twelve 2
"Put this on." Li Yunsheng took out a patched uniform of a Qing soldier from his bag and threw it to Liu Qingye. After watching him put it on, he threw a token to him and said, "We didn't catch up with the people from the Lantern Festival along the way. They are probably caught. Even if they haven't been caught, they are probably going to meet those fake Dragon Slayers. You take this token and go in to rescue them later."
Liu Qingye took the token and saw the words "Fucha" written in Manchu, Mongolian and Chinese. He was startled and said, "Mr. Li, you won't go with me?"
Li Yunsheng said: "I will go to see General Fucha, and then come back to take care of you. In fact, if I'm here, there will be a conflict. How can the people from the Lantern Society leave without taking my life?" After saying that, he kicked his horse and galloped straight towards the sentry in front of Shanshan City.
Liu Qingye followed him to the archway at the entrance of the city. The sentries all recognized Li Yunsheng and did not question him. They also did not pay attention to a man like Liu Qingye dressed as a young lieutenant. The two of them entered the city without any trouble and arrived at the camp in a short while.
Li Yunsheng pointed behind the general's tent and said, "You can go to the tent where Wang Chunshan was originally imprisoned and ask them to take you there. Tell them that I want to interrogate him. If he is imprisoned somewhere else, leave a mark on the way and I will come to find you later."
Liu Qingye nodded, dismounted, said goodbye to Li Yunsheng, and walked straight towards the tent he pointed to.
No one questioned the man along the way. When he arrived in front of the tent, he saw that it was still guarded by two soldiers as before. He took out his token and said, "Mr. Li asked me to interrogate those traitors." He was afraid of getting into trouble by saying too much, so he deliberately did not say whether it was the Dragon Slaying Society or the Lantern Transmission Society.
The two soldiers looked at him, took the token, turned it over and over, and said, "You came at an unfortunate time. The rebels have already been taken to the Grand Mosque."
Liu Qingye frowned and said, "The Grand Mosque? Mr. Li only told me to pick him up. No matter where it is, you just need to take me there to pick him up."
The two soldiers looked at each other and replied, "Okay, follow me." They led the way and took Liu Qingye to the back door of the military camp.
The road was winding and winding, and after leaving the military camp, they passed through several alleys. Liu Qingye followed his lead and arrived in front of a large mosque. There were also some soldiers guarding the mosque. The two leading the way came forward and spoke in Manchu, then turned to Liu Qingye and said, "We brothers will take you here, you follow them in."
Liu Qingye smiled at them, said "thank you", and followed the sentry at the door into the Great Mosque.
Shanshan was one of the most prosperous towns in the Western Regions since ancient times, so this mosque is quite spectacular. However, it seems to have fallen into disrepair, probably because it has been abandoned for many years and no one has come to perform pilgrimage, so it was requisitioned by the Qing army.
Liu Qingye stepped onto the white stone ground, listening to the footsteps of the guide in front of him, and suddenly felt that this place was spacious and gloomy. He kept thinking in his mind: Where is the master imprisoned? Or maybe the master and his companions have not fallen into the trap, and the people imprisoned here are just fake members of the Dragon Slayer Society...
The soldier took him to a stone chamber and said, "Sit here and wait for a while. I will bring the prisoner up. Who does Mr. Li want to interrogate?"
Liu Qingye was stunned, and he couldn't answer rashly, so he said: "Mr. Li said, take them all away."
The soldier looked at him suspiciously and asked, "All of them? Mr. Li only sent you?"
Liu Qingye hurriedly said: "Mr. Li said that the rebels are very powerful, and he is afraid that I can't watch over them alone, so he specifically instructed that each rebel must eat 'The Concubine's Gaze' first, and then tie them together with ropes. I'll trouble you with these things, brother." He thought quickly and brought out the poison used by Mang Keshan, thinking that the soldier would believe it.
As expected, the soldier did not ask any more questions. He nodded and said, "Okay, wait a minute, I'll do it." After that, he closed the door and went out.
