Chapter 292 Would It Be a Trap?
It rained heavily. The rain covered everything, and it sounded like waves and tides.
Clatter!
Buckskin boots were heavily stepped into the puddles in the mud. The muddy water splashed on all sides, leaving a hollow shallow pit. Then, it was quickly covered by muddy water again.
On the official road, five swordsmen buried themselves in black rushing through the rain quickly, the mud at their feet splashing. They were in a hurry and looked back from time to time. Blood kept oozing from their clothes soaked by the rain, running down their bodies with the rain.
The person in the middle wearing a coir raincoat and a bamboo hat was a middle-aged man with a tough look on his face. Covering his chest, he looked pale, but he never looked back. He kept gritting his teeth and staring ahead, with hate and eagerness in his eyes.
North was ahead, and Hedong was in the north. He was on the way home, but he might not be able to return home, because the middle-aged man was the messenger of Hedong, and he went to Zhaoyi for uniting Kang Chengqian to deal with Li Ye.
At present, Li Ye was welcomed by Kang Chengqian and the civil and military officials in the southern border of Luzhou, while he was fleeing in panic in the northern border of Luzhou.
The bean-sized raindrops fell on the bamboo hat, shattering and crackling. The disordered rhythm fitted the mood of the middle-aged man.
In the front, a pavilion appeared beside the official road. In the wilderness, it stood in the rain, quiet and lonely. The pavilion meant stop. When ordinary travelers encountered a pavilion, they would stop for a rest, drinking water, and eating food, and then they would continue on the road.
These five people didn’t intend to stop. There were many pavilions along the way, but where was their way home? At least not here. While they were fleeing, they couldn’t stop until they got home.
They were unwilling to stop, but someone wanted them to stop.
Someone was in the pavilion. A person with the umbrella. An old man in his fifties with the umbrella.
Facing the official road, he was looking at the heavy rain with his one hand behind his back. There was a five-kilometer wilderness in his sight. The forest and the mountains were silent. He didn’t look at the people coming down the southern official road, as if they were not enough to attract his attention. But the people who came couldn’t ignore him.
His cultivation was so high that no one could ignore him.
When the five injured people, who were rushing forward, saw this man, they felt hopeless.
The four swordsmen guarding on the four sides secretly gritted their teeth. One of them suddenly said to the middle-aged man, “General, there are 15 kilometers away from the boundary of Qinzhou Hedong. Someone will meet you there. You leave at once. You don’t need to worry about us!”
His voice was resonant. He used his cultivation power to say the last words. The surrounding rain was all shattered.
The middle-aged man’s expression changed. He looked painful, but he didn’t refuse.
The four swordsmen jumped up one after another and rushed toward the pavilion from different directions through the rain.
The old man with the umbrella finally took back his gaze at the wilderness and glanced at the crowd faintly. Then, he sneered disdainfully. “You can’t even protect yourselves. How dare you fight me!”
He didn’t move at all, not even a finger.
His cultivation power suddenly burst out. Taking him as the center of the circle, a light shield rose like an upside-down bowl from an exploding Qi of waves!
When the swordsmen, who rushed to the pavilion, hit the light shield, they flew dozens of steps backward, like a kite with a broken string. Blood splashed around them, and they fell to the wet ground without a sound. Only a pool of blood spread under their bodies.
When the four swordsmen died, the middle-aged man, who wore a coir raincoat and a bamboo hat, just came before the pavilion. The guards risked their lives to buy him time, but they failed in the end.
Gnashing his teeth, the middle-aged man suddenly screamed and jumped to the old man with the umbrella, holding his knife. In the air, he wielded his long knife vertically. More than 30-meter Knife Qi condensed and chopped toward the pavilion!
Even when he faced the middle-aged man’s deadly counterattack, the old man remained expressionless. He just raised the umbrella and moved from the bottom up. A wave of blue Spiritual Qi hit the Knife Qi, like a flame. “You’re doomed to die. Why struggle?”
The Knife Qi dissipated. The middle-aged man’s body stiffened suddenly as if he was struck by lightning. His coir raincoat and bamboo hat cracked and exploded, flying to somewhere. He was bleeding and fell in front of the pavilion from the air heavily.
The old man looked indifferent and walked step by step to the middle-aged man, who was lying in the mud and couldn’t get up. He said faintly, “The pavilion means stop. And your life in the world should stop here. Wouldn’t it be a good thing that you don’t need to work hard anymore? Although your head is not valuable, I need to use it to show my Zhaoyi’s attitude.”
The middle-aged man barely raised his head, with no fear but hatred and unwillingness in his eyes. “I didn’t expect that you would come and stop me personally. To curry favor Li Ye, you really have no shame... But, I’m the messenger of Hedong, so if you kill me, Prince of Longxi won’t let go of you!”
This old man was Kang Xigui.
That night, after Kang Xigui and Kang Chengqian decided to turn to Li Ye, the first thing they did was to catch Li Keyong’s messengers who were in the commissioner’s mansion and show Zhaoyi’s attitude, but the messengers were aware of the danger and ran away.
Kang Xigui still didn’t open the umbrella but pushed its tip against the middle-aged man’s throat. “Only living people have the right to worry about worldly affairs, but the dead don’t. What’s more, compared with Prince An, Prince of Longxi is nobody. It won’t be long before Zhaoyi will help Prince An to fight Hedong!”
When he finished speaking, a cold light flashed on the tip of the umbrella. Blood splashed on the ground. A big head flew up high in the heavy rain.
...
Kang Chengqian led Li Ye to Luzhou. That night, he set a banquet in the commissioner’s mansion to warmly entertain Li Ye and the officials and generals of the Pinglu Army.
