On the morning of April 28, the 17th year of Hongwei, the second morning after the reconnaissance company entered the poison field, the soldiers who had driven the mountain road all night finally came out of the jungle and came to a small canyon.

This is the karst landscape, there is no silt on the ground, and the footprints that stretch from the poison field are completely lost here.

Cao Siyuan leaned on the tall stone wall, exhaled a breath of turbidity, but his chest was still painful, in order to catch up with the officers and soldiers who had withdrawn from the poisonous field as soon as possible and find out the truth of the matter, the reconnaissance company had already fought hard.

This night's forced march made him, an "old Jianghu", a little unbearable, if it weren't for Xu Rui's vigorous winter training, I'm afraid more than half of the soldiers would have been left behind.

"The whole army stopped, inspected the equipment and dry rations, repaired on the spot for an hour, each squad took turns to be on guard, and the vanguard squad set up an outpost two miles in front."

Looking at the exhausted soldiers, Cao Siyuan raised his right arm and gave the military order to trim.

The soldiers who had not been assigned to the task suddenly staggered, some took out dry food with difficulty to eat, and some simply leaned against the cliff wall and fell asleep.

Cao Siyuan was also tired enough, but he couldn't rest yet, he had to set an example for the soldiers and be the first to take on the vigilance task.

He climbed a boulder with difficulty, from here he could barely see hundreds of meters before and after the canyon, and after looking at it for a while, he didn't find anything abnormal, so he took out the map drawn by Xu Rui himself according to the information of the military department.

Since there has been no field survey, although the map is marked with contour lines and scales, the actual error is still very large, but it is better than nothing.

Cao Siyuan first found out the location of the poison field and the current location on the map, then connected the two points with a pencil, and then followed the line, extending forward in the direction of the valley, his brows gradually furrowed.

The reconnaissance company followed the footprints, but the route was very strange, because the ravine led to only one place, and that was the bay twenty miles away from the poison field.

Cao Siyuan judged that the departing officers and troops were likely to go to the bay by boat and rush directly to other places, but there were several roads to take from the poison field to the bay, each of which was much closer and easier to walk than the current marching route.

They had spared a big circle before they finally rushed headlong into the canyon, where the terrain was difficult and easy to ambush, so if they really wanted to go to the bay, why did they choose such a marching route?

Could it be that someone deliberately wanted to lead himself into the canyon and then volley back and forth, annihilating the reconnaissance company in one fell swoop?

This is a possible inference, but how does the enemy know that he is coming, and that he will chase him?

Also, if you want to ambush in the canyon, you must block the two ends, but you go all the way, but you don't find that there are ambushes hiding outside the valley, or does the enemy use some method to deceive your eyes and hide the ambush soldiers in unexpected places?

"Your Excellency!!"

Just as he was thinking about it, a soldier suddenly rushed over in a hurry.

Cao Siyuan came back to his senses, and when he looked at it, he was actually the person in charge of the forward squad who went out to explore the way, and his heart suddenly sank.

"What's going on?"

Cao Siyuan jumped off the boulder and subconsciously pulled out the scimitar.

The soldier finally took a breath and said with a frightened face: "Big ...... My lord, there seems to be an accident in front, there are all corpses, please go over and take a look! ”

Sure enough, something happened!

Confirming his thoughts, he calmed down instead, and said in a loud voice: "The whole army is assembled and ready for battle!" ”

The narrow canyon made a ninety-degree turn in the middle of the canyon, and the inside could not be seen from the outside, but when the reconnaissance company cautiously turned the corner, it was immediately stunned by the scene in front of it.

The small canyon was littered with corpses, and even the horses had all fallen to the ground and died, judging by their clothing, these were the officers and soldiers who had left the poison field.

The corpses were strewn with arrow feathers, and they should have been shot from the top of the canyon, but strangely all of them did not seem to resist, and most of them died empty-handed, not even having time to draw a knife from their waists.

This shows that they died very suddenly, so suddenly that they didn't even have time to draw their knives.

Cao Siyuan frowned and thought for a long time, but he still couldn't think of what kind of scene it was, he was able to kill all these 300 people in an instant, and he didn't let them resist at all, even if he killed more than 300 pigs, it wouldn't be so smooth, right?