Once the door was closed, the stone chamber looked a bit like a prison cell - the windows of the mosque were built high up and were very narrow, so the room was extremely dark; moreover, the walls were made of thick stone, so not even the sound from outside could be heard, which was really creepy.
Liu Qingye sat quietly in the stone room for a while. When the soldier who brought people back did not come back, he wondered, "He has been gone for so long. Is there a trick?" He stood up and walked to the door, intending to push it open. But when he pushed it, he was shocked - the door of this room was made of stone. He did not notice it when he came in just now! He recalled that the soldier who led the way walked very loudly, and it seemed that he had never practiced light skills. However, when he closed the door, he did it with ease, as if he was just closing a wooden door. This kind of strength is definitely not that of an ordinary reckless soldier in the army!
He couldn't help but secretly exclaimed in his heart: "Oh no, I fell into a trap!"
He took a breath of Qi, put it on his palms, and pushed the stone door flat with both hands. But the stone door was heavy and could not be moved. He felt cold in his heart, took a few deep breaths to force himself to calm down, and pushed a few more times, but it was all in vain. He couldn't help but feel depressed: Master must have not seen it, and I fell into a trap... If Master and the others had not been captured, wouldn't I have become Fu Cha Kang's bait?
He couldn't just sit there and wait for death. He drew out his sword and thrust it through the crack in the door, hoping to see if there was a way to open it. But the door was sealed tightly, and the sword could not penetrate more than two inches. He exerted his strength for a long time, and finally the sword broke into two pieces with a "click".
He was out of breath and sweating profusely. He leaned against the cold stone door to rest. He was filled with regret and suspicion. The first one was: "I have handed over Mr. Li's token, but these people still imprisoned me. Could it be that Mr. Li wanted to harm me?" He thought about how his master said that the Tartars were cunning and how he called Li Yunsheng a traitor. But as he thought about it, he remembered Fu Chatao's good points and what Li Yunsheng said to him when he came. He thought to himself: "Could it be that I revealed something when I said it just now?" After thinking it over carefully, there was nothing suspicious. The only difference was that when he entered the mosque, the soldiers who led the way and the soldiers guarding the gate said a few words in Manchu, which he did not understand at all: "They spoke Chinese to me and talked to each other in Manchu... Could it be that they had seen through me at that time?"
He could not come up with a conclusion, but he thought that it was absolutely right to get out, so he stood up and knocked on the walls on all four sides, trying to find a place where the wall was slightly thinner. Every time he knocked, he leaned over to listen to the sound, and all of them were dull "bang bang bang" sounds, it seemed that the wall was as thick as the stone door.
After checking two walls in a row, he leaned over to the wall on the left side of the door and unexpectedly heard two people talking. They were probably leaning against the wall to chat, so the sound came through the wall and was very clear.
I only heard one of them say: "Your Lord Mang Keshan is really a genius, haha."
The other person spoke in a slightly awkward Chinese language, "What about chickens and ducks? Ah, you think our Lord Mang Keshan is great, right? Well, of course - your Lord Fu Rui is also great!"
Liu Qingye estimated that one of them was a Tatar soldier under Mang Keshan, and the other was a Han soldier under Zhong Rui.
The Han soldier said, "In fact, our Lord Zhong Rui has been conferred the title of Baturu, so he has no other intentions. He is just feeling sorry for your Lord Mang Keshan. He has worked with the general, and he has made great contributions. Even if he has no contributions, he has suffered a lot. How could he be suppressed by Mr. Li for so many years?"
The Qing soldier said, "That's right. Mr. Li is not loyal to the general. Our Lord Mang Keshan has seen it long ago. Mr. Li is in league with the rebels. Fortunately, your Lord Fu Rui came up with a good idea this time. He arrested those Han people and lured Mr. Li into the trap!"
After hearing this, Liu Qingye was certain that his master and the predecessors of the Lantern Festival had fallen into the hands of Mang Keshan and Zhong Rui. He was extremely anxious, and when he heard that this was a trap to lure Li Yunsheng into, he became even more worried.
The Han soldier said, "Hey, I mean, that kid is imprisoned next door, right? We can't let him run away."
