A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Starting from the Village Chief

Chapter 81: Catching a Few Spies
The second half of the night in summer is the best time to sleep, as it is no longer stuffy.

The knocking on the door continued, and Li Yi was woken up from his sweet sleep. He was very angry.

Even the little tabby cat stared with wide eyes, looking very unhappy.

"Who?"

"Ah Lang, this is Xiuzhi. Uncle Luo is knocking on the door. He said that the black man in the east courtyard caught several thieves."

When Li Yi heard this, he woke up from his sleepiness.

Get dressed and get up,

After unbolting the door and opening it, Xiuzhi was outside holding a lantern. Ji and Yushu were also up. Even the two little maids, Hongxiao and Lanxiang, were standing in the yard with sleepy eyes.

It was still pitch black outside.

"You all go and rest, I'll go over and take a look."

Ji said worriedly, "Let's go with Alang."

"Since Uncle Luo came knocking on the door, it means that the situation is under control."

Li Yi opened the inner courtyard door,

Luo Er was waiting outside the door holding a torch. Not only him, but also several villagers.

"Where's the thief?"

"It's hanging on the persimmon tree in the west yard."

"How many thieves?"

"Three," Uncle Luo was very excited, his eyes shining like an owl.

Li Yi asked Xiuzhi and the others who followed him to the door to close the inner courtyard door, "You go back and rest, remember to lock the door."

On the way, Luo Er talked about what happened with great enthusiasm. He actually got the second-hand information from Liu Heizi.

Several villagers were also quite excited. Three thieves actually dared to steal from Li Daizhao's house in the middle of the night. They probably didn't know that Li Daizhao was a Taoist priest who knew the Five Thunders Method.

"Liu Heizi knocked down all three thieves with just one stick, tied them up and hung them from the persimmon tree in the yard. Now they're being whipped and feeding mosquitoes."

Li Yi shook his head after hearing this. "Lao Hei is inexperienced. How can he hang the three thieves together? He should hang them separately in different corners of the yard and then interrogate them separately."

Come to the West Courtyard,

It's already very lively here.

Only Liu Heizi and his wife were currently staying in the inner courtyard of the West Courtyard, keeping watch at night. However, there were two other teachers living in the outer courtyard. They were migrant workers from Hebei Province, so naturally, they had to stay here when they came to the school. Dong Qilang would return to his home in Fengjiabao at night.

There were still a few villagers from Luojiabao standing at the gate of the courtyard.
There are more in the yard.

As soon as they heard that the thief had been caught, all the men came.

Everyone still hated thieves. The village was well organized, and Luo Er knocked on every door. All the men in the remaining 19 households came.

Li Yi saw the three thieves under the persimmon tree in the yard.

They were hung on the tree with their hands tied, like three pieces of bacon. Under the light of the fire, they looked embarrassed and terrified.
Liu Heizi stood there with his bare chest and a stick in his hand, telling the villagers in vivid detail how he noticed a slight movement in the middle of the night and easily knocked down three people with just a stick.

"These three thieves were carrying daggers. Luckily, I've practiced some boxing and kicking since I was a kid, and this stick technique is something I learned from an old beggar..."

"The village chief is here."

Liu Heizi turned around and saw Li Yi, and quickly ran up to him, "Ah Lang, you really predicted it right. There really were thieves coming, three of them, but I caught them all."

"Have you asked?"

"I just asked, and these guys are very stubborn. They just said they are refugees from Longyou. They came to Yusuchuan to beg during the day and heard that Alang's workshop is very profitable, so they wanted to steal." Liu Heizi pointed at the three people hanging on the tree. "But I searched them carefully. They all had daggers and several packets of medicine. I suspect they wanted to poison you."

Li Yi frowned when he heard this.

Carrying a poisonous knife,

This person has bad intentions.

An ordinary thief would not need to carry these things, and if he was caught, there was no reason to be so stubborn.

Very unusual.

"Old Black, light the torch closer to them so I can see it more carefully."

Li Yi observed carefully and found that these three people did not look like assassins or killers. They were just like the refugees he had seen in Sanqiao before. They were skinny and bony, but younger than the old and weak ones he had seen before.

They must be refugees, not servants raised by Wei Du.

