"Lord Ding, will we be discovered?" asked a horse thief gesticulating. The gendarmes were only a stone's throw away, and they hid in the rocks instead of going into the depths, and if they climbed the boulders or came in around the rocks, they would have no way out. They are fast-moving archers, and their habitual thinking and playing style is to keep a distance as much as possible, and it is very unscientific and unaccustomed to the fact that the enemy is so close and does not disappear and flee away like this.

Ding Xiaofeng waved his hand to calm them down, while calmly paying attention to the situation outside.

For more than an hour, groups of gendarmes hurried past near the stone piles, but no one came in to look at them, and when the day was almost dawn, the army of gendarmes had finally passed, and the surroundings were gradually quiet, except for the mountain breeze and the scattered sound of birdsong.

Ding Xiaofeng quickly looked at the surrounding situation after coming out of a boulder in front of him, and then waved his hand to make a gesture, and the four people flashed over the boulder one after another and disappeared into a dense forest.

After the success of this siege of the mountain, Chen Ruoping transferred these two battalions to take over the defense areas of the original Flying Dragon Battalion and the Leopard Battalion.

In the camp, the interrogation of the horse thieves was still going on, and the horse thieves were so hard that they insisted that they were only receiving the ransom there, and that the prisoners did not know anything about the situation on the mountain. Just when the interrogators of the Central Army were at a loss and making no progress, the commander of the military police, the Congjung, hurried into the tent of the Chinese army in the camp.

"Lord Chen, I heard that you ......" The arrow on the arm of the congjun had been pulled out, and the wound should have been bandaged simply, but as soon as he entered the camp, he found that the eighteen masters of the Central Army had gathered together.

"It turned out that eighteen masters gathered, no wonder there was such a strong combat power. Lord Chen, I heard that you have caught a group of horse thieves?" The stunned soldiers were only stunned for a moment, and they quickly returned to normal from stunned.

"yes. The interrogation is ongoing, and we are waiting for news. Chen Ruoping said.

"Your ministry will hand over those horse thieves to us, after all, the horse thieves captured this time are all our people, on the one hand, we can use these horse thieves as an exchange bargaining code, and on the other hand, we can quickly interrogate the whereabouts of our captives, and then rush to the rescue as soon as possible. Guo Congjun said.

"The commander also knows that only the emperor can quickly gather these eighteen people together, and we have received a top-secret order written and issued by the emperor himself, and the emperor is only responsible for the process and results of this operation, and all the captured personnel cannot be transferred to any department. The emperor will personally come over and interrogate him in the next few days. So the situation is in charge... I also know that you are anxious to rescue your subordinates, but please forgive me for not being able to help. Chen Ruoping said.

"Then you have been interrogating for so long, have those horse thieves confessed any useful information, if so, please let me know, I can quickly arrange a rescue operation. "The situation is that the army retreats and seeks second.

"Those horse thieves are very strong-mouthed and don't say anything. It is really not easy for the commander to stay on our side for a long time if he is injured and has to command the bandits, so if we ask for any news, we will inform the commander of the situation as soon as possible. In other cases, please go back and rest first. Chen Ruoping ordered the eviction of customers.

Seeing that the army really had no choice, he had to say a few kind words and turned away.

"I thought this guy was quite able to calm down, but he was in a hurry so quickly. After the army left, Xu Hu whispered.

"I guess it was the horse thief who put pressure on him again, and then he ran out to chase the horse thief. Hit the ambush and was shot and wounded. Lei Leopard said as expected.

"What should we do about this matter, wait for the emperor to ask or will we ask it and report it to the emperor?" Chen Ruoping asked Lei Bao hesitantly.

"Your Excellency is the president's leader and commander-in-chief, why did you ask me instead?" Lei Bao hurriedly corrected his attitude, "but I think it's better to wait for the emperor to ask." Our side sent the prisoners and ransom to take care of them, so that nothing goes wrong. In this way, many things save us from being wicked, and some things that we don't need to understand can also be ignored. ”

"That's fine, but we've been tasked with killing all the horse thieves and freeing the gendarmes' captives. Now we can only be regarded as halfway done, and we must hurry up and continue to act, lest the emperor come and we will not look good. Otherwise, let's go out and find the hiding place of the other horse thieves and even their horse thief leaders before dawn, what do you think?" asked Chen Ruoping.

"I think it's okay, but the horse thief captives and ransom that we have caught now must also be taken care of, lest we go out and the horse thieves take the opportunity to come in and make us steal chickens and rice. He Ming said cautiously.

