Looking to the Thirteen Rivers

Duan Ning ran for a while in the yard, drank a pot of tea and ate a few plates of snacks on the porch.

Today she was dressed in a smart riding outfit, and she looked very energetic. When she was sitting and resting, she still refused to put down the whip in her hand. Seeing that she was about to finish eating the sweet-scented osmanthus cake that was just delivered, the maid next to her reminded: " Miss, it's been more than an hour, why haven't you come out?"

Duan Ning crossed his legs, glanced at the closed door inside, and said nonchalantly: "What's the hurry, do you want to change the medicine, and there is no one to help, the pain is so painful, don't rush me, you .”

The maid thought for a while and asked: "How about... the servants go in and help?"

Duan Ning grinned and said: "Then you should be prepared to be silenced. Few people in Yunhua Palace probably know that she is a woman. Once you go in, be careful that she hacks you to death."

The maid was stunned for a moment, and said with a sneer, "Hacking me to death won't stop..."

While the master and servant were talking, there was the sound of dragging footsteps in the long-quiet room, and soon, two wooden doors were gently pushed open, and Meng Jing came out fully dressed, wearing the cloak Duan Ning gave her.

Cang County has been sunny for many days, and the bright sunlight made Meng Jing's pale face somewhat transparent. She covered her mouth with a handkerchief and coughed twice, and said to Duan Ning, "Wait a while."

Duan Ning looked her over, patted the crumbs on his hands, and stood up: "It's over? Then let's go."

A group of people walked out of the yard and turned to the backyard as if taking a walk. There was an independent firewood shed there, and several armed guards were guarding the outside, with a heavy iron lock on the door.

"In the past few days when you were recovering from your wounds, I have been tortured a lot, but that guy was so stubborn that he didn't say a word." Duan Ning gestured for the guards to open the iron lock, "you can just stay in bed now." Walk around, don't quarrel with him when you go in, so as not to get angry with yourself, just slap him twice in the face with a fire in your heart, but let's not come up and run around in one breath before he is dead, then I won't So I can explain to you Yunhua Palace."

Meng Jing let out a "hmm" and opened the door by herself without asking the guards to help. Duan Ning was about to follow in, but saw Meng Jing raised a hand in front of her and said, "Thank you."

Duan Ning rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything, and retracted his feet wisely.

The guards stretched out their hands to close the door, and Duan Ningli didn't want to go outside, and it didn't matter if he didn't leave. The maid before saw this and muttered again: "What, waited for her for so long, and still didn't let the young lady go in."

Duan Ning gave her a blank look, raised his eyebrows and said, "Why are you talking so much? Go! Bring me a chair."

Standing by the door, Meng Jing didn't have the first time to see where the man in black was. She took out the elixir from her bosom and swallowed a pill, and after a moment of silence, she opened the curtain and entered the inner room.

There are hills of firewood piled inside, and the old musty smell floats in the air. The man in black who wanted to kill her that night is resting against the wall with his eyes closed. Injured, his nose was bruised and his face was swollen from being beaten by Duan Ning, and he looked embarrassed.

Hearing the sound of someone coming, the man in black slowly opened his bruised eyes. When he saw Meng Jing, instead of showing the slightest surprise or fear, he laughed softly and said in a joking tone: "Your son is dead!" Big, it didn’t die like this.”

Meng Jing walked up to him slowly, looked down at him, and said straight to the point without talking nonsense, "Why did you kill my parents?"

The man in black relaxed his posture, stared at Meng Jing twice, and said, "Tell you, can you let me go?"

Meng Jing nodded expressionlessly.

But the man in black sneered: "Are you lying to a child? If I tell you the truth, you must kill me right away to avenge your parents. Come on, brother, I was not coaxed to grow up."

Meng Jing said, "I can kill you now too."

The man in black looked provocative: "Then why not do it now?"

Meng Jing didn't say a word, and raised his hand to take out a shiny dagger from his sleeve pocket. The man in black sneered again when he saw her action, but he didn't expect that Meng Jing wasn't trying to scare him, he just heard his laughter Fang Luo, Meng Jing bent his knees and squatted down, stabbing the dagger into his chest quickly and hard.

Suddenly, an unspeakable pain spread, blood spattered, the pupils of the man in black shrank, and a painful scream came out from his throat.

"You need to understand that I'm a medical student," Meng Jing said, slowly pulling out the dagger, "I know where it won't hurt your vitals, and I know where it will kill you instantly, so If you refuse to cooperate obediently, I can use many ways to make your life worse than death."

"You—!" The man in black gritted his teeth and cursed, "...Little bastard!"

