The foothills of that area stretch, the villages are scattered, and the roads between the mountains are even more tortuous. It was not until dark that Pei Xiaoyuan received news from his subordinates, and found out that a family lived next to a mountain col more than ten miles away, which was a grandson, and it sounded somewhat similar to the description of the owner of the water shop.

This night, when Pei Xiaoyuan found the mountain residence overnight, it was already the middle of the night.

It is the old man who delivers water and his grandson Chou'er who live here. In the middle of the night, they heard someone knocking on the firewood door, and the black dog in the courtyard barked wildly, waking up the grandfather and grandson, and the ugly child got up, and saw the figures outside the fence wall through the crack in the door, and the fire staff moved, and he was very afraid. The old man was also worried in his heart, asked his grandson to hide back in the house, and walked out with courage, opened the firewood door, and found that it was several people who looked like officers and soldiers, and the leader was very young and quite kind, and said that he was here to inquire about people, so that he did not need to be afraid.

The old man breathed a sigh of relief, bowed and saluted, and heard the other party ask him if he had taken his grandson to Xishi yesterday to deliver water, and nodded yes. The man motioned for his attendants to wait outside the door, and walked in himself.

The old man knew that he should have something else to ask, so he followed suit.

There was a dim oil lamp burning in the room, and the old man wanted to wipe his seat, but he stopped him.

"Don't be polite, my surname is Pei, I heard that you met a person outside the water shop yesterday, and you said something, what is that person's surname? Where to stay? ”

After Pei Xiaoyuan asked, the old man looked hesitant, and then said: "I'm looking for my lost brother-in-law, and I learned that she also came to Chang'an, but I don't know where she is staying." Yesterday someone saw that the person you were talking to outside the water shop looked like her, so I asked for news. You can rest assured, she is my own person and will never be bad for her. ”

Because the other party was an official and came to check late at night, the old man did have some concerns, and after listening to it, he nodded hurriedly.

"I see! It's just that I don't know the name of that little Langjun, let alone where he lives. I only met by chance on the road before, and I met in the West Market yesterday, so I stopped people and said a few words. I'm really sorry, so I asked the general to come for nothing. The old man had a look of guilt on his face.

Although he was a little disappointed, Pei Xiao Yuan didn't expect to know her exact news from this water sender. What he was most anxious to know was whether Qingtou had seen the wrong person, whether that person was her or not.

As long as she is in Chang'an, no matter where she lands, it is not difficult for him to find someone.

He described her appearance to the old man: "The eyebrows are straight and delicate, the eyes are like water droplets, the corners of the eyes are slightly raised, the earlobes are complete, the shape is like ingots, there is a small wound on the forehead above the eyebrows, and the size is about to mine——"

He compared the position below his ear.

The old man thought for a while: "Except for the forehead injury, the old man didn't see it, Xiao Langjun is the appearance you said the general!" Junxiu doesn't say it, he looks like a blessed person! ”

Her forehead injury was shallow, and the old man should not have paid attention to it.

It seems to be her. A wave of excitement rose from the bottom of his heart, but he still didn't dare to confirm it immediately.

"How did you meet her?"

The old man said that Xiao Langjun had taken a car into the city before, and that there was an accident when he met the prince of Xiping County in a hurry.

“…… I went home to rest for a few days, and yesterday I went to deliver water, I didn't expect it to be so coincidental, when I saw him, I stopped and said a few words of gossip, and then Xiao Langjun left, and I came back. ”

At the end of April, Chang'an, which had entered from a long distance, came from afar.

Whether it is the time or direction of the trip, it is consistent with her, even the appearance!

Pei Xiaoyuan finally breathed a sigh of relief at this point, and couldn't help shaking his palm slightly.

Seeing that he was silent, the old man showed a look of chagrin on his face: "It's all my fault, I don't even know what my surname is, and I didn't think to ask him where he lives." I knew I was asking yesterday! ”

Pei Xiaoyuan said that it was okay.

The purpose of his trip has been achieved, knowing that it should not be disturbed in the middle of the night, he suppressed the emotions that were surging in his heart at this moment, and was about to leave, when he suddenly heard the old man say again: "By the way, I remembered!" On the same day, I went back to Lingaoyi to find someone to repair the car, and I heard Gu Twelve say a few words to him, as if he was asking him where to stay after entering the city. General, you go back to the city and go to the West City to look for Gu Twelve and ask again, you should be able to know. ”

Pei Xiaoyuan asked Gu Twelve who it was. The old man explained, Pei Xiaoyuan thanked him, and the old man hurriedly returned the salute, not daring to say anything. At this time, Pei Xiaoyuan saw a child poking his head out behind the door of the inner room, secretly looked at himself with curious eyes, smiled, went up and touched his head, and went out.

