Chapter 427 Rescue (Two Updates)
Gu Jiao went to Qinghe Academy and pulled Gu Chengfeng out of the men's restroom.
Gu Chengfeng was furious: "Can you please stop trying to rescue me from places like this every time!"
If this happens a few more times, he'll become impotent!
Gu Jiao led him to a woodshed outside the academy and made him wash his hands.
Gu Chengfeng: ...So you do care about this!
Gu Chengfeng dawdled as he washed his hands, and Gu Jiao, annoyed by his slowness, grabbed him and pulled him into the small woodshed.
"What are you up to this time?" Gu Chengfeng asked irritably.
Last time, I risked my life to help this girl empty Prince Ning's private treasury, but in the end, I didn't give him a single gold bar.
He was her porter for nothing!
I finally managed to hide one, but Xiao Jiu's eagle snatched it away!
Even eagles are just like her!
Are you angry or not? Just tell me if you're angry or not!
"I have something to ask you." Gu Jiao casually broke off a branch and squatted down to draw a double-sword emblem. "Do you recognize this?"
Gu Chengfeng, still grumbling about the gold bars, snorted and said, "Double Blade Sect, what's wrong? Are you going to rob them? Have you gone crazy for money lately? Robbing everywhere, aren't you afraid of getting exposed!"
"We won't rob them this time," Gu Jiao said. "Are they very powerful?"
Gu Chengfeng squatted down beside her and said indifferently, "It depends on who you compare it to. It can't be compared to an old-school organization like Qianji Pavilion, but it's quite outstanding among the new sects that have risen in recent years. Why are you asking about this?"
Gu Jiao said, "It's nothing. This sect might offend me in the future."
What does "maybe in the future" mean?
Do you know them?
Are you good at fortune telling or dreaming?
Gu Jiao asked for the address of the Double Blade Sect and got a general understanding of its situation. Since it was still early before the incident, Gu Jiao decided to keep an eye on them after a while.
After leaving Qinghe Academy, Gu Jiao went to Hanlin Academy.
There was some traffic on the road, and by the time we arrived at the Hanlin Academy, it was long past the end of our shift.
Seeing that the pancake shop was still open, Gu Jiao thought for a moment, then walked over and asked, "Boss, do you still have preserved vegetable pancakes?"
The shopkeeper chuckled, "Your husband bought the last few dried plum vegetables."
Because they frequented his business, the people at the bakery already knew that Gu Jiao and Xiao Liulang were a young couple.
"Did my husband buy it raw?" Gu Jiao asked subconsciously.
Most people wouldn't buy raw meat, so her question was quite strange; in fact, she herself found it odd.
The shopkeeper assumed that she had told her husband to make sure to buy the raw ones, and that she was asking because she was worried that he would buy the wrong ones.
The shop owner smiled and said, "It's raw!"
Gu Jiao thought to herself, "What a coincidence, isn't it?"
In his dream, something happened the day he bought the dried plum and vegetable cakes, but that happened two or three months later.
Not every day you buy raw plum and vegetable cakes will result in trouble.
Despite thinking this, Gu Jiao still went to the place where he had the accident.
It was a long-established rouge shop, but its business had been taken over by the surrounding shops, and there were very few customers coming and going.
Perhaps for this reason, the scene was well preserved, and no one discovered or damaged it.
Gu Jiao immediately noticed the dried bloodstains on the ground.
Gu Jiao squatted down and carefully examined the trail and traces of blood. Images of him falling and stumbling repeatedly flashed through her mind.
That's right, he fell twice.
The first time was when I bumped into the door threshold, which cut my hand and arm.
The second time, he fell a few steps forward, where there were still bloody handprints from where he had braced himself.
I only fell once in my dream. It was freezing cold, and I fell pretty badly. I was knocked unconscious on the spot.
"What's going on? Could it be that the events in my dream have come to pass?"
Gu Jiao was also encountering this situation for the first time, and without experience, she didn't know if her guess was correct.
"This bloodstain could also be someone else's; what if we're mistaken..."
She had made a mistake, but she absolutely could not gamble Xiao Liulang's life on that one possible outcome.
It would be best if it wasn't Xiao Liulang, but if it were, it wouldn't delay the opportunity to save him.
His hands cannot be crippled, and his life cannot be lost!
Gu Jiao followed the trail of blood all the way to a deserted old street, where the bloodstains suddenly disappeared.
There are two possibilities—one, the bleeding has stopped; two, he was kidnapped here, and not by using martial arts skills, but by leaving in a carriage.
Using light-footed skills to leap across rooftops in broad daylight is easily detected, and there will still be some bloodstains left behind.
Gu Jiao searched the outer wall but found nothing.
Given my husband's unlucky constitution, the chances of the bleeding stopping are slim; the real possibility is that he'll be mistakenly arrested.