Meng Jing pinched the handkerchief, wiped the blood splattered on her face, and said calmly, "Why did you kill my parents?"

Seeing her coming, the man in black restrained his disdain, spat and replied, "You don't know who your parents are? Taking people's money and hurting innocent people, I killed them as a substitute." God | walk the road!"

Meng Jing looked at him calmly, but didn't answer.

Thinking that she had been stabbed in the scar by his own words, the man in black pulled the corners of his mouth and laughed again, and said sarcastically, "You have to know, your parents are no different from ants on the road in my eyes, and it doesn't take much to kill them." The reason is that if you want to kill, you can kill. I was originally ordered to catch Yin Qiu. Who knew that she was taken away by Man Jiangxue and left you to give her the top bag. Really, you should seek revenge from Man Jiangxue That's right, if she doesn't take Yin Qiu away, your family won't be in this situation."

Meng Jing wiped the dagger in her hand, she still didn't look angry after hearing this, she said lightly: "If you told me this a few years ago, I would still believe it, but now it is useless at all. She paused, then asked again, "Why did you arrest Yin Qiu?"

The man in black smiled evilly: "Guess what?"

Meng Jing said, "Too lazy to guess."

After she finished speaking, she once again pierced the dagger in the man in black's chest, but this time it was in a different place.

The man in black screamed again.

"I know Yin Qiu's life experience. That year was the first time she was found since she was living abroad." Meng Jingfu pulled out the dagger again, without any expression on his face, "I heard that she was the first to know She heard about the Ziwei Sect, but you rushed to find her before the Ziwei Sect, who told you that she was in my house?"

The man in black hissed and gasped in pain, and he didn't dare to speak quickly, sweating profusely: "...I am a disciple of the secret guard of Jingyue Peak. Since Man Jiangxue wants to go down the mountain to find her, I just need to follow Man Jiangxue. Then you can know where Yin Qiu is."

Meng Jing was quiet for a while, and said: "Since this is the case, then you should know that if Yin Qiu is found by the uncle, she will definitely take Yin Qiu by her side and will never leave her to others to take care of. This is obvious. Reasonable, but you are following our family of three, why is that?"

The man in black breathed a sigh of relief, and replied: "Of course it's because we are not sure whether Man Jiangxue took Yin Qiu away in person. She has a keen mind, and we dare not follow too closely along the way for fear of being noticed by her. When we arrived, you had already split into two ways. If Man Jiangxue deliberately came up with a plan to drop the bag and gave Yin Qiu to Ji Wanshu, if all of us went after Man Jiangxue and left Ji If Wanshu doesn't care, why don't you ask Ji Wanshu to take him away? The reason why I want to follow you is just in case."

Hearing this, Meng Jing paused as he wiped the dagger.

"... Just in case?" She chewed on these four words, and then smiled, "Just in case, you deliberately killed my parents?"

Seeing her sudden smile, the man in black couldn't help feeling chills down his spine, and said hesitantly: "There is a saying that it is better to kill a thousand by mistake than to let go of a hundred. From our standpoint, this is nothing. wrong."

"Who says it's not?" Meng Jing smiled slightly, but there was no trace of a smile in his eyes, "You are all right, it is my parents who are wrong, they are blind to money, and they deserve to die, right?"

Before the man in black could reply, Meng Jing continued: "You killed them to uphold justice, punish evil and promote good. You are good people."

The man in black was already a little slack, but he couldn't help feeling a little impatient after hearing what she said, and said in a deep voice, "Okay, don't be so weird, if you want to kill or cut you, hurry up and have a good time!"

"Happy? Then you have to wait for you to explain everything before you can be happy," Meng Jing said, "Who are you from? Why are you dealing with Yin Qiu?"

The man in black didn't look at her, and looked ahead of Meng Jing and said: "You just give up on this, even if you really kill me now, don't try to ask the truth from me."

Meng Jing seemed to have expected such a reaction from him, so she was not in a hurry at the moment, but said slowly: "Don't be so absolute, I can give you a chance to think about it."

"Don't think about it!" The man in black shouted, "Kill me now!"

Meng Jing looked at him indifferently.

The man in black sneered: "Why, dare not do it? Have you ever killed someone?"

Meng Jing twirled the dagger, gesticulated a few times on his heart, and said, "I haven't killed him."

It was the first time in her life that she poked him twice before.

"Then why not try?" The man in black urged her, "Killing people, it's such a simple matter, even if you kill a hundred villains, it's still not worth killing one enemy, now is the perfect time for you to take revenge. Why hesitate? You coward!"

Facing his malicious provocation, Meng Jing didn't react at all, she was calmer today than ever before.