Singing and dancing kept going on in the banquet. People were drinking and cheering with each other.
Kang Chengqian kept toasting to people with a low profile. He treated people humbly and kept praising Li Ye’s past achievements, from Li Ye’s reaching the Qi-refining stage in one day to the settlement of Huang Chao Uprising, no matter how big or trivial. Every time he praised Li Ye, he would propose a toast. He was so hospitable that the people, who did not know him, would think he was a subordinate promoted by Li Ye.
Fortunately, Kang Chengqian had high cultivation, or he would get drunk since he had drunk too much wine.
Xue Wei’s table was next to the Henghai secretary’s. Unlike the others, their faces were gloomy.
Xue Wei stared at Kang Chengqian with resentment and thought that Kang Chengqian was really shameless. Kang Chengqian was indeed a scholar and very good at flattery. His compliments were never repeated. He was really quick-witted.
Xue Wei thought that his praise for Li Ye was nothing, compared with Kang Chengqian’s. If Kang Chengqian went on flattering Li Ye like this, Xue Wei thought that his position would be at stake. Kang Chengqian might catch up from behind and get a higher position than him.
The Henghai secretary was also depressed. He kept shaking his head, sighing, and saying that what Kang Chengqian did was a disgrace. While saying this, the Henghai secretary left the banquet. As Xue Wei saw his weird look, he quietly followed.
The secretary came outside the courtyard and asked his subordinate to give him a brush pen and ink. Then, he used his subordinate’s back as the table and began to write. In the end, he gave what he had written to his subordinate solemnly and asked him to give it to the Henghai commissioner at top speed.
Because of his high cultivation, Xue Wei saw the contents of the letter after he glanced at it for a few times. Although he couldn’t see all the contents, the words “please send more troops” were particularly obvious. Xue Wei’s heart suddenly thumped and he realized that something was wrong. The secretary was to ask the Henghai commissioner to send troops to come!
In fact, the Henghai commissioner only sent 10,000 troops and it was really not many, ranking at the bottom. Henghai always had a good relationship with Pinglu, and the Henghai commissioner curried favor with Li Ye all the time. With only 10,000 troops, he could no longer claim himself to be Li Ye’s No. 1 henchman, especially when he heard that Kang Chengqian promised to Li Ye in the banquet that more than 100,000 Zhaoyi soldiers would listen to Li Ye’s command.
When Xue Wei saw the Henghai secretary looking back, he hurriedly retracted his neck and hid himself. He thought to himself for a while and immediately went to look for his own trusted subordinate. He wrote a military order and asked his subordinate to take it back to Tianping and mobilize the remaining Tianping soldiers to come. In any case, he couldn’t let Henghai and Zhaoyi surpass him.
“I am the first of all the vassal states to turn to Prince An, so I cannot do less than you and let you get more credit than me!” Xue Wei thought on his way back to the banquet after he made an order. He was quite proud. He totally forgot that he was caught by the Son of God and forced to follow Li Ye to fight.
Kang Chengqian’s hospitality was beyond Li Ye’s expectation. His understanding of the current situation, loyalty, and righteousness made Li Ye doubt that if he had ulterior motives.
Kang Chengqian was unceasingly praising Li Ye’s past achievements and expressing his awe and admiration. At the same time, he promised that Zhaoyi would do their best to offer food to the troops and would recruit 200,000 civilians to help the troops to transport military supplies. At this point, Li Ye was deep in thought.
Would it be a trap?
Of course, Li Ye didn’t know that Kang Chengqian and Kang Xigui had decided to do their best to help Li Ye so that Hedong would have no chance to resist and would be suppressed at one blow.
Otherwise, when Li Ye returned to Pinglu afterward and Hedong restored strength, Hedong would take revenge on Zhaoyi because Zhaoyi was adjacent to Hedong. Obviously, Zhaoyi couldn’t defeat Hedong because there were eleven prefectures in Hedong!
If Zhaoyi was defeated, Hedong would be in danger. But what was more terrible was that Hedong wanted to fight Zhaoyi all the time! Hedong was able to defeat Zhaoyi, but Zhaoyi was unable to defeat Hedong. That would be a tough life for Zhaoyi.
Seeing Li Ye deep in thought and his doubtful look, Kang Chengqian felt terribly uneasy. “Isn’t Prince An satisfied with this? We are so sincere! Is there anything else that is not good enough?”
Kang Chengqian thought hard but couldn’t figure it out. Gradually, he became uneasy and was sweating on his forehead. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Kang Chengqian got the report that Kang Xigui was back. He was relieved. He immediately got up and bowed to Li Ye. “Your Highness, I have a gift for you!”
“Oh? It’s very kind of you. What is it?” Li Ye wasn’t very interested in it.
Since Li Ye lacked interest in it, Kang Chengqian felt more pressure. Now that the Pinglu Army had already entered the border, he had offended Hedong. At present, if he couldn’t satisfy Li Ye, Zhaoyi would be in a dilemma.
Kang Xigui walked into the hall, carrying a box. After saluting, he bent and raised his hands over his head and presented it to Li Ye in good behavior. When he faced the messengers of Hedong, he acted like a master, but now he was like a child who wanted to please adults.
Shangguan Qingcheng stepped forward, took the box, and checked it. After making sure there was nothing wrong, she opened it slowly. When she saw the thing in the box, her gaze became cold. She threw the box and unsheathed her sword, pointing to Kang Xigui. At the same time, the pressure of the general of Militarism emanated. The strength of over Level 9 Qi-refining made everyone in the hall felt as if a huge stone was pressing on his body.
She shouted in a low voice, “What do you mean?!”
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