Walking out of the underground Zoroastrian Temple, Tuoba Huaisu took Zhou Jun to the side courtyard and entered a warehouse.
Tuoba Huaisu ordered his servant to open an iron box, and saw a set of blood-stained armor inside, as well as many other things.
The blood-stained armor was none other than Long Qi's black armor, and it was stained with scars, which showed what a brutal battle he had gone through when he escaped.
Tuoba Huaisu used a piece of white cloth to dip some of the black liquid on the armor, put it under his nose and smelled it, and said to Zhou Jun: "I was poisoned by the senior sister, but I can still survive to this day. Long Qi can be considered a strange person."
number."
Zhou Jun glanced at it for a few times, and his attention was attracted by a small package in the iron box.
Tuoba Huaisu saw this, picked up the package, unfolded it and said: "This is what Long Qi desperately snatched from the horse bandit camp. I thought it was poison, but after careful inspection, I found out that it was not poison."
."
Zhou Jun looked carefully and saw some brown-yellow colloidal substance lying quietly in the package.
After twisting a little bit, Zhou Jun sniffed it first and then threw it into the brazier. Suddenly his face changed drastically and he exclaimed: "Impossible!"
Tuoba Huaisu asked in surprise: "What?"
Zhou Jun: "This thing is called opium... No, I'm afraid you have never heard of this name. It has another drug name, which should be aphrodisiac. Smell the white smoke. Opium with such purity is probably...
After layers of refinement, it is close to the classification of refined products.”
Tuoba Huaisu: "I know that opium is a soothing and hypnotic medicine, but what is opium?"
Zhou Jun's face was solemn, and he said to Tuoba Huaisu: "Take the opium fruits and flowers, squeeze the juice into liquid, filter and dry it, and then go through some processes to become black raw opium. If we continue to distill it at high temperature to remove impurities,
, and then extract and purify it, you can get brown refined opium, or even golden high-purity opium."
"Once opium is taken, it can become addictive, making the body weak and unable to quit. In the end, the opium will go bankrupt and sell children and daughters, just to take another puff."
Tuoba Huaisu couldn't help but be stunned on the spot after listening to Zhou Jun's words.
Zhou Jun wondered: "The process of purifying afurong into opium is complicated and extremely difficult. How come it appears here?"
After thinking about it, Tuoba Huaisu replied: "My senior sister is proficient in the use of poisons. Even the master was amazed by her skills. I am afraid that this opium is a poison she discovered after painstaking research."
Zhou Jun looked at Tuoba Huaisu: "Let me ask you something, your senior sister betrayed Zoroastrianism, why has she been running away until now and hasn't been caught yet?"
Tuoba Huaisu: "When she first defected, she was isolated and helpless. I almost caught her several times. However, on the eighth day of April in Tianbao's fifth year, the holy fire came down and the master's prophecy came true. After weighing it, I
I abandoned the matter of arrest and went to the Central Plains to look for you. I didn’t expect that after that, senior sister would actually mix with the Kang family and the horse bandits again. It would be difficult to catch her again."
Hearing this, Zhou Jun took a long breath.
Damn butterfly effect.
Zhou Jun lamented in his heart that because of his arrival, a demon that would only harm China a thousand years later appeared in the Tang Dynasty now.
If it is not stopped in time, the subsequent harm will be unimaginable.
Zhou Jun said to Tuoba Huaisu: "This matter cannot be delayed."
Tuoba Huaisu nodded, summoned a fire maid, and asked her to inform him to summon the Zoroastrian soldiers in the ancient temple to prepare for an expedition to destroy the camp of the horse bandits.
Just one day later, Zhou Jun led Sun Aying, Qiu Yong and a group of soldiers, Tuoba Huaisu led two hundred Zoroastrian soldiers, and hurried through the desert, heading towards the junction of Shazhou and Guazhou.
at.
After arriving at the place where Long Qi was rescued, everyone began to search around for any clues about the horse bandits' camp.
What disappointed Zhou Jun and Tuoba Huaisu was that after Long Qi was rescued, the scene was completely cleaned and no useful clues could be found at all.