From the moment he learned about her to this moment, he hadn't closed his eyes for two nights in a row. But in the second half of the night, on the way back to the city, Pei Xiaoyuan did not feel sleepy at all.

This smooth journey made him feel very excited.

When I returned to the government office, it was already dawn. Because he had business this morning and needed to meet with Han Kerang, he couldn't get out of it, so he sent a subordinate named Liu Bo to visit Gu Twelve in Xishi on his behalf.

If the old man hadn't heard it wrong at the time, the matter would have been brought to a conclusion today.

I really never dreamed that God would arrange it like this. In the months before, when he was tossing and turning day and night just to find her, she was walking south to the capital.

But it doesn't matter, he has no complaints about the hard work he paid in vain because he was misled by her book. He was glad to know where she was soon to go, and he was very happy.

After finding someone, the first thing he did was explain to her the possible misunderstanding that had happened in the hallway early in the morning, and then pick them up. Later......

What will happen in the future, he has not yet thought about it at this moment. When you see someone, it's not too late to talk about it.

In short, his mood was very brisk throughout the afternoon, until Liu Bo came back at noon and brought him a piece of news.

There was indeed a man named Gu Twelve in the West Market, but people told him to run away.

Here's the thing, after Liu Bo arrived, a team of Wuhoupu in Xiangxi City was inquiring about people, and he knew that Gu Twelve was a scoundrel, with his fists a few points harder than ordinary people, causing trouble, and several times in the early years he entered the court for beating people, and when he entered, he tore off his clothes and pointed to the injuries on his body, saying that he had fought the rebels in the early years, and the county order sentence was not heavy, and he came out and threatened the people who sued him, so that in the end everyone was afraid to avoid it, and now there are some idlers who are also not doing their jobs, but many people are still bewitched by him, and they have become the head snake of the West Market.

When Liu Bo inquired, he didn't know who was going to report the letter, that Gu Twelve was about to be a thief himself, and when Liu Bo arrived, he saw that the door was open, and the people had already run away. It was reported that he was seen fleeing straight out of the city, hiding without a trace. Liu Bo had no choice but to come back to report the situation.

This change caught Pei Xiaoyuan off guard and froze for a while.

The first time the boss ordered to do something, it was so messed up.

Liu Bo was quite frightened, and seeing that he was silent for a while, he suggested checking the shop books of the rented houses in Kaiyuanmen and around the West Market from the end of April.

There is a good reason to delineate this range.

In the square near Kaiyuanmen and Xishi, there are hotels with different high and low prices. Normally, people who enter from the far gate can find a suitable temporary place to stay, and they will not go far away to find another place.

The most important thing is that, according to the old man's account, Pei Xiaoyuan concluded that the time when she entered the city was almost the time when the evening twilight was rising, and the time was in a hurry, and it was extremely unlikely that she would go a long way and then go to another place to stay.

As long as she had lived in that area, the hotel was registered, and even if she only stayed for one night and moved out the next day, there was a record.

That's all there is to it at the moment.

Liu Bo took the order and led people to check the area from house to house, and it took a few days of hard work, but he didn't find a person named Ye Xuyu.

"The lower officials were afraid that if the people below did not handle things properly, they personally checked all the 256 large and small hotels and 121 rented houses in the relevant workshop, and there was no record. The lower official is sure that he will not miss it. Or...... Take a look at the East City area? ”

Liu Bo didn't get anything done, so he put forward another idea.

There is also a possibility of this.

Xikaiyuan Gate is a gate that Chang'an receives the most outsiders every day. In order to compete for customers, the inns located in some alleys in the east of the city often send people to guard customers in the evening when the drums are about to sound. It is also common for the newcomers to have dark eyes and hurried, afraid that they will not have time to settle down and be locked out of the square, so it is common to get in the car and be pulled over.

Pei Xiaoyuan put down the matter this time, and as soon as he was free, he personally went to check the places where she might have landed in the area of Dong City, however, there was still no whereabouts.

Chapter 24

In the area of the eastern and western cities, at least half of the hotels and rental houses in the city are concentrated.

Pei Xiaoyuan had spent time and manpower to check the shop books in this range, but without any results, he simply went through all the records of all the large and small hotels and rental houses in Chang'an.

However, no one was found.

From the time Qingtou told him that he suspected of seeing her, half a month has passed until today. These days, except for the necessary official affairs in the government office, all his spare time and energy left are devoted to this matter.