"You can't live in this place, but you can't die. It's hard, isn't it?" Meng Jing said, putting the cleaned dagger back into her sleeve, "If you really want to die, you can cut off your own heart, and you don't have to incite me. Come on, you don't want to die at all."

The man in black couldn't take it anymore: "Then what are you going to do!"

Meng Jing stood up, looked down at him, and said: "Apart from being my murderer, you are also the person who ambushes my uncle, and the person who wants to deal with Yin Qiu. Do you want to die? It's not that easy. I can't take your life because of my own private thoughts, although I really want to do this, but I can take the overall situation into consideration and bring you back to Weicheng and hand it over to my uncle."

After saying that, she walked to the door step by step, and before leaving, she turned her head and said: "Or, you can choose to cut off your own heart, it depends on whether you have such a backbone."

After saying these words, she gently opened the door and walked out.

Duan Ning waited outside for a long time, eavesdropping with her ears up all the time, but she didn't hear anything except the screams of the man in black. Meng Jing's people came out, and she still focused her ears on the window, and had already eavesdropped. To start a stay.

"Miss!" The maid quickly patted Duan Ning and reminded her in a low voice.

"Ah...?" Duan Ning came back to his senses, only to find that Meng Jing was already standing at the door, looking up at her, and couldn't help but a little embarrassed, "Oh... have you finished asking?"

Meng Jing nodded, without saying anything, she went down the steps without paying attention to anyone, and left the yard on her own, and soon disappeared.

"It's scary, she still has blood on her face..." The maid said in horror, "Couldn't she have killed that man?"

A few guards rushed into the room to check the situation, and rushed out after a while, shaking their heads at Duan Ning.

"I even instigated her to slap someone in the face." Duan Ning took a look at the man in black and said, "I underestimated her, so there's no need for me to talk too much."

The maid looked at Duan Ning strangely: "Then you are still smiling so happily...?"

Duan Ning showed her big white teeth and said, "Did I smile?" She raised her hand to touch her face, "Oh, I did."

The maid asked, "What are you laughing at?"

"Don't you think she's so cute?" Duan Ning said with interest, "This person is interesting, I like it."

The maid was confused: "What, what?"

Duan Ning said, "Oh, that's what! Why are you so stupid!"

Maid: "What the hell..."

Duan Ning was not in the mood to talk to her, he jumped out of the corridor like a rabbit, and then strode towards Meng Jing's leaving direction.

·

When the moon climbed over the eaves, Yin Qiu finished eating and sat on the rattan chair waiting for Man Jiangxue to pack her changed clothes.

Originally, when she just woke up two days ago, she wanted to take a bath, but the doctor said she was weak, fearing that the energy she had finally accumulated would be washed away again, so she refused to let her go. Yin Qiu had to endure it for two more days. day.After dinner tonight, she felt that she couldn't continue to be sloppy, so she begged Man Jiangxue to take her to the soup room quietly, but Man Jiangxue didn't agree quickly, but made up her mind after seeking the doctor's advice .

The window was half-closed, and the crescent moon hung on the window like a boat, illuminating the newly planted Clivia in the courtyard. Man Jiangxue handed Yin Qiu the clean dress, and leaned over to hug her.

In the past two days, Yin Qiu hardly walked around by herself. She stayed in the room and did not go out and had to lie down to recuperate. Occasionally, she went out to get some air without touching the ground. Man Jiangxue always hugged her, wherever she went.

It was late at night, and the disciples in the house had all returned to their rooms. There was silence everywhere, and the moon was shining everywhere. The two walked through the long corridor and entered the soup room. Some disciples had already boiled hot water, waiting for Yin Qiu to leave. After Wanyi sank into the soup pool, Man Jiangxue turned out from behind the screen, bent her knees and squatted to wash her hair.

The room was filled with white mist, the boiler was burning hot, and there were people who were dedicated to adding firewood, worrying about the lack of hot water. Yin Qiu leaned against the pool, and suddenly remembered something, and turned to ask Man Jiangxue: "It's been a few days. I didn't see Bai Ling and Senior Sister Ji, where did they go?"

Man Jiangxue's cuffs were rolled up high, and her exposed arms were as white as cold jade. She brushed the foam off Yin Qiu's ears, and replied, "Go and find out who chose those dark guard disciples."

Yin Qiu was silent, and said softly, "Have you counted everyone?"

"Well," Man Jiangxue said, "only one disappeared, and the rest died in the bamboo forest."

Recalling the experience of that night, Yin Qiu still can't believe it.

These days, she has been restraining herself not to think about it, but the facts are in front of her eyes, and there is always a time to face it, even if she doesn't want to.

