Baodugu is part of the low mountains and hills in central and southern Shandong. Most of these low mountains are limestone with an altitude of 500 to 600 meters. The mountains are not high, but they have craggy cliffs that stand high in the clouds. The rocks are abrupt, steep and magical, which is surprising. From

The road from Baodugu to Linchengcao is about 120 to 30 miles. For those bandits who robbed in the mountains and forests all day long, it was like walking on plain ground - it only took a day and a night to reach Lincheng on foot.

On the side of the urban railway line.

However, for those wealthy people in the city who were accustomed to riding in cars and sedan chairs, walking this hundred miles of mountain road was tantamount to enduring a long torture, not to mention that there were hundreds of frail women and children along the way. Therefore, when they

When being forced to go on the road by bandits, there are always cries, screams, and sighs all the way at first. Eventually, they are all exhausted and can only breathe, and just move forward step by step.

At this time, the orange moon gradually set in the west, and the gray-blue sky was already shining over the desolate mountains. Finally, a bright red sun emerged from the large square hills getting closer and closer - that is, Linglu Zhongnan

The daunting main peak of Baodugu, which is 100 meters above sea level, slowly rose up, breaking through the gauze-like mist, casting its warm and genial light on this embarrassed team.

"Woo-"

Suddenly there was a dull and exciting conch sound, and the bandits stopped. It turned out that Sun Meiyao saw that he had left his pursuers far away, and the team in front of him was really exhausted, so he gave a rest order.

These more than a thousand "meat coupons" also followed the example of the bandits. They all scattered tiredly and lay down in the shade of trees and rock crevices. Some who had not had time to write home before took the opportunity to

They borrowed paper and pen from each other, put their hands on their knees, a bag or a big stone to write, and cried while writing. Some other minions went to collect the letters one by one, and then handed them all to "Master Guo".

After the two sisters, Xie Hongfen and Xie Hongying, wrote a letter to Shanghai and Beijing respectively, they got up and went to a mountain spring where water was gurgling. Suddenly their fatigue disappeared. The two happily ran to the spring.

Next, I drank a few sips, then took out a towel from the small schoolbag I carried with me, washed my face, and felt energetic.

After that, the two of them took a closer look at the situation around them and saw that although the bandits were lying in disorder all over the forest, there were still many mobile sentries around, making it difficult to escape. Then they returned to the "meat ticket" team in frustration.

They saw several bandits gesticulating around Fang Jianlin, a reporter from Shenbao, under a mountain rock, and walked over. It turned out that the bandits took out some money engraved with foreign characters that they had snatched from the "foreign bills".

Please ask Fang Jianlin to evaluate the jewelry!

I saw a bandit holding up a red diamond almost the size of a bird's egg, and heard Fang Jianlin say disdainfully:

"It says on it that it is an imitation. A piece of glass stone is only worth two or three cents of silver dollars."

The bandit was stunned for a while and couldn't recover for a long time. Another bandit took out a shiny gold ring and came to ask Fang Jianlin again:

"Yours is also fake. It's made of brass and plated with gold. Nowadays, fashionable foreigners like to wear fake ones. It's worth thirty-five cents!"

Fang Jianlin took it and glanced at the English text above and said. The bandit also sighed. Another bandit took out a yellow chain pocket watch from his pocket and asked pitifully:

"Then...then, sir, is this a gold watch?"

"Let me see!"

The two sisters, Xie Hongfen and Xie Hongying, found it amusing to watch Fang Jianlin deceiving the bandits, and they all rushed to see the gold watch.

"You also understand foreign languages?"

The bandit in his fifties looked at the two girls in front of him suspiciously. Not only did the two girls look beautiful, but they also looked like they were carved from the same mold. If the boss hadn't made the rule about losing heads, in the past, I'm afraid...

…These two girls have already been harmed by others.

"Why not!"

Xie Hongying, who went to high school and then university at a girls' school run by the church, couldn't help but snatch the gold watch from the bandit's hand. Then she took a careful look at the words on the gold watch, and clucked in her mouth for a while. Then she felt quite moved.

Said disappointedly:

"Fake gold watch, 24k gold plated, just worry about the ocean!"

My sister, Xie Hongfen, also repeatedly agreed, but when she agreed, she was suppressing a smile in her heart. My sister was really bad. This was obviously a high-end gold watch from Switzerland, but she insisted that it was gold-plated.