In fact, for him, there is no need to be so time-consuming and laborious to check the records of the shop. With his authority, and even without a reason, as long as he gave an order, the shop books of all the inns in Chang'an could be collected and delivered to him in one night.

The reason why he didn't use this method was because it required the mobilization of as many as a thousand Wuhou shops under the left and right Jinwu guards.

Not long after he arrived, because of the emperor's edict, he became the focus of many people's attention, and every move he made was probably watched by some people. Finding someone is completely his private matter, especially related to Ye Nu, he doesn't want to be so enthusiastic to bring her into the eyes of others, causing unnecessary suspicion, which may be unfavorable to her, so he has been using the manpower under his own government office to conduct secret investigations.

Now that the investigation is finally completed, it is such a result.

Gu Twelve's side also reported the latest situation, but it was still not good news. According to the confession of a butcher in Xishi who usually befriended Gu Twelve, he heard that the ban in Beijing had been tightened recently, and the news that the son-in-law of Shenwu General Chen Sida had committed a crime and surrendered to prison had also spread rapidly in various squares. The so-called heroes don't suffer immediate losses, and temporarily ran away to avoid the limelight, as for where to run, no one knows. Although it has been released here that it is a misunderstanding, but when he receives the message to dispel his doubts and then returns, I don't know what day it will be.

At this point, Pei Xiaoyuan's mood on the road when he returned from Xishan that night had completely vanished.

To say that you are not tired and not disappointed is naturally false.

Now there are only two possibilities left.

First, Qingtou saw the wrong person that day, and the "Xiao Langjun" in the old man's mouth was not her. It's just a person who looks like her.

The second possibility is that she is now living in a hotel or rented house in a certain square in Chang'an, but her name is not registered.

Although the imperial court had a hukou jurisdiction system, it was stipulated that travelers could not cross the official road without passing through the passes. Guests do not keep books, and the hotel is not allowed to stay overnight. Especially in Chang'an, due to the frequent flow of people, the sources are complex, and the management of outsiders is even stricter, not to mention large and small hotels and rental houses, even residents can not keep outsiders at home, even if relatives and friends arrive, more than three days do not report to the square, it is also regarded as a crime. Hu Cao will inspect the rental houses of the hotels and hotels under its jurisdiction from time to time, and if there are problems, they will be punished accordingly. But one of the shop taxes is charged according to the head of the store book, so the hotel has concealed from time to time, and then give Fang Zheng or other related people some benefits, every time you check the ventilation report, turn a blind eye, and if you are lucky, you can pay a small amount of money, and if you are unlucky, you will be caught, eat some fines, and the next time it will be the same, it is commonplace.

Is it possible that when she was staying, the hotel where she stayed did not register her according to the rules?

Pei Xiaoyuan cheered up, assigned things to his subordinates, and began to inspect Wuhou shops one by one again. Everywhere she went, she summoned the team to ask the inns in Mingfang that had done this kind of thing, and then went to the door to check the people who stayed on the night she arrived, described their appearance, and checked whether they were there. The hotel was forced by Jin Wuwei's coercion, thinking that it was arresting key criminals, and did not dare to deceive, but he found out a lot of missing guests, but there was still no one to find.

In fact, there are almost no hotels in Chang'an that do not deliberately miss the number of people, the difference is only that there is more concealment or less, and this round of implementation is more troublesome than the previous one. The government office is newly opened, and he still has business to do in the department, and the degree of daily busyness can be imagined. But once he was free, he personally searched for them one by one, and went from square to square, no matter how slow he was, he never had the slightest idea of giving up.

Time passed day by day, and the emperor lived up to his wishes, and in the evening of this day, things finally came to a turning point.

At that time, he was still discussing with Han Kerang and others in the Jinwu Health Office.

The Shenshu Palace is about to be completed, and the significance of this palace goes without saying. For Jin Wuwei, more importantly, this palace is the place where the saint celebrates next year's longevity festival, and the stakes are very high, and there must be no mistakes.

In a few days, on the fifth day of the next month, the crown prince will lead hundreds of officials to the new palace on behalf of the saint to hold a ceremony of thanking the earth and rewarding the gods. Han Kerang ordered Pei Xiaoyuan to accompany him when he arrived, and familiarize himself with the venue as soon as possible in the following days.

In Han Kerang's words, it is so familiar that even the spine beasts squatting on the top of the Shenshu Palace have a few claws, and their faces are round or pointed, and they must also remember it clearly.

