The two walked along the mountain road for a while and the road was at the end.

The mountains ahead are rare in the depths of the mountains, and ordinary herb collectors will never risk being attacked by spirit beasts.

Ling Xiaozhi grabbed a branch and turned around and said, "What should I do? There is no way."

Ling Xi glanced at the sun in the sky: "Just go forward. The road is not something that people have walked out, so what are you afraid of?"

Ling Xiaojie rubbed his hands and said, "Then you come to open the way. There are thorns on both sides, so it is difficult to pull out the hands."

Ling Xi simply called out a local soldier and walked in front of him against thorns.

A sharp arrow passed through the air and shot down a bird on the trunk.

Ling Xi immediately tensed his muscles all over his body and looked at the archery place.

A short-sleeved young man stood there holding a short bow, covered in bronze skin, with a scar on his face across half of his cheek, staring at the two with curious eyes.

Ling Xi did not speak first. The young man walked under the tree, picked up the bow and arrows and prey, and gave the two a harmless smile.

"Who are you?" Ling Xi asked vigilantly.

The man said in a dialect with a strong local accent: "My name is Malu, and everyone in our village calls me Mazi. You guys are from outside."

Ling Xi also smiled and said, "Your village? There are still villages in the Beiguan Mountains."

"Ah, my father said that in the past, when we were in war, we were afraid of forcing the recruitment, so we hid in the mountains. Although we stopped fighting now, we would still live here. It would be so comfortable to have mountains and waters."

Ling Xi pointed to the Beiguan Mountains and said, "Then, do you know how to get the shortcut deeper?"

Ma Lu shook his head and said, "My father should know that when he was a child, he followed his grandfather to collect herbs and went there many times."

Ling Xi took out a silver note and said to him: "Can you take me to your village? I hope your father can help us get deeper."

A helpless expression appeared on Ling Xiaojie's face, and he held Ling Xi's hand and whispered: "Ling Xi, why are you giving him money? What's the use of these deep mountains and forests?"

Unexpectedly, Ma Lu smiled and said, "Okay, but I've said it's OK, my father may not agree."

Ling Xi stuffed the silver notes into his hands: "It's okay, you just need to take us there, I will talk to him."

Malu put away the silver notes and turned around and replied, "Come with me, it will take another half an hour to go."

Ling Xi smiled on her face: "As long as they contact the outside world, they need money to exchange for necessities in life."

Ling Xiaozhe curled her lips and said, "What are you pretending? These people have been corrupted by money. Unlike me, they regard money as dirt."

"See the wine sympathizes with the lovers." Ling Xi added.

Ling Xiaojie punched him and said with a smile: "You just think you and Ling Yingxi have not broken up yet."

Half an hour later, Malu took the two of them into a village.

The houses in the village are all covered with wood, but occasionally you will see one or two pieces of iron at the door, symbolizing the exchanges between the village and the outside world.

"Brother Ma Zi." A girl ran over with a smile, her eyes were extremely clear and full of innocence.

She looked at Ling Xi and the others behind the road and asked in confusion: "Who are they? Didn't your father not let you take people to the village?"

Ma Lu scratched his head and said, "They just wanted their father to take them into the mountains. They gave them so much money."

The girl was shocked when she saw the silver note in his hand: "So much." They usually hunt, and a prey is worth one or two or three taels of money, even a saber-toothed tiger skin. They only saw their father take it back once, and the amount on it was far from this one. The number on the silver note was enough for their entire village to spend a year.

Ling Xi smiled and said, "Is Marseille here?" He talked to Ma Road on the road and already knew that his father was Marseille. The girl in front of him was his sister, Ma Ying.

In the Tianwu Empire, only the name of the family that is quite prominent is three characters, and the character in the middle is their seniority. Like those grass-roots people at the bottom, they are not qualified to take three characters at all. The same is true for Ling Xi's name.

Ling Xiaojie was named Xiaojie because his nickname when he was a child. He thought Ling Xiaojie was too ugly, so he simply called him Ling Xiaojie.

As for Lingli, this name was chosen by his father, and he himself never said why.

"Yeah." Ma Ying said with some restraint: "My father just came back from farming and was having dinner in the house."

Ma Lu smiled and said to Ling Xi: "Come with me."

The road lifted the wooden curtains of his home and shouted, "Dad, I'll bring back two guests."

Ling Xi and Ling Xiaozhang followed in. A short and thin man sat in the room. Perhaps because of his excessive work, his face looked a little aged.

Marseille put down the porcelain bowl carrying the vegetable soup, frowned and asked, "What are you doing? Why did you bring it into the village? Didn't I say I won't let you go?"

Ma Lu smiled and took out a silver note and put it on the table, saying, "Dad, they want you to take them into the mountains."

Marseille glanced at the numbers on the silver notes, picked them up and put them in front of his face and shouted, "Five hundred taels!" He had never seen so much money in his life, and his hands holding the silver notes were trembling slightly.

It took him a long time to calm down his excitement, picked up the tobacco gun and lit it, and asked Ling Xi and the others, "What are you doing inside?"

