At the same time that the "Mr. Sai" carried Qin Beiyang and others over the Huangpu River, Qi Yuanshan was hiding deep underground, accompanying thousands of water rats. The Shanghai Public Concession and the French Concession are certainly not comparable to the Imperial Works of the Sewers of Paris, which Victor Hugo described in Les Misérables as "the belly of Leviathan", and the Shanghai sewers are nothing more than the belly of a sparrow. Qi Yuanshan walked alone in the belly of the sparrow, his rickety back like a bell-ringer Quasimodo, and Japanese crayfish drilling in his clothes.

Late the night before yesterday, after the arson case of Dharma Mountain on the sea, Qi Yuanshan was forced to flee separately from Qin Beiyang. He finally shook off the chase of the Indian patrol and spent the night among a group of beggars who came from Jiangbei to escape the famine. The next day, the streets and alleys were full of patrols, and he also found a wanted warrant with his own photo. Qi Yuanshan lifted the manhole cover and burrowed into the dirty and narrow sewer. Fortunately, he had served as a soldier in the engineering corps, so he knew some engineering principles and was able to avoid dangers, such as biogas poisoning.

This morning, Qiyun Mountain touched the Huxi Huajie from the underground. The security here was not strict, so he changed his clothes and went to the bathhouse to take a bath. When he came to the carriage shop, he wanted to find the coachman on the night of the crime. However, he discovers that the coachman has died violently, and the cause of death is unknown. Needless to say, this was done by the assassins again, in order to exterminate the evidence of Qin Beiyang and Qi Yuanshan's alibi at the crime scene.

In desperation, Qi Yuanshan remembered the ship, a foreign steamer that had been anchored at Hongkou Wharf for more than two months, and he suspected that the ship was hiding the assassin and tomb robber Xiaomu.

Qi Yuanshan went deep into the ground again, along the sewer pipe across Shanghai, to the alley opposite the Hongkou Wharf. He stole a coolie's clothes, and such porters abound along the riverside, and most of them are controlled by the Green Gang.

He approached the dock carrying a sandbag, and a cargo ship flew a red, white, and red striped flag — the Peruvian flag — and many Peruvian ships in the late Qing Dynasty specialized in transporting Chinese to South America to dig guano and cut sugar cane for indentured slavery.

With no one around, he climbed the ship's gangway and rolled over to the deck. Two crew members approached, looking like they were of mixed Indo-European descent, and they were speaking Spanish. Qi Yuanshan took refuge in the cabin, a coal-burning steamer, and the hold was covered in dirty soot. He groped down the hallway, looking for a clean place. Up two flights of stairs, it seems to be the cabin of the captain and the officers, much better furnished.

Outside the door, there was a tray on the floor, full of used cutlery, like a restaurant delivery service. Qi Yuanshan had been hungry for two days, and his appetite prompted him to open the hatch.

Spacious and clean as a hotel room, with a young man lying on a wire bed - a standard Chinese.

Before he could scream, he was gagged by Qi Yuanshan, and the big mirror box cannon was pressed against his heart.

"Wait a minute, I seem to remember your face......" Qi Yuanshan carefully looked at the white face, as well as the mutilated fingers of his left hand, and immediately remembered the wanted warrant of the patrol room, "Tomb robber-Xiaomu?" ”

Xiao Mu was stunned for a few seconds, subconsciously nodded and shook his head, but it was irretrievably exposed. Qi Yuanshan grabbed him by the throat.

In the silent cabin, Xiao Mu's face was flushed, and he wanted to cough but didn't dare to make a sound: "Are you from the patrol room, or from the Green Gang?" ”

"I'm ......" Qi Yuanshan didn't know if he was a member of the Green Gang, so he could only lie, "I was sent by the Beiyang government!" ”

Xiao Mu clutched his throat and stepped back into the corner of the wire bed: "I haven't killed anyone. ”

"Do you have anything to eat here?"

"What?"

Xiao Mu looked at the appearance of Qi Yuanshan's starving ghost, and then he understood, and pointed to the cabinet in the corner.

Qi Yuanshan continued to point the gun at him, and at the same time opened the cabinet and saw a few loaves of bread. He tore it open and stuffed it into his mouth, gobbling it up, his lips trembling.

"Aren't you thirsty?" Xiao Mu saw that he was almost finished eating, so he reminded, "There is water on the table." ”

"Thank you!"

Qi Yuanshan raised the kettle and poured it into his mouth, and just took two sips and spilled it on the ground. It turned out that his feet were shaking, and the dock outside the porthole began to move, and two whistles sounded overhead.

The ship opened.

Kogi looked out of the porthole in surprise. The steamer had left the dock and headed for Wusongkou downstream. On the surface of the Huangpu River in winter, white water vapor is steaming, hiding countless white seagulls and dense sampans.