Pei Xiaoyuan should be. At this time, it was already evening, after the discussion, Han Kerang walked out of the Jinwu Office with him, outside the door, he took the reins of the horse handed by the entourage, and was about to turn over on the horse, suddenly as if he remembered something, stopped, looked at Pei Xiaoyuan who saw him off, and teased with a smile: "I heard that you recently robbed Hucao's job, and the owner of the Chang'an Hotel trembled when he saw you?" ”

Pei Xiaoyuan knew that he and his subordinates kept going in and out of various squares to find people, even if others didn't know, in Han Kerang's place, sooner or later they would not be able to hide it. He explained that after visiting an old man, the old man had a relationship with him in the past, and learned that his descendants happened to be in the capital now, but they didn't know where to stay and wanted to find each other.

"I don't want to alarm the general, so I'm smiling."

His explanation itself was the truth, Han Kerang didn't ask anything else after listening to it, and nodded, "I don't have any other intentions, you just came not long ago, I saw you go out early and return late, I'm afraid you will be too tired." If you need it, you don't need to scruple to mobilize all the Wuhou shops under the left and right Jinwu guards, which is much faster than yourself. ”

"Searching for people is my private matter, and it is enough to use the manpower under the government office, and General Meng understands it, how dare I transfer the people below. The saint's longevity is approaching, and everyone has something important to do. ”

Han Kerang his head: "It's okay, you can do it yourself." ”

After Han Kerang left, Pei Xiaoyuan did not return to his residence, but continued yesterday's visit and rode directly to Xishi along Jinguangmen Street.

The sound of drums in the twilight of the city became more urgent, and the wide streets were full of hurried homemakers. He went against the pedestrians, and when he rode a horse to the vicinity of Xishi, he met Liu Bo, who was about to see him, and when he saw it from afar, he galloped on his horse, and said that he had finally made a breakthrough in finding someone.

The first thing explained by the boss did not go well, and Liu Bo was inevitably anxious in his heart, but at this moment he finally had news, and he reported it as soon as possible.

Several times before, he thought that he would be able to find someone, but in the end, Pei Xiaoyuan became much more cautious, and he didn't dare to immediately hold out hope and ask questions.

Liu Bo said that a Wuhou shop team had just come, "This person's name is Chen Shao, who has been on duty in Yanpingmen for many years, and said that he had met an outsider that day, and the situation was consistent, so he reported it for Si Cheng to verify." ”

Pei Xiaoyuan's heart, which was already gradually tired, jumped because of the news that suddenly arrived.

"What about people?" But he still didn't dare to be too hopeful.

"I've brought him to meet him!"

Pei Xiaoyuan raised his eyes and saw that a middle-aged Wu Hou not far away had quickly turned over and dismounted, came to his horse, and bowed his head: "Humble Chen Shao, knock to see Pei Sicheng!" ”

Pei Xiaoyuan immediately got off the horse, went up to support the other party's arms, and wanted to help him up to ask for details. This Chen Shao didn't know why, his eyes kept looking at him, his expression was very excited, Pei Xiaoyuan held it a few times, he was finally willing to get up, and then calmed down, recalling that night, after dark, he took a team of Wuhou to patrol the street as usual, passing by the northwest gate of Yongpingfang, and met a young man who patted the door to enter the workshop.

Because of its proximity to the empty land in the south of the city, there are not as many martial arts as in the north of the city, so it is inevitable that there will be people who commit adultery and criminals who take advantage of the darkness to sneak to avoid trouble and hide. At that time, the dusk drum had stopped, and the doors of the workshop had long been closed, and he knew that the gatehouse was for small profits, and often let people into the workshop without permission, so he went up to investigate.

"That Xiaolang Jun arrived, saying that he entered the city from the far gate, entered late, and couldn't find a place to stay in that area, so he came all the way along the north and south straight streets to knock on the door indiscriminately."

This must be false, and he should have found it on purpose. But I know that there are often strangers who have arrived at the first time and find it difficult to find a place to spend the night before the dusk drums settle, so I was not embarrassed, and saw that he looked like a man who was a traitor, and after checking the place, it was indeed not a forgery, so I let him in. I just learned from a brother that Liu Sijie was looking for someone recently, and I remembered that my age and appearance were similar, so I reported it to Liu Sijie. ”

"That's right! That Xiao Langjun is a famous painter, I checked his baggage and saw some brush pigments. I also have the impression of the name on the office, the surname is Ye, the name is Yuyu, and the name is issued by the Luzhou government. ”

Hearing this, Pei Xiaoyuan's heart was already beating a drum.