Lao Wang saw it very clearly, the projectile shot by his young master did not hit the rabbit at all.

The guards, who were pointed at by fire/guns and horned bows, were quickly captured, and the opponents were twice as numerous as them, and the fire/guns were accurate, and no one wanted to gamble with their lives; The most important thing is that as long as the head of the family can pay the ransom, the horse thief will not kill or injure people at will.

In the face of the menacing horse thief, Jiang Qinggui saw that the guards did not dare to move, and naturally he was not stupid, he threw the fire/gun on the ground, and was about to open his mouth to speak, "Stampe, trample," a fast horse passed by, and the heavy scimitar smashed on his back.

Rao is knife back, Jiang Qinggui was also knocked off the horse by the huge impact, and he grinned and howled; Then, his screams stopped.

The horse thieves who came up pointed at the guns, the horned bows were still on the strings, and Jiang Qinggui, who fell to the ground, consciously stopped screaming after his delicate soft boots broke free from the stirrups.

Who knew that none of these hideous-faced horse thieves would be unhappy, and it would not be wise to give him a shot or an arrow, and call out.

Seeing that his subordinates surrounded these people, Zhao Heizi, who was following behind, laughed, and glanced at Li Da beside him with appreciation, "You kid can, you can shock these guys with one shot,"

With the spread of the name of the Fugui Building, the title of the fire system was replaced, the delicate and sturdy fire/gun, the name of the foreign ear, was quickly accepted by the people, and it was also spread among the border army, and Zhao Heizi also heard this fashionable name from the merchants.

"Hehe, luck, luck," Li Da, who was in a cold sweat with his brain, carried a heavy fire/gun, and smiled unnaturally, he was aiming at a guard's war horse just now, but the horse's back shook, and the projectile actually exploded the hare's head.

If the muzzle of the gun is shaken to the side again, the big fat sheep in the eyes of the leader will be knocked out with one shot; Thinking of this, Li Da's slender face had a large pockmark twitching.

There was fire/guns and arrows in front of him, and the son was knocked off the horse again, and the guards, who were worried and cherished their lives, obediently dismounted and handed over their weapons, and squatted on the ground with their heads in their hands, and the war horses were also pulled away by horse thieves.

Zhao Heizi, who drove the horse forward, came to Jiang Qinggui and looked at the fat sheep on the ground condescendingly, "Hehe, look, who is this, I didn't expect that my old black could meet the young master of the Jiang family, it's Jiang Gongzi,"

Hearing that the evil man in front of him with a face full of flesh and a long scar on his left cheek actually said his identity, Jiang Qinggui not only did not feel happy, but felt a chill on his body, "I, I,"

"Look, hypocritical Jiang Gongzi, what kind of identity are you, I've been famous for a long time," Seeing this soft egg's humming and chirping, Zhao Heizi was suddenly unhappy, baring his mouth full of big yellow teeth, and stretched out his hand to point at the guards next to him, "They are all burdens, let's kill them,"

As soon as the words fell, a cold wind blew, and the sound of poof, poof, puff arrows piercing into the flesh, a few wails, and the two guards died tragically on the spot, and were shot through the chest by sharp arrows.

"No, don't," the horse thief's ruthless means immediately made Jiang Qinggui pee his pants, these guards were killed, so wouldn't it be his turn to come down.

"I am Jiang Qinggui, my father is Jiang Jie, and Jiang Jie, the commander of Gansu Town," Jiang Qinggui, who was weak in his legs and feet, simply revealed his identity, but let the remaining guards secretly thank him.

"Hahahaha, the expenses for the second half of the year can be regarded as handed," confirmed the identity of the fat sheep, and Zhao Heizi, who was satisfied, raised his head and laughed again and again, and the grievance of being chased and killed by the Tartars finally paid off.

Of course, he can't leave these guards, at most one can go back to report the news, raise his hand and wave it casually, and the horse thieves on both sides who know it happily pull the trigger and shoot sharp arrows.

