Zhiwen and Zhiwang followed the rather enthusiastic servant of the county magistrate, dodging the patrolling soldiers, all the way to the prison, only to be stopped by the jailers.
The servant immediately produced a wooden waist tag and said in a cold voice, "My lord has ordered that the two people behind me are permitted to enter the prison for a quarter of an hour."
The jailer hesitated for a moment, but ultimately agreed to let them pass because of the waist tag.
Zhiwen and Zhiwang were extremely anxious and were about to step inside when the servant quickly pulled them aside and whispered:
"That general is coming with great force and considerable power. You should not leave the town for the next few days, lest you make things difficult for the magistrate."
After thinking for a moment, Zhiwen agreed.
Seeing the servant put away the waist token and leave without looking back, Zhiwen pulled Zhiwang, whose face was stern and seemed to be thinking about something, into the prison. They followed the jailer and groped their way to the darkest corner of the cell.
The once empty prison was now crammed with people. Zhiwen and Zhiwang stared wide-eyed for a long time before finally finding Zhixing and the others in a corner cell.
The jailer, expressionless, reminded him, "One quarter of an hour. You can't stay any longer."
Zhiwen slipped a tael of silver to the jailer and gave him a fawning smile: "Thank you."
The jailer weighed the silver in his hand, turned and left, making room for them to chat.
Zhiwen breathed a sigh of relief and turned around to see Zhiwang clinging to the cell door, eagerly talking to Zhixing.
Zhixing was clearly surprised by their arrival, and felt both touched and uneasy: "You all need to get out quickly and not come back. If anyone asks, just say you don't know us."
Zhiwu, who was standing next to him, bit his lower lip and said, "Brother Wen, Xiao Wang, I'm afraid we can't escape. Don't let yourselves get involved too."
Seeing their haggard faces and disheveled figures, a far cry from the composure and high spirits they had displayed when they returned from the prefectural city, Zhiwen felt extremely distressed.
"Don't talk about severing ties yet." Zhiwang tried his best to calm down, looking around at the people in the cell. There were about ten of them; the rest must be in other cells. "Brother Xing, what exactly happened? When we went up the mountain, we clearly..."
Zhixing quickly covered his mouth, looked to both sides, stuffed a small crumpled piece of paper into his hand, and whispered in his ear:
"Everything was proceeding normally until we entered the territory of Tanzhou. Among the people I brought down the mountain, there was a traitor."
That bastard was in charge of gathering intelligence; he tricked Zhiwu and Wang Jin, saying that Elder Nian had been captured…
Zhiwu was the only one of the four who didn't use his brain much, and Wang Jin was no less so.
Both men were highly capable, skilled in combat, and loyal, but they were not very smart and easily believed the words of a traitor.
Zhi Xing did not believe it.
But once they entered Longxing Prefecture, news of the capture of mountain bandits spread like wildfire. Fearing that the eldest brother might actually be captured, he led his men on a risky trip to the streets to gather information.
They ran right into the vanguard of the parade.
Zhi Xing sighed: "Logically speaking, he was just going to gather information, so he shouldn't have been caught, but... a family of villagers who were with the advance team recognized Wang Jin at a glance and immediately shouted that Wang Jin was a bandit."
The traitor, having received money from someone, knelt before the young general when no one was looking, claiming that Zhiwu and Wang Jin were bandits who had killed his entire family and demanded blood for revenge.
We were all arrested.
The most ridiculous thing is that the traitor was a bandit before Zhiwen and his three companions entered the mountains, and had committed several robberies on the road.
Because he was sensible and had never killed anyone, the eldest son did not drive the man down the mountain.
At this point, they turned around and falsely accused the villagers of harming people, claiming that they had reformed themselves when they came up the mountain.
Zhiwen frowned as he listened.
He knew, of course, that many of the brothers in the stronghold looked down on them, not just because they were not good at fighting, but more because they thought they were not ruthless enough, had little experience, and were not worthy of being bandits.
But after they made enough money for the bandit gang and even got on good terms with Boss Ye, no one talked about these things anymore.
It's unbelievable that there are people who eat and use the money they earned, yet still look down on them in their hearts, and even do such disgusting things.
Taking advantage of the moment when no one was looking, Zhiwang quickly pocketed the small crumpled paper that had been slipped to him, clenched his fist, and asked in a fierce voice, "Where is he?"
Zhiwang had never wanted to kill anyone so much before.
Zhi Xing sneered and pointed to the cell diagonally opposite: "They've been arrested too."
That young general was not someone who could be easily fooled. After investigating, he learned that the traitor was also a bandit, so he arrested him on the spot.
However, Zhixing and his group did not have a clean background. The young general did not order them to be tortured, but he was also unwilling to release them.
Zhiwen and Zhiwang were silent for a long while before lowering their voices and saying, "I'll go find..."
Zhixing shook his head and pushed away Zhiwang, who was clinging to the door:
“No, if the old man comes, wouldn’t that be walking into a trap? We’ve never killed anyone or done any looting. At most, we’ll be forced to do three months of forced labor. There’s no need to go to such lengths.”
Before Zhiwen and Zhiwang could speak, Zhixing pointed to the person slumped like mud in the corner of the cell:
“If you really want to save him, why don’t you rescue him? He’s not a bandit; he was implicated by us and is now in prison unjustly.”
Zhiwen and Zhiwang frowned deeply and did not respond.
Zhixing spoke lightly, but performing corvée labor was not that simple.
Especially for prisoners like Zhixing who were sentenced to forced labor, they did the hardest and most tiring work, ate the least and worst food, and were frequently whipped and beaten...
Zhiwang wiped away his tears and was about to speak again when the jailer shouted from a few steps away, "The time has come. Don't delay, come out now!"
Zhi Xing and Zhi Wu pushed Zhi Wang and the other two, saying, "Let's go, don't waste any more time."
Zhiwen and Zhiwang suppressed their tears and strode out of the prison.
Zhi Xing sighed and plopped down on the ground, still maintaining a relatively optimistic attitude: "At least Elder Nian and the others weren't implicated by us."
"Hmph." The person lying on the pile of weeds sneered, "Who's implicated is still uncertain. Besides... how do you know they can definitely escape?"
"You!" Zhiwu and Wang Jin clenched their fists in anger.
Zhiwen and his companion returned to their rented house. Just as they were about to send someone to deliver a message, several children ran up anxiously.
"It's terrible, Brother Wen, Brother Wang! The people we sent to do business in other towns have all been arrested. And the towns are firmly sealed off by the advance army; they're only allowed to enter, not leave!"
Zhi Wang's heart sank suddenly as he remembered the words the servant had said before he went to prison.
The two exchanged a glance, their expressions unusually blank, bewildered for their age.
*
"Zhixing and Zhiwu have been arrested, Zhiwen and Zhiwang are trapped in the town, and the bald man who sent the old man back to his village has not returned yet?"
Ye Wenxue held her head, unable to understand how, after just one night, she had a happy birthday and suddenly felt like the sky was falling.
—It's just that it wasn't her side of the sky that collapsed, but Zhang Suinian's bald head.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
