Murder

The sound of the explosion even shook Pengyang.All households opened their doors and windows one after another, poking their heads out to ask each other.

"It exploded again? Or collapsed again?"

"Won't it collapse if it explodes?"

Sima Feng was running fast on the rooftops, and from a distance, he could only see a cloud of smoke and dust on Jiutou Mountain, mixed with flames, it was very scary.

When they arrived at the city wall, all the guards guarding the city knew what he was here for, and they all raised their fingers and pointed to the top of the city wall: "Master Chi is on top."

Sima Feng didn't have time to thank him, so he rushed forward in three steps at a time.

The city wall on the side of Pengyang was rebuilt not long ago, and the lights were not bright enough. Sima Feng couldn't tell the difference from before.He suddenly remembered that he didn't seem to think how dilapidated the city wall was before, and he didn't know why it had to be rebuilt.This thought slipped through my mind and disappeared immediately.He saw Chi Yebai standing beside the city wall with Murong Hai.

Chi Yebai was still dressed in white, and the night wind blew the corners of his clothes, temple hair and a bunch of red tassels on the hilt of his sword.Sima Feng approached carefully, and heard him whispering something to Murong Hai, the newly built city wall was under his feet.

"You're here." Chi Yebai hurriedly turned his head to look at him, "Wait a minute, I'll finish talking to Murong."

Sima Feng: "...Okay, you can continue talking."

He rushed over holding his breath, now he was relaxed, and felt very hungry all of a sudden, but he didn't want to go down to look for food, so he squatted aside and stared at Chi Yebai to satisfy his hunger.

His eyes were fiery, and he didn't want to turn his head after watching for half an hour. Murong Hai couldn't bear it any longer: "The master..."

"Don't look at him, the more you look at him, the more energetic you are." Chi Yebaifei said quickly, and continued to say what he said before, "In short, let the people in the Pengyang sub-house keep an eye on Jiang Chuan, and find those ships that you found earlier. What is the cargo on board and where it goes.”

Murong Hai took the order and went, Chi Yebai looked at Jiutou Mountain, took a deep breath, turned and walked towards Sima Feng.

There are many officers and soldiers on the city wall, all of whom came to see Chi Yebai, the magical and handsome "Zhaohaitou" in the legend.Seeing that there were so many people, Sima Feng couldn't say anything, so he winked at Chi Yebai and told him to go down with him.

"I'm going to Jiutou Mountain now, are you going?" Chi Yebai lowered his head and asked him.

Sima Feng sat down on the ground because he was tired from squatting, he was taken aback when he heard this: "What are you going to Jiutou Mountain for?"

"There is a problem with the brick kiln on Jiutou Mountain." Chi Yebai said.

"The landslide? We don't care about this matter." Sima Feng said, "Someone has gone to the government to complain, and the frontier is now investigating this matter."

Chi Yebai was silent for a moment, staring at him silently.Sima Feng tilted his head to look at him, with a smile at the corner of his mouth, which made people feel disgusted and liked at the same time.

"It's fine if you don't go." Chi Yebai turned his head and said, then quickly walked down the stairs on the city wall.

Sima Feng got up quickly and followed him downstairs: "Don't leave me, I will definitely go with you."

The two men showed their waist cards, the soldiers opened the city gate, and the two horses rushed out one after the other.

The road to Jiutou Mountain was not too rough, and both of them ran with all their strength. Even so, it was already past midnight when they reached the foot of the mountain.

"Don't go up on horseback." Chi Yebaile stopped the horse and said to Sima Feng, "Leave the horse at the bottom of the mountain, we will go up."

"As you please." Sima Feng said.

Chi Yebai: "...you don't ask why?"

Sima Feng: "It must be because you don't want to take the main road. It's too inconvenient to ride a horse if you take a shortcut."

He was right, Chi Yebai nodded, and the two quickly put the horse on the horse, and walked up the mountain together.

"I came back early this time because Ying Beishe found some strange things. At first I wasn't sure if this matter had something to do with Wen Xuanzhou, but what I saw and touched on the city wall just now allowed me to Confirmed." Chi Yebai said.

He couldn't run fast, Sima Feng was able to follow him, so he asked, "What's the matter?"

Ying Beishe started to investigate Wen Xuanzhou and Shenyingying again, and King Lu couldn't get around.The people from the Pengyang sub-house conveniently collected some recent sales and transactions of Lu Wang's mansion, and they should store the information first.

There is a spy in the sub-house who used to work as a boatman on the Yulan River and is very familiar with river transportation.About half a year ago, he and his wife and children went to the riverside to watch the launching ceremony of the new boat and pick up the pork. By chance, they saw a boat sailing into the pier.It was just an extremely ordinary merchant ship, which mostly transported porcelain, jade, cloth and so on.Because his wife recently said that he would pull new cloth to make clothes, the spy subconsciously took a few more glances, but was surprised to find that the boat was a little strange.

Its draft is too deep.

The spies quietly kept an eye out, and after that they deliberately detoured to the Yulan River Wharf when they went to and from work, and they found several strange ships with extremely deep drafts.The ships are all ordinary merchant ships, and the goods on board are also ordinary things, but the draft of the ship far exceeds the amount it can carry.

This matter has no beginning and no end, so the spies kept it in their hearts and did not make any effort to investigate.On the Yulan River, there is a bright side of the river, and naturally there is a dark side of the river. He has worked as a boatman and knows these things very well.