Looking at the "gold-plated watch", the bandits didn't believe it and handed it to Fang Jianlin. Fang Jianlin also said it was fake. The bandits had no choice but to consider themselves unlucky and scolded the foreign devils for being stingy.

Fang Jianlin and the others saw their teasing, one fat and one thin, only two or three feet away, and felt very happy. The bandit who had previously held up the diamond turned sideways and pointed at the fat Englishman.

Ask Fang Jianlin:

"I heard that this fat foreigner is the warlord?"

Fang Jianlin was secretly amused when he heard this. Because China had a military governor, the bandits thought that foreign countries also had military governors. So he decided to play tricks on them again and said with a straight face:

"You have to be careful with those two people. The fat man's name is John, and he is indeed a governor. The thin man's name is Henry, and he is also a patrol envoy. They are both in charge of thousands of troops! I accidentally angered the British government, so beware of another Eight Kingdoms coming.

The coalition forces are making trouble in China!"

The bandits looked solemn and respectful at first. After hearing the last sentence, they all looked at each other with timid expressions. One of them hurriedly reported to the "big boss", "fifth boss" and "big boss" who were discussing things not far away.

"Master Guo". I heard "Master Wu" say from a distance:

"What the heck are you afraid of! We have a foreign military governor and a patrol envoy at our disposal. It would be strange if Yuan Shikai didn't send us a thousand and twenty thousand taels of gold! If things don't go well, we'll tear these two foreign generals apart. The Eight-Nation Allied Forces are going to

Let’s fight, first of all, it’s Beijing, which is far away from us!”

Although the fifth master's attitude was still tyrannical, when he set out again, he asked his minions to find two wooden chairs and some bamboo sticks at a farmer's house in the mountains, and tied them into a sedan chair like the "sliding pole" of the Sichuan people.

The foreign "general" sat on it. John and Henry didn't give in, and they slept on it without hesitation, and let the minions carry it tremblingly. This difference in treatment only made the "meats" jealous.

After walking like this for a day, although the dark Baodugu was very close, we still couldn't get in. In the evening, a strong wind suddenly blew in the mountain forest, and the sky was dark for a while; then hailstones as big as eggs fell from the sky, mercilessly.

It hit pedestrians, making them unable to dodge. After a while, the rain poured down again, and the whole world melted into darkness and rain.

The long team of more than a thousand people couldn't help but squirm faster and ran for more than ten miles at a stretch before entering a village in the depression of Baodugu Mountain. The bandits seemed to have returned to their own village, knocking on doors and waking up the mountain people.

Each family assigned a few to a dozen bandits and "meat tickets" to the mountain people to make wine and fire, fry sorghum cakes, and cook mung bean soup to temporarily settle them down.

The four sisters Song Zhiyu, Fang Jianlin, Xie Hongfen and Xie Hongying were assigned to rest in a rather solid thatched house with stone walls at the entrance of the village on the edge of the mountain. The owner of the house was a young widow in her twenties, also named

Fang, petite and pretty, the bandits called her Sister-in-law Fang. There was only a little girl of five or six years old beside Sister-in-law Fang, who had fallen asleep on the kang in the back room.

Mrs. Fang let the three of them into the house lightly. They sat down in the outer room. Seeing that they were all wet from the rain, she quickly went to the inner room to get dry clothes for them to change. On this rainy night in the mountains in May, the temperature was very low.

The three of them were dripping with water from head to toe, their cold clothes and pants clung tightly to their bodies, and they were shivering from the cold.

"These are my dead man's clothes. I'm afraid they are a little short, so just wear them as they are!"

Soon, Sister-in-law Fang brought out a lot of clothes, first handed one set to Fang Jianlin, then gave one set to Xie Hongfen and Xie Hongying, each of whom stuffed a set into their arms and said:

"Quickly change out of these wet clothes. I'll help you dry them right away." After saying that, Nunuuzui gestured to the two sisters to go into the back room to change. The two sisters were holding clothes, but you pushed me and refused to go in together.

, I don’t know whether it was because I was embarrassed or because I was afraid of disturbing the children in the back room; in the end, my sister went in first.