"I've had a lot of dreams during the few days I've been asleep." Yin Qiu was still a little weak, and he was panting uncontrollably when he spoke.

"What dream?" Man Jiangxue asked.

"I can't remember clearly," Yin Qiu tried his best to recall, but his mind was full of fragmented pictures, "It's very messy."

Man Jiangxue took a look at her, saw Yin Qiu's brows were tightly frowned, touched her earlobe, and said, "Then don't think about it."

Yin Qiu was stunned for a while, looked down at himself reflected in the water, and said, "When I left the palace, there was still a lot of candy in the cupboard."

Man Jiangxue scooped up water with a wooden ladle, rinsed her hair, and said softly: "It's been a few months, and I can't eat anymore. I'll buy you a new one."

Yin Qiu didn't speak, and after a while, he whispered again: "The brothers are gone, no one is watching for me, there must be rats in the room, those candies must have been eaten."

Man Jiangxue looked at her demure and dull profile, and sighed softly: "Xiaoqiu..."

"I still can't accept it," Yin Qiu said in confusion, "How could they be bad people?"

Man Jiangxue stared at her, unable to answer these words.

Not to mention Yin Qiu, even when she saw the corpses of those hidden guard disciples in the bamboo forest, she couldn't help being surprised.

Over the years, although she hasn't interacted much with the disciples of the hidden guards, and she rarely communicates with them, she has spent so many years together day and night, and many of them were still young when they came, and Man Jiangxue looked at them little by little. grown up.

But she did not expect that these people would be sent to monitor her.

The world is unpredictable, she is not a fairy who does not know the foretelling, she also has negligence and is plotted by others, and she cannot always be on guard against all aspects, but she can quickly accept this matter, Yin Qiu can't, she is still too young, let alone She has not experienced many ups and downs in the true sense. She still needs time to digest and realize that she was betrayed by people around her like this. Although this process will be cruel, as long as she survives If you do it, you can benefit from it. In a way, it might be a good thing.

Even though in Man Jiangxue's heart, she didn't really want Yin Qiu to experience such a thing, but people are in the arena and can't help themselves, no matter how careful she is to protect her, there will always be omissions.

Just like being invited to the Nine Immortals Hall that day, if she had taken Yin Qiu instead of Bai Ling, maybe this would not have happened.

It's a pity that there is no regret medicine in the world, and the choices I have made cannot be changed.

"Forget about them," Man Jiangxue said slowly after a short silence, "From now on, Jingyue Peak will only be me and you, isn't it great."

Hearing this, Yin Qiu's dazed eyes lit up, she turned around and looked at Man Jiangxue, pursed her lips and said, "Of course it's very good, as long as I can be with Master Uncle, I'm not afraid of any danger."

When she said this, there was a calm smile on her face. Although her body had not yet recovered, her complexion was still a little pale, but the warm candlelight enveloped her, making her plain face without makeup clean and clear. Like pear blossoms in spring, innocent and flawless.

At this moment, Man Jiangxue's downcast eyes were full of Yin Qiu, and there was nothing else she could tolerate. She raised the corners of her mouth slightly, stretched out her hand to hold Yin Qiu's face, and asked softly: " Do you want to be with me?"

Yin Qiu rubbed against her palm like he did when he was a child, and said with a smile, "I've thought about it, I've always wanted to, don't master uncle know?"

Man Jiangxue said: "I know," she moved her fingertips, touching Yin Qiu's fan-like long eyelashes, and said, "But I don't know how long you want to be with me."

Yin Qiu said without hesitation: "Of course it is a lifetime. As long as I have a lifetime, I want to be with my uncle for as long as I want."

She made Man Jiangxue laugh with a serious look: "For a lifetime? Well... Let me think about it, for a lifetime, it seems to be too long, and I will get tired of it."

"How can you get tired of it?" Yin Qiu said quickly, "I won't get tired of it. Is it because my uncle will get tired of me?"

Man Jiangxue said: "I won't get tired of you, but when you grow up, I will be old."

Yin Qiu said: "No, my uncle won't grow old, and even if my uncle gets old, I still like my uncle."

Man Jiangxue's eyes were gentle, she stroked Yin Qiu's cheek and said, "Do you like me?"

Yin Qiu didn't know why her heart beat faster because of this sentence. She knew that Man Jiangxue's question had no other meaning, but she still couldn't help being moved, and said sincerely: "I like it."

Man Jiangxue stared at her without saying a word.

Yin Qiu really wanted to ask her back, "Does the uncle like me?", but she held back the thought and did not show it boldly.

But the next moment, Man Jiangxue said by herself: "Uncle Shi likes you too."