There was no one in the Liao ancestral hall, and the surroundings were quiet. A dark shadow walked quickly and stopped at the door of the ancestral hall. It was Liao Wenbin. He first looked around cautiously, then unlocked the door and walked in quickly.
On the opposite roof ridge, Zhou Yu'an and Shen Chongming exchanged glances, and then Shen Chongming jumped down from the roof ridge and landed steadily in the courtyard. Zhou Yu'an followed closely behind, and just as he was about to jump down, he met Shen Chongming's eyes, then put on a fearful look and said to Shen Chongming, "What should I do?"
"Come down!"
"It's so high, will I fall to death?"
While observing Shen Chongming, Zhou Yu'an carefully moved half a step forward. When he saw the corners of his mouth raised, he pretended to have trembling legs and sat on the eaves.
"Master Shen, I'm scared!"
"I'm afraid just stay up there!"
Shen Chongming turned around and seemed not to pay attention to her. Zhou Yu'an gritted his teeth, tilted his body, and rolled down from the eaves. As expected, she was picked up by Shen Chongming and fell steadily into his arms.
Smelling the reassuring breath, Zhou Yu'an took the next step and hugged his neck: "Thank you, Mr. Shen!"
"Is it fun?" Shen Chongming raised his lips and came closer to her face: "Miss Zhou, do you want me to carry you in?"
"No, no, no, how dare you trouble Mr. Shen? I can walk by myself." Sliding off Shen Chongming's body, Zhou Yu'an touched his legs in a pretentious manner: "Sir, let's go first, my legs are a little So soft!"
"Weak legs?" Shen Chongming's voice rose, "Then I'd better hold the girl."
Suddenly, Zhou Yuan shuddered, shook his head quickly and said: "My legs are not weak anymore, I can walk on my own."
He bared his teeth and slipped past Shen Chongming, and suddenly he grabbed his wrist.
"Can you really leave?"
"Really!" Zhou Yu'an said quickly: "Thank you, Mr. Shen, I will go alone."
"Zhou Yu'an." Shen Chongming approached her and whispered: "It's not too much to ask me to accept this."
ah?
Zhou Yuan was dumbfounded, and instantly felt as if he had dug a hole and buried himself.
It was pitch dark in the ancestral hall, with only a little bit of moonlight shining in through the window lattice. Shen Chongming took Zhou Yu'an's hand and walked to the south wall, stretched out his hand and patted it twice, but there was no response from the wall.
Zhou Yu'an tugged his hand, pointed to the ancestral tablets placed in the middle of the ancestral hall and said, "Will your ancestors' tablets be placed sideways?"
Shen Chongming frowned and looked in the direction of her finger, and sure enough he saw a tablet lying sideways.
Setting up the mechanism on the ancestral tablet, the Liao family is really unusual.
"This man's name is Liao Ting. Looking at the place where he is placed, he is either grandpa or great-grandfather. Does the Liao family have any grudge against this ancestor?" Zhou Yu'an looked at the tablet and found that the bottom of the tablet was badly worn, and there was indeed a mechanism hidden underneath.
Liao Ting? Is it the Liao Ting from sixty-five years ago?
If he is really his descendant, then everything the Liao family has done can be traced.
Zhou Yu'an held the tablet and moved it slightly twice, but it did not move. Seeing this, Shen Chongming covered her hand, first moved the tablet back to its original place, and then gently turned it with reference to the previous position. With a "click" sound, the wall behind the tablet unexpectedly flipped open, revealing the contents inside. A dark room.
There was a faint light in the dark room. Shen Chongming and Zhou Yu'an exchanged glances. They walked in quickly and the wall closed again.
In the dark room, Liao Wenbin looked a little panicked. He didn't expect anyone to follow him in, let alone Shen Chongming and Zhou Yu'an. After seeing their faces clearly, he sat on the ground completely exhausted.
On the bamboo bed behind him, a man was lying crookedly. The man was as thin as a bamboo pole, and he should be a dead man.
Under the bamboo bed was a pair of tattered military shoes. Judging from the regulations, they should belong to the Shuozhou defenders.
"Is he the beggar in the City God's Temple?" Shen Chongming asked coldly: "He is the Shuozhou army. Did he flee to Liulin Town after Beidi captured Shuozhou?"
"He didn't escape, he crawled out from the dead." Liao Wenbin retorted and looked at Shen Chongming: "He is my uncle Liao Boqing."
"Liao Boqing, that spy who escaped before the battle?" Shen Chongming's eyes showed a layer of ridicule. He walked forward and stood in front of Liao Wenbin: "Shuozhou City was destroyed because someone was in the city to respond. When the list of soldiers was counted, only Lieutenant General Liao Boqing is not here."
"My uncle is not a spy, it was General Wu who was guarding the city who deceived him!" Liao Wenbin sat on the ground: "When Beidi raided Shuozhou, it was when the people of Shuozhou were preparing for New Year's Eve. My uncle received an order saying that it was issued by the imperial court When a batch of supplies arrived, he was asked to go outside the city to greet them. When the imperial court distributes supplies, there must be relevant documents, but my uncle did not see them. With doubts, he went to General Wu to ask, but he was scolded by General Wu. Nine cold days , the moat was frozen, so my uncle led his soldiers to rush forward and met soldiers carrying supplies ten miles outside the city."
"Are those soldiers pretending to be Beidi people?"
Zhou Yu'an looked at the dead body on the bamboo bed, and it matched Li Zheng's description. One of his legs was broken, half of his face was destroyed, and there were many intersecting wounds on his body. Judging from the wounds, there were weapons from both Beidi people and Shuozhou defenders. This person should have been besieged by two parties.
Liao Wenbin did not refute Zhou Yuan's words, but turned his head and continued.
"They dressed up like our own people, and even their speech imitated our accent. My uncle did not doubt that he had it, so he brought them into the city. According to regulations, materials allocated by the imperial court need to be stored in the Yamen of the state capital. The warehouse is in charge of inventory by the prefectural government office, but General Wu asked my uncle to take it to the general's palace, and the steward of the general's palace will be responsible for inventorying it, saying that it will be distributed after the inventory."
Liao Wenbin lowered his head, and the sarcasm in Shen Chongming's eyes gradually disappeared, replaced by a look of cold anger.
Unlike Liao Wenbin, who had no power to restrain a chicken, his uncle Liao Boqing was a versatile man in both civil and military affairs. When he noticed something was wrong, he did not make any announcement, but secretly observed and collected relevant evidence.
Late at night two days later, something happened in the General's Mansion. Dozens of killers poured out of the General's Mansion. They sneaked into various mansions in the city at extremely fast speeds and killed those who had been against the General or disobeyed the General, regardless of their official positions. Assassination.
They came and left quickly, and most of the officials they assassinated lost their lives in their sleep. These people were ruthless in their actions. They killed not only officials, but also their wives and children.
Liao Boqing wanted to save people, but he couldn't even protect his wife and children. Killers were wreaking havoc in the city, and Beidi people raided outside the city. With no choice, Liao Boqing could only carry the evidence of General Wu's collaboration with the enemy to escape Shuozhou.
He originally wanted to hand over the evidence of his crime to the Suizhou governor and ask him to forward it to the imperial court. However, the Suizhou governor and General Wu were in the same boat. He narrowly escaped death and dragged his broken body back to Liulin by begging all the way.
He knew that General Wu and the Beidi people would not let him go. He did not dare to contact his brother and hid in the Chenghuang Temple as a beggar. It was not until he found that his cotton clothes had been tampered with that he sneaked into the Liao Mansion at night. Find Liao Wenbin.
