Not long after Li An came up, he saw a woodcutter enter the residence of the lotus sisters, which is very unusual, although firewood is also needed to live at home, and buying firewood is the most common thing, but because I had suspected the sisters before, seeing this woodcutter enter their residence in the dark at this moment, it naturally increased my suspicions. Burn? Wen Xiao?? Say ?w?ww?.? ｒ?ａ?ｎ?ｗ?ｅ?ｎ?a`ｃｏｍ

In addition, the vegetation of Xiazhou City is not very good, many woodcutters are going to the Qiwu Mountain in the northwest to cut firewood, there is better quality firewood, the quantity is more sufficient, and the Qiwu Mountain is the location of the horse thief's lair, if the horse thief sends a liaison into Xiazhou City, the woodcutter is obviously the most confusing profession, and it is the most convenient for the horse thief.

"It's out, and sure enough, it's still going west, hehe!"

Li An soon saw the woodcutter who had been firewood, and at this moment the woodcutter had no firewood on his body, only a long wooden stick and a piece of rope that was randomly wound around the stick.

And with the departure of the woodcutter, the lotus closed the door.

"You continue to take turns staring, you can't relax for a moment, and you sleep here when you're tired."

Li An opened his mouth and ordered.

"Yes, my subordinates understand."

As long as there are two people on the roof at a time, it is enough, and there are more than ten soldiers in charge of monitoring, and there is no pressure to line up in five shifts, only in this way can we ensure that the soldiers who go up every time can have enough energy to monitor, and if you fight fatigue, if the soldiers are tired and lie on the roof and fall asleep, it will be troublesome.

In fact, there is no night ban in Xiazhou City, but because of the horse thieves here, at night, the city gate is still closed, but if the people in the city don't want to sleep, they can also go to the street casually, and no one will say anything.

In addition, if the merchants and civilians in the city need to go out of the city overnight, as long as they can provide their reliable identity or someone can prove it, they can also pass.

It's just that there are not many merchants who choose to go out of the city at night, almost none, and ordinary people will not have any major events, so they have to go out of the city overnight, so the gate is easily not opened, and it is good to be able to open it once or twice a night.

The soldiers sent by Li An went to the vicinity of the West Gate at a relatively fast speed, and then, finding a reliable position, waited quietly, and it didn't take long for the woodcutter with a wooden stick to walk near the West Gate, apparently planning to leave the City Gate.

However, the guards are not good talkers, and the duty at night is a relatively hard thing, even if they sit by the city gate for a night, it is also very hard, and the city gate is not as good as the gate in the ordinary people's homes, opening and closing once, it takes a lot of physical strength, and the soldiers guarding the door are naturally unwilling to open the door for a while.

"General, open the door!"

The woodcutter walked to the gate of the city, and saw several small soldiers gathered around a round table to chat, and spoke.

Several small soldiers were naturally reluctant to deal with this woodcutter, and they all pretended not to see it.

"A few generals, the villain is in a hurry to go home, just make it convenient!"

The woodcutter demanded again.

"What's the matter with you kid, how often do you go out of town in the middle of the night."

"It's just that I just took over, and I have to work."

"You have to do it, what to do, you open it yourself, open it yourself."

The creep looked impatient and asked the woodcutter to open the door himself, after all, opening the door is a tiring thing.

"Eh, okay."

The woodcutter didn't dare to say anything, so he went to open the city gate by himself.

Although the city gate is very heavy, it is a little laborious to open the door alone, but it can be opened, and he is just alone, and he does not need to open all the gates when he goes out, only a small slit that allows his body to pass, and it does not take much effort.

The woodcutter's figure is very strong, take away the beam, push the gate seems very easy, after opening a small crack, he easily left the city, and after leaving the city, he did not forget to bring the city gate, very sensible.

It is estimated that the woodcutter has walked some distance, and the soldiers sent by Li An also walked over, preparing to open the door and leave the city by themselves.

"Stop, what are you doing, why are you a little faceless."

"I haven't seen it either."

"Who are you! Come and report back. ”

A few little soldiers, like the uncle, didn't come to bolt the door after the woodcutter left, and they knew that they were he.

"If you go out of the city on business, you may not come back when."

As he spoke, he took out the waist card on his waist.

"Yo, it's the guard of the capital, or a chief."

"It's a small one who doesn't know Taishan, I'll open the door for you."

Several soldiers guarding the gate saw that the other party was from the capital, although the official position was not big, but the soldiers in the capital had a higher status than them, and they were still a minor official, so they naturally had to respect it.

"You're welcome, by the way, did the woodcutter just now often go out of the city at night?"

The guard asked.

"That's right, this kid goes out of the city at night, and the time is not very fixed, the latest, he only goes out of the city in the middle of the night, and a little woodcutter actually causes us trouble, which is really annoying."