"Okay, then leave three people here to cooperate with the direct guard battalion to take care of the prisoners and ransom, if someone breaks into the camp and robs people and kills them directly, no matter what, you can't let things go wrong here. Chen Ruoping said and named the names of the three people, and called two directly subordinate guard battalion bands to arrange all kinds of mobile sentinels, dark sentry archers, and even crossbowmen to be solid, and let the three masters and two pipe belts scatter and arrange internal and external fortifications in the camp where the prisoners and ransoms are located.

"My lord, why don't you stay in the camp, and a few of us can go out. Deng Yong said.

"No, I'll act with you. Chen Ruoping shook his head and took fifteen masters out of the camp taking advantage of the bright sky. The west peak is led by Chen Ruoping, He Ming, Deng Yong, Xu Hu, Lei Bao, Mo Cong, Lu Can, and Mu Jia, and the east peak is in charge of the other eight masters such as Peng Tianhua. Since the army of the gendarmes had already done a carpet march and search in front, everyone's progress was much faster, and they rushed to the front of the gendarmerie army as soon as the day was clear.

As the encirclement has been narrowed over the past few days and the gendarmerie army has continued to advance inward to search and suppress, the search area here has been reduced by about two-thirds compared with the beginning. Of course, although the territory has been reduced, it is still as big as a drop of water falling into a river for sixteen people, but because everyone is a master of one in a million, and the speed of their ears and eyes is extraordinary, although there are few people, the search speed is much faster than that of eight hundred gendarmes. They each zigzagged seven or eight miles apart, and in less than half an hour they had advanced more than a mile along the mountain-shaped terrain, and the faster they went, three, four, and five miles every half hour...... As we move deeper and deeper, we get closer and closer to each other.

Just when Chen Ruoping and his team were searching all the way along the mountain, there was already a lot of trouble on the side of the Central Army battalion, and the Congjun personally surrounded the Central Army camp where the horse thieves were held prisoners with 5,000 guards and four military police battalions that urgently reinforced Shuanglong Mountain, and they had to hand over the prisoners to them with two pipe belts directly under the guard battalion.

"Our people should quickly ask for information and go to the mountain to rescue, your department had better cooperate, otherwise I will be easy to speak, and my brothers who are eager to save people are not easy to speak. The military guards and barracks were all tense, and the situation was about to erupt.

"We can understand that the commander and the military police brothers are eager to save people's hearts, but please also understand us, we have received a death order from His Majesty himself, and this group of prisoners cannot be handed over to anyone. If the commander insists on robbing people regardless of the emperor's order, we have no choice but to accompany us to the end in order not to make mistakes in the task. A guard battalion commander rode a horse, standing behind rows of knives, guns, bed crossbows, and chain crossbows, shouting to the soldiers from a distance.

"Besides, the commander has this spare time to fight against us, it is better to take people up the mountain to suppress the bandits as soon as possible, how much time have you wasted on the four battalions from the beginning to the encirclement here, and more horse thief captives have been captured by you in the middle of the morning, why do you have to rob us of these more than 200 prisoners?" said the other guard battalion manager with a blank face.

Four and a half battalions surround two battalions, this is a task that cannot be completed in any case, plus the encirclement cannot be moved, so the so-called encirclement is that the four gendarmerie battalions are arranged in front and behind the central army camp, and more than 5,000 gendarmes clamped the belly of the camp of the central army commander where the horse thieves were captured, and the two wings of the camp were not occupied by the gendarmes, and the guards were still stationed under Chen Ruoping's direct guards.

Just when the two sides were tense and confrontational, a group of soldiers of the Central Army had already received orders to act separately, using shields, spears, bows, arrows, and crossbows to form a variety of sophisticated and strict formations, these two guard battalions were the descendants of Chen Ruoping's lineage, and they practiced the ninety-nine formation more pure than a furnace fire, and as soon as the defensive formation was formed, it immediately gave people a feeling of being solemn and shocking and unbreakable.

"Commander, I don't think this kind of formation will be able to attack in a day, or let's go up the mountain early to suppress the bandits, don't rub with them here. A gendarmerie whispered.

They came from a long distance to urgently reinforce the bandits, the purpose of which was to go up the mountain to suppress the bandits instead of dealing with the Central Army, and their four military police battalions were likely to suffer a lot of casualties when dealing with horse thieves, and if they dealt with the entire battalion and the entire battalion of the Central Army, the consequences would be completely unimaginable, and perhaps more than half of them would have been killed or wounded before they had reached half of the attack. What's more important is that they don't have a reason to do it on their side, they don't even have a reason to force their actions, and it is one thing to really get killed and injured, and how many people dare to go on is also one thing, after all, the gendarme is the gendarme of the imperial court and not the private army of the army, those central armies act according to the order without fear, but the gendarmes will bear a charge of rebellion if they don't get it right, which is something more terrible than death and injury, so in this case, I am afraid that it will be difficult to give an order forcibly. (To be continued......)