Chapter 135: Crossing the River in White
Xu Zhi and others wrote in the letter: King Luo Bin escaped from the tomb of King Song with half a page of proverbs, and went to Yangzhou overnight, and when he returned to Yangzhou, the imperial army had already occupied Huaiyin and forced Gaoyou. Under the advice of the strategist Xue Zhang, Xu Jingye decided to abandon Yangzhou, prepare to go to Taizhou, enter Tongzhou, and flee to Goryeo by boat.
The rebel army in Yangzhou was leaderless and chaotic. King Luo Bin saw that the city of Yangzhou was full of fleeing people, and there were bandits everywhere who took advantage of the fire to rob, he sighed, and with a heavy heart, he came to Xu Hui's mansion and saw that a general of the volunteer army was about to lead his troops to break in. King Luo Bing hurriedly stopped it, and the general knew that King Luo Bing was once the secretary of the British public, so he did not dare to be presumptuous, and retreated to the side.
King Luo Bin was very relieved to see that Xu Hui's wife and newborn son were safe, and decided to hide the affairs of Songzhou from Mrs. Xu. When Mrs. Xu saw that King Luo Bin had returned alone, she did not bring any news from her husband, and cried that she wanted to take the child to Songzhou to find her husband. King Luo Bin couldn't dissuade him, and in desperation, he had to tell Mrs. Xu the news of Xu Hui's martyrdom in Songzhou.
After hearing this, Mrs. Xu was so sad that her eyes turned black and she fainted. King Luo Bin hurriedly asked the servant to invite Lang Zhong, prescribed medicine to Mrs. Xu, and waited for her to wake up and comforted her a lot before leaving.
King Luo Bin returned to his house and saw that his wife was about to give birth in three months, and the people in Yangzhou at this time were in turmoil, and it was really not a place to stay for a long time. In order to preserve the bloodline of the Xu and Luo families, King Luo Bin thought twice and decided to persuade Mrs. Xu to leave Yangzhou with his family.
At that time, Mrs. Xu was filial piety, and Xu Gongzi was not yet full-term, so she was reluctant to leave Yangzhou for a while, but under the repeated persuasion of King Luo Bin, Mrs. Xu reluctantly agreed to leave the turbulent Yangzhou immediately.
Seeing that everything was in place, and seeing that the grain and grass of the righteous army had not yet left Yangzhou, King Luo Bin decided to cross the river and transport half of the treasures and belongings to the south of the Yangtze River, find a paradise to live in seclusion, and then wait for the change of the situation in the world, waiting for the opportunity to avenge Xu Hui.
On a stormy night, King Luo Bin hugged his wife who was about to give birth, Mrs. Xu and Xu Gongzi in his arms, and all the entourage guards wore cloaks and white filial piety clothes and boarded a large merchant ship. King Luo Bing also asked the servants to hide half of the treasures of the rebel army in their bags and stretchers, and then let the boatmen sail and sail.
As soon as the boat sailed out of the dock, I saw that the fire in Yangzhou City was soaring, and there were sounds of fighting and crying everywhere, and suddenly someone on the shore shouted: "General Li, we searched the entire Yangzhou City, but we didn't catch the thief leader Xu Jingye, Xu Hui, Xue Zhang, Luo Binwang and others." Look, general, there is a big ship in front of you that is fleeing to Jiangnan in the rain, will there be big fish on this boat?"
Li Xiaoyi glanced at Jiang Xin and ordered: "Soldiers, quickly cross the river to chase, if you can capture Xu Jingye alive, you will be rewarded with 10,000 gold, and the marquis of 10,000 households will be sealed!
King Luo Bin saw that although Li Xiaoyi had broken through Yangzhou, he had not captured the British duke, and he was much more comforted. At this time, a maid came and told her that the pain in her abdomen was unbearable, and that she was afraid that she was about to give birth to a baby, and that there was no midwife on the ship, so she did not know what to do.
Just when King Luo Bin was very hesitant, Mrs. Xu walked out of the cabin and reproached the maid, saying, "There is a big river in front and a chasing soldier in the back, General Luo is our backbone, don't let him mess up his mind! There is no midwife, I will deliver Mrs. Luo!"
As soon as King Luo Bin was about to stop him, Mrs. Xu waved her hand at him and ordered the maid to prepare hot water.
Luo Bingwang saw that the boats of the officers and soldiers behind him were getting closer and closer, and he personally came to the bow of the boat to steer and paddle in the face of the wind and rain. When the helmsmen saw that King Luo Bing was dressed in white, with a straight waist and eyes like torches, like a bright light in the wind and rain, and a flag fluttering in the wind, they were very moved, and they all shouted the trumpet, shook the oars hard, and gradually left the officers and soldiers behind.