Gu Jiao guessed correctly; Xiao Liulang was indeed unlucky enough to be arrested.
He had clearly shaken off those assassins and went to a carriage shop to hire a horse-drawn carriage. Xiao Liulang hadn't been to that old street for a long time, so he didn't have a very clear impression of it. Therefore, he found a horse-drawn carriage and asked for directions.
The question they were asked was about the assassin's carriage.
This is what it means to search high and low without finding it, only to have it come to you effortlessly.
The assassin opened the window, completely bewildered.
This is ridiculous!
Xiao Liulang was thus unlucky and tragically captured by the assassins and put into the carriage.
There were four assassins in total; two were driving the carriage outside, and two were watching Xiao Liulang inside.
Xiao Liulang was bound hand and foot and blindfolded. The cloth strips were not stuffed in his eyes, mainly because if they were too thin, he could vomit them out, and if they were too thick, he might suffocate.
"Isn't there still a nose for breathing?" Assassin B asked.
Assassin A glared at him and said, "What if your nose is blocked? Have you forgotten how that guy died last time?"
Assassin B recalled a hostage they had captured, whose mouth was gagged and nose blocked, and who ended up dying halfway through the journey.
Assassin B fell silent.
Assassin A brandished the tip of his knife at Xiao Liulang's handsome face, threatening, "Don't make a sound, you hear me? If you dare utter a sound, I'll cut out your tongue!"
Xiao Liulang leaned against the carriage wall and ignored him.
He couldn't see or walk, but from the sounds on both sides of the street and the aromas wafting from the shops, he could roughly deduce that the carriage was traveling along Luoyang Street and was approaching the East Gate.
Are they going to take him out of the city?
Xiao Liulang's guess was soon confirmed.
He heard an unusual sound of horseshoes, the sound of horseshoes clattering on the official road near the city gate.
Just as it was almost their turn, a troop of cavalry suddenly charged over. Judging from the sound of horseshoes and armor scraping against each other, they seemed to be the imperial guards.
The commander of the Imperial Guards declared, "Anyone leaving the city will be thoroughly investigated!"
"Brother, why the sudden crackdown?" Assassin B asked in a panic. "Have we been exposed? It can't be that fast!"
Xiao Liulang also felt something was strange. Only His Majesty and Empress Dowager could mobilize the Imperial Guards. Had His Majesty and Empress Dowager discovered that he had just been arrested?
It wasn't late; even if he hadn't gone home, it wouldn't be assumed he'd been captured by assassins.
If even Xiao Liulang couldn't figure it out, the assassin would be even less likely to understand it.
It's one thing to not understand something, but it's quite another to have a way to deal with it.
"Touch his acupoint!" Assassin A said.
Assassin B irritated Xiao Liulang's cunt.
As if realizing something, Assassin B scratched his head and said, "Hey? Brother? If you can treat acupuncture points, why did we go through the trouble of tying him up?"
Assassin A: "...If you don't speak, no one will think you're mute!"
Xiao Liulang, whose acupoints had been acupunctured, was not only unable to move, but also unable to make a sound.
The blindfold was ripped off, and the next instant, something cold and icy was pressed against his face.
It is the rumored human skin mask.
It's not actually made of human skin; the raw material is fish skin, which is why it's called human skin after processing.
These masks have some flaws when viewed up close, but from a distance they are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
The Imperial Guards probably didn't expect the martial arts practitioners to use such an unorthodox method, and they successfully left the city.
"Brother, this is bad! The government troops have also left the city! They're coming after us!" Assassin B said, looking at the Imperial Guards who had also left the city in the distance.
Assassin A frowned, glanced at Xiao Liulang, and said, "They won't be discovered so quickly... Never mind, they might not be here for him. Let's just be cautious."
Assassin B asked, "So... shall we still proceed according to the original plan?"
Assassin A thought for a moment, still feeling a bit guilty towards the Imperial Guards, and said, "Let's take the back road!"
The group abandoned the official road and took a country road instead. They passed through a small village and waited until the imperial guards left before returning to the official road.
Assassin B whispered, "Let's slow down, or we'll run into the Imperial Guards ahead."
I had a feeling the Imperial Guards were there to arrest them!
Assassin A was also in a dilemma.
Wasn't he just a poor official from the countryside? Arresting him wouldn't have been a problem, so why did he attract the attention of the Imperial Guards?
"Big brother, big brother! It's the government!" Assassin B said, looking at the group of people walking towards them.
Four constables arrived, riding horses and escorting a prison cart. Inside the cart sat a prisoner dressed in prison clothes and with shackles on his hands and feet.
Assassin A suddenly had a brilliant idea: "Steal the prison cart!"
It was no problem for four assassins to kidnap several minor government officials. After knocking the officials unconscious, the four men threw them into the nearby bushes.