The Qing soldier said, "How could that be possible? I saw him take Mr. Li's token to demand the release of someone, so I locked him up. We just need to wait for Mr. Li to rescue him, and then our Lord Mang Keshan will be caught red-handed."
The Han soldier said, "Haha, now your Lord Mang Keshan has been promoted and made a fortune, and his future is limitless - let's see if the general will still protect Mr. Li this time!"
The Qing soldier said, "Of course, you will get promoted and make a fortune. Haha, when the time comes, the first person our master will thank is your Master Fu Rui. Hey, your Master Fu Rui is really amazing. How did he know how to catch the man who used Mr. Li's token to interrogate the traitor?"
The Han soldier said, "This is the wisdom of my master. You wouldn't understand it even if I told you."
The Qing soldier refused to give in and forced him to speak, but the Han soldier refused to do so. The two began to argue in Manchu and Chinese. Liu Qingye had no intention of listening to their quarrel, and just looked around for a way to escape. He looked around at the stone room, which could be described as "bare" except for a few chairs, and his eyes finally stopped at the narrow window - it seemed that was the only exit.
Although the room in the mosque was high, it was only two meters high. Such a short distance was not a problem for Liu Qingye. He jumped up to the air and put his hands on the windowsill. However, he felt a sharp pain in his palms, and he screamed "Ah" and fell down - his hands were covered with blood, because the windowsill was full of steel nails.
Mang Keshan and Zhong Ruite are also vicious! He cursed inwardly, but this small obstacle could not stop him - he immediately dismantled a chair, grabbed two wooden boards in his hands, and jumped up again. This time, he slammed the wooden boards on the windowsill. Although the steel nails were long, only a few of them pierced through the wooden boards.
The window was a carved stone window, and the joints were made of rice paste clay. He swung his palm in mid-air, and the bricks fell down with a crash. Before the bricks hit the ground, he quickly jumped out of the window. He saw a soldier under the window who was hit by a brick and was shouting in Manchu for someone to come over. He immediately grabbed the soldier's throat and threatened in a low voice: "Don't make a sound, or I'll kill you!"
The soldier was so frightened that he trembled and said, "You...you are a traitor...you..."
Liu Qingye didn't argue with him, but lifted him up and jumped onto the windowsill. He asked, "What did you shout just now?"
The soldier said, "I... I said the window was broken..."
Liu Qingye asked, "How do you say it in Manchu?"
The soldier repeated it tremblingly. Liu Qingye secretly memorized it, then pressed the soldier's acupuncture points and threw him in through the window. He jumped down and began to shout loudly in the Manchu language that the soldier had taught him: "The window is broken! The window is broken!" While shouting, he ran along the wall.
Several soldiers came towards him and asked him questions in Manchu. He just turned around and pointed in the direction of the stone chamber, shouting, "The window is broken! The window is broken!" The soldiers then ran towards the window of the stone chamber.
Liu Qingye guessed that he had escaped into the courtyard behind the mosque. After running for a while, he came to a place that looked like a kitchen. He looked around and saw no one, so he dodged inside. He casually smeared some pot ash on the stove and painted his eyebrows black and thick. When he looked in the water tank, he looked completely different.
Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly heard someone behind the stove shouting, "Hey...you, are you from Lord Furui's side?"
Liu Qingye was startled, but seeing that the man was just a cook, he played along and replied, "Yes."
The cook said, "Hey, look how smart I am. I can tell at a glance that you are Lord Furui's man, so I don't have to talk to you in Manchu for a long time, but you can't understand it. I say, did Lord Furui ask you to bring wine and food to anger those rebels?"
Liu Qingye smiled and said, "Brother, you are really good. You always guess right. It was Lord Furui who asked me to come. Where are the wine and food?"
The cook said, "When have I ever delayed anything that Master Fu Rui asked me to do? I have done it all. But Master Fu Rui is really a fool. Why did he waste all these wine and food?"
Liu Qingye said: "My Lord Fu Rui is very smart and only he can come up with a way to deal with the rebels."