At this time, the boat had sailed into the center of the river, the wind and waves in the center of the river were even greater, Luo Bingwang stood unsteadily several times, and was almost swept into the river by the wind and waves, but he was not afraid at all, and silently recited in his mouth: "God bless the children of the Xu and Luo families to be safe, God bless the book of heaven to survive this catastrophe!", the guards on the side of the boat also firmly held the penny in their hands and pointed out the course of the boat.
At this time, I heard the loud cry of a child from the cabin, and a maid came to announce the good news: "Congratulations to the master, congratulations to the master, the lady has given birth to a son!"
Luo Bin Wang was overjoyed and said: "It's really the sky has eyes, and my Luo family has a queen!", everyone was overjoyed when they heard this, rowed their oars, and had more strength, and finally left the pursuers far behind, and a few small boats of the officers and soldiers were gradually submerged by the wind and waves in the center of the river, and the soldiers on the boat shouted, fell into the Yangtze River one after another, and fed the fish and turtles.
When King Luo Bing saw that everyone was out of danger, he entered the cabin to visit his wife and children. In the cabin, Mrs. Luo and Mrs. Xu were coaxing the children and talking. When Mrs. Luo saw King Luo Bin come in, she smiled and said, "Master, look at our child! After speaking, he handed a white and fat boy in his arms to Luo Bingwang.
Luo Bingwang took the child, thanked Mrs. Xu first, and then looked at his son carefully for a while. Mrs. Luo saw that her husband liked the child very much, and asked him to give her son a name. King Luo Bin repeatedly said: "This army is in chaos, I hope my son can be safe, by the way, Brother Xu's son is called Xu Ping, and our son is called Luo An!
Mrs. Luo nodded and said, "As long as the master likes it, I know what a woman knows!"
The next day, just after dawn, Luo Bin Wang led his family across the Yangtze River, they wanted to reach Runzhou on the other side of the river by boat, but due to the strong northeast wind in the evening, blowing their boat to Jiang Shan in Jiang Zhou, Luo Bin Wang knew that Li Xiaoyi's army would be able to catch up here in one day, he quickly ordered his family to go ashore, and threw all the heavy gold and silver treasures into Zixia Lake in Jiang Mountain, and locked half of the page with a cast iron box, and buried it deep under a large pine tree on the south bank of Zixia Lake.
King Luo Bin took care of everything, and then led everyone back to the Yanziji ferry in Jiangzhou, seeing that the ferry was constantly checked by officials and soldiers, everyone did not dare to take the waterway, so they had to go east by land, and walked for three days before they arrived at the city of Runzhou.
King Luo Bin saw that there were fleeing homeless people everywhere outside Runzhou City, and there was a notice posted on the city wall to help the homeless, so he boldly followed the homeless people to the west gate of Runzhou. The soldiers guarding the city saw that Luo Bingwang and the others were dressed in vegetarian clothes and linen, and knew that they had just died of their relatives, and they were afraid of taking advantage of bad luck, so they did not carefully investigate, so they let them into Runzhou City. Poor Luo Bingwang and others were not familiar with the place in Runzhou City, and they were afraid that the local officers and soldiers would recognize them, so they had to find a small fishing village by the river to live in, and declared that their name was Robin, and they had fled from Xuanzhou to Runzhou.
One day, King Luo Bing walked along the canal alone, crossed the Huju Bridge, and came to a cemetery in the southern suburbs of Runzhou, he saw that this place was far away from the downtown area of the city, and there was a hill in the middle, although it was barren, but it was also a good piece of auspicious land, and he thought: If he can be buried here after death, it will be in vain.
King Luo Bing passed through the abrupt graves, and came to the middle hill, and when he saw that there was no path up the hill, and knew that no one had ever come to this barren mountain, he carefully passed through the dense thorns, and braved the pain of being bitten by snakes and insects, and climbed to the top of the hill, and saw that there was a house that was about to collapse in the depths of the trees on the top of the mountain.
King Luo Bin pushed open the dilapidated hut, looked at the murals on the wall, and knew that this mountain was called Shouqiu Mountain, this house was originally the Tibetan Zhai of Emperor Wu of the Song Dynasty, and he later discovered the secret of the statue, found the three stone chambers underground, and slightly camouflaged and modified them as his secret study.