"Boom, boom, boom," "whoosh, whoosh, whoosh," a breath-in-one slaughter knocked all the guards on the ground to the ground, blood soaked in the rancid meadows; However, the fire/gunfire seems to be a lot more dense, and the distance is a little farther away.

Zhao Heizi, who was squinting and enjoying the screams, blinked his eyes a few times, his eyes widened, and when he looked around, he found that half of the more than forty horse thieves on horses fell to the ground, and their heads turned into blood gourds.

The other horse thieves dismounted in panic and shrank behind their horses to avoid the projectiles that came from a distance; And he, the leader of the horse thieves, was still calmly riding on his horse, and the projectile did not find him.

"Hmph," a strong wind hit his ears, and a gunshot from Peng was heard in the distance, Zhao Heizi dismounted with a spirit, rolled and rolled in the grass, pulled out the short fire/gun in his waist, glanced back and forth, and shouted weakly, "Who, a good man on which road, wants to fly against me,"

Just when they were in shock, one after another figures appeared around, praying mantis fluttering cicadas, yellow finches behind, Zhao Heizi vaguely flashed this sentence in his heart, and knew that he was also calculated.

However, the accurate shooting from a hundred and fifty steps away made his mouth bitter, this was not a fluke like Li Da, but a marksman who pierced through Yang at more than a hundred paces, and he didn't see the horse thieves lying on his ground, and he didn't even have a chance to get up and shout.

"Put down your weapons and raise your hands high," a masked gunman on a horse, stepped forward with a fire/gun in one hand, less than a hundred steps away from Zhao Heizi and them, and shouted loudly, "Come out slowly, or you will be killed,"

His shouts were ignored by the horse thieves, and though they were surrounded in the meadow, they were full of potholes, hidden in them, and no one could easily rush in; What happened just now was their carelessness.

Also, there was no warning from the riders in the distance, and the horse thieves ignored the movement on the periphery, and tried to catch the fat sheep, but now they were also in a commotion.

The three wind riders arranged by Zhao Heizi on the periphery, when they met the scouts of Wang Hu's team, they were basically cleaned up by the crossbow in one face, and they didn't even have a chance to raise the alarm.

In the meadow under the scorching sun, there was the occasional neighing of horses, and suddenly there was silence, and the guards lying on the ground, like Jiang Qinggui, couldn't even muster the courage to fart under the vicious eyes of the horse thieves.

Two more masked riders caught up, and when the time for warning had passed, the people in the meadow were still hiding, so they stopped talking nonsense, and loaded grenades on the muzzles of their guns.

"Bump, bump, bump," the three grenades arced high and smashed evenly into the hiding place of the horse thieves, blasting the grass and mud with a bang, and also blasting out the two horse thieves and their war horses.

The horse thieves fell to the ground wounded, and lay on the ground without saying a word, letting their vision grow dark, and it was evident that they would not live more than an hour of tea; But the horse was startled, and jumped up and down covered in blood, and scattered in all directions.

"Peng, Peng, Peng," there were three faint gunshots, and the war horse, whose head was pierced by a projectile, suddenly fell to the ground one after another, falling to the ground and convulsing continuously.

Looking at the tragic scene in front of him, Zhao Heizi sighed, it's over, this time it's planted, people are not in a hurry, they will obviously not let go of a person. Even the sturdy war horse was killed without blinking, and he had only seen one person before, and that was Lu Yidao.

However, Lu Yidao and his subordinates were good at making knives and bows and arrows, and had a small number of three-eyed fire systems, and Zhao Heizi had never seen them shoot such accurate fires/guns.

"Brothers outside, don't fight, I'm flying on the grass and planting," when another round of grenades came over, Zhao Heizi, who was lying in the mud pit, shouted loudly and aggrievedly, people didn't come at all, and they could grind them to death with this strange explosive, and Zhao Heizi, who was empty of force, reluctantly threw away his weapon.

"Throw away the weapons on your body, raise your hands high, and walk out slowly," Jiang Qinggui and his guards walked out with a loud shout, and then Zhao Heizi and his twenty or so subordinates also walked out with their hands raised, all covered in mud and grass.

Jiang Qinggui, who was limping, felt that he was really unlucky.