"Go, open the prison cart." Assassin A tossed the key he had taken from the constable to Assassin B.
Assassin B opened the prison cart and said to the prisoner inside, "Alright, you can go now."
Prisoner: I don't want to leave, thank you.
Assassin B slapped the man across the face, pulled him out, and stripped him of his prison clothes and shackles, putting them on Xiao Liulang.
His actions were naturally not gentle. Xiao Liulang's hand was already injured, and after being treated roughly, the wound that had just begun to scab over was torn open again, and blood flowed all over the ground.
Assassin A complained, "Be careful! Don't kill him before you get the money! Find something to bandage him up!"
Where can I find something to bandage it?
Assassin B tore off a piece of Xiao Liulang's clothes and haphazardly wrapped it around his neck.
The assassins changed into the clothes of yamen runners, mounted their horses, and brazenly headed towards their destination.
The assassin's bandaging was far from good; Xiao Liulang's wound continued to bleed, and to make matters worse, he had been acupunctured and couldn't tighten the bandages himself.
The carriage traveled along the official road for a while longer, and they unexpectedly encountered Minister Zhao of the Ministry of Works, who was returning from out of town.
Minister Zhao also participated in the Six Ministries assessment, and Xiao Liulang was the examiner; the two had met before.
Xiao Liulang tried to ask Minister Zhao for help.
Perhaps the assassin's technique was not quite right, as Xiao Liulang was already able to move slightly. However, he was unsure whether this attack would attract Zhao Shangshu's attention, so he proceeded with great caution.
The prison cart jolted, and he lurched forward, looking as if he had simply lost his balance and fallen.
His shoulder and head slammed heavily against the prison cart, the loud noise startling Minister Zhao, who lifted the curtain but only glanced at it before lowering it again.
Clearly, he had no intention of interfering in the affairs of other government departments, nor did he suspect anything.
The two quickly passed each other.
As Minister Zhao's carriage drove away, Xiao Liulang knew that this glimmer of hope had been shattered.
This might be... the last glimmer of hope.
Because they are almost at their destination.
"Brother, look! We're almost there! Just ahead!" Assassin B was so excited he almost spurred his horse off.
Assassin A glared at him: "Stop fooling around, or you'll attract the Imperial Guards!"
"Right, right, right! We can't attract the Imperial Guards!" Assassin B replied with a grin.
The group followed the official road to a T-junction. Instead of continuing along the official road, they turned and walked onto a side road.
Just then, another carriage came from the other direction of the official road.
Xiao Liulang merely glanced at it indifferently, and his whole body froze!
He suddenly couldn't care less about hiding the fact that he could move slightly. He turned his face away, lowered his head, and tried not to let the other person see him.
He instantly forgot that he was wearing a human skin mask, so what if he saw it?
I can't recognize him.
"Princess, there's a prison cart ahead," Yu Jin whispered to Princess Xinyang from inside the carriage.
Princess Xinyang said, "Then let's slow down and let the prison cart pass first."
"Yes," Yu Jin replied, lifting the curtain and saying to the driver, "Take it easy."
The driver tightened the reins slightly and slowed down.
Only after the prison van had passed did they accelerate their pace.
Long Yi rode his horse and was also part of the entourage.
Suddenly, Long Yi stopped walking.
Princess Xinyang didn't hear the sound of Long Yi's horse hooves. She frowned, lifted the curtain, and saw that Long Yi was indeed nowhere to be seen.
"Stop," Princess Xinyang said.
"Yes." The coachman stopped the carriage.
Princess Xinyang gestured to Yu Jin to open the rear window of the carriage.
Yu Jin pulled back the curtain and opened the rear window.
Princess Xinyang saw Long Yi riding a carriage, stopping at the intersection, staring intently at the prison cart.
Princess Xinyang glanced at the prison cart, her expression unchanged, and said, "Long Yi, let's go."
Long Yi didn't leave.
On the prison cart, Xiao Liulang was dripping blood.
Drop by drop, it all spilled onto the road.
The dragon dismounted.
Princess Xinyang said coldly, "Don't move the prison cart!"
The Dragon Shadow Guard would not disobey his master's orders. Princess Xinyang forbade him to touch the prisoner rescue cart, and he indeed did not touch it.
The next second, he slashed with his sword, and the four assassins were instantly killed!
Long Yi calmly sheathed his sword, walked over, and directly grabbed the cage containing Xiao Liulang from the prison cart.
Princess Xinyang glared at him angrily.
His eyes darted around, and because his hands were busy, he could only kick the carriage with his toes.
It's as if it's saying...
Look, the prison van is here; I didn't move.
What I moved was the cage.
One hundred ways to drive your master crazy
How about a fresh monthly pass?
(End of this chapter)
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