Chapter 90, Thief Chieftain

After nearly half an hour's journey, I finally arrived at Fan'an Pavilion.

After all, Fan'an Pavilion is a small pavilion with a small population and low density. Even if there are two streets, it is far less spacious and flat than Anyang Pavilion. Looking far away from the street, you can already see the fire everywhere on the street, and there are also people crying one after another. The sky was rolled up by the smoke and burned red, and the thick wind and snow were blocked outside.

It's just that I didn't hear much killing except for crying.

Continue on the road and step on the end of the street. Zu Zhao saw many figures in the burning place ahead, coming and going, like ghosts and ghosts. The houses on both sides of the street are still complete. They all close the doors and windows. Occasionally, you can hear some frightening sounds, but they soon weaken and disappear without a trace.

Zu Cheng clenched the horse halberd in his hand, looked grim, and said to Zu Zhao, "Sir, is this...is this..."

Zu Zhao raised his hand to stop Zu Cheng's words and said slowly, "It seems that it's not a big mess. Anyangting's team has repelled the bandits."

Zu Cheng was a little surprised. Now he hasn't seen exactly what happened, but the eldest son can come to such a conclusion, which really makes people feel a little hasty. He still asked, "How did the eldest son know?"

Zu Zhao raised the halberd in his hand and pointed to both sides of the street. His voice remained unchanged and said, "If the thief had the upper hand, he would have looted all the nearby houses. Now the doors and windows are closed but intact, it can be seen that there is no misfortune."

Zu Cheng suddenly realized and praised, "The eldest son's eyes are still sharp."

Zui Zhao said, "Let's go and ask."

The group continued to move forward along the street. As they got closer and closer to the fire, the street became more and more messy. There were all kinds of abandoned iron tools, mostly some dilapidated and old farm tools, including some ring knives and simple knives. There is snow on both sides, and some blood flowers can be seen on the white snow blocks after a few steps. It can be imagined that those hot blood drops melt into the snow block and generally eroded into the snow block with Buddha poison.

Soon I met some people, mostly dressed as ordinary people, who were helping their injured companions lean against the roadside.

The people were not too panicked when they saw Zu Zhao and his party waiting, and after recognizing the Hequ horse of Zujiazhuang, they felt more and more relieved, and several bold people quickly gathered around.

"You guys are from Bei Guoting?" An elderly man asked.

"Exact, I am Zu Zhao. How is the situation now? Where is the thief?" Zu Zhao, the leader, had a correct attitude and asked rhetorically.

"It turned out to be the eldest son of Zu. The thief has asked Master Zhang and Master Han to take back. At this time, Master Zhang and Master Han are chasing the escaped thief. The elder said with a little tears.

"What direction?" Zu Zhao asked again.

"Go southwest and go to Songling." The elderly pointed to the end of the street.

Zu Zhao took a look, immediately turned behind him and ordered Zu Cheng, "A Cheng, take a team of people to the southwest to assist them. The rest of the people stayed in the town with me to deal with the aftermath.

Zu Cheng answered, ordered more than 30 horses and continued to run forward.

Zu Zhao took the rest of the people to the center of the town. After assigning several horses to patrol around the town, he told the rest of the people to rescue the wounded and put out the fire. He supervised for a while and heard that Fan'an Pavilion was still beside him, so he made a special trip to find out the cause and effect of the thief's attack.

Fan'an Pavilion was injured, with dirty head and obvious palpitations on his face. He told Zu Zhao tremblingly that the incident was extremely sudden, and almost all the people in the town had fallen asleep and rested, and suddenly there was a shout of killing. At first, the thief seemed to be stealing the granary of a large family in the town, but because he was found, it was convenient to fight.

When Zu Zhao heard this, he interrupted the other party and asked, "How many thieves are there?"

The pavilion chief said in a trance, "Many, many, there may be 60 or 70 people. Later, after Master Zhang from Anyang Ting brought people here, the two sides still killed each other in the town. That's called... That's inexorable... Later, it seemed that someone in the Zhang family killed the thief chief, so the thief dispersed and stabilized the situation.

