flapping wings

Sure enough, Xiaobao obediently called for breakfast to be brought into the room, and even the deaf man ignored Zhang Rumeng's repeated calls behind him while ordering.

"Que'er's injury is almost healed," Qi Ping sat at the table, picked up a small steamed bun from the dinner plate and said while eating, "Clean up tonight, sleep well, and we'll continue our journey tomorrow. "

"Brother Seven," Xiaobao pushed the whole drawer of steamed buns in front of Qi Ping with a smirk on his face, "Qingfeng and Junior Sister Xuanya want to travel with us."

"Are you sure you didn't invite them yourself?" Qi Ping slapped the table hard, obviously very dissatisfied with Xiaobao.

"No," Mu Xiaoque suddenly questioned from behind: "Xiaobao, if you hadn't been chased and killed, we would not have taken you on the same journey. You have already seen how dangerous it is to be with us, why did you agree to them?" !"

"Brother Mu, I was wrong," Xiaobao lowered his head and wiped the sweat from his head, "I couldn't resist Junior Sister Xuanya's begging for a while, so I agreed to them, and I will explain it to them in a while."

.....................

In the evening, Mu Xiaoque sat at the table and wiped the knife in his hand. Qi Ping lay on the other side of the table and stared at him without blinking, "Do you want to take a bath and rest?"

Seeing Mu Xiaoque nodding, Qi Ping got up with a smile: "I'll go get our Que'er bath water."

The wind was still a little cold at night, when Qi Ping arrived at the backyard of the inn, there were still several people queuing up to fetch hot water.

The fireman inside kept apologizing, and he started chatting with the few people in front of him because he was bored.

Of course, it was nothing more than discussing which school or faction was going to Yunhe City, and which school or faction's disciples were slaughtered by the devil again.

Xiao Bao returned to the inn from the outside, and suddenly saw a person standing on the roof.

He squinted his eyes and looked at it for a while, then flew up to the roof, and walked over with light kung fu, "Brother Mu, I look like you from a distance, what are you doing here?"

"Blowing air," Mu Xiaoque turned to look at Xiaobao: "Going to drink?"

"Well, I spent the whole day playing in the city with the Huashan brothers and sisters," Xiaobao scratched his head embarrassedly: "At night, we will have a break-up meal in a restaurant outside by the way."

He glanced down, and suddenly pointed to a person and said, "Is that Brother Seven?"

"No," Mu Xiaoque shook her head, "You read it wrong."

Xiaobao hiccupped and tilted his head suspiciously. Just as he was about to continue to identify, he heard Mu Xiaoque's voice mixed with the cold wind: "You are drunk, go to rest early!"

After sending Xiaobao away, Mu Xiaoque looked downstairs and saw that Qi Ping had already filled up the hot water, and was just about to turn around and leave, but saw the other party put down the bucket suddenly, not knowing what to do.

Qi Ping waited in line for a long time, and came out of the stove carrying hot water like a treasure. A whirlwind of sand and stones swept past his eyes. He was just about to look down to see if there was any dust in the water, but it happened The stench got into the nose.

After hesitating for a moment, he put down the barrel and sniffed to find the source of the smell.

If the moments of life and death in the past few days have taught him anything, it is undoubtedly cautious.

If he had left quickly after discovering that something was wrong with the Qi family, the series of pursuits that followed might not have happened.

Smelling the smell, he walked all the way to the door of the woodshed in the backyard. Before entering the door, he deliberately glanced behind him before he dared to take a step.

Although the smell in the firewood room was still very faint, it was already stronger than the one outside. Looking around, Qi Ping strode towards the dry well covered with boulders with his sword in his hand.

Walking halfway, he suddenly stopped, and at the same time quickly turned his head to look at the door.

His long hair was thrown to the side of his face. In the darkness, he had a stern expression and squinted his eyes and asked, "Who? Sneaky! Come out!"

"It's me," Mu Xiaoque pushed the door open and walked in, walked quickly to the edge of the well, sniffed here, "It came from here."

"Why are you here?" Qi Ping's tense body couldn't help but relax, he walked to Mu Xiaoque's side and stretched out his hand to grab the other's face: "The face is real."

"Boring," Mu Xiaoque swung Qi Ping away, bent over to exert strength, the moment the stone was moved away, the stench permeated, enveloping the two of them in an instant.

Qi Ping was so smoked that his eyes were narrowed into slits, and he kept retching while covering his mouth.

"Get out," Mu Xiaoque turned and pushed him, and the two walked out of the firewood room. The smell hadn't completely dissipated from the firewood room, and it was quite windy tonight, so at least half of the smell was blown away by the wind.

Qi Ping followed Mu Xiaoque into the kitchen, there was no one in the kitchen, the fire was crackling under the stove, and there was a pot of bubbling boiling water sitting on it.

The little guy probably went upstairs to bring hot water to the guests, so Mu Xiaoque found a long rope and led Qi Ping back to the woodshed.

"I'll go down first," Mu Xiaoque tied the rope around his waist, tore off a piece of sleeve and wrapped it around his face, then took out a night pearl from his bosom, "If it's safe to go down, I'll pull the rope three times."

"Is it not safe?" Hearing the question, Mu Xiaoque sighed helplessly: "Then I will step on the well wall by myself."

Qi Ping lay on his stomach at the mouth of the well, and when the rope moved for the third time, he jumped down impatiently. The dampness and stench below were not only disgusting, but also stained his clothes.

