"Mr. Chen, please take a rest."
After getting the information from Chen Jiaqiao, Xu Mu stood up suddenly.
"My boss is going out again? It's going to snow heavily in the next few days."
"I can't care less."
If it hadn't been for the constant snow, he would have thought of going there as early as two days ago.
According to Liu Wu, there will be a bitter village four hundred miles southwest of the inner city. In the village, there are at least a hundred mountain hunters who are good at shooting.
Thousands of private soldiers have not been gathered yet, and he does not want to miss out on these good people.
"Wei Feng, order thirty people, bring more dry food, and follow me out of the village."
"General Feng!"
With the sound of a horse's neighing, General Feng jumped out of the horse gallery and ran towards Xu Mu, stopping in front of Xu Mu.
Xu Mu looked happy, stretched out his hand and touched General Feng's horse's neck, then took out a piece of corn from his pocket and fed it into the horse's mouth.
After General Feng finished eating happily, he had to kneel down again.
"Don't kneel down, don't kneel down, stand up, you and I are brothers, brothers are not allowed to kneel to each other."
The gray horse seemed to understand immediately. After shaking his mane, he straightened his body again.
Xu Mu then smiled and stood up in the stirrups.
“Master, we’re all here, and we’ve brought a few extra portions of dry food.”
"Okay! Four hundred miles southwest, follow my boss's attack!"
Under the blossoming snow velvet, Xu Mu picked up the reins, and General Feng whizzed away like lightning. Not long after, he was already two miles away.
Only thirty of Wei Feng's men remained. After being stunned for a moment, he then picked up the reins and roared forward.
…
Changyang City, covered with snow, crushed the wine shops that were unable to get business, crushed the sound of studying in Shuixie Academy, and crushed the backbones of many people.
Yuan Tao was wearing a large cloak. It was rare for him to come out and take a few steps during the snowy weather. It's not that I want to enjoy the snow scenery, it's just the emotion in my chest that I can't hold my breath for a while, and I wish I could see the snow-colored mountains and rivers of Daji more often.
Gu Ying held a hand stove and followed carefully.
"What to do with the body of the Beidi man?"
"Master, I heard that the royal family was being buried in a royal ceremony. After a while, I restrained myself and sent it to the north. But on the way... I was blocked by many knights again, and the body was chopped into meat paste."
"Relieve the qi." Yuan Tao exhaled and coughed a few more times unconsciously.
"Master, do you think it's the little boss..."
Yuan Tao turned his head, with a slight smile on his pale face.
"Don't talk nonsense. The young master was eating wine in Tangjiang City that day, and many people saw it. Lu Zizhong, a member of one of the four major families, was also beaten to a pulp for the second time."
"Master, I'm just suspicious. I always feel that this matter is the trick of the little boss."
Yuan Tao smiled, stopped answering, and continued to pace forward with slightly staggering steps.
"In the spring of next year, as soon as the frost and snow have gone, the Beidi people want to knock on the city again. When the robbers come, they don't fight them, but they want to give away their wealth and honor."
"A wolf's ambition cannot be fed enough."
"Gu Ying, I heard something that said... Daji can't defeat Beidi. It's because the Great Wall is no longer in the hearts of Ji people like me."
"Why doesn't the court use civilian workers to build the city?"
"It's the Great Wall in my heart."
"There is a Great Wall in the heart, which can protect the mountains and rivers for thousands of miles."
Gu Ying still didn't understand, so he simply stopped asking. He just held the stove and followed his master's footsteps, slowly moving forward.
"By the way, where is the little boss?"
"Master, this kind of frost, snow and cold weather should be in Zhuangzi."
Yuan Tao lowered his head.
"In my game of chess, my little boss has a killing piece."
Gu Ying agreed in confusion. When he looked up again, he found that Sheng Xue, dressed in white, had turned around and walked towards the Hou Mansion, coughing.
…
Two days passed, and I was glad that heavy snow did not fall. Only the bare old trees beside the official road were covered with a thick layer of dead branches.
When a horse's hoof stepped on it, it was shaken to the ground.
"Xu."
Xu Mu stopped his horse and stroked its neck twice before silently raising his head and identifying the direction of travel.
"My boss, if we continue to take the official route, we will go to Muyun Prefecture."
"Take the path."
Xu Mu spoke in a solemn voice. In the past two days, he had heard that thousands of people in Dangyang County revolted. They only lasted for less than a day before the army of Muyun State broke through the city. More than ten thousand people were killed or injured.
Occasionally, there would be people fleeing, following the official route, from the direction of Muyun Prefecture, and the bodies of the dead were spread all the way.
"My boss, there is a small road ahead." Two heroes from the Qinglong Camp hurried back.
"General Feng, let's go."
The figures of more than thirty people on horseback only waited for a while, then stepped on the horses' hooves and hurried forward.
"Master, once you enter this path, there will be no rest for the town."
These two days, when it was getting dark, they all looked for a nearby town to spend the night. Otherwise, they would most likely freeze to death outside.
"It's okay. There are woods nearby. We can build a wooden shed at the worst."
As we drove, from early morning to dusk, until the trail in front of us almost reached the end. A group of thirty people saw the smoke of people in front of them.
"Master, it's almost dinner time, maybe we can buy some hot soup and cakes." Wei Feng laughed happily.
"Wei Feng, you seem to have forgotten that only in Xujiazhuang can you have three meals a day."
The ancients only ate two meals a day, even if there was no shortage of food. They went out to do farm work in the morning, had one meal in the morning, and had the second meal around midnight in the afternoon, almost in the evening.
Furthermore, in these troubled times, if you don’t even have enough food left at home, why would you want to sell it to passers-by?
"Master, there are frozen corpses here."
Xu Mu paused, looked up, and found that there were five or six people huddled under a bare tree, all frozen.
They were probably members of a family. One of the women was wearing thin clothes, with a desperate look on her face, and she was holding the child tightly in her arms.
At the very edge, there was another middle-aged man performing his filial piety, keeping his bow and warming the legs and feet of an old woman.
Thinking about it carefully, during the heavy snowstorm on the second or third day, the family had no way of survival. They wanted to go to the inner city to beg for their lives, but they didn't want to freeze to death on the way.
If there was peace in the world, the people of this family should have something to do at sunrise and rest at sunset, instead of the tragic scene in front of them, dying in the wind and snow.
Before Xu Mu could give orders, Wei Feng had already sighed and led a few good hands to bury the poor man of the family under the tree.
"Go ahead. Don't be reincarnated in the past few years. If you don't get reincarnated as a rich man, everything will be miserable. It will be extremely miserable."
Xu Mu was silent for a moment. I just felt that the reckless Wei Feng in front of me suddenly spoke to his heart. In the distance, I thought of Tian Song, who died at the border, and the words he often said in the corner of his mouth.
It is better to be a dog in peace than a traveler in troubled times.
"Enter the village."
After Wei Feng and others walked back, Xu Mu dismissed his annoying thoughts. The figures of thirty riders rushed towards the small deserted village not far ahead in the frosty weather.