Zu Zhao pondered for a moment and felt that there were many things that didn't make sense. There are so many thieves, why do you have to sneak around at the beginning? Since you want to sneak around, why bring so many people? Upon thinking about this, he asked again, "Do you know these thieves?" Where do they come from? Where is the corpse of the thief chief now?

Fan Anting couldn't understand Zu Zhao's meaning for a moment. He was stunned and quickly shook his head and said, "Son, look at what you said. How can we...how can we know these thieves? Well, the body of the thief chief... seems to be right in front of him.

Zu Zhao asked in a positive voice, "What I ask is, do you know if these thieves are local?"

Only then did Fan'an Pavilion react and sigh, "This, the black light is blind, and I can't see it clearly for a while."

Zuzu Zhao didn't ask anything else, but said, "Take me to see the body of the thief chieftain."

Fan Anting repeatedly said, "Yes, yes, please, the eldest son."

Zu Zhao followed Fan'an Pavilion and continued along the street until he came to the vicinity of the pavilion that was still burning by the fire.

Although the fire subsided, the people nearby ran back and forth, throwing water and snow at the scene of the fire, but the whole pavilion had already been burned, and some houses next to the pavilion were also affected. The sound of crying, shouting and splashing water made the fire more chaotic.

Chief Fan'an called a descendant and asked the descendant to lead him to find the body of the thief chieftain.

Later, he knew where the corpse was and hurriedly greeted Zu Zhao and others to bypass the burning pavilion and come to an alley in the rear. There have been some people gathered at the entrance of the alley, including small officials of Tingyi and several family members of the Han family. These people are surrounded by a dilapidated body with solemn faces.

"This is the thief chief." The later life pointed to the body and said.

"How can you confirm it?" A son of the ancestral family behind Zu Zhao asked.

"Everyone has seen it, that is, this man has been pointing fingers and shouting at the thieves to set fire everywhere. When he was killed by the Zhang family, many of us witnessed it with our own eyes. After the thieves fled, we moved the body of the thief chief here. Later, he said something and felt very agged about the suspicion of the children of the ancestral family.

Zu Zhao ignored it and took a step forward to carefully look at the body lying on the ground through the fire of the pavilion behind him. Although there were many dark marks on the face of the corpse, he still had a very familiar and familiar feeling, and immediately squatted down to further identify it carefully.

"Isn't this Wang Zheng!" Soon, he immediately recognized the identity of the man and said coldly.

Among the several children who followed Zu Zhao, some have seen Wang Zheng, even if they have never seen him, but in the past two months, listening to the rumors in Zujiazhuang alone, they still know more or less about such a person.

"How could it be him?" A son asked puzzledly.

Zu Zhao grabbed one arm of the corpse, looked at its palm, and found that the palm was missing a finger.

"That's right, it's Wang Zheng." He said firmly. The missing finger of the other party was cut off by himself.

Since the last thief in Lingzhi County, Zu Zhao sent Wang Zheng to the county government of Xu Wu County. Later, it was heard that because Wang Zheng was a native of Lingzhi County, Chen Xianjun detained him and escorted him to Lingzhi County. As for Wang Zheng's escort to Lingzhi County, he did not pay much attention to what happened afterwards. However, according to his crimes of colluding with thieves, secretly fighting with bandits, and attempting to cheat, even if he was not killed, he would not be imprisoned for less than two months. There are really many things that don't make sense.

"Why was Wang Zheng released?" The children of the ancestral family were also surprised.

"Big son, do you know this person?" Fan'an Pavilion asked carefully.

"This person is one of the former thieves in Zhixian County, and he is also a Taoist disciple of Taiping Road." Zu Zhao said briefly.

Ah? Again, peace again?" Fan'an Pavilion was surprised.

"Don't say much. Let's discuss it when the Zhang family returns." Zu Zhao stood up with a slightly solemn look.

Waiting for nearly an hour, the reserve pavilion team that chased the fugitives returned one after another.

Fan'anting Han's team came back first, followed by Zu Cheng and others. Zu Cheng hardly participated in chasing thieves in a real sense. When he chased seven or eight miles to the southwest, he met some thieves who had fallen and wanted to chase forward. The front team had begun to return.

It was not until the Han family Ma and Zucheng and others completed the count in Fan'an Pavilion that the people of the Zhang family in Anyang Pavilion came back.

