Jiang Fa took advantage of the moment when the soldiers' attention was attracted by the grain truck and quietly moved towards the rear of the convoy.
At the end of the grain team were two men carrying sacks. They were both wearing coarse cloth jackets and were covered in dust. Their attire was somewhat similar to his.
He lowered his body, mingled behind the two waiters, and helped to lift a bag of grain from the ground to his shoulders.
The clerk looked back at him and thought he was new from the grain store. He didn't ask any more questions and muttered "Hurry up and follow him."
Jiang Fa carried the sack, lowered his head, and followed the grain team towards the city gate.
Just as he was about to step through the city gate, the man in black on the side of the door suddenly turned his attention.
Jiang Fa was already on guard, his face remained calm, and he looked like a country boy who was used to hard work.
The man in black stared at him for two breaths.
Jiang Fa did not dodge his gaze, but instead tipped the sack on his shoulders, as if he was struggling to carry the weight.
"Go faster."
The man in black looked away and waved to the grain team.
Jiang Fa breathed a sigh of relief in his heart and walked quickly through the doorway carrying the sack.
After that, he followed the grain team for most of the street and finally escaped quietly at the corner of an alley.
The night completely enveloped Qingshan County, and there were no fireworks in the streets and alleys.
At this time in the past, the vendors along the street had already closed their stalls and returned home, and the alleys were filled with the sounds of people chatting and children playing, but at this moment, the entire county was eerily silent.
The whole Qingshan County is like an empty city.
Jiang Fa specializes in narrow and secluded lanes and rushes in the direction of the Zhao Clan Martial Hall.
Within half the time of burning the incense, his figure appeared outside the martial arts gym.
With just one glance, Jiang Fa's heart sank.
The martial arts hall that used to be noisy now became dead silent.
He couldn't hold it in any longer, and quickly rushed into the courtyard of the martial arts school.
Wherever you look, you see devastation and ruins.
In the martial arts arena in the inner courtyard, the originally flat and solid bluestone floor was filled with cracks and ravines, and countless gravels were scattered on the ground.
In the area where the disciples usually practice boxing, there are several pits of different depths. The soil around the pits is charred and black, mixed with the faint residue of Sha Qi.
The weapon racks on both sides of the martial arts arena all collapsed. Bamboo spears, wooden knives, and iron halberds were all broken and bent. The ground was littered with debris.
He searched around and found that the entire martial arts hall was empty.
Without stopping at the martial arts hall, Jiang Fa turned around and ran towards the north of the city.
The night was dark and the streets were empty. Jiang Fa's figure was walking quickly through the darkness. Wind-Chasing Steps was moving to the extreme under his feet. His whole body was like a silent shadow passing over the bluestone road.
While passing by the main street in the east of the city, he caught a glimpse of several corpses lying across the entrance to the bustling market in the past. No one had collected them, leaving them exposed on the street.
Jiang Fa only glanced at it and then withdrew his gaze, his feet became a little faster.
The small courtyard behind the medicinal shop in the north of the city.
Jiang Fa slowed down from afar, pushing Origin-Returning Breath-Concealing Art to the extreme, and touched the wall of the alleyway.
The door was ajar, there were no pry marks on the door panel, and there were no signs of being broken open by violence.
He rushed to the courtyard door in a few steps, stretched out his hand and opened the door. The courtyard was quiet.
The door of the stove was half open, the lid of the pot on the stove was tilted to one side, and the ashes in the stove were cold.
The door to the main room was also ajar. He pushed it open and went in. The tables and chairs were neatly arranged, the cupboard doors were closed, and the beds were folded neatly.
Everything seemed to be normal, but the person was missing.
Jiang Fa's heart clenched suddenly,
He forced himself to calm down and not get carried away by panic.
Heavenly Demon Sect took control of the entire county, and his family suddenly disappeared. If they were kidnapped, the scene would not be so neat.
If they evacuate voluntarily, they will definitely leave clues for themselves.
