A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

They were lying in ambush at the sharp bend at the bottom of the hillside.

The snow fell heavily in the latter half of the night, its soft patter drowning out all other sounds in the world.

Liu Ye lay on the ground, curled up in the haystack outside the bend, clutching the oiled paper medicine packet in her hand. Liu Da pulled the two prepared fast horses, nestled behind the earthen embankment not far away. Qin Ying, dressed in black, pressed against the slope, holding a short knife, unmoving. Yang Hu lay beside Liu Ye, staring at the top of the slope.

The wind and snow blew harder and harder, stinging his face like tiny knives. Yang Hu squatted in the grass, his breath just rising before being blown back by the wind and snow. He held his medicine box in one hand and the oiled paper medicine packet in the other. His heart pounded heavily. The outcome of this night, the blood feud of the Qin family, and the lives on the frontier would all be decided in the next stick of incense!

Around midnight, the faint sound of wheels grinding through the snow could be heard from the top of the hill.

coming.

Three carts, covered with tarpaulins, slid heavily down the long slope. Five or six men escorting the carts, their necks hunched and knives at their sides, followed behind. Just as Yang Hu had predicted, they only felt at ease once they left the village. They all kept their heads down, only wanting to make sure their feet were firmly planted in the snow, and had no time to look down the slope.

When the vehicle reached the bottom of the slope, the livestock were restrained and slowed down, struggling to make the sharp turn.

Right now.

"Move!" Yang Hu shouted in a low voice.

Liu Ye darted out, crouching low, and pressed herself against the first man escorting the cart. With a backhand flick, she sprayed a handful of powder at him. Caught off guard, the man's nose was filled with the powder, his vision went black, and his throat itched. Before he could even cry out, his legs gave way, and he collapsed onto the snow.

Another shadow flashed through the withered grass; it was Qin Ying. She moved with incredible speed, almost disappearing as a blurry shadow. She passed by the second and third men escorting the cart, using her elbows and the back of her knife to strike their vital points and joints. The two men didn't even see her face before collapsing to the ground, groaning.

In just a few breaths, five or six men who were escorting the cart were either blinded by the powder or knocked to the ground by Qin Ying, falling haphazardly without being able to utter a single coherent word.

"Fine!" Liu Da rode up on his horse, and clicked his tongue when he saw the crowd on the ground.

Yang Hu didn't feel relaxed either. He rushed to the front of the first car and forcefully pulled off the tarpaulin.

The cart was loaded full of nailed-together wooden crates. Liu Da got on, wielding the back of his axe, and quickly opened the crate lids. Inside were rows of swords, spears, and arrows, emanating a chilling aura; there were also several locked iron boxes.

"Really." Qin Ying opened a box, rummaged through the contents, and said through gritted teeth, "Armor, account books, and letters... enough to tie the prefectural governor's office to the enemy for treason."

Yang Hu's heart was becoming increasingly taut; he quickly touched himself for a while, his heart sinking little by little.

Everything went too smoothly.

From the bottom of the slope to the moment they took down these three vehicles, it only took the time it takes for an incense stick to burn. But this road was so smooth that it was almost suffocating. The guards were incredibly lax; everything was perfectly organized, and even the crucial evidence was placed in the first vehicle, which was the easiest to steal.

"No, that's not right." He jumped to his feet. "Get out of here! We can't flip this over here, get out of here right now!"

Before he could finish speaking, a cluster of torches suddenly appeared on the hilltop and over the rocky hillside!

"Hey! There really are thieves!" A loud shout rang out, accompanied by a gust of wind and snow: "Surround them! Leave no one alive!"

A large, dark group of people, carrying torches and knives, surged in like a tide from the rocky hillside and from both sides of the hilltop.

There are dozens of them?

Yang Hu's heart sank: he had fallen into its trap again, but it was even deeper than he had imagined. That hand had placed the deadly evidence in plain sight to lure them into action and succeed. Then, while they were examining the stolen evidence, the hand would catch them red-handed and bring them all to justice. In that case, the Prefectural Magistrate's Office would be the ones to be accused of colluding with the enemy, but the "bandits" who were caught and killed on the spot would be them. Without any confrontation, that hand had cut off their path.

"It doesn't want to protect this truckload of goods!" In an instant, Yang Hu saw the most ruthless part of the hand. "It wants to kill the person who's been targeting it, along with the stolen goods, right here!"

"What's the panic?"

A voice, yet as steady as a rock at the bottom of a slope.

Qin Ying.

She appeared among the three vehicles at some unknown time. Snowflakes fell on her smeared face, but she exuded an imposing aura. Under the light of dozens of torches, she was far more intimidating than those dozens of fierce soldiers.

"They set a trap, I disarmed it." Her voice wasn't loud, but every word pierced Yang Hu's heart: "They calculated that we would get caught up in the fight for the item, and we won't get caught up in the fight for it. The proof is irrefutable; I've already taken out the most important box of letters and have it with me. I don't need the rest."

With a backhand slash, she snapped the rope of the first cart, then kicked away a torch by the roadside, igniting the tarpaulin on the cart.

"It wants the stolen goods?" The flames roared up, illuminating her cold, murderous eyes. "I'll just burn it all down to show everyone! Without this cartload of stolen goods, these dozens of people surrounding us will become nameless, faceless savages besieging an innocent family in the middle of the night. It'll have to think twice about whether it can handle this situation!"

The fire roared up along the tarpaulin, turning the three vehicles into three fireballs in an instant, illuminating the bottom of the slope as if it were daytime.

The burly man leading the group was dumbfounded by the fire. These were the very things they wanted to sell, but the "thief" had burned them all. Dozens of them had surrounded the main road day and night, brandishing knives and swords, yet they received no explanation. Was this some kind of bandit suppression operation? Weren't the goods sold by their own robbers?

Protect the goods? They were the ones who wanted to burn the goods themselves.

They burned it, ruining a perfectly good plan to catch the culprit red-handed and have him executed.

"Go!" Qin Ying shouted.

Liu Da's horse had already charged forward. Under the illumination of the sea of ​​fire and amidst the blinding chaos, the four of them leaped onto their horses and, taking advantage of the gap in the crowd before it could close in, tore a slit open and galloped down a path at the foot of the hill.

In the wind and snow, the flame behind them and the angry curse grew farther and farther away.

Qin Ying lay on her horse, a box of letters pressed against her body, poking at her heart, causing her pain and heat.

It was the blood feud of her entire Qin family, the lives of the soldiers guarding the border, and the first piece of evidence she had painstakingly painstakingly obtained.

The fire in the wind and snow transformed into a dazzling red in the night sky north of the city.

Four horses galloped through waist-deep snow, and those who tried to catch up could not keep up.

Liu Ye glanced back at the receding flames, then looked at Qin Ying beside her. For the first time, she saw something admirable in this usually taciturn "medicine boy." Facing dozens of torches and dozens of knives, he saw through a dead end in a flash of lightning, extinguishing the plan of the two leaders with a single fire, and tearing open a path to survival on that dead end.

Yang and Hu followed side by side behind the saddle, but they felt no sense of relief.

This box of letters was enough for him to tear the steward in the prefectural governor's mansion to shreds, enough for him to overturn the entire prefectural governor's mansion, but in that one glance he saw clearly that between the lines of the letters was a shadow hidden somewhere in the capital, a shadow that even the prefectural governor had to obey.

A section of the tendril was unearthed; the roots that had been entrenched deep within were now thoroughly disturbed tonight by their fire.