"Those entering the country must check their license plates, and those behind must line up!"
The chirping of cicadas rose and fell in the trees along the official road, and passing merchants shouted as they bypassed the city gate that was restricted to pedestrians and went to the side door reserved for merchant caravans.
The shouts of soldiers, the hawking of vendors at the tea stalls and market stalls outside the pass, and the neighing of animals were mixed together.
Someone weighed the copper coins in his hand and collected the fees from a stall with a smile, put them into his belt, hummed a little tune, turned into a small path, and when passing by a tea stall, a figure who was dozing with his head down raised his face slightly, opened his eyes under his bamboo hat, glanced at the passing back, took out two copper coins and put them on the table, grabbed a long-handled guillotine, hugged it to his chest, and slowly followed.
It was Zuo Zhengyang, one of the “lonely men” mentioned by the Taoist priests before.
This time he went north, also because he heard about what the Qihuo Sect had done in Lanruo Temple. After settling the five scholars, he did not travel with Lu Liangsheng. After purchasing a new weapon, he went to Linghezhou alone. He was considered an old hand and knew the direction and when to travel.
Half a month ago, he rushed to the border pass of Heling Prefecture, and while waiting for Lu Liangsheng and others to join him, he used his own methods to inquire about the direction of Ziling Mountain.
The name of the mountain is rarely known in this area. After asking around, I found out that it is located in the southeast of Junyang City.
Since he is a cultivator and is doing evil things, he must be very careful in his actions. As for food, Zuo Zhengyang guessed that the people on the mountain would not go down the mountain to buy it themselves, and it must be bought and escorted to the mountain by their confidants in the mountain or by outsiders.
Junyang City, which is close to Ziling Mountain, must be a place to buy food. He guarded the city's vegetable market in the early morning for two consecutive days and visited farmers to inquire about the buyers. After excluding some nearby sects, government offices, and gangs, he locked on two people. One of them was under the command of the person he was following.
But at the moment, it is not certain that the other party, or even the people above, are the ones who delivered the food to the Qihuo Sect.
With his eyes hidden by the bamboo hat, Zuo Zhengyang slowly hung behind, staring at the back of the man setting up the extortion stall, and did not stop until he reached a nearby fenced yard. The man tilted his head to look, and pushed open the door of the farmyard. A woman was sweeping under the eaves, and when she saw him come in, she dropped her broom, and rushed into the house in panic, trying to close the door.
The man reached out a hand to hold the crack of the door, then kicked it open, lifted the woman up by the shoulders, and closed the door with his backhand. After a moment, the woman's screams and cries were heard from inside the room.
Behind a tree outside the yard, Zuo Zhengyang narrowed his eyes. It seemed that the other party had behaved like this more than once or twice.
He leaped into the yard and kicked the door open. The shirtless man lay on top of the woman whose dress was torn.
"Who are you?!"
Before the man could shout, his scalp tightened and he was pulled away from the woman, stumbling and falling. With a bang, he flew out of the door, fell heavily to the ground, rolled several times, and crushed the fence of the vegetable garden.
Zuo Zhengyang turned his head away, not looking at the woman shivering on the bed. He threw a piece of silver over, turned around, closed the door, and walked into the yard step by step with a long knife hanging from his hand.
"You dare to kill me?!"
"Do you know who I am? Let me tell you, if you dare to draw your knife..."
The man sat on the ground, rubbing his back, holding his head and screaming. The next moment, the blade came slashing at him. He was so scared that he closed his eyes and shouted repeatedly: "I was wrong, I was wrong!"
"My dear hero, I didn't do anything."
"Blackmailing merchants and kidnapping women, are you still not doing anything?" Zuo Zhengyang tilted the blade and put it against the man's face. He grinned, revealing his white teeth: "Is killing people and setting fires considered a big deal?"
Feeling the coldness of the blade, the man's whole body was shaking. He quickly took out the purse from his belt and threw it to the other side.
“I blackmailed vendors… Yes, but I didn’t rape women… I didn’t have the time to do it.”
Having said this, he became more quiet.
"It was a little exciting... I didn't even take off my pants... and it was over..."
Zuo Zhengyang glanced at the man's crotch, which was wet, and his eyes revealed disgust. He hung the knife on his back, went over to grab the man's collar and lifted him up, then leaped forward and took the man to the wilderness and woods. With a swing of his arm, the man screamed "Ah!" and flew away, crashing into a tree. He fell heavily, holding his waist and groaning.
