The soldier who wanted to blackmail glanced suspiciously at the gap, and he remembered that the ground in the barn was very flat and smooth.

"Oops," said the intermediary indifferently, "I only have this coin."

"It doesn't matter," said the soldier, who had inherited the chief's ideas and practices, "and God has already made his decision." ”

He drew his pistol as smoothly and lightly as lubricated, startling his two companions, and the muzzle of the Glock pistol flashed with a dazzling flash of fire, and a monk who was crawling out under the cover of others was knocked off most of his neck, and his head fell into the arms of a man, killing him instantly.

Several of the children in the Boy Scouts screamed uncontrollably, and the two boys beside Boa emitted a suffocating stench from their crotches, and Boa moved back, looking like he was trying to avoid them, when in fact he was hiding himself behind the others. Behind him was the wall, his hands groping for the rough rocks and digging through the dirt on the ground.

"Your idea is stupid," said the soldier, "even if the families of these monks and children are willing to pay, the politicians and police will not be willing to let others notice that there is such a way to make money, they would rather let us rot here with the hostages,—— on TV and in the newspapers, they will say very good, but it turns out that they will never compromise, neither to the previous fools nor to us - since the establishment of the federal government, there is zero record of being able to get the money and successfully escape in this case, Do you understand, Zero! Zero! Zero! None of them succeeded! ”

"Are you really going to kill everyone?" Another soldier asked, "Forget it, monks, there are too many people here who regard filial sons as saviors, and no matter what, once a child is involved, it is like a hornet's nest."

"Five Xu Qiu have died in the Baptistery. And every one of us here, as long as there is one person alive, who can speak, who can write, who can blink - those insatiable dogs can follow the clues they give us to find us, do you really want that? Dear saint? Do you want the monks here to reserve a niche for you?" The soldiers, who were not interested in money, laughed at him without a trace of affection. Until his companions raised their hands in surrender.

The soldier smiled with joy and turned to face the angry and desperate hostages: "Try it, shit!" He roared at the monk and the child, "Aren't you going to fight back anyway?" Have you figured it out? Are you going to lie on the ground like this cowardly waiting to be killed? That's a lot of nonsense. Cowards! Look down, do you still have eggs in your crotch? This is the last chance! ”

Bao'er clutched the ground, her nails covered with dirt, and the three nails turned over, and he didn't realize it.

"Hurry up," he cried out silently, "hurry up! It's going to be long! ”

Hundreds of years ago, the craftsmen toiled day and night in the solid rock beneath the monastery with their own hands, pious hearts and rudimentary tools, digging out huge underground tombs and treasure troves for the abbots and nobles, and the researchers who secretly studied and cultivated ticks here further expanded its space, pouring concrete and asphalt on the rocky ground around the monastery in addition to the closed passages and rooms.

The unknown workers happily accepted the well-paid job. As a token of their appreciation, they renovated the barn free of charge, gave it a new gate, and laid asphalt under the roof and dirt floor, which still looked the same as before, but was much stronger than before.

The dean didn't point out this place to the chief for no reason. Three hundred years ago a clever thief had made a secret door for himself in the wall of the barn—he had loosened the outer stones with small iron chisels and drills, pulled out the filled gravel inside, and pushed away the inner stones—before he had made a piece of wood about the size of the hole, and fastened a thin slab of stone with gum in front and back, as thick as the wall, and pushed it to block the hole. Usually held in place with a thin layer of mud, when the monks filled it with peasant offerings, he would open the "door" and crawl in in the middle of the night, stealing only a little at a time - for twenty years, no one noticed, and finally he told it in his deathbed confession.

The abbot of the monastery at that time found out about this. After pondering for a while, he decided not to close the hole: "Let's take this as a little reward for the Lord's people." He said that the abbots of the monastery after him, in order to prove to the people that they respected and loved their predecessors, did not touch it, and the monks repaired it when the stones fell and the boards decayed. When the workers repaired the barn, the dean made a special instruction.

The monks knew about the hole, and the abbot thought they would find a chance to escape with the children.

