The men led them deep into the valley for a long time, and Mei Xiaoren estimated that they had been walking for more than half an hour to an hour, and then they heard someone shout "stop".

They stopped, and in a few moments someone passed by them and untied their blindfolds.

The moment the sun shone in, it was extremely dazzling, and Mei Xiaoren tried to open his eyes slowly, and it took a long time to get used to the light.

She looked around, and the place where they were was was indeed a valley, full of mountains, and directly in front of her was a mountain villa built into a valley, which looked a little old but not small.

She looked back again, and when they came, they had bypassed a large mountain, which obscured the view so that people could not see the river at a glance, which showed how hidden this Zhuangzi was built.

She stood in front of and behind the young coolies of the captivity, nearly twenty of them, all bound hand in hand and tied to a rope.

To Mei Xiaoren's surprise, the people who wandered around them and took them captive were no longer the rough overseers she had seen that night, but a group of red-clothed men.

She had seen such garments before.

A red-clothed man with five big and three thick walked around them, holding a knife in his hand, and said slowly: "This is the rudder of the gang, you will stay here in the future, do things for the gang, and you will be rewarded for doing well; If you are lazy and want to run, you will be dead! ”

The man in red then ordered the cloth to be removed from their mouths.

got a chance to speak, and a timid coolie immediately knelt down and begged: "Master, let me go back, I still have an old mother to take care of at home." ”

As soon as the coolie's words fell, the man in red had already stood beside him, put the knife in his hand on his neck steadily, and asked with a sneer, "Do you still want to go back to take care of your wife?" ”

The coolie glanced at the knife around his neck, his face turned pale, and he trembled on his knees.

"Lao Tzu asked you, do you still want to go back?" The man patted him on the shoulder with a knife.

The coolie was so frightened that he shook his head again and again, "I don't want to...... Don't want to ......"

"Don't stand up for Lao Tzu yet!"

The coolies got up from the ground trembling, and hung their heads and did not dare to say anything more.

The man walked back and forth around them with a knife, and asked sharply: "Who else wants to leave, say it as soon as possible, if you enter Zhuangzi, it won't be so cheap to use a knife to split your neck!" ”

When the man in red walked up to her, Mei Xiaoren asked in a low voice, "Dare to ask, what gang are we going to enter?" ”

"Drifting Fire Gang!"

Mei Xiaoren was stunned for a moment, shocked and couldn't help but think, is her luck good or bad?

When she was in Xuanzhou before, she wanted to check the details of the Flowing Fire Gang, but she found nothing, who knew that she had no place to find when she stepped on the iron shoes, and now she was unexpectedly recruited by the people of the Flowing Fire Gang to become a gang.

Opportunity is a good opportunity, but I don't know if I have no return.

The Drifting Fire Gang had blindfolded them before, obviously for fear of revealing the location of the rudder, she had never seen the way she came, and this place was so secret, how to get out was a problem.

Since the threat of the man in red to kill the chickens and monkeys, no one has dared to speak. When the Drifting Fire Gang saw that they were settled, they began to untie them.

Mei Xiaoren rubbed his wrist, which was sharpened by the rope, and followed them towards the villa.

She got on the boat to find the prince of Xia Guo, but she was kidnapped here by the Drifting Fire Gang, did she get on the ship of the Drifting Fire Gang by mistake, or was it actually the people of the Drifting Fire Gang who colluded with Xia Guo to save the prince of Xia Kingdom?

Thinking about it like this, even though the place in front of her looked like a Longtan tiger's den, she felt the need to break in.

Mei Xiaoren followed everyone into the villa and found that the people here were all wearing vermilion clothes, but the black patterns on the clothes were different, but most of them were flowers, birds and animals.

She guessed that this was a division of the gang into three, six, nine, and so on, and the patterns on the clothes were symbols of rank, for example, the fierce man before wore tiger stripes, symbolizing the deputy hall master, and the clothes that these new minions received were nothing.

Xinyang Mansion

Under the spring sun, the Xie family was escorted out of the Xie Mansion by the people of the Hidden Moon Platform.

This is the first time that hundreds of Xuanyi guards have appeared in Xinyang Mansion, and the formation is so large that the people have avoided it when they see this, and they don't have the courage to see the excitement at all. In the yamen of the palace, the prefect and all the officials stood in the hall, all of them hung their heads, held their breath, and didn't even dare to breathe too hard.

The tea on the desk in front of the hall was already cold, and Gu Chuyu didn't have the heart to touch the teacup.

Liuyue hurriedly came in and bowed her hand: "Master, the people of the Xie family have been arrested and imprisoned, and they said that they don't know the whereabouts of Mei Fucheng either. ”

"Wasn't the Xie family's boat docked at the dock that day?"

"Yes, but the Xie family said that the ship was hijacked by a group of people not long ago when it was carrying goods back to Xinyang from Xuanzhou, and the group also broke into Xie's mansion and kidnapped the head of the family, as a threat, and borrowed a caravan and passage documents that could enter and leave Beijing. After the caravan returned, they loaded the goods at the dock overnight, and the Xie family asked for a lot of coolies, and only after the ship set off did they release the hostages. ”

"Who?"

"The Xie family doesn't know, but they are definitely not from the Xia Kingdom, and their subordinates guess that it may be the forces of the rivers and lakes, I don't know if the master remembers, there is a gang in Jiangnan that is extremely rampant called the Flowing Fire Gang, it is said that as long as there is silver, they dare to do anything, when they did things for Gao Jingshu, they wanted to assassinate the master and blame the prefect." Liuyue continued, "My subordinates guess that this time it should be that Xia Guo spent a lot of money to hire them to come to Beijing to rob prisoners. ”

"Why is that gang still around?"

Liuyue replied: "Master forgive the sin, the Flowing Fire Gang is different from the ordinary forces in the rivers and lakes, they are unpredictable, their whereabouts are strange, their subordinates have been looking for their traces, but they have not yet found their hiding place, once the subordinates find out where their nest is, they will be uprooted." ”

Gu Chuyu asked another: "Has the ship been found?" ”

"Back to the master, all the rivers in the eastern state capital have been blocked, and the Xie family's boat has still not been found." Liuyue said, "My subordinates will immediately transfer some more people from Shangjing to find them together." ”

Gu Chuyu beckoned and motioned for Liuyue to do it.

Gu Chuyu had a map of several state capitals in Ningdong in front of him, and he picked up his pen and circled a circle on the map.

It took about one to three days from the time of her disappearance to the time when the order reached the state capitals, and the downstream state capitals had not intercepted the ship, indicating that the ship had stopped before his order was given, and that the anchorage was within this circle.

The boat went down the river much faster than the horse-drawn carriage, so the area he circled was not small, and it was at the junction of two state capitals, mostly in the wilderness, and it was extremely troublesome to search by land.

As for the waterways...... To the east of Xinyang, there is the largest lake in Daning, with many islands, and it takes a lot of time to find the lake and the islands on the lake.

But no matter how troublesome it is, even if he wants to use the country's strength to turn over the entire Daning to find it, he will not hesitate to do it.

Gu Chuyu put down his pen, looked at the place on the map, and said to himself: "I only want you, and I am safe." ”