"Why should I ask you, who is your boss? Do you go to Ziling Mountain once a month?"
The man who was covering his lower back stopped groaning immediately. The other party was wearing a bamboo hat and holding a weapon, and he seemed to be seeking revenge in the martial arts world.
“Hero, you’ve got the wrong person. I’m just a nobody… As for the Purple Wing Mountain you mentioned, I’ve only been there once. I don’t know what I did there. I took some food and meat and put them in the forest and came back.”
Zuo Zhengyang stuck the knife into the ground and reached out to feel the man's body. When he pulled his hand back, there was a small booklet. He shook it open and took a look. It was full of messy graphics. This man must be illiterate and was afraid of forgetting things, so he drew some pictures that only he could understand to remember them.
"What does the circle represent?" Zuo Zhengyang raised his eyes.
The latter swallowed his saliva and glanced at the edge of Senhan's knife. "Pie, that is, food."
"Two downward-facing mountains (W) with two dots on top. What is that?"
The man didn't dare to look at Zuo Zhengyang. He looked like an extremely experienced police chief, which made him feel uncomfortable. After a long while, he finally opened his mouth and squeezed out two words: "Woman."
"Huh, that's clever."
After Zuo Zhengyang picked out some difficult-to-understand pictures and asked about them, he concluded that with his many years of experience as a detective detective, it was not difficult to put together the content of such representative pictures.
At first he thought it was just some gang affairs, or some trivialities of life, but the more he read, the angrier he got. The graphics above seemed to have turned into words, forming content and pictures, which were vividly presented in front of him.
…
"Since your family is poor, why not sell your daughter?"
"Not for sale! Get out!"
The man holding the broom waved a wooden stick and drove away a few idle men. He looked back with anger and saw his terrified daughter hiding behind the door.
One night not long after, a fire broke out in the yard. A man fell in the yard with blood all over his head. A girl of eight or nine years old struggled in the hands of the brute, crying and shedding tears as she looked at her father who had lost his voice on the ground.
A moment later, he was stuffed into a carriage and disappeared into the range of the fire.
…
The picture becomes a little unclear here.
“… What did you do to the girl?”
Zuo Zhengyang's hands, holding the booklet, were shaking slightly. In fact, it was not difficult to imagine the ending, but he couldn't help but ask, hoping to get a different answer.
Looking at each other, his voice became low.
"explain!"
cluck~
The man swallowed hard and said, "We sent them to the mountain... There is a batch every month, my hero. I don't know the rest. You..."
"Uhhh—"
Throwing the booklet into the sky, Zuo Zhengyang pulled out the long sword from the ground. The sword light silently passed through the sunlight, and he chopped down angrily, and blood splashed instantly.
puff!
The head was cut off at the neck and fell to the ground, rolling away.
The pages of the booklet fluttered and scattered, and the headless body fell to the ground, soaked with blood.
In the sunlight, Zuo Zhengyang wiped the bloody blade on the corpse's clothes, turned and left, returned to the tea stall outside the pass with an expressionless face, sat down again, leaned the knife against the corner of the table, and ordered a cup of tea.
Outside the tea stall, there was a lot of noise, but I closed my eyes and just sat there, and I felt a sense of peace.
Ding ding dong dong~~~
The crisp sound of copper bells came from afar and stopped outside the tea shed. Zuo Zhengyang, who was dozing with his eyes closed, felt someone patting his shoulder. From the aura he felt, he knew who it was.
Sun Yingxian opened his eyes, wiped his mustache, sat aside, and asked the waiter for two cups of tea.
Outside, a scholar in a white robe with apricot patterns tied the reins and walked in, saying with a smile, "I thought Yan Chixia would be the first to arrive, but I didn't expect Qianwei to be faster than us."
Lu Liangsheng thanked the waiter who brought the herbal tea, sat down opposite Zuo Zhengyang, flared his nostrils slightly, and raised his eyes.
"Qian Wei, did you just kill someone?"
He knew that the one-armed man opposite him was not a person who would kill indiscriminately. Now that he was stained with blood, he must have a reason to use his knife. After a while, Zuo Zhengyang picked up the tea and clinked it with Lu Liangsheng and the Taoist priest.
"He deserves to die. I am just sending him off on behalf of God!"
After saying this, he exhaled a breath and told Lu Liangsheng and the Taoist everything that had happened before and what he had heard about Ziling Mountain.
"I wonder how many bodies are buried under this Fire Prayer Sect."
Lu Liangsheng dipped his finger in the tea and wrote a big word "behead" on the table.