From then on, King Luo Bin stayed at home during the day to accompany his wife and raise his son, and at night when he had free time, he went to Tibet to write his vigorous life, but he was worried that this secret would lead to endless troubles for his children and grandchildren, so he thought of the trick of writing with rice fat with the intention of letting his children and grandchildren know and not wanting them to know. The days are getting faster and faster, and more and more comfortable.
But good days are always short-lived, a month later, Luo Bingwang went out to buy a full moon steamed bun for his son, and saw a notice posted at the entrance of the village, and the neighbors watched and talked about it. When the neighbors saw King Luo Bing coming, they pointed and pointed, and after a while, they dispersed.
King Luo Bin saw that the notice read: "If there are any foreigners in the villages and towns, please report to the local government in time, if you do not report the information, you will be guilty of rebellion!"
It turned out that after the city of Yangzhou was broken, Li Xiaoyi got a report and knew that Xu Jingye led the remnants of the rebels to flee to Taizhou, in a vain attempt to go to sea from Tongzhou and flee to Goguryeo. Li Xiaoyi was overjoyed, led his troops to chase after him, and annihilated Xu Jingye and Xue Zhang's remnants in Tongzhou in one fell swoop, but the whereabouts of Xu Hui, Luo Binwang and other leaders of the rebel army were unknown, which made Li Xiaoyi very nervous, afraid that someone would slander him for privately disrupting the party.
Li Xiaoyi had no choice but to repeatedly postpone the schedule of returning to Beijing to face the saint, and secretly ordered Huainan and Jiangnan provinces to inspect Xu Hui and Luo Bin Wang for betraying the party, and the military order was carried out to the boundary of Runzhou. Of course, the governor of Runzhou did not dare to slack off, and notified all prefectures and counties to check the foreign personnel according to the map.
King Luo Bin knew that the situation was very dangerous, so he immediately returned home, informed his wife and Mrs. Xu to take some silver taels, and took the children with him at any time, and prepared to leave Runzhou.
At dinner time, an aunt in the village saw a group of officials walking from the river embankment with swords in the distance. The aunt was very righteous, and hurriedly knocked on the door and told King Luo Bin to let their family leave quickly.
King Luo Bin thanked his aunt and said to his wife and Mrs. Xu: "I took a few guards and tried to lure away the officers and soldiers, you take the children, take advantage of the night, hide in the reeds by the river first, and wait for us to come back!"
Those messengers tiptoed and were about to besiege Luo Bingwang's family, but Luo Bingwang pushed open the gate and took a few family members with him, shouting while running: "Dog official, grandpa is the Luo Bing Wang you want to arrest, if you have the ability, come and arrest us!"
The group of officers and soldiers did not know what to do, turned the horse's head, and chased after Luo Bin Wang and others, Luo Bin King saw that the other party was riding a horse, reflexively bent his bow and arrows, and shot the leader of the general under the horse with an arrow. When those officers and soldiers saw that King Luo Bin was fierce, they couldn't help but stop and shouted loudly: "Be careful, everyone, the traitor has a weapon in his hands, let's press step by step, don't let the traitor run away!"
King Luo Bin fought and retreated, and simply traveled south along the canal, introducing the group of servants into the cemetery, and then thinking about how to escape. At this time, the bow and arrows in his hand had also been shot out, and the guards around him were all sacrificed one by one, so King Luo Bin had no choice but to hide in the Tibetan Zhai on the top of Shouqiu Mountain. The group of officers and soldiers were very surprised to see King Luo Bing suddenly disappear from under their noses, so they had to search around, and finally found a broken house on the top of the mountain, so they surrounded this broken house and shouted loudly: "The rebels inside come out quickly, otherwise we will set fire to the house and trap you in the house!"
At this time, Luo Bing Wang had already sneaked into the underground stone room, and when the officers and soldiers saw that no one answered in the house, they set fires everywhere, until half of the Tibetan Zhai was burned, and then they entered the house to check, and they saw that the house was full of white bones, full of charred things, and they could not tell whether Luo Bing Wang had been burned to death for a while, so they had to do it hastily, and reported to the upper authorities that Xu Hui and Luo Bing Wang, the leaders of the rebels, had been burned to death. After Li Xiaoyi received the report in Yangzhou, he was relieved to go north and returned to Luoyang to inform Wu Zetian of the incident. Wu Zetian was very happy when he received Li Xiaoyi's good news, and immediately ordered that the rebels had been exterminated and amnesty would be granted to the world.
It was not until the rumors of the government's pursuit subsided that Luo Bin Wang Fang came out of the Tibetan Zhai, he secretly returned to his small fishing village, and saw that the neighbors were talking about it: This surnamed Luo turned out to be Xu Cheng's subordinate, he was besieged by the official army on a small hill and burned alive, poor two ladies of his family, after hearing the bad news, they both hanged themselves under a big willow tree by the river the next day, but unfortunately their young children were missing.