"What are you doing down here?" The muffled voice sounded from Brie, and Mu Xiaoque frowned, obviously speaking in such an environment, he couldn't stand it.

"Accompany you," Qi Ping squatted down and probed for a moment, under the faint cold light, everything at the bottom of the well could be discerned, only several corpses piled up together, already decomposed for a long time, oozing pus.

There is not an inch of thread on the corpse, and looking up, every face has long been changed beyond recognition, leaving only a lump of fleshy mud, stuck in a deep pit. The faces of these people are obviously man-made. Destroyed.

He covered his mouth and lowered his head to look carefully, and pinched a face with a handkerchief on it. There were scattered stone chips on it, and Mu Xiaoque replied, "It was hit by a stone."

Qi Ping went to the distance to fan the wind, and frowned as he looked at the corpses in the distance. It was obvious that the murderer was afraid that people would know the identities of the victims.

But there are as many people in the rivers and lakes as crucian carp crossing the river. In this place without communication network, many people only have a name. As for what they look like, there may be only a few people who know it.

So why did the murderer think that the finder could recognize the identity of these people and deliberately destroy their faces?

"What do you think?" Qi Ping confessed all his doubts after asking.

Before Mu Xiaoque could reply, there was a faint "click" sound from the bottom of the well.

Qi Ping turned his head and glanced around, and before he could find the source of the sound, he saw Mu Xiaoque suddenly jumped up the wall of the well.

He backed away in fright, raised his eyes hastily, and suddenly there was a loud bang, which made people's eardrums hurt. The sound echoed underground for a long time before it gradually subsided.

After a while, the cold light finally came back to him again, and Mu Xiaoque's face looked serious, "It's sealed up."

"Aren't we going to be able to get out?" Qi Ping showed a trace of worry on his brows: "Even if Xiaobao finds out that we are gone, he probably won't be able to find us here."

He turned around at the bottom of the well, suddenly, his feet became stiff, and he stepped on something.

Moving his foot away, Qi Ping bent down to look at it for a while with the light in the distance, and then reached out and picked it out in the mud, it was a piece of jade pendant.

"I found a piece of jade pendant," Qi Ping shouted, rubbed his fingers against the jade pendant for a moment, then reached into his bosom, and took out his own piece. In terms of texture, his own piece was obviously smoother.

Moreover, the jade is ordinary in color, with some faint cracks and gaps on the surface, obviously it is not particularly valuable.

"This kind of close thing falls here," Qi Ping asked, "Isn't there a lot of people coming down the well?"

Mu Xiaoque also glanced at the surrounding walls of the well at the same time, and then began to look for the exit together with Qi Ping.

Just when Qi Ping was about to fly to a higher place, Mu Xiaoque quickly grabbed him by the waist and dragged him back to the ground, "It's meaningless, the only people who can often go in and out of this dry well are the guys in the inn. I watched them recently, I didn't find any martial arts."

"But we have searched for the ground," Qi Ping squatted at the base of the wall in distress and decadence, "Could it be that we are wrong, this is a useless abandoned well?"

"The abandoned well where the corpses are hidden," Mu Xiaoque looked at the corpses piled up in the distance again, and followed Qi Ping to squat down to rest for a while.

There are many thoughts in his mind, a dry well that seems to be visited by people often, a pile of naked and damaged corpses, and the murderer hiding outside.

Mu Xiaoque asked aloud: "The clothes and hairpins of these corpses have been stripped clean, don't you find it strange?"

"Of course I find it strange," Qi Ping sighed, "What can this clothes reveal? Who is so powerful that he can tell people's identities through clothes?"

Speaking of this, Qi Ping frowned, and a flash of inspiration suddenly appeared in his mind, "Maybe they are disciples of a certain sect, so they can be identified through their clothes, or someone wants to impersonate them."

"Exactly," Mu Xiaoque nodded, and continued: "But we just met Hong Ling yesterday, do you remember what she said?"

"In order to hide their identities, those sect disciples have changed their uniforms to wear their own private clothes!"

After Qi Ping answered with sparkling eyes, he shook his head discouragedly and said, "But if everyone wears private clothes, no one can confirm the identity of that person just by looking at a piece of clothing, so there is no point in pretending to be an identity."

Mu Xiaoque looked at Qi Ping and nodded in agreement, "Then it doesn't make any sense to take clothes off, no matter if you're an undisciplined scholar or a disciple of various sects."

Suddenly a certain scene popped up in Qi Ping's mind, and he grabbed Mu Xiaoque's sleeve suddenly, "Do you remember the corpse pit of Qi's family? Those people other than the more than 50 corpses!"

The description of the more than 50 corpses in the Qi family is actually inaccurate, because whether it was the corpses carried out by Mu Xiaoque or buried in the coffin, those maids and servants were excluded.

The former is because there is no need for this group of people to investigate, and the latter is because their status is low, and it is safe to bury them on the spot.

But why can everyone tell their identities just by looking at them?Because they are all wearing uniforms!

Those corpses wearing pink clothes and only embroidering their own decorations on inconspicuous places were lying in rows in the soil, and at this time they returned to Qi Ping's eyes.

He stood up from where he was, feeling extremely terrified in his heart, and the worst guess had already been formed in his mind.

"All guests who stay in Beishan can know their identity as long as they see their faces or clothes."

Qi Ping looked up when he heard the voice, and saw Mu Xiaoque standing beside a corpse, holding a small piece of rag in his hand: "I think, I know the identities of these people."