Half a day later, Zoroastrian soldiers came to report that there were traces of a recent encampment twenty miles southwest of the junction.
Zhou Jun and Tuoba Huaisu rushed to the abandoned camp and found that it didn't look like a camp for horse bandits, but more like a temporary stop for a caravan.
After Sun Aying led Tang soldiers to search, they found something and presented it to Zhou Jun.
Zhou Jun couldn't help but gasped when he saw that item.
It was a flag engraved with the seal of the Jin family.
Zhou Jun looked at the boundless desert around him and said to himself: "Is it possible that the caravan camped here is the Jin family's Changxingfang?"
Tuoba Huaisu heard this and said: "The Jin family's Changxingfang has left Yumen Pass. It should follow the official road and go north to Xingxing Gorge. Why do you come to camp here? It has deviated from the official road for seventy years.
Dori."
Not long after, another servant found a wooden bowl thrown in the desert.
Tuoba Huaisu picked up the wooden bowl and saw the residue stained with sand and gravel in the mouth of the bowl. He smelled it carefully, then frowned and said to Zhou Jun: "The Jin family's Changxingfang, I'm afraid someone has cheated."
Phantom poison.”
Zhou Jun: "Phantom poison?"
Tuoba Huaisu: "This poison is a secret in Zoroastrianism. It is extremely difficult to prepare and is very precious. It will not hurt people's lives and is not easy to detect. You only need to pour a small amount into the meal each time.
Accumulated several times, people will have more and more serious hallucinations."
Zhou Jun: "So, there may be a traitor in the Jin family's Changxingfang."
Tuoba Huaisu nodded and said: "The traitor knew my identity, so he probably waited until he got out of Yumen Pass before he dared to poison me."
Zhou Jun: "Uncle Shen of the Jin family once said that not long ago, a Changxingfang in the Jin family disappeared without a trace. I am afraid that it was poisoned by someone and deviated from the official path, eventually encountering an accident."
Tuoba Huaisu asked in confusion: "Long Qi followed my senior sister and accidentally entered the camp of the horse bandits and discovered the existence of opium. The Kang family also ordered these horse bandits to attack the caravan in Changxingfang. All this
What is the connection behind it?"
Zhou Jun folded his arms in front of his chest and kept pacing on the spot, and said again: "Let me think about it."
After speaking, Zhou Jun began to sort out all the current clues in his mind.
Kang family, horse bandits, Zoroastrian traitors, opium, Changxingfang...
After thinking about it for a while, Zhou Jun's heart lit up and he suddenly made a bold guess.
Just listen to him saying to Tuoba Huaisu: "Your senior sister, that Zoroastrian traitor who is good at using poison, accidentally mastered the method of refining opium. And the Kang family, after seeing the efficacy of opium, understood the meaning behind it.
In order to see business opportunities and profits, I offered to guarantee her personal safety, but your senior sister must make opium for the Kang family."
Tuoba Huaisu: "It sounds reasonable, but what about the Ma bandits and the Jin family's Changxingfang? How could they be involved?"
Zhou Jun: "Since opium has been produced, it is natural to arrange caravans for transportation. Changxingfang of the Tang Dynasty is responsible for transporting materials between the state capitals and the Duhufu. Such caravans have the official certificates and official certificates issued by the government. They will not
The best way to transport opium is to inspect the goods at the customs station and Jindu."
"However, in the past, the deeds of Changxingfang in Liangzhou were all carried by the Jin family. If the Kang family wanted to take over, they must find a way to destroy the Jin family's trade routes. With this idea, the Kang family and the horse bandits
Cooperation is a matter of course, and supplemented by the phantom poison of Zoroastrianism, we can make the Jin family's family deviate from the official way without being aware of it, and then wait for an opportunity to attack."
Tuoba Huaisu thought carefully and finally said slowly: "If Erlang's guess is true, then if you want to find the horse bandit's camp, you only need to follow this Changxingfang who has been poisoned by phantom poison."
Zhou Jun: "Yes, this is called...the mantis stalks the cicada, with the oriole behind."