They failed to find this opportunity, and the chief's soldiers were wary. Adults and children are grouped on either side of the barn and no movement is allowed. The hidden hole was in the middle of them, close to the children. The monk who had his neck broken was trying to push it away, and maybe in the chaos, a few children could get through it and escape.

"Hurry!" Bao'er dug into the dirt on the ground and muttered quietly, he bit his lip nervously, afraid that he would also shout - he could not see that the milk vetch in front of the barn and the grass and trees behind the barn, mainly ryegrass, were swaying, the leaves and stems were not changing, but the milky white roots were stretching and growing at a rate of a few centimeters per second, burrowing under the walls of the barn, shaking the foundations of the walls; The roots of the trees and vines followed, their brown roots much stronger than those of ryegrass, and they tumbled through the earth like earthworms without links, popping up from the ground and winding their way through the walls, ticking the stones piece by piece, looking for weaker connections between them.

The soldier who claimed neutrality looked around left and right, and the ground trembled slightly for a long time because of the baptistery that should have been cursed a thousand times. It had stopped abruptly just a few minutes earlier, but then it intensified - he really wanted to go out and have a look.

"Hi, do you feel ......"

"Fuck it, for God's sake," he asked, not hearing what he was saying, he was busy yelling at the "Leader Two", who was indulging in the thrill of intimidation and threats—the former was haunted by frustration and irritability, this mission was unsuccessful, they were not paid, and the leader died: "You are all mongrels!" He shouted, cursing and pulling the trigger, not knowing if it was intentional or not, except for one bullet that broke the monk's arm, and several others hit the dusky wall.

The camouflaged stone wall shattered all at once, and everyone froze for a moment, and it was Bao'er who was the first to make a move—he pushed a boy away and crawled into the hole.

All three soldiers opened fire. It only takes two to three seconds for them to shoot twenty-five bullets in their rifles, and in those two or three seconds, sixty or seventy bullets can kill everyone here.

Perhaps it was God's will that the tragedy did not take place, but at the same time as the stone wall shattered, the crack in which the coin had been swallowed suddenly widened and lengthened, like the one cut by a child trafficker in the time of James II on the face of a child who needed to be broken, the wound from the left ear to the mouth, and then from the mouth to the right ear, like a cake that had been broken, the barn split in half, and where the soldiers stood was the discarded part, it was falling backwards, falling, rolling.

The soldiers were wiped out by dirt and gravel at once, and they were still pulling the trigger.

Two more people were hit in the midst of the gunfire, one was also a monk, the other a child, and they were immediately caught by the others and crawled out—the roots and branches of the vines furiously reaching into the wounds of the barn, pulling out the rocks and dirt—and the panicked Boa'er could not give any more orders, which saved many, especially the wounded and the Crusaders, who were caught up in the vines and roots as they fell involuntarily after the earth and rocks, and pulled them up until they were held to a safe place.

Beelzebub and the others were also beneficiaries, and hundreds of stout vines climbed on a large tree with peeling bark, and the vines searched through the grass like snakes, enveloping them as they tried to climb upwards, dragging them upwards and carrying them to the highest branches.

Charlie held his father in his arms, leaning against the part of the branch against the trunk, which was safest, and Sasha put Lila on his lap, and Beelzebub sat not far from the thin end, and pressed the branch out of the bend.

The tower next to the barn slowly toppled over, crushing the part of the barn that remained.

"Is it safe enough here?" He asked.

"It should be enough." "It's not a naturally occurring landslide," Sasha said.

Farther away, the monastery, blessed by the devil in a cruciform structure, was sinking into a whirlpool of rubble and sand, flames and black smoke supporting the centuries-old structure like a tray of flowers—it tilted unwillingly, shattered, roared miserably.

A terrible roar with tons of mud and rocks washed into the jungles, shoals, the Rio Grande.

They watched silently, and no one spoke.

The sun shone brightly on them, the mountains and the Rio Grande.

Half an hour later, a blue-and-white striped helicopter flew over them.

((One second to remember)