45.
As Fang Tinglan said, from Taiyan to Youji is the fastest route to reach the sea, but it is also the most dangerous route. Although he had delayed the opponent for a day and a half by destroying the stronghold of Tianjiku in Yu'an, after the group arrived in Jiayong on the third day, there was still a trace of gunpowder in the air.
Hailian was the first to notice the smell. He stuffed the half-eaten candied chestnuts to Fang Tinglan, but looked straight ahead, "It seems that someone is following us."
"How did you find out?"
"Intuition." Hailian has been obsessed with killing for so many years, and he can sense any strange gaze falling on his back, "Do you want to solve it?"
"Don't do it here." Fang Tinglan shook his head, "Then don't go to the safe house, I'll go around the city twice more."
"Come to a crowded place." Hailian glanced at the low buildings above his head, "I'll stop them."
"Do you want a firecracker?"
"No, that thing is too noisy, put the... uh..." Hailian didn't know Dongzhou's official position, so he got stuck for a moment.
"You mean patrolling?"
"Anyway, it's people like the magistrates. It's not good for them to find out." Hai Lian moved his wrist and pulled out the dagger, "You protect Long Rong and them."
"Be careful." Fang Tinglan warned.
Hai Lian raised her eyebrows, and chuckled lightly: "Be careful yourself, coachman Fang Daren."
While speaking, the carriage turned into a busy street. Jiayong City is neither big nor small, there are not too many pedestrians, everyone is busy with the work at hand, so when there is an extra person on the street, no one notices, only the watchdog of the old shop rushes to the side. He barked at the figure flashing down from the carriage. And Hai Lian greeted the puppy, and quietly walked around to the alley next to the old shop.
Beihong's building is square and solid, and the walls are mostly decorated with edged stone paintings. For him, it is the best point of focus. With a stretch of his arms, Hailian climbed up to the roof almost effortlessly. He used his toes to push back a piece of rubble that was about to roll down, and then looked down while holding on to the sloping roof.
Amidst the noisy fireworks, Fang Tinglan's four-wheeled carriage was driving past a pharmacy, and dozens of feet away from the carriage, there was also a two-wheeled carriage shuttled through the crowd. The middle-aged man, whose appearance is no different from the average Dongzhou man, is driving slowly with a rosy nose. Is this car following? Hai Lian was not in a hurry to make a judgment. Anyway, the speed of the carriage was not fast, so he walked and watched unhurriedly. The young man was like a wild cat strolling on the roof. Under his feet were all kinds of shouts, the smell of wine, and roadside stalls. The boiler in the house is steaming in the spring light, as if stepping on the spring light of the city.
After the four-wheeled carriage turned left at the three-fork intersection at the end of the busy city, the middle-aged man sat up straight, pulled the rein and followed suit.
"Looks like it should be." Hailian muttered, jumping up and down, flying across the gap between the buildings.
After leaving the market, the flow of people gradually thinned out, leaving only a couple of idlers and servants chatting and joking under the shade of the lush willows. Fang Tinglan's car passed by them without stopping, and continued to turn into the nearby alleys and circle the road back and forth. He began to speed up gradually, the middle-aged man saw that the situation was not good, he flicked the short whip in his hand, the sound of the horse's hooves gradually became tighter, and then a thin man came out from the carriage, holding a long gun in his hand, aiming at the lacquered wood compartment.
Tsk. Hai Lian couldn't help being speechless, he regretted not taking the short gun that Fang Tinglan gave him before, but at this moment, time was running out, he stepped on the high and low roof ridges and sprinted, almost parallel to the two-wheeled carriage and up and down.
The buildings on the long street were undulating, and the beasts accompanied Hailian. The frightened chaffinch flapped its wings and circled, and finally returned to its nest. The assassin no longer controls the strength under his feet, and the crackling sound bursts out under his feet, like a piece of tea piano music with a light melody.
boom! !
The first shot did not penetrate the carriage, but shattered a piece of wood on the carriage, but the sound of the explosion was nothing more than a signal, causing the horse in front to raise its head and neigh, and start galloping. Seeing that he missed a shot, the thin man immediately began to clean the rifling, ready to shoot the next round.
Hailian frowned, knowing that he had to make a move. At the moment when the two-wheeled carriage followed the target and was about to turn again, he spotted a warped eaves not far ahead, and then flew out with a run-up.
Hailian jumped down from the eaves. The two people in the car felt as if there was a shadow covering their heads. The moment the second bullet was ejected from the thin man's hand, the sound of the explosion and the sound of the young man landing on the roof of the car sounded at the same time—bang! The next moment, the thin man only felt a huge force pressing down on his neck from behind, and the feeling of suffocation quickly surged into his brain, and before his eyes could turn upwards, he felt that force pulling him sideways violently. With a flick, he was directly thrown out of the car by an unknown enemy in a semi-conscious state.
The muffled sound of landing mixed with the man's screams was quickly left behind by the speeding wheels. "Old Zhao!" The matter happened too quickly, the middle-aged man stared dumbfounded at the fact that there was only one person missing in the seat beside him, and in the blink of an eye, he felt a favorable wind blowing at the back of his head. Apparently there were two gunmen, and while he ducked down to avoid the sharp edge, he was able to grab Hailian's wrist and yank him off the roof of the car.