The cook said, "That's true - go quickly, little brother, otherwise Lord Fu Rui will be worried." Then he handed a food basket to Liu Qingye and respectfully escorted him out the door. At the end, he said, "Please say a few good words in front of Lord Fu Rui - you know my Chinese is not good, I can't say anything in front of Lord Fu Rui."
Liu Qingye agreed readily. Seeing a soldier from the opposite side rushing towards this side, he was afraid that it might be Zhong Rui's men coming and he would be exposed, so he quickly left the cook and went to the mosque.
But the soldier on the other side stopped him and asked, "Hey, are you sent by Lord Mang Keshan to get the wine and food?"
Liu Qingye lowered his head and replied, "Yes." At the same time, he secretly clenched his fists, intending to kill the soldier with one blow.
The soldier came up happily, took his hand and said, "That's great. Lord Furui sent me to bring you wine and food. Thank you for your help, brother." Then he took the food basket.
Liu Qingye was delighted: Just right, let this man lead the way! Thinking of this, he stepped forward to take back the basket and said, "Alas, Lord Mang Keshan sent me to do something, how can I trouble you, brother? If Lord Mang Keshan sees me, I will lose my head, right?"
The soldier was stunned for a moment and said, "Wow, you speak Chinese really well. There are not many people like you under Lord Mangkeshan. Well, I have made a friend of yours. Let's go up together."
This was exactly what Liu Qingye wanted, and he immediately entered the mosque with the soldier as a brother. However, after being fooled once, he was much more careful this time, always slightly behind the soldier, and at the same time, he circulated his true energy on his right palm, so that if the soldier attacked, he would kill him.
However, this time his worry was unnecessary. He and the soldier walked along a long staircase and came to a spacious stone chamber. The stone chamber was built underground and could not see the sun, so torches were stuck on the walls. In the light of the fire, Liu Qingye immediately saw Zhong Rui and Mang Keshan sitting at the eight-immortal table at the door. He raised his eyes slightly and saw a staircase at the end of the stone chamber. The cage on the staircase held the members of the Lantern Festival, and the man in plain clothes standing in front of the cage was General Fu Chakang.
Liu Qingye couldn't help but be shocked: "Mr. Li went to see him, but he is here? Could it be that Mr. Li has also met with an accident?" Just as he was thinking about it, he heard one of Mang Keshan's men shouting: "You two are too inefficient. Do you want the general and the rebels to starve together?"
Seeing that Zhong Rui and Mang Keshan were looking at him, Liu Qingye panicked a little. He took advantage of the soldier's scolding to kneel down and said, "I dare not... I dare not..." He learned this trick from Sunada.
As soon as he knelt, Fury's men followed suit, saying, "General, please forgive me... Please forgive me..."
Mang Keshan and Fu Rui glanced at them, as if it was a little strange for these two people to be so fearful and timid, but Fu Chakang waved his hand on the steps and said, "Forget it, just go and serve. We can eat anytime, but it would be a sin to let these heroes starve ."
"General, what you said is wrong!" Zhong Rui gestured to Liu Qingye and the soldier to step aside, and poured a glass of wine for Fu Cha Kang: "These rebels, although they have special skills, cannot be considered heroes. A hero knows the current situation. But they can't distinguish right from wrong, loyalty from treachery, and have a passion for serving the country, but they use it in the wrong place - at best, they can only be called 'heroes'." As he said this, he also poured a glass of wine, moved in front of the cage, and said: "You are fasting and ruining your bodies like this, how can the fallen Ming Dynasty be restored?"
Everyone at the Lantern Festival looked on coldly, and no one answered.
Zhong Rui added: "There are always a thousand benefits to being alive. For example, Hong Chengchou of the former Ming Dynasty refused to surrender and refused to eat at first. But looking at his later glory, you will know that it is better to surrender. Haha, at the beginning, Emperor Taizong did not hesitate to let Concubine Zhuang to persuade him to surrender, which shows that he is eager for talent. Now General Fu Chakang is personally persuading him to surrender..."
