Liu Jizu was a little puzzled by this, so he rode to Elder Long's car and asked what the reason was.

Elder Long probed out to take a look, snorted, and said, "This is not bad, the King of Chu took the opportunity of the death of the old emperor half a year ago to control Jiangbei Dao. The people here have not been plagued by these people for a long time, and now they just haven't eaten enough, and Jiangnan Province is even worse than here, and it is almost hell on earth.

The bastard King of Chu has no ambitions, and he doesn't want to manage the two roads well as the capital to compete for power, so he only knows how to connive at his subordinates to loot on a large scale. These people have already practiced the methods very well in Jiangnan Province, and they first used various excuses to continuously increase the taxes of ordinary people to loot the people's fat and ointment, and the people naturally became more and more poor. This is only on the surface, while raising taxes, they will also conduct door-to-door inspections, and when they find out the situation of each household, mainly after knowing which family is rich, they will use all kinds of despicable means to encroach. Jiangnan Province was squeezed dry by the King of Chu and his gang in this way, and now it is concocted in the same way, and it has come to Jiangbei Province to cause disaster. ”

Liu Jizu was very angry when he heard this, and scolded: "King Chu is really a bastard, he is really lawless!"

"It is indeed lawless, the king of Chu has been doing evil in Jiangnan Province for many years, and the court does not care about it at all, and now he is tossing Jiangbei Province again, the world of the Great Zhou Dynasty has been so scourged, and it is called no heavenly reason. I think that the common people in Chudi may have been the first to start rebelling, and now there are many robbers and bandits in various mountains and lakes in Jiangnan Province, and Jiangbei Province will soon become like that if it continues to develop like this. But these people don't care about these at all, they only know how to make a lot of money. ”

Liu Jizu asked angrily: "He is full of evil, and no one will kill him?"

Elder Long sighed and said, "Why not, I don't know how many people want to kill him, eat his flesh, and drink his blood. There have been three large-scale popular uprisings alone, and more than a dozen have been executed for his assassination. But after each riot or assassination, he intensified his looting and oppression of the local people.

It is said that when he came to Chudi in the first few years, although he was greedy and did a lot of bad things, he did not loot so much. It was only after someone assassinated him that he began to take revenge on the local people, and after each riot assassination, he increased the tax, saying that it was for the suppression of bandits. But the people of Chu have never eaten this set, and they still continue to assassinate, which has almost become a vicious circle. Now the people of Jiangnan Province can no longer live, and Jiangbei Province has only been occupied by him for half a year, and they are already panicking.

And this King of Chu is as timid as a mouse, smart as a fox, and very strict in his precautions, and the entire periphery of Star City is full of troops raised by him, and the Star City is tightly surrounded in it, and the army accounts for almost sixty percent of the two provinces in the south and north of the Yangtze River. Didn't you see that even the soldiers of the post station were transferred here, most of them were sent to defend the satellite cities, and a few were sent to guard the various passes.

This is only the perimeter of the city, and it is a large-scale war, a riot of the people, and a large number of green forest heroes.

In addition to the regular guards and patrols of the government, the entire Star City is also full of his eyeliner and thugs. He also paid a lot of money to buy and hire many masters of the rivers and lakes, and the entire Star City was under his control. As long as a suspicious person enters Star City, they are under secret surveillance for twelve hours.

Moreover, this bastard didn't believe anyone, even when he was doing that with the woman, there were four guards watching him, and when it was over, he also slept by himself. I also heard that he had built ten secret rooms in his royal palace, which were connected to each other, and only he had the key, and no one knew that he slept in that secret room at night. And when he is awake, it is impossible for someone he does not trust to walk within ten steps of him, how can you kill him. ”

Liu Jizu also had a feeling of powerlessness when he heard this, he didn't expect that this King of Chu was actually such a person. He also sighed, and then followed Elder Long's instructions and drove all the way to the southeast of the Weir City.

During the whole journey, they were still cautious, not staying in the inn, but no longer rushing to the night, but camping in the wilderness early in the afternoon.

Although this is much slower, it is also a helpless thing, and the long day and night journey is unbearable for people and mules and horses. And in this way, Liu Jizu also has time to use the afternoon and evening to teach everyone to ride horses and archery.

Among them, Wu Lun and Elder Long can ride horses, and they only need to learn archery, and with the martial arts of the two of them, learning this is a piece of cake. Ye Zi and Seventh Sister have more or less half a year of martial arts training, and they learn quite quickly, but their archery strength is poor, and there is no burden on horseback riding, and they learn quickly. Only Shi Niang has never practiced martial arts, and Liu Jizu simply stopped teaching her to shoot arrows, and only taught her to ride a horse.

