From Xu Shi to Chou Shi, Xia Zhaoyi left and never came back.
Du Xuan and Lao Tong fried half a pot of peanuts and sat in the yard, eating and waiting.
Finally, when they heard the sound of footsteps, the two men stopped stuffing peanuts into their mouths. It took a while before they dared to stand up and acknowledge them.
Xia Zhaoyi seemed to have rolled through a quagmire. Half of his body was covered in mud, and his ocher-colored clothes were covered with mud. His face and hands were all covered in mud, but his face and hands were still fair and clean. They should have been washed in the river on the road.
Lao Tong had already prepared hot water and immediately prepared a bath for her. Du Xuan also hurriedly made ginger soup, saying that it must be used to ward off the cold.
Two men came out of the kitchen carrying large buckets of water and saw that the girl's room was brightly lit with candles and the wooden door was open. She was standing in front of the desk, flipping through drawings.
Du Xuan sighed softly: "Ah Li has never been idle since she came back from Congxin."
"Even if there were no refugees outside, she would still be too busy chopping wood on Guangshan Mountain," Lao Tong said.
The girl seemed to have found the drawing she was looking for. She picked it up and looked at it carefully in the candlelight. She probably felt something was wrong, so she picked up the pen and revised it.
"Let's go," Lao Tong said softly, "after she finishes bathing and the heat comes up, she will soon fall asleep and rest."
"Um."
After finally waiting for Xia Zhaoyi back, Lao Tong and Du Xuan were relieved, but their sleepiness was gone at this time. They simply sat in the courtyard and continued to wait.
It was late at night, the wind was blowing and the weather was cold. The wind lamp on the corner of the eaves was swaying. Xia Zhaoyi came out of the bathroom wearing a clean lilac warm shirt and saw them eating peanuts there.
"I don't need any more teeth." Xia Zhaoyi walked over and said with a smile.
Du Xuan asked her to sit down, and he brought the brown sugar ginger tea that was hot on the small clay stove. Lao Tong went to bring the osmanthus cake and freshly fried beef on the stove.
Xia Zhaoyi smiled, picked up her chopsticks, and without waiting for them to ask questions, she said: "There is a big cliff at the foot of the mountain on the other side of the Taoist temple in Qingxiang Village. It is as big as three Qingxiang Villages. Below it is a mountain stream and an abyss, all of which are
spring."
"Where did you take those refugees?" Lao Tong asked.
"Well, there is a cave that can be used as a temporary shelter tonight. For tomorrow, Brother Du, I would like to ask you to lend me a few people."
"Send food and clothing to them?"
"Um."
"Okay, no problem." Du Xuan agreed.
"However," Lao Tong was a little worried, "Ah Li, the people in Qingxiang Village are extremely dissatisfied with this. If they continue to recruit those refugees, I'm afraid they..."
"We are just trading with them," Xia Zhaoyi said.
"Yes, if the deal cannot be negotiated, then let's not negotiate. The hostility lies with them, not with us." Du Xuan said.
"I understand this, but the refugees outside have a blood feud with them."
"This hatred..." Du Xuan said in a deep voice, "The refugees outside are not refugees at all. Weiping Mansion was flooded by floods and man-made disasters. They are the victims of displacement."
"But the feud has been forged..." Lao Tong sighed.
"It was a battle for survival," Du Xuan said with rare seriousness. "I don't agree with the behavior of those refugee militiamen invading Qingxiang Village, but I can understand it. And if we allow those refugees to have a place to live, it will be better for Qingxiang Village.
This is a great good thing, if they break with us because of this, they will not be able to stand!"
"Brother Du." Xia Zhaoyi raised her eyes to look at him.
Du Xuan raised his hand and rubbed his eyes: "Ah Li, I seem to have lost my composure."
"You've had a lot of dealings with them in the past few days, thank you Brother Du," Xia Zhaoyi said.
"That Mr. Mo Wu is just a fool!" Du Xuan said.
"He is a little bit." Lao Tong nodded.
Xia Zhaoyi smiled faintly. At this moment, he thought of a person. Xia Zhaoyi looked at Du Xuan: "Brother Du, let me tell you a name. See if you recognize it."
"who?"
"Xie Zhong."
Du Xuan thought for a while and shook his head: "If you don't recognize this person, why do you mention him?"
Xia Zhaoyi will tell about the external "coup" that he heard from the refugees.
"This Qian Fengrong is so powerful," Lao Tong murmured, "Then who is this Xie Zhong?"
"I have never heard of it, but I must have met them once. A few months ago, Brother Zhi and I took a boat to the north, and we were on the same ferry as them."
"To be able to control such a difficult person as Qian Fengrong, this person has a deep scheming." Du Xuan said solemnly.
"Now those refugees outside belong to them?" Lao Tong asked uneasily, "What should we do? Qian Fengrong's fists and Xie Zhong's brains now have military strength, wouldn't it be..."
Du Xuan was speechless: "It's really easy to 'conspire to usurp the throne'."
"It's not a serious 'regime' at all." Xia Zhaoyi said.
Du Xuan raised his hand to suppress the beating on his brow.
The harder I press, the faster I jump. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. This seemingly peaceful village is actually full of dangers.
When the night reaches its darkest place, the dawn slowly rises.
It was almost midnight, and there were still a large number of people on this land with their eyes open and awake.
Some people are thinking about what disaster will happen tomorrow, some are thinking about how to have enough food and clothing, and some are at a loss as to where to go.
Many more people witnessed or personally participated in a tragic massacre.
Xie Zhong took over Zhong Qiankun's "strategic advisor" position with his kind and honest smile. The first order he gave was to purge the army and march south.
However, he doesn't bring waste.
Don't want those who are too short, don't want those who are too old, don't want those who are sick, even if they are just a little cold.
"The most taboo thing when marching is to abandon your troops and armor," Xie Zhong stood in front of the crowd, smiling like a gentleman who came to give porridge. "I will not abandon you, and I will not let you live in the wilderness and survive alone. Therefore, I
Let me give you a happy experience."
He raised his hand and gave the order. Under the slowly rising sun, thousands of homeless people with nowhere to escape became the desperate and wailing undead on the earth.
He ordered the corpses to be built into several piles of grain. He wrote on the pieces of clothing he had stripped off, and ordered a large knife to be inserted into the piles of corpses.
A simple and straightforward sentence: Go west to Qingxiang Village, five miles away, and Ali will be in the village.
Xie Zhong watched with satisfaction as the hanging clothes rustled in the morning breeze. The rest was dog bite.
This woman seriously injured Qian Fengrong outside the Sinan Gate of Junzhen, so that their plan to go north this time failed, and Xie Zhongke still had a grudge for coming to Congxin for nothing.
He also couldn't stand Qingxiang Village.
Others are so hungry that they exchange their children for food, but such a small Qingxiang Village can still have rice and meat. How unfair, so let's go to hell together.
During this reorganization, the number of the entire army was greatly reduced, leaving only eight thousand.
Xie Zhong did not stay long and went south with eight thousand troops, planning to leave Youzhou in two days.
But what Xie Zhong didn't expect was that after he led his troops away, dozens of people came out from their hiding place in the distance and watched their leaving figures from a distance.
Several of them were attracted by the clothes dancing in the wind on the pile of corpses and climbed up with bare hands.