While thinking, he walked forward, and before he knew it, he walked far away, gradually getting out of the pile of corpses, and when he came back to his senses, he found that a corpse was lying alone in the middle hundreds of meters away from the large army.

Cao Siyuan hurriedly rushed up to take a look, only to see that this corpse was wearing the standard armor of an officer, at least the deputy chief soldier of a province, and a member of the fourth grade.

Unlike all the other corpses, this corpse had no external injuries, but its face was blue, its eyes were turned upward, its palms were tightly pinched around its neck, and the smell of wine and bitter almonds was faintly in its mouth.

Cao Siyuan was slightly stunned, looked around, and found that there were some roasted minced meat crumbs not far away, such as food such as hooves, and some other food residues, and there was a puddle of water stains around, he leaned in and smelled it, it was the smell of spirits.

"I see......"

The things in front of him and the corpse of the fourth-grade master finally made Cao Siyuan figure everything out.

It turned out that this was a bloody extermination, and the reason why the officers and soldiers guarding the poisonous field chose this path was that the mastermind behind the scenes carefully designed them to exterminate them.

The truth is that after these officers and soldiers were ordered to destroy the poison field, they received an order to go to the bay and leave by boat, and the people who gave the order found a reason to make a strange marching route, let them go around in a big circle, and finally entered the canyon.

The army had walked all night, and when they came to the canyon, they must have been sleepy, and after eating like the Apocalypse, they immediately fell asleep.

The black hand first asked the commander of this team to come out in the name of "going to the banquet", poisoned him with poisoned wine, and then took advantage of the lack of horses and horses to suddenly block the two ends and release arrows from a high place.

If a person is extremely tired, it is fine if he does not relax, but once he relaxes, it is difficult to raise his strength, so these three hundred people will hardly resist under the sudden attack, and it is difficult to even draw a knife.

Every step of the army was in the calculations of the other party, the planning was almost perfect, and the other party was able to make a single appointment with the commander of the army and let him drink the poisoned wine unsuspectingly.

It shows that these people should be quite familiar with this Zhengsi Rank Master, and even he trusts him very much, so much so that he will never think that the other party will harm him.

But why did the mastermind behind the scenes destroy his own cash cow with his own hands, and then deliberately kill the guards and the officers and soldiers?

You must know that killing the general soldiers of a province and slaughtering hundreds of officers and soldiers, even with the status of the four major families in Xichuan, it is difficult to cover the sky single-handedly.

They are willing to take such a risk, whether they will break their wrists after realizing that the matter is exposed, or whether they will prepare for another, bigger conspiracy.

For a while, Cao Siyuan's heart was full of question marks, and the world in front of him seemed to suddenly turn around.

He shook his head, shook off all these heavy burdens, and took a long breath as he looked at the sky divided by the canyon into a long river.

"Huh?"

At this moment, Cao Siyuan looked at the cliff and was suddenly stunned, and hurriedly took out the map from his arms, and was shocked to find a coincidence.

"So on the other side of the cliff is the bay that the officers and soldiers can never reach again?"

Cao Siyuan pondered for a moment with a calm face, and suddenly beckoned to the soldiers behind him, pointed to the cliff above his head and said, "Come a few people, set up a rope ladder, I want to climb up and have a look." ”

The soldiers of the reconnaissance company hurriedly gathered over, and shot the iron hook tied to the rope to the top of the cliff with crossbow arrows.

Then Cao Siyuan and several soldiers grabbed the rope ladder and quickly climbed to the top of the cliff.

Without waiting for the follow-up soldiers to come up, Cao Siyuan took the two or three soldiers who climbed up first and walked in the direction of the bay.

The bay and the canyon are actually only a few hundred meters apart, as if a cake has been cut in half by a cliff.

Cao Siyuan walked to the other side of the cliff and looked down from above.

Just at a glance, his pupils suddenly shrank suddenly, and his whole body shook violently, stiff and motionless like five thunderbolts.

"Oh my God......"

He was stunned for two seconds before he spit out these four words in his mouth, which was open in shock.