"Fu Rui!" Fu Cha Kang shouted, "What are you talking about?"
Zhong Rui immediately realized that Concubine Zhuang's attempt to persuade the emperor to surrender was something the court was most reluctant to mention. He accidentally mentioned it, so it was no wonder that Fu Cha Kang was angry. He immediately changed his topic and said, "Hong Chengchou made such a wise move when the Ming Dynasty had not yet fallen. Moreover, now, the whole world belongs to the king—"
"Bah!" Wang Chunshan cursed, "You traitor, you used such a treacherous scheme to deceive us, aren't you afraid of being cursed for eternity?"
Zhong Rui laughed and said, "Master Wang, it seems that you are not very clear about the current situation in the world - let me tell you about it!" He took a sip of wine, left the table and walked towards the steps, saying as he walked, "First, I am already a bannerman, and I can't be considered a 'Han'. Besides, the Manchus and the Han people are one family in the world. As long as the people support the emperor and submit to the court, they are 'loyal', and those who rebel are 'traitors'. Second, how did I deceive you? I invited you to Shanshan to meet the brothers of the Dragon Slayer Society. The Dragon Slayer Society has already submitted to the court. Don't you know this? Many of our soldiers you saw today may be from the Dragon Slayer Society!"
Wang Chunshan was stunned and said, "You are talking nonsense. What kind of bullshit are you talking about?"
Zhong Rui said: "Emperor Shizu issued many edicts, imperial edicts and imperial decrees after May of the tenth year of Shunzhi to recruit Zheng Chenggong, Yongli of the Southern Ming Dynasty and the anti-Qing troops from all over the country. His words were sincere and the conditions were favorable. After that, except for a few people who insisted on being enemies of the court, most heroes and heroes joined the court. The Dragon Slayer Society that you are looking for also surrendered in the third year of Kangxi."
Wang Chunshan was so shocked that he was speechless. Cao Mengsheng on the side scolded: "Some people don't even care if their ancestral graves are dug up. Just because they have no bones doesn't mean we have no bones either!"
"Master Cao..." Zhong Rui took two steps forward and said with a smile, "The most stubborn person in the world is probably your senior brother Li Yunsheng. He covets fame and wealth, but doesn't want to leave a bad reputation, so he has been hiding beside the general for so many years, playing both sides - are you waiting for him to save you? Haha, don't wait, the people he sent have been caught by Zhong, and he, probably can't save himself!"
When Liu Qingye heard Zhong Rui's laughter, he felt a chill down his spine: "Yes, I have to find a way to rescue everyone quickly!" He looked around secretly and saw that there were a dozen soldiers guarding the room besides Mang Keshan and Zhong Rui. It would be easy for him to deal with these soldiers, but he was definitely no match for Mang Keshan and Zhong Rui.
At this time, Fu Cha Kang said, "Fu Rui, you are wrong. Mr. Li is loyal to the Qing Dynasty, and the sun and the moon can testify to that. He is willing to risk his life for these heroes just because they are fellow disciples. How could such a sentimental person live up to the kindness of Emperor Shizu? You said he is playing both sides, but I don't believe it. I am temporarily holding him back for the sake of state affairs. State affairs cannot allow him to be emotional."
His righteous words made Liu Qingye feel relieved - at least, Li Yunsheng was not in danger now.
Zhong Rui was scolded and bowed his head and said, "The general is right."
Mang Keshan said on the side: "General, this Li Yunsheng is clearly disloyal, otherwise why would he not even want to tell his name for so many years?"
Fu Cha Kang sighed and said, "Mr. Li is too depressed—"
Just as he was about to continue, a soldier rushed in in a panic, shouting, "General, my lords, this is bad! The spy sent by Li Yunsheng has escaped!"
"What?" Mang Keshan slammed the table and stood up. "How did you get to be a police officer? Why did you run away right after you caught him?"
The soldier said, "Please spare my life, sir. I just heard someone shouting that the window of the cell was broken, so I went to check and found that it was my brother who was imprisoned in the cell. The spy had already escaped."