But we can't rule out the possibility that Weidu didn't hire him.
"Nothing to say? Then there's no need to say anything. These people sneaked into my workshop late at night with knives and poison. They are not thieves at all. They are here to kill and burn people. I don't think these people are refugees at all. They are sent by Xue Ju from Longyou to kill people and burn people to cause chaos in the rear of the Tang Dynasty."

"Old Black, chop off their heads and send them to the government office at dawn. Please give me your reward."

Murder and arson are much more serious crimes than theft.

Li Yi also accused them of being Xue Ju's spies who came to infiltrate and sabotage, which was an even greater crime.

Liu Heizi chuckled twice. His appearance was particularly ferocious in the firelight. "A Lang, these slaves from Longyou can't get away with it. Hand them over to me. I will use a hammer to beat their fingers and toes into minced meat.
Then I smash their balls with a hammer and finally twist their heads off.”

Such cruel words, coupled with his ferocious face,
Suddenly, one of the younger thieves couldn't bear it anymore. There was a smell of foul smell and the sound of dripping water.

Urine.

"I am not a spy for Xue Ju. My family was plundered by the rebels of Xue Ju and his sons, so I had to flee to Guanzhong. Five of my seven members were killed by them, leaving only me and my younger sister.
I am not a soldier of the thief Xue, I really am not, please let me go,
My little sister is still waiting for me to come back."

Li Yi looked at the collapsed little thief. Judging from his voice and appearance, he might be about the same age as him, only about fifteen or sixteen years old.

"Heizi, untie him and take him to the kitchen. I'll talk to him first. You hang the other two separately and farther away. Don't let them talk."

Kitchen,

The stove was cold and there was no trace of the lively atmosphere of the day.

Li Yi asked Liu Heizi to put the man down and leave first.
He faced the boy alone.

His hands and feet were tied behind his back, and he knelt on the ground in fear.
This reminded Li Yi of Liu Heizi that night. So, he walked behind the thief, and with a thought, the electric baton appeared in his hand again.
Open the insurance, press the switch,
Arc flash,

"Taishang Laojun is as urgent as the law, the Five Thunders are in effect..."

Li Yi pretended to recite a few words, then pushed his hand against his thigh.
Clap, Capybara,
The three seconds of intense and exciting energy can instantly bring people to the peak.

The thief fell straight down.

Peed again.

Li Yi had reason to suspect that this kid was very nervous because it was his first time committing a crime and drank a lot of water when he came. Otherwise, how could he urinate so much?

Put away the electric baton. There is no place to charge this thing, and it becomes less and less with each use.

He waited quietly for the boy to wake up.

After a while, the guy woke up and struggled and screamed in fear.

Li Yi squatted in front of him,

"You didn't feel good about the Five Thunders I just used, did you? Now I'm giving you a chance to confess and I'll give you a few more blows if you don't tell the truth."

Li Yi originally thought that this guy would confess everything.

But surprisingly, although he kept begging for mercy, he refused to confess.

After thinking for a moment, he asked, "Is your sister being held hostage? Are you worried about her?"

The little thief looked at Li Yi pitifully.

"Okay, let's start over again. Poor boy from Longyou, what's your name? What's your sister's name? How old is she?"

The boy was silent.

"If you don't tell me, I will hand you over to the big black guy. He will use a sledgehammer to smash each of your ten fingers and toes into minced meat, and finally smash your balls.
Finally, they will tear off your head and take it away, and your body will be thrown into the ditch to feed the wild dogs."

"If you die, your sister won't even be able to see you for the last time, and she'll have no one to rely on in the future. Just think about it."

The little thief broke down and cried loudly.

Liu Heizi knocked on the door. "Ah Lang, that skinny guy outside refuses to confess. I've already hammered him to death. Do you want to bring his head over for inspection? That kid still refuses to confess? Just let me hammer him to death. Who cares what his name is?"

"Go interrogate the tall guy first," Li Yi said.

The footsteps fade away,
"Did you hear that? One of your accomplices is dead. What was his name?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen him before,"

"You three didn't know each other before?"

"Ah."

"Then how did they get together? Who arranged it?"

The little thief begged Li Yi, "Can you rescue my sister?"