Thinking of this, Jiang Fa opened his eyes and began to carefully look at every corner of the house.
He recalled that when he was a child in Yellow Earth Town, when the family was too poor to open the pot, his parents would occasionally hide the few coins they had saved in the cracks in the bricks behind the stove, for fear of being picked up by mice or being dug out by the second aunt who came to collect debts.
Later, when life got better, my mother Lady Chen used to sew important things into pillows or press them under the rice vat.
These are the habits that farmers have accumulated in their daily lives.
Jiang Fa's eyes glanced around the main room, and finally landed on the half-old rice vat in the corner.
The rice vat is not big. The mouth of the vat is covered with a wooden board, and a coarse porcelain bowl is pressed on the stone board.
He walked over, removed the porcelain bowl, and lifted up the wooden board.
There was only a thin layer of rice left in the vat, just enough to cover the bottom of the vat.
Jiang Fa put his hand into the rice, groping between the cold rice grains with his fingertips, and soon touched a slightly raised hard object at the bottom of the tank.
With a look on his face, he pushed aside the floating rice, revealing something wrapped in oil paper at the bottom of the tank.
Jiang Fa's heartbeat is a few minutes faster.
He peeled off the oil paper layer by layer, and inside was a piece of yellowed straw paper.
There are only four words written on it, "North Mountain Shops."
North Mountain Shops is located in the northern suburbs of the city. After passing City God Temple and walking about half a mile further in, there is a place called North Mountain Hollow.
In the early years, it was an old warehouse where the county government stored official grain. Later, the official grain was loaded and unloaded at the Nancheng Water Transport Terminal, and the old warehouse became abandoned.
After it was abandoned, a few brave merchants built a few shops next to the old warehouse to engage in leather goods business, and gradually gathered into a small market, called North Mountain Shops.
The place is not big, with about ten shops. Few people go there during the day, and at night there are no ghosts.
In a small, dilapidated and leaky courtyard.
Lin Feng squatted in the house, looking extremely haggard. What happened in the past few days was like a nightmare to him.
He raised his head and looked at the scattered people in front of him.
Jiang Dashan leaned against the earth wall with his eyes closed. Lady Chen beside him was curled up on a broken mattress, holding Jiang Xiaohe in his arms.
The child slept deeply, with his little face buried in his mother's arms, turning over occasionally.
Further inside, there are several senior brothers from the martial arts school.
Li Chen had a strip of cloth wrapped around his left arm, obviously injured.
Sitting next to him was another disciple from the inner courtyard. The two of them sat back to back, neither of them speaking.
There is also a disciple named Zhou Shen, who is a disciple of the outer courtyard. He has only been in the academy for two and a half months, and his round face still has the childishness of a young man.
He squatted in the corner, his face full of uneasiness.
In addition to them, there were several Lin Lineage people at the other end of the cellar who had narrowly escaped, and their faces were equally ugly.
Lin Feng's nerves were stretched to the limit.
In the past three days, he barely slept a wink.
He didn't dare to open the window, didn't dare to light a fire, and didn't even dare to take a breath.
He listened to the noise outside almost every moment, and he did not dare to relax, because the lives of more than a dozen people in the cellar were all tied to him alone.
On the day when the martial arts hall was attacked, if his master and senior brother hadn't fought tooth and nail to protect him, he might not have been able to escape the clutches of those men in gray robes.
Those men in gray robes were extremely ruthless and didn't give anyone a chance to survive. He watched with his own eyes as the two junior brothers were smashed into pieces with a single palm, and they didn't even have time to scream.
The martial arts school is like this,
Even my own family... even my father...
Lin Feng Thinking of this, a sad look finally appeared on his face.
But soon he cheered up again, he had to live, he wanted revenge!
Just as he was thinking about it, there was suddenly a sound of very light footsteps outside the courtyard wall.
The sound of footsteps was so small that it would have been impossible to catch it without Lin Feng's keen ear developed over many years.
His heartbeat suddenly accelerated.