"We want to cross the Beiping Mountains, but you only have to send us to the border of Fuzhou. We will walk the rest of the road ourselves."

Marseille rolled his eyes, looked up and down at Ling Xi, "If you put the official road and don't leave, you have to risk your life to penetrate the Beiping Mountains. What's wrong with you two?"

Ling Xi took out a silver note from his arms again and waved it: "Send us there, connect this one, you don't have to worry about the others."

Marseille swallowed, and he didn't know what the two people in front of him were. The fugitive? The merchants who needed to cross the mountains in urgent matters? They didn't look like each other. It was hard for him to imagine why two young men, about sixteen or seventeen, were so generous, just to risk their lives to cross the mountains.

After hesitating for a few seconds, Ling Xi spoke, "If you don't want to, let's go and talk to other family members."

Without waiting for Marseille to respond, Ling Xi turned around and walked out the door.

"Wait, I'll take you there. I'm the most familiar road there, and I've walked it no less than a hundred times."

Ling Xi stopped and turned around and smiled, "Since that's the case, then prepare for it and set off quickly."

Marseille stood up and said to the woman beside her, "Go and bake twenty big cakes quickly, let's prepare some food."

An hour later, Marseille stood at the entrance of the village with a big bag on his back.

Other villagers gathered to see them off.

An old man said to Marseille: "You are not in good health. Be careful on the road and try to walk the road as firmly as possible. You are the most familiar with you, and we believe in you."

Marseille agreed, glanced at Malu and said to Ling Xi, "Let's go."

Ling Xi shook his head, came to the road and said, "I'll ask you for something. Don't tell others about the news about our coming here."

Malu suddenly remembered what Marseille had told him before: "No matter what, don't disclose our whereabouts. You must say that you don't know anything, and you haven't heard of it."

He nodded and said, "Don't worry, I won't say it."

Ling Xi patted his shoulder, turned around and walked towards the depths of the jungle.

A few days later, the woman came to Peking City with the silver notes. She walked into a silver notes shop and said to the old man in gorgeous clothes behind the counter: "I want to exchange this silver notes for cash."

The old man took the silver notes, looked carefully with his glasses, and checked them a few times. After checking the authenticity, he said, "That's right, it's true."

The woman's tightly held heart also relaxed, and exhaled and asked, "Where are you taking it?"

The old man called out a person, handed him the silver notes and gave him a few words of advice. The man turned around and went back to the inner hall to get five hundred taels of silver.

The old man wrapped the brocade cloth and handed it to the woman. The woman took it excitedly, and turned around and left without caring about anything.

The road was waiting at the door, and when he saw the woman walking out, he immediately said, "How is it?" The woman held the brocade bag and said to him, "Let's go! Let's go back to the village first."

Ma Lu smiled proudly, followed with a sigh of relief.

The old man in the shop thought about it for a few moments and felt something was wrong. He called the man before and said, "Where is the silver note? Take it over and I'll take it again."

The man handed him the silver bill, and the old man took it, chased him gently and said, "Hiss, this is the silver bill of the Ling family. How could that village woman have the silver bill of the Ling family?"

The man hesitated and said, "I know the man at the door. His name is Malu, and he is a hunter from the small village in the Beiping Mountains."

"Beiping Mountains? Ling Family?" The old man seemed to have thought of something, took out Ling Xi's portrait and looked at it, stood up and said, "Hurry up, follow me to the capital."

At night, most people in the mountain village went to bed early. A native dog was tied at the door, lying on the ground and staring at the big tree at the entrance of the village with its glowing eyes.

It seemed to hear something, and a group of people in black robes appeared from the shadows and walked towards the village.

The local dog stood up and shouted, and the wool sound alarmed the people in the village.

An old man walked out with a lantern and was stunned when he saw the men in black robes at the entrance of the village.

Yuan Tang, who was in charge, walked up to the old man, spread out a portrait, and asked the old man: "Have you ever seen this person?"

The old man looked at Ling Xi on the portrait, thought carefully and said, "Wait, I'll wake up the villagers and ask."

Late at night, a house was lit with candles, and more than a dozen people were crowded inside, which seemed a little narrow. Outside the house, many villagers who were woken up and surrounded by windows to watch the fun gathered.

Ma Lu and Ma Ying stood aside, and the woman seemed a little restless on the chair beside her.

Yuantang looked at the woman and asked, "Have you seen this person?"

The woman shook her head repeatedly, without saying a word.

Yuantang then asked, "Then where did your previous silver notes come from? Tell me."

A look of panic flashed in the woman's eyes and she hurriedly said, "I picked it up in the pile of grass."

"Where did you pick it up? Is it next to this village?" Yuantang said, pointing to the dark mountains outside the window: "It's still in this Beiping Mountains."

The woman didn't dare to look at his face, stared at the dragon pattern on Yuantang's clothes, pinched the corner of her clothes without saying a word.

"Who are you?" Ma Lu asked from the side.

Yuantang glanced at him and said, "You don't have to worry."

"My mother doesn't know anything, just ask me if you have anything." The road top said in front.
To be continued...