Here, Fang Jianlin didn't care much, so he stripped off to only a pair of blue shorts in front of Aunt Fang and Xie Hongying, and hurriedly changed into the short cardigan and bloomers that Aunt Fang gave him. Aunt Fang also

He quickly took the suit and white shirt that Fang Jianlin had changed into and went to bake them in front of the stove.

After a while, my sister changed her clothes and came out, looking like a typical peasant girl; and the green cloth coat was obviously a little thinner, and her chest was squeezed out. My sister made fun of it, and went in with the clothes in her arms. Another time passed.

After a while, I heard my sister yelling "Wow..." and running out as if she had seen a ghost. She was wearing a silk underwear on her upper body and her wet white floral underwear on the lower body. Her face was pale with fright.

Upon seeing this, Fang Jianlin and Mrs. Fang hurried into the back room, and under the dim oil lamp, they saw a three- to four-foot-long green snake winding its way up the wall of the kang where the little girl was sleeping, and soon disappeared along the purlin of the house.

"It's okay. This snake is not poisonous and doesn't bite. We are all used to it. People in the city have never seen it, so no wonder!"

Sister-in-law Fang said with a smile as she pushed Fang Jianlin out.

In the outer room, Xie Hongying was just stunned. When she saw Fang Jianlin coming out, she seemed to suddenly realize that she was only wearing underwear, and her face suddenly turned red. At this time, Fang Jianlin suddenly realized that she had lost her composure and turned away in embarrassment.

, when he turned his face, Song Zhiyu, who had entered the first floor, pushed him out of the door and closed the door again.

"Put it on quickly, don't get cold!"

At this time, Mrs. Fang took out the clothes from the back room and handed them to Xie Hongying, breaking the embarrassing scene. She asked Xie Hongfen to help her sister put on the same peasant girl's clothes as herself.

After a long while, Aunt Fang baked a large pancake and cooked a large pot of mung bean soup. While the three of them ate, they started cooking with Aunt Fang. While talking, Fang Jianlin suddenly had an idea and asked Aunt Fang:

"Is this also the scope of the "Big Boss"?"

"You want to escape?"

Sister-in-law Fang seemed to see through his thoughts at a glance. She turned over the wet clothes in front of the stove and said:

"There are 8 hills here and about 10 villages from the top to the foot of the mountains. They can all be said to be bandit villages. However, we get along well with each other, and therefore we avoid a lot of harassment from the government and soldiers. It's just that we usually have to help them take care of it.

These "meat tickets" are indispensable. And there are bandits stationed on all sides here, and they can't escape even if they want to. Even if there are some who run away, they will "rip off the tickets" as soon as they are caught, so they can't do anything!"

The look of advice on Mrs. Fang's face made Fang Jianlin have to give up the idea of ​​​​escape.

But at this time, Song Zhiyu said.

"It's impossible to escape. I guess these bandits follow the rules, otherwise..."

While speaking, Song Zhiyu looked at the twin sisters in front of him and then said.

"Otherwise, I'm afraid you and I would have suffered a long time ago. Since the other party wants money, as long as the money is given, we will let him go!"

As he spoke, his hands touched his fingers from time to time.

"No, sir, what you said makes sense. The big boss is not a bad person in the first place. After entering the mountain, he kept talking about the rules. Later, when the military advisor came, he even talked about the rules of the green forest. Why has the big boss allowed the big boss to do this all these years?

Everyone is convinced because of these rules. As long as you stay here peacefully, I will definitely let you go as soon as the money comes from home."

Sister-in-law Fang was talking over there, and then she looked at the four of them and said.

"But don't be confused for a moment. It will be a big deal if you lose your life!"

Fang Jianlin and the other three were filled with emotion after hearing this, and naturally gave up the idea of ​​​​escape. Just what Mrs. Fang said, maybe the three of them didn't believe it, but Mr. Song was obviously a man who had seen the world, and so did he.

Of course there is a reason for that. Just then, there was a sudden "bang, bang" knock on the door. Mrs. Fang quickly stopped talking and went to open the door. The person who came in was a man in his 40s who seemed to be quite wealthy.

A scheming rugged man and a young man holding a book.

"Mr. Guo, would you like to check the number of people? Don't worry, I have more than four here." Aunt Fang pointed at Fang Jianlin and the others and said. As she spoke, a trace of jealousy flashed across Aunt Fang's eyebrows, which was noticed by Fang Jianlin.
To be continued...