"Only after you explained it clearly did I know where to go to save people."

During the meal, Li Yi asked him the same question several times, but the answer he got did not satisfy him.

This little thief Chen Liang was only fifteen years old this year. He was originally from Didao, Jincheng County, Longyou. Last year, there was a severe drought in Hexi, followed by famine, and bandits were everywhere. Jincheng Captain Xue Ju took the opportunity to rebel. Although this guy rebelled against the Sui Dynasty under the banner of opening the granaries to release grain, his soldiers also plundered the people. His son Xue Rengao's soldiers were even more vicious.
Chen Liang's family owned a shop in the market of Didao County. They were quite well-off, with shops in the city and land in the countryside. His father used to follow the caravans, transporting goods from Chang'an to Liangzhou.
Chen Liang studied from a young age and began to learn business at the age of twelve in his family's shop. However, the country was in chaos, followed by natural disasters and famine in Hexi, and then wars. His family's shop was robbed, his father was killed, and his mother and sister were raped and abducted.
Only he and his younger sister escaped, but without a home or parents, they had no choice but to flee to Guanzhong with many others. Yesterday, he and his younger sister were begging in Xianyang when they were taken away.

The other party threatened him with his sister and asked him to do something, and they would give them a stone of grain after he succeeded.

He and the other two thieves had never met or seen each other before.

He also didn't know who asked them to do this.

They were even brought all the way here by someone, and after they were told the location, the other party disappeared.

What the man asked the three of them to do was simple: sneak into Li Yi's workshop in the west courtyard and put drugs in the bean curd sheets, soaked bean curd and other goods in the workshop.

They didn't know what the medicine was, but they just did what they were told.

But as soon as he sneaked into the yard, before he could find the stock in the workshop, Liu Heizi knocked it all over.

Li Yi felt a bit of a headache. It turned out that this was not an ordinary thief, but the other party acted very cautiously. He found refugees and threatened them with their relatives, then sent them here in the middle of the night, pointed out the location, and gave them medicine and a knife.

Even if we fail, it will be difficult to lead them out.

Li Yi believed that even if these three people completed the mission, they would probably be killed after returning. After all, there were at least 8,000 refugees from Longyou near Chang'an. If three or five of them were missing, who would know what was going on?
Li Yi relied on his intuition.

I think the most likely suspect is the Wei family, followed by the Du family.

The Wei family was the most suspicious, naturally because the other party did not directly hire someone to kill him or poison him, but was after the bean curd sheets and bean curd produced in his workshop. That meant that the other party wanted to attack Li Yi's workshop. If these were sold, people would have problems eating them, or even die from them.

Then Li Yi was in big trouble.
At the very least, his workshop was completely destroyed.

If his workshop was destroyed, who would benefit the most? Of course, the Wei and Du families who had obtained the Fang.

The Wei family's workshop was already competing with Li Yi, so he was more suspicious.

Next, Li Yi interrogated the two separately.
First, use the electric baton, then guide the child.
In the end, both of them confessed, and the situation was similar to what Chen Liang said.

After thinking for a long time,
After dawn, Li Yi first asked someone to invite Wang Lizheng and Wang Xiangchang, and then took Liu Heizi and Luo Ershu to escort the three of them to Chang'an.

"Are you going to Wannian County Government Office?"

"No, go to Yongzhou Yamen and find His Royal Highness the Prince of Qin. We have captured three spies sent by Xue Ju."

Liu Heizi was surprised, but he didn't say anything.
Village chief Wang and village head Wang thought they had really caught a spy and were very excited.

On the way, Liu Heizi quietly asked Li Yi, "Why are you sending them to Yongzhou Hall? They can't be spies sent by Xue Ju to cause trouble."

Li Yi smiled slightly. "If you don't say that, how can we use the power of the court to find out the murderer behind this?"

Only with this reason can the person be handed over to Li Shimin in a fair and reasonable manner. Otherwise, there is no reason to go beyond the Wannian County Government Office.

It was not easy for Li Yi to directly tell Li Shimin that the Wei and Du families wanted to harm him. If he dared to say something without any evidence, Wei and Du would kill him in a short time. So there had to be another reason to get Li Shimin to intervene.

(End of this chapter)