"Has this ship sailed before?"

Qi Yuanshan asked, and Xiao Mu shook his head: "I have never driven since I was robbed from the Hongkou patrol house and boarded the boat." ”

"Are you going back to South America?"

Of course, Xiao Mu didn't know about this question, and he didn't know where the ship came from.

Qi Yuanshan held the gun and continued to ask: "Tell me, who are you?" Who were the assassins who slaughtered the Hongkou Patrol House? ”

"I'm just a creep."

"Fart!" Qi Yuanshan really wanted to slap him, "I was also a small soldier. ”

Xiao Mu immediately reported the number of his troops in the Beiyang Army, but Qi Yuanshan had heard of this army: "They have been wiped out in Shaanxi." ”

"I'm the only survivor."

These words reminded Qi Yuanshan of himself: "I am also from the Beiyang Army Engineer Corps, and they all died on Taihang Mountain." ”

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

Xiao Mu's eyes softened: "I'm twenty years old." ”

"I know."

"You don't know, actually, we are all the same kind of people......" Xiao Mu said, his eyes became soft, and he actually raised his arm and touched Qi Yuanshan's face, "I guessed right, right?" ”

At first, before Qi Yuanshan could react, Xiao Mu's cold fingertips slid on his cheeks for a few seconds.

Suddenly, he slapped Xiao Mu with a face full of consternation.

"Original...... What kind of person are you? ”

"I'm sorry."

Kogi hides in bed like a humiliated woman.

Outside the porthole, the steamer had already left Wusongkou and sailed in the choppy East China Sea. The hull of the ship began to jolt, and Qi Yuanshan, a landlubber from the north, felt seasick, and his stomach full of bread wanted to vomit......

The hatch opened.

Qi Yuanshan instinctively threw up his arm and fired a bullet. At the same time, something hard hit his head, as if countless grains of sand had penetrated into the cranial cavity.

The world was spinning, and in the last second of consciousness, he saw Xiao Mu clutching a smashed lamp.

It was as if you had been thrown deep into the seabed......

He felt like he was lying among the wrecks of countless shipwrecks, surrounded by skeletons and broken bones, covered in seaweed like a woman's long hair. During the flood season, large yellow croakers swam in schools through their rotten eye sockets.

Qi Yuan Mountain, which was transformed into a corpse, passed through this shipwreck grave. Suddenly, the sea retreated like a curtain, raising the yellow sand in the sky, the wind was flying, the military chess was fluttering, and the drums and trumpets were ringing, blowing through the long river of sunset...... There are famous generals all around, and there are many dragons, tigers and dogs in the "Three Heroes of Beiyang". The boy grabbed his father's reins, smelled the smoke of gunpowder, and saw the infantry with spears, the cavalry galloping with thousands of horses, and the artillery with rolling wheels. In the Xinhai year, at the birthday banquet of Prime Minister Yuan Shikai, Qi Yuanshan was able to recite the infantry drill of the Beiyang Army at a young age, which made the toad-like troubled heroes quite amazing, and gave this kid a Japanese short knife on the spot.

A month later, his father was assassinated by Yuan Shikai.

The next year, his mother died of illness, and his family fell into the middle of the road, and Qi Yuanshan ended up on the streets. The only brother is missing. His father's old ministry took him in and arranged for him to be paid in the engineering regiment.

At the age of fifteen, his body had not yet developed and he could not do the heavy physical work of digging holes with a shovel, so he was assigned to the regiment commander as a service soldier. The head of the regiment likes to visit the "Xianggong Hall", and when he saw this slim and beautiful young man, he forcibly dragged him into the tent......

Qi Yuanshan broke like this.

In the future, he not only became the male favorite of the regiment commander, but also became a male prostitute in the barracks, exclusively for the pleasure of senior officers. At first, he was in pain. Later, he slowly accepted reality. Some officers are rude and rude, while others are very elegant, knowing the allusions to broken sleeves in ancient times, shouting for warmth, and giving some small pastries and gifts. But he hated himself and wanted to get a gun, even if it was just a Hanyang-made rifle, so that he could go to the battlefield to kill or be killed.

Am I dead?

Qi Yuanshan asked himself, his nose filled with the smell of soot. He coughed a few times and returned to the world. He saw the locked hatches, the narrow portholes. The dark night, the sea and the sky in the cold winter, are full of stars.

He felt the pus and wounds on the top of his head, and the blood had long since dried up. Remembering, he infiltrated the Peruvian steamer and found the tomb robber Kogi, who had been robbed by the Assassins. Before he could see the Assassin's face, he was knocked unconscious by a lamp.

What corner of the Pacific Ocean is this? Is Peru coming soon? Going to dig up guano?