After hearing the bad news, King Luo Bin was immediately discouraged, and thought: "I am so hard, not to save a little blood and blood of the Xu and Luo families, now that the two ladies have died tragically, the child will definitely not be able to be saved!", thinking about it, he returned to Shouqiu Mountain to hide and fast, and after writing this letter, he committed suicide by taking poison in the underground stone room.
When Xu Zhi read this, he remembered the difficulties of his ancestors, and regardless of everyone around him, he couldn't help but burst into tears and cried.
Zhou Yuanzhi, Luo Suying, He Mengjiao, Gao Xiaohui, and Li Cunxiao saw this, and they were also infected by the heroic feats of Xu Hui and Luo Bingwang, and they shed tears one after another.
Gao Xiaohui asked, "What happened to the children of Senior Xu and Senior Luo, and are they still alive in the world?"
Li Cunxiao wiped his tears and replied: "Sister Xiaohui, do you still need to ask? The children of the two predecessors of Xu and Luo are the ancestors of Brother Xu and Sister Luo, if they die, where will there be Brother Xu and Sister Luo later?"
Zhou Yuanzhi also nodded and said, "Yes, Sister Xiaohui." Cunxiao is right, this book was written by Luo's predecessors, and he can only write about what he knew before his death. If Senior Luo knew the story behind it, and knew that their child hadn't died yet, maybe he wouldn't have committed suicide! If you want to know the story behind it, I'm afraid you can only ask Brother Xu or Sister Luo!"
He Mengjiao said curiously: "Sister Yuanzhi, how do you know that Brother Xu and Sister Su Ying will know what will happen later?"
Zhou Yuanzhi smiled: "I also guess this, because every family has some stories that will be passed down from generation to generation, maybe Brother Xu and Sister Luo will know some of their family's past!"
Xu Zhi nodded at Zhou Yuanzhi and said to Luo Suying: "Sister Suying, why don't you tell the story behind to everyone?"
Luo Suying hurriedly shook her head and said, "Brother Xu, brothers and sisters! I'm sorry, Suying has been amnesia for a long time and has long forgotten what happened in the past! Let Brother Xu tell everyone about it!"
Xu Zhi saw that Luo Suying's eyes were full of evasion and uneasiness, which was completely different from the pure and ignorant Suying he knew before, so he had to say: "The story behind Xu Zhi has also been passed down from generation to generation by his ancestors!", after speaking, he continued to tell with tears in his eyes:
It turned out that Mrs. Xu and Mrs. Luo were hiding in the reeds, and when they saw that King Luo Bin did not come back the next day, they heard passers-by talk about it, and only then did they know that King Luo Bin had been besieged by the officials and troops on a barren mountain last night, and was burned alive, and the heads were sent to the capital. After the two ladies learned the news, they were all discouraged, thinking that they couldn't hide from their two women's families, and they couldn't run far, so it was better to kill themselves than to die of humiliation, but the two ladies felt sorry for the two young children who were born not long ago, and they didn't know what to do with them.
At this time, a fisherman who was sitting in a wooden basin picking water chestnut lotus found two ladies hidden in the reeds, and shouted that he wanted to report to the official to receive the reward. When the two ladies saw the greedy fisherman ashore, they went to the government to report to the official, and left a large wooden basin in the water, and they took the opportunity to put the two sons sleeping in their arms into the wooden basin, and bit their fingers, and wrote the names and life stories of the two children in blood, so that they floated to the center of the river, until the big wooden basin disappeared from view, and the two ladies both hanged themselves under a big willow tree by the river.
When Gao Xiaohui heard this, she threw herself into Zhou Yuanzhi's arms and cried whining: "The fate of the two ladies is too pitiful, just like Uncle Xu, Aunt Xu, and Uncle Luo, they were all forced to death by the ruthless world, dark officialdom, and greedy hearts. When He Mengjiao and Li Cunxiao heard this, they also shed tears.
Seeing that everyone was very sad, Luo Suying also cried: "It turns out that the fate of our Luo family's ancestors is so tragic and heroic, I hate myself for not being a man, I am too incompetent, I can't do anything for the Luo family?"
Xu Zhi saw that Luo Suying was overly sad, afraid that she would do something stupid, so he hurriedly persuaded: "Sister Suying, although our Xu and Luo families have gone through vicissitudes, they still hope that future generations can live a peaceful life, just like the name they gave their children!"