They had been traveling day and night before, and the people and animals had worked very hard, and they had reached their limits, so they had to rest well after entering Gangbuk Province.

Fortunately, Liu Jizu and Wu Lun have superb cooking skills, and this slowed down, their eating has been greatly improved, and Liu Jizu can also cook a variety of dishes with different tastes, which everyone is a little surprised. Wu Lun can cook, after all, it is a gourmet, he has traveled south and north for decades, and if he eats more delicious food, his natural cooking skills will be higher. But before Liu Jizu came to the sect, he never came out, so how could he cook a lot of dishes with different tastes?

So when Ye Zi asked him, Liu Jizu, who was showing off his cooking skills, was scared into a cold sweat on his back, he turned his brain quickly, and finally thought of a pretext before the cold sweat on his forehead came out, "My cooking skills are family heirloom, my great-grandfather is from the north, my grandmother is from the south, and my mother is a local, so the tastes from all over the north and south can be made by the family, and the family is delicious, I have been interested in this since I was a child, and I often help my mother cook, and I have learned it over time." ”

This is true or false, and no one else can find any fault, so everyone can only listen to it. But with the delicious food, everyone was happy, especially Wu Lun and Ye Zi. Later, Wu Lun simply didn't do it, and became a shopkeeper, only letting Liu Jizu cook, and then tasting and commenting after eating, and finding faults.

Ye Zi's mouth was very tricky, and she couldn't make a fire a lot of times in the first few days, so she could only eat cold and dry food, and she couldn't eat much at all, which tortured her so much that her face was thin. Since Liu Jizu barbecued meat for them one night, she has been looking forward to Liu Jizu cooking for them every day.

On this day, they found a hidden place early, parked the car, fed the livestock, cleaned up, and Elder Long went to practice horseback riding and archery.

Liu Jizu has already told them what they should teach, they just need to keep practicing and getting familiar with it. After arranging for Laifu and the Black Tiger to be on guard, he first went to find a lot of firewood and grass, then took out the marching stove and began to prepare food for everyone.

At this time, Yezi, who had never worked, actually came over to help for the first time, in fact, she was just greedy and wanted to eat it first, because Liu Jizu made them roast sheep and mutton soup today.

It is really rare to be able to eat this on the way to escape, this sheep was bought by Liu Jizu in a larger town when he happened to see a freshly slaughtered sheep from the butcher shop next door.

Liu Jizu wanted to improve the food for everyone, and eating something good could help Wu Lun and Elder Long recover as soon as possible, so he bought it all and let the butcher cut it in half, half of it was roasted and eaten, and the other half was chopped into pieces with internal organs to cook soup and eaten.

Ye Zi saw the mutton, and he had been looking forward to it all the way for a long time.

When the fire burned, Liu Jizu washed the half of the washed and chopped pieces, blanched it with hot water and fished it out, then boiled the water again, boiled the meat and internal organs, and filled a large pot.

When the other half was about to be roasted, he made a wooden rack and lit a fire, and when the fire was almost burned, he skewered the half of the sheep that had been pickled on the road with an iron spear, and roasted it on the fire, and smeared spices and oil as he roasted.

After more than half an hour, the smell was already fragrant, and the other people didn't have the heart to ride horses and shoot arrows, and waited around the side.

Liu Jizu looked at it almost, and slipped it down with a short blade, originally wanted to taste it himself, but he was about to stuff it into his mouth, but when he raised his eyes, he saw that Ye Zi was staring at him with little stars in his eyes, and his saliva was about to flow down, so he had to hand it to her to taste it first.

After Ye Zi took it, he was still a little embarrassed, but he couldn't resist the temptation of the food, so he swallowed it in one mouthful, and nodded while chewing: "It's cooked, it's cooked! It's ready to eat! Hurry up and divide it!"

Everyone took out their short knife dagger to cut the meat and eat, Wu Lun also took out a jar of leek flower sauce he treasured, for everyone to dip and eat, this mutton and leek flower is a perfect match, the taste is indeed very good, fresh and delicious, the outside is charred and the inside is tender, the skin is crispy and the meat is fragrant, everyone eats a mouth full of oil, after eating the meat, the bones are thrown in a basin, and they will be fed to the dog later.

After eating the roasted and cooked, Liu Jizu sprinkled salt before coming out of the pot, everyone took out the chopsticks, and ate the pot of meat and internal organs, and drank not a drop of the soup.

