In the desert beyond the Great Wall, there was a rider riding west. He had a pair of sabers at his waist. The man wore coarse hemp clothes.
Further west of Liangzhou, there were three military towns in ancient times: Fengxiang, Linyao, and Qingcang. They controlled the upper reaches of the Central Plains. At the same time, they formed a triangle with the Iron Gate Pass. Together, they controlled the vast Western Regions. However, the three towns had long been abandoned. They had become the perfect shelter for hundreds of thousands of refugees. These criminals were particularly brave and good at fighting. Not to mention young men, even women and children of seven or eight years old would fight to the death against Beiliang soldiers as long as they were given a wooden spear. The border army of Liangzhou had always had the habit of using refugees to practice martial arts. Most of the sinners' bravery was forced out by the Beiliang cavalry. They had no choice but to do something desperate. The first thing the Beiliang crossbowmen did was to throw them here. They were only given a horse, a crossbow, and a cold saber. Then, they had to pray for their own good. If they could survive for a month, they would have crossed the first threshold. If they died, even collecting their corpses would be an extravagant hope. They would have long been whipped to pieces by the sinners who hated Beiliang to the bone. The people of Lingzhou, which was far from the border, all said that the children who grew up there loved to kick and play with the skulls of the dead Beiliang soldiers. Therefore, the people there were neither human nor ghost. They were extremely terrifying.
When the rider traveled two hundred li to the west, he encountered a group of future crossbowmen who had just entered the area. The two sides were on the verge of fighting. There was no need for words. The coarse hemp man casually blocked the barrage of short crossbows and two waves of charges without injuring anyone. The elite soldiers returned without accomplishing anything, so they gave up on trying to chew this tough bone. Although the number of heads they beheaded after returning to Liangzhou was related to the amount of money they would be rewarded, their original intention was still to survive. Since it was clear that they could not chop off this fellow's head, they quietly took a detour after picking up the crossbow bolts one by one. This place where the refugees gathered was full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers. There was no lack of Jianghu people who fled beyond the Great Wall after committing crimes in Liyang. Those who were able to gain a foothold here were either in a high state of martial arts or were proficient in unorthodox ways. Therefore, the group of armored soldiers did not find it strange that they encountered this knight in white hemp garments with a saber. What they found strange was that this young fellow had blocked all of their attacks without even drawing his saber, which made them fearful.
The hundreds of thousands of refugees, a mixture of good and bad people, did not disperse. They were mainly concentrated in the three abandoned cities from the east to the west, Qingcang, Linyao, and Fengxiang, which had been removed from the map of Liyang. This was because if they were to disperse, they would definitely become ghosts under the sabers of Beiliang's armored soldiers. The refugees rarely carried weapons with them. If these stragglers ran into groups of armored soldiers who had the potential to become Beiliang's elite scouts, even if they were not afraid of death, they would still die. As for why Beiliang did not take down the three cities in one go, the refugees were already extremely lucky to be alive. They were too lazy to care about this. They wanted nothing more than for the old King of Beiliang to treat them like a fart and let them go. However, when they heard that this butcher was already dead, they were skeptical. At first, they were more or less relieved. Then, there was a rumor that a new king had ascended to the throne in the three cities and was going to use them as an example to establish his might. Soon, a large army would be coming to the border. This immediately put them on edge. These refugees actually hated the Poison Warrior Li Yishan the most. When the Xu family took over Beiliang, those local wealthy families who showed even the slightest hint of disloyalty were all killed off. Not a single one was left alive. The children who were not taller than a horse's back were driven here. After that, the armored soldiers of Beiliang came here to hunt for military exploits and did not allow even a catty of salt or a piece of iron from Liangzhou to enter this place. It was all under the instructions of Li Yishan. In the early years, there were some who were greedy for glory and wealth and hoped to use the secret military intelligence of the three cities as proof of their allegiance to Beiliang in exchange for a stable life. In the end, Li Yishan ordered all of them to be killed and their corpses thrown out of Qingcang City. Only then did all of the refugees completely give up. This Beiliang person was determined to make them a lonely soul for the rest of their lives! As for the old King of Beiliang, Xu Xiao, in the past, the refugees did not hate him very much, but they feared him even more. Now that Ren Tu was dead, their hatred turned to hatred. This was because someone said that before Ren Tu died, Ren Tu's last words were that he wanted the new King to bury two hundred thousand refugees with him. Only if the new King of Beiliang managed to gather a million soldiers in the netherworld would they be able to wrestle with the King of Hell. At first glance, this kind of ridiculous nonsense was actually believed by everyone in this precarious land of refugees!
In the twilight, they could faintly see smoke curling up from the kitchen chimneys of several villages. In this area, there were very few Beiliang riders who dared to wander around unscrupulously. The last time they did so, it was the son of the Administrator and a man with heavy pupils who came to take a stroll around the city. The man with the saber led his horse forward and asked for a ladle of water from a family living in a mud hut at the entrance of the village. The family of four consisted of a dark-skinned, robust couple and a pair of barefoot children. Their eyes were abnormally cold. Probably because they were intimidated by the two sabers at the visitor's waist, they suppressed their impulse to kill him and steal his horse. The man in charge of the family endured the heartache and scooped up a ladle of muddy water from the bottom of the water tank with difficulty and handed it over. The man was not drinking the water to quench his thirst, but was recklessly using it to clean the horse's nose. The two children of the family looked at the man and the horse from afar with blazing eyes. In this place, it was easier to survive with an iron saber. As for having a good horse to ride, it was purely a luxury. It was better to have a backer. Otherwise, it was tantamount to having the words "kneeling and begging for death" written on your face. When the young knight with gray hair handed over the ladle, he glanced at the two children from the corner of his eyes. They were both looking at the saber. There was a young child at the Tumbling Horse Pass who was looking for a clean Jianghu dream in his heart. The children here were thinking about how to kill if they were killed. The two were worlds apart, but there was no right or wrong. Before leaving with the horse, he took out a large piece of silver from his bulging money bag and threw it over. The man caught the silver and took a big bite out of it. He grinned at him, but there was no gratitude in his eyes.
Not long after, the man called over more than twenty young and robust men in the village. They carried wooden spears that every family could not live without. There were also some robust women and slightly older children who were unwilling to be left behind. They aggressively intercepted the wanderer who accidentally revealed his yellow and white substance. It was not accurate to say that they intercepted him, because the man stopped his horse not long after leaving the village, as if he had been waiting for them. The man with the saber gently threw the money bag in the open space in front of him and said in an authentic Beiliang accent, "If you are not afraid of death, take it if you have the ability."
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