Hailian didn't expect the blow to miss. The moment he fell, he only had time to curl up his shoulders, and then slammed into the seat hard. The space in the car was too narrow, before Hailian even had time to adjust his body posture, the other party followed suit and shoved him outward! This time, he was completely unable to stabilize his center of gravity, and he fell backwards uncontrollably. During the sway, Hailian barely pierced the carriage with a dagger, so as not to roll out of the carriage like that skinny man.
Just one more kick to the little guy can break his neck. The middle-aged man looked at Hailian who was struggling, and knew that he had won a big victory. He was about to show a smile, but the corners of his mouth suddenly twitched, and he grinned out uncontrollably. He heard the sound of water droplets.
The strong wind blew the young assassin's messy hair, and also wiped the blood splattered in the air on his thin face. The other party's neck is fair and slender. He didn't see a wound on the young man's body, so whose blood was it
The fourth lesson that Agg, the blind eagle, taught Hailian, when he was about to die, he had to do everything possible to make him fall behind.
"!!" The middle-aged man covered his neck in horror, only to realize that he was unable to cry out. At this moment, the wheels happened to run over a raised bluestone slab, the carriage was bumped, and the man who had stopped breathing also fell down.
Hai Lian watched the opponent's tall body disappear before his eyes, and the blood-stained blade on the other hand slipped from between his fingers. At this time, almost half of his body was hanging outside the car, relying on that hand to barely maintain his balance, but before he could breathe a sigh of relief, something seemed to be getting closer in his peripheral vision, and Hailian looked sideways. Go, can't help but be shocked - a red lacquer column is close at hand! Once hit, he would probably die worse than that middle-aged man! The young man didn't even have time to react, his body made a choice faster than his brain, he slammed his ankles out, hooked the shaft of the car suddenly, and at the same time, his waist and abdomen were tense, and his whole body moved in an almost unbelievable way. Sitting up with a bang, the cold stone pillar brushed against the back of his head, causing a shudder on the back of his neck.
"... It's really tiring to fight against a strong man with brute force." Panting, Hai Lian pulled the dagger out of its sheath from the wall of the carriage. Just as he was about to sit in the car, he suddenly thought of the most important thing.
—He can't drive a carriage!
Even though he knew that he no longer needed to be afraid of this kind of animal, the sound of the horse's head and iron paw colliding with the stone road in front of him still made the young man's instinctive hands and feet cold. He forced himself to calm down, thinking about whether to jump out of the car and leave When it was over, a family a hundred paces ahead suddenly opened the door, and then a little boy came out from the door, he waved towards the inside, and another girl who was a little younger than him also wobbled. Walking out, the two held hands, talking and laughing towards Hai Lian.
Hailian's pupils shrank in shock. "No… "
Without any hesitation, he sat back to his seat, tried not to pay attention to the flying horseshoes in front of him, and grasped the rein tightly, "Fang Tinglan! How can I make this beast stop!!"
"Hold back!" Fang Tinglan's voice came from afar.
Putting it lightly! The fighting and bloody smell just now had obviously stimulated the docile gelding. It was obviously foaming at the mouth, but it still galloped forward in a panic.
Fifty steps to go.
"Go back! Go back to the house!" Hailian yelled angrily, while pulling back the rein forcefully, the horse felt pain, but there was no intention of stopping under its feet.
The two children also found the carriage rushing towards them at this moment, but the sudden change made them freeze in place, unable to hear Hailian's shout at all.
Thirty steps.
It was already too late to go back to the house, the slightly older boy opened his mouth wide, and threw the girl under him with all his might. His round pupils can already reflect the dark muzzle of a brown-red horse.
ten steps.
In a blink of an eye, Hai Lian almost overlapped the figure protecting his sister with himself when he was a child.
He reined in the reins with all his might one last time.
"Hiss—" the brown-red horse neighed sharply, and raised its front hooves high. When it landed again, it staggered a few steps and stopped in front of the two small figures.
Hailian let go of her hand, and found that there was a bruise on her palm.
The crisis was over, and the culprit was still in shock. Hai Lian jumped out of the car, squatted down, and looked at the petrified child in front of him.
"... didn't hit you, did you?" He stretched out his hand to the other party, but the blood on his hands and face obviously made the two children more frightened, and the boy shrank back while protecting the girl.
"You scared them both." A handkerchief was handed to Hailian from behind. Fang Tinglan did not know when he came behind him. He patted Hailian on the shoulder, motioning for him to comfort her.
Fang Tinglan also squatted down, and asked with a smile, "Is this your sister?"
The boy didn't speak, just nodded slowly.
"You are so brave," the man praised earnestly, he took out the half bag of candied chestnuts from his arms and handed them to the two, "Here, I reward you for your courage."
The boy took Tangli in a daze, as if he had just realized what he had just experienced, and burst into tears with his sister, the crying made the door not far away move again, Fang Tinglan hurriedly pulled Hai Lian fled the crime scene.
46.
"Don't worry, those two shots missed and missed the people in the carriage. Long Rong and the others have already returned to the safe house according to the route. We will also start after you recover some strength." Fang Tinglan whispered . The two were standing in a dead corner of an alley not far away, waiting for the storm outside to subside.
"Give him your share of candied chestnuts, don't you mind?"
Hai Lian shook his head, he lowered his head for a while, and was about to speak when something sweet suddenly fell into his mouth.
It's a bar of malt candy.
"When you went to buy candied chestnuts, I also bought some food. A friend of mine told me that sweet things can make people feel at ease," Fang Tinglan smiled, reaching out to wipe the bruises on the young man's cheeks. A bloodstain, "You are so brave, this is your reward."