Liu Jizu took the bones to the two dogs to eat, the two dogs had already been waiting, saliva was flowing all over the ground, Liu Jizu gave them food, and specially left the sheep's head to Laifu, the sheep's hooves were given to the black tiger, and the two dogs couldn't wait to gobble it up.

The rest of the journey was about the same, and two days later in the morning, they came to the vicinity of the weir city. It wasn't until he saw the city gate from a distance that Elder Long finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Before entering the city, he specially found a hidden place, called a few people to instruct: "This is only a day's journey from Wuwei Valley, and Yancheng is as important as Yong'an City to the academy. The daily supply of Wuwei Valley depends on here, so we can rest assured here that it is difficult for the academy's forces to penetrate here. But one thing to remind you is that we should not reveal our identities here, although we escaped from the academy, outsiders do not know. What's more, the relationship between Wuwei Valley and the academy has always been ambiguous, and it is difficult to distinguish friend from foe, in case they attack us, it will be troublesome, this group of people is good at using poison, it can be said that it is impossible to prevent it. Let's hide everything that can reveal our identities, and be careful not to get into trouble. ”

Everyone agreed, and sorted it out according to Elder Long's request, mainly the Xuanyuan Sword and the Hundred Treasure Bag, which had distinct characteristics, and the Xuanyuan Sword had been placed in the car before, and now it was hidden in the dark compartment. The treasure bags are all hidden in the clothes, in fact, the treasure bags are all the same, if you don't look at the label, or if you are more familiar with the style of the academy's treasure bags, it is difficult to see the difference. What's more, the academy's treasure bag is still for takeout, it's just this special point that they are carrying now, not for takeaway.

The men put everything that looked suspicious in order, let the two dogs hide in the carriage, and then hit the road again.

Soon they were in the city of the Dam.

This city was much smaller than the Jinyang City he had seen, but it was also much larger than the average county seat, and it should be the size of Dazhou City.

A few people entered the city, and the city here was extremely loosely guarded, and no one cared about it at all.

Liu Jizu entered the city and finally felt a hint of prosperity in Jiangbei Province, but many people were sad. Liu Jizu thought to himself that these people might be worried about the methods of the King of Chu behind, and he remembered the scene when he entered the Jiangbei Dao Pass, and thought to himself that it was not easy to get out of Jiangbei Dao, how should we get out? Elder Long didn't seem to be in a hurry about these things, as if he had a way to deal with them, and he was very familiar with this place, so after entering the city, he led everyone straight to a mansion.

He knocked on the door, and after a while, an old butler came out, and when he opened the door, he saw that it was Elder Long, he was startled at first, and hurriedly smiled and saluted, and said, "Master, you can come back, I will go and tell Madame immediately!"

The old housekeeper welcomed them into the hall first, and then went to the back room to report the news, and after a while a middle-aged woman with two maids came out.

Liu Jizu took a look and saw that although this woman was a little older, her charm still existed, and her figure was maintained very well, and she must have been a big beauty when she was young.

As soon as she saw Elder Long, her eyes turned red at first, and when she saw that there were still outsiders, she couldn't help it, first saluted Elder Long, and then asked what these guests were called.

Elder Long hurriedly helped her up and introduced her one by one: "This is Wu Lun, my senior nephew, and this is his wife. This is his apprentice Li Chuanzong, who is now also my grandson-in-law. This is the seventh sister, this is Ye Zi, my granddaughter from Jinyang, both of them are the fiancées of the ancestry. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my lady in the city of the Dam. ”

The lady probably knew about Elder Long's situation, and when she heard it, she was not an outsider, so she gave up her seat one by one and let the maid serve tea, Wu Lun and the others also hurriedly saluted, but they didn't know what to call it, so they had to keep their voices silent.

Liu Jizu thought to himself that he didn't know how many women Elder Long had, there were a lot of pigeons in that cage, and they were still so far away, I really didn't know how he coped with it.

Elder Long asked softly, "I've had something to do in the sect for more than half a year, and I don't have time to come back, how is my family?" Did you receive the letter I sent a few years ago?"

Hearing this, Madame Long became sad again, and said, "I have received everything, including the pigeon sent a few days ago, and we have prepared it according to your instructions." But now that Jiangbei Province is occupied by the king of Chu, he knows that the tax will be raised, and the government has come to our house two days ago to check, and all the valuable things in the house have been registered, saying that they will be taxed according to the property of each household. We inquired, and this is not a tax at all, but an inventory of the property of each household, and then find a way to seize it. ”