This time, the person who is in charge of sorting out the recent transactions in Lu Wangfu is exactly this spy.He found that King Lu had sold two merchant ships a few years ago, and the buyers were all merchants from other places.And these two merchant ships that had changed hands happened to be two of the few strange ships he discovered.

"Are you guessing that King Lu pretended to sell the ship, but in fact the ship still belonged to him? The two merchants wanted to send him money. How does this have anything to do with what we investigated?" Sima Feng didn't understand for a while, "The water is deep. ……So what?"

"The spies said that judging by the size of the cargo hold, even if it was filled with porcelain and satin and only one boatman was left to work, the draft of the ship would not be able to reach such a depth." Chi Yebai made a gesture, "Unless the cargo is all stones .”

"... King Lu, smuggling stones?" Sima Feng asked in surprise.

"I think those aren't stones, but mud transported from across the Yulan River." Chi Yebai said in a low voice, "More precisely, they are brick soil or brick adobe for firing bricks."

Sima Feng was taken aback and stopped immediately.

Chi Yebai ran over and turned back to wait for him.

"What kind of bricks does he want to burn?" Sima Feng asked in a deep voice.

"I don't know either." Chi Yebai said frankly, "But the matter is being carried out in such a secret manner, and it is definitely not an honorable thing to secretly transport soil or bricks from other places."

Sima Feng walked to his side: "You are not fully recovered from your injury, follow me closely."

What Chi Yebai said made him speculate about the Jiutou Mountain brick kiln that he had never been to.There may be other dangers above, he must not let Chi Yebai get hurt again this time.

"I'm fine." Chi Yebai said.

At this moment, Sima Feng finally spoke to him a word unrelated to other matters, took a deep breath, turned around and grabbed his shoulder, hooked his fingers, and undid the two cloth buttons on his neck.Chi Yebai immediately grabbed his wrist to struggle, Sima Feng yelled fiercely: "Don't move!"

The moonlight was covered by dust, but Sima Feng's eyesight was excellent, he could still see the thin scar on Chi Yebai's neck.The scars had indeed scabbed and healed, and Chi Yebai could speak without hindrance at all.

Chi Yebai was stared at his neck for a long time, very embarrassed: "Did you see it? It's really healed."

As soon as he finished speaking, Sima Feng suddenly lowered his head and kissed the scar on his neck.

The warm lips touched the scar, and for some reason, Chi Yebai's scalp suddenly went numb, and an inexplicable panic and panic rose up his spine.

He pushed Sima Feng away and said angrily, "What are you doing!"

Sima Feng snorted, took a step forward and stood in front of him again, held his face in his hands, and kissed him directly on the lips this time.

"There's no one here." He was also afraid of being beaten, so he quickly backed away after touching it, "What does it matter if you kiss me?"

Chi Yebai wiped his mouth: "Light, broad daylight!"

"It's been out of the sun for a long time." Sima Feng walked forward quickly, "Let's go."

The back of his head hurt, it was Chi Yebai who jumped up and punched him hard.

Sima Feng didn't bother to rub the back of his head, and hurriedly followed Chi Yebai: "Xiaobai, what saponins did you use? Why is your neck so fragrant?"

Chi Yebai ignored him, and simply walked faster and faster, Sima Feng didn't care to tease him, and followed closely with all his strength.

When the sound of brick kiln explosions erupted, Bian Jiang was already riding his horse and was almost at the brick kiln on Jiutou Mountain.

The sound frightened the horse, and the horse threw him off and ran away wildly.The horse belonged to the government, and Bian Jiang endured the pain and got up and chased for a few steps. Suddenly, he heard a strange noise from the treetops above his head, and then something rubbed against his back heavily, and fell to the ground with a bang.

He broke out in a cold sweat, and quickly knelt down on the ground.

There was chaos at the other end of the brick kiln, the sound of noise came faintly, and the fireworks continued for a long time.Bian Jiang held his breath and waited for a while, then looked up and looked around carefully. The dense bushes above his head were quiet, only the sound of wind and birds, and there was no ambush.Only then did he dare to stand up and touch behind him.

What fell behind him was actually half a brick.

This brick was quite different from the city wall bricks he had seen in the Jiutou Mountain brick kiln before. It was flat and rough, and the breaks were a bit tricky, solid and delicate.Frontier gestured with his arm. The half brick was about a foot and a half long and wide, but it was definitely not used to build the city wall.

Frontier's heart was pounding.He knew such bricks, and every policeman knew such bricks.

He turned to the cat in the bushes and approached the brick kiln cautiously.

The closer he got to the brick kiln, the more fragments of bricks he saw on the bushes and roads.They were all the same flat pieces, some smooth, others still rough because they hadn't been polished.

Frontier stopped at a perfectly intact brick.

These bricks still carry heat and should have been blasted out of the brick kiln where they were blasted.

As he touched the brick, thousands of thoughts flashed through his mind.

These are not ordinary bricks, but "gold bricks"*.

"Golden brick" is a large square brick with a square of one or two feet. The firing process is extremely complicated and exquisite, and it also has extremely strict requirements on the fired clay. From clay, billet making, firing, and brick production, All follow certain rules.And the frontier is also very clear that "golden bricks" are definitely not something that ordinary people can use-it is specially used to build royal palaces and tombs, and only imperial kilns can be fired in the world.

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Gold bricks: Refers to the fine-material square bricks specially fired for the imperial palace, with fine particles and dense texture, which sound like gold and stone when knocked.There is a "Royal Kiln Village" in Suzhou, which is named because it specializes in firing gold bricks.