The old man of the Zhang family is nearly 40 years old. Although his family is still alive, he retired early and handed over all the affairs of the family to his eldest son. The name of the Zhang family is Zhang Xuan, and his name is Zongdao. He is the uncle of Zhang Yuan and Zhang Yu. Although Zhang Dao was born in literature, the people in the north know more or less. Therefore, when he encountered the thief of the crime, he personally put on the battle and led all the children of the clan to attack the thieves.

The reason why the Zhang family returned a little late was not because they chased too far, but that they caught seven or eight thieves alive in the process of chasing the thief and escorted these hiking thieves to return. Naturally, the journey was slow.

Zhang Yuan and Zhang Yu were in the same queue. Both of them had different degrees of injury, especially Zhang Yu. When they returned to Fan'an Pavilion, they were already pale and shaky, as if they were symptoms of excessive blood loss.

Zu Zhao greeted and answered. After seeing Zu Zhao, Zhang Yuan first greeted him and immediately led him to Zhang Xuan. As early as the beginning of preparing for theft, Zu Zhao had seen several photos with Zhang Xuan. Usually, there were not many words, but Zhang Xuan obviously listened to the introduction of his own children Zhang Qi, Zhang Nan, Zhang Yuan and others, and his attitude towards the eldest son of the ancestral family was quite favored.

Zuzu Zhao first asked Zhang Yuan and others about the process of attacking the thief, which was roughly similar to what he guessed. Instead, Fan'an Pavilion and the Han family and others talked about some details at the beginning of the chaos. At night, the thief entered the town and waited for the opportunity to steal the granary of the Han family's mansion, which shocked the Han family's family touring the night, which caused a fire. At first, there were not many thieves. There were only a dozen people who stole the Han family's granary. Later, when the real knife and real gun started, several other thieves gushed out from the vicinity.

Judging from the clues currently available, it seems that these thieves did not intend to take looting at the beginning, but just held the mentality of stealing food. This is really puzzling. Obviously, there are so many people, and these people are all carrying blades. If they don't launch a sudden attack silently, I'm afraid that the Han family's mansion will fall into chaos on the spot and will never react so quickly.

Then Zu Zhao went to torture the captured thieves. He found that most of the thieves were mostly poor and exiles, with rags, yellow and thin faces, trembling. Obviously, they had been hungry for a long time. More importantly, there was no murder in the eyes of these people, which filled them with pity and fear. .

The whole torture is almost tortured. What he asks, these people answer honestly and have no intention of resisting at all. This is the most typical peasants of all dynasties. If they hadn't really reached a terrible desperate situation, these docile people would always be exploited and slaughtered like little sheep.

After asking, these captured thieves truthfully explained that they came from all over the state and county, and most of them were homeless displaced people. Later, they were summoned by a man nicknamed "Northern Wolf" and said that they could give them a way to make a living. It took a little half a month to summon the exiles, and in this half a month, the "Northern Wolf" took care of the food. Until the day before yesterday, he said that he would "borrow" grain from a nearby town, or "rob" grain, but after walking for a whole day and a half, he did not go to the nearby town at all, but came to Xu Wu County.

Everyone followed a man named Wang Zheng and said that he would do it after dark. However, on the one hand, they are tired after a long journey, and on the other hand, everyone is timid and afraid to kill directly into the town according to Wang Zheng's will. Later, everyone thought that he tried to steal the granary first, but he was found halfway. As a last resort, Wang Zheng shouted and shouted, and then there was a fierce match.

"Northern Wolf? Can this person be with you? Zu Zhao waited for these exiles to finish their words and immediately asked.

"I was there at noon yesterday, and I don't know when I didn't stop there." Someone said.

"No, he didn't follow us at all. It has always been the man named Wang Zheng who took us." Another person said.

"I, I don't know anything, I just... know how to follow them..."

Zu Zhao is silent. Although these people are incoherent, at least he can conclude that this "Northern Wolf" Niuhai is indeed related to those Hu thieves and Taiping Road, and since it is related to these people, it is also related to the attack of the county government and the rebellion in Changcheng. It's a thief, a peace road, and a bandit and exile. Right Beiping County is really messy.