The sky gradually darkened, the setting sun disappeared behind the clouds, and only a little afterglow appeared, dyeing the clouds red.
Jingxi has gradually entered summer. Even in the evening and near night, it is still very hot. The leaves on the trees are motionless, there is not a breath of wind, and the cats and dogs are all sticking out their tongues, looking listless and wilted.
When they reached the door, a man with a scar on his face kicked the stray dog beside the steps naturally, then hurriedly went up the steps, knocked on the door and entered the yard.
The yard had just been sprinkled with water. Although it was still hot, it was much better than outside. The man wiped the sweat from his forehead, walked around the corridor familiarly and came to the study next to the rockery. He immediately said to the book boy, "Go in and tell the chief secretary that the third brother is back."
The man dressed as a bookboy was tall and strong, which looked a bit strange. He smiled when he saw him and said, "Yes! Please wait a moment, I will go and inform him immediately. The chief secretary is waiting for you and has asked about you several times in the past few days."
The man nodded, and when he heard Xue Changshi's voice, he put on his clothes and went into the house immediately. As soon as he entered the house, he knelt down in front of Xue Changshi: "Changshi, something happened!"
Xue Changshi's face was not looking good. He had just smiled when he saw him, but when he heard that something happened, the smile disappeared completely. He immediately became extremely gloomy. He looked at the man in front of him, staring at him. He called Changshi anxiously, and then raised his chin calmly: "Get up, get up and talk first, what's going on?"
He paused, then frowned: "Third brother, you have always been steady. If nothing terribly wrong hadn't happened, you wouldn't be in such a state. What happened?"
Originally, things were going quite smoothly. He planned to capture Xie Liangcheng first, and had already discussed with the Tatars. He was just waiting for the right time to push Xie Liangcheng out as the mastermind of collusion with the Tatars. Through the Xie family, he would kill all the people from the Wei family and the Zheng Palace who had plotted against Chu Jingxing and caused him to escape death.
Let them also have a taste of the pain he once suffered.
But things just went wrong.
He frowned in annoyance and urged the third brother to speak quickly: "What happened? Tell me quickly. Did something happen in Datong?"
The third brother was responsible for guarding Xie Liangcheng and contacting the Tatars. He hurried back and felt something was wrong no matter how he looked at it.
When he heard Xue Changshi ask this, the third brother's face became even worse, and his face was as black as Bao Gong, but he didn't dare to delay and immediately answered yes. Under the pressure, he coughed a few times before saying: "Sir, you don't know, someone is eyeing us..."
They were hiding well in Datong, but things changed after Xu Ge Lao's granddaughter Hong He was found in Datong.
Originally, it was expected that Hong He would be found, and it was also something they had specially arranged. However, the only thing they did not expect was that after Hong He was found, the security in Datong became much stricter.
Not only had the garrison commanders who had been bribed by them for business purposes completely turned against them, but higher-level officials such as the garrison commander of Datong and the imperial censor seemed to be looking for someone in the city.
They didn't take it too seriously at first. After all, it was the granddaughter of the cabinet minister who was missing, and many people were involved. Those people would do their best to please their superiors, so it was possible that they would be strictly controlled for a while.
But gradually they realized something was wrong - those people seemed to be looking for someone.
In addition to Lord Xu's granddaughter, they were still looking for other people, and none of the garrison commanders who had received a lot of money from them before dared to reveal any information.
They hid from place to place in order to avoid being hunted down by the government and those unidentified people hiding in the dark, but in the end they failed.
The third brother's voice was very low. He simply explained what happened and couldn't help but say, "Someone must have noticed something. But why did they find us so quickly? Our news in Datong was very secretive... Xie Liangcheng's identity was important, and we had to let the government see him alive for the last time. We couldn't kill him, so we were very careful. Moreover, he had nothing to do with the group that arranged the kidnapping of Hong He. We don't know how his whereabouts were exposed..."
Xue Changshi's expression became increasingly gloomy, and his face looked extremely ugly: "Is Xie Liangcheng missing?"
He knew the third brother's character. Whenever something happened, he liked to nag and say all sorts of nonsense to shirk responsibility.
Something must have happened.
The third brother paused, as if there was a stone stuck in his throat. He looked at Xue Changshi, whose face was getting worse and worse, and he was obviously very angry. He swallowed involuntarily, closed his eyes and shook his head: "Sir, it is really lost..."
Xue Changshi almost lost his balance and sternly scolded the Third Elder a few times, "I usually say that although you are smooth-talking, you are always reliable! But look at what you have done. Are you worthy of me? Are you worthy of His Highness?!"
These words were too harsh. The third brother knelt on the ground, not daring to move, and felt a little wronged.
He has tried his best to hide his whereabouts, but Datong is not a big place and the locals are cunning. Where can they hide
They hid for a long time, but once the government took action, and because of those people who were difficult to deal with in the first place, their tracks were exposed.
Moreover, after he discovered that he was being followed, he reacted and wanted to kill Xie Liangcheng first. After all, it was better for Xie Liangcheng to be dead than alive.
Dead people won't speak, and if they are found alive, there will be real trouble.
But before he could do anything, he had already lost his chance - that night, the house they rented caught fire. Amid thick smoke, their people hurriedly scattered to put out the fire. By the time they reacted, the fire had been out, but Xie Liangcheng was gone.
"You won't look for him if he's missing?!" Xue Changshi's throat felt dry and painful, but he endured the discomfort in his throat: "Do you know that if we lose Xie Liangcheng, we'll be in danger! If we let him run away, won't the Wei family and Shen Chen know that we kidnapped him and framed him?!"
The third brother was silent for a while before he said, "We looked for him, but... but the government was investigating very strictly. We had no other options. We couldn't go looking for him in a big way... We searched secretly for many days, but still couldn't find any trace. We also lost contact with the outside world. We had no other options, so I came back..." (To be continued)