"What, is there something wrong with this woodcutter? Do you want us to help? ”

Several of the soldiers became enthusiastic, and none of them sat down, but all of them stood up.

The guard hurriedly said: "It's nothing, it's a horse thief in Xiazhou, the above sent us to investigate around, and we happened to come here, and I saw that the woodcutter was out of the city, so I also wanted to go out and have a look." ”

"Do you want horses? We have two horses here, you pick whatever you want. ”

The janitor said politely.

"No need, it's inconvenient to have a horse, don't say much, I should go out of town."

The guards estimated that the woodcutter had gone far enough, so they prepared to leave the city, after all, if they went out of the city after him, it would easily arouse the woodcutter's suspicion.

Several gatekeepers worked together to open the gate, and as soon as the guards left through the crack in the door, they asked them to close the door.

At the west gate of Xiazhou City, the number of night guards is not much, there are only ten people, among them, there are four soldiers at the head of the city, and there are six under the city, and the soldiers on the city take turns to look outside the city, and the soldiers under the city are almost all chatting and lazy, they are all locals of Xiazhou City, and most of them get this position through the back door.

For example, a distant relative is an official in Xiazhou, and he went in at the back door, and the errand of guarding the door is actually not a good errand, but at least it is also a job, able to support himself, and, to be honest, it is really not too tiring, compared to other hard work, it is much easier.

And the people who are willing to do this job are basically lazy people who don't have much interest, the kind of people who are lazy and lazy, if they are a little more diligent, they will not choose to do the job of janitor, so it is easy to understand that these soldiers are not willing to open the door.

When the guards walked out of the city gate, they looked around and saw that the woodcutter was nowhere to be seen, but he was a trained soldier who could effectively track down the woodcutter with only the slight footprints left on the road.

After carefully identifying the traces on the road, the guards easily discerned the direction in which the woodcutter had left, and followed at a faster pace.

Because there are several roads out of the city, as long as you find footprints at the end of the road, you can keep chasing quickly, and you don't need to look at the footprints a little bit, unless you encounter a fork in the road, you need to carefully screen the footprints again.

Sure enough, after chasing for a while, the guards found a figure fifty paces away in front of him, and from the round wooden stick on the figure's back, it could be seen that it was the woodcutter who had just left the city gate, as long as he didn't lose the person, so the guards did not approach, and always kept a certain distance from the woodcutter to ensure that he would not be discovered by the woodcutter.

This is more than an hour, in order to prevent getting lost, some inconspicuous marks were deliberately made along the way, after all, the guard is the first time to enter Qiwu Mountain, if you don't make a mark, it is easy to get lost, if you really get lost, it will be too bad.

The woodcutter kept walking in front of him, unaware that he was being followed, humming songs from time to time along the way, looking very proud.

"I'm back!"

Soon, three big men came out of the woods, and they were very strong at a glance.

"I'm back."

The woodcutter took something out of his pocket and handed it to one of the strong men, and then turned and walked into the woods.

The guards didn't see it very clearly, but it felt like a money bag, maybe it was money from selling firewood!

The man with the money bag also turned away, leaving only the two strong men standing in place, muttering something quietly.

The guards don't have a doppelganger, they don't know who to track, and there are two strong men blocking the intersection, and the two people who go away are not easy to track, in this case, the guards can only give up tracking and quietly return to Xiazhou City.

Eighty miles northeast of Xiazhou City, near Dejing County, there are the ruins of the Great Wall of Qin, although the age is a little old, but it is still worth seeing.

Ang Lee plans to take his wife to take a look and feel the momentum of the Great Wall here.

However, before leaving, the guards came to report on last night's investigation, and after listening to the report, Li An could leave for Dejing County.

"Let's talk about it! What is the situation? Is there really something wrong with that woodcutter? ”

Ang Lee asked.

The guards hurriedly told Li An everything they saw last night, and every small detail was reported very carefully.

"A woodcutter met three strong men in the middle of the night and gave something back, this is obviously the eyeliner of a horse thief! It's so suspicious. ”

When Li An heard this, it was almost certain that this woodcutter was the horse thief, and the lotus sisters must be too, and the strong men who appeared must be horse thieves.

After all, in the entire territory of Xiazhou, I have never heard of other strengths such as bandits, only horse thieves who often haunt and trouble, and everyone is in danger.

"You did a good job, next, the official will give you ten people, and you will be responsible for tracking the woodcutter and those strong men, you must pay attention to concealment, and you must not leak traces."

Li Ankai said on his behalf.

"Yes, my subordinates understand."

The guard answered.

After everything was ready, Li An and his entourage of more than 100 people drove to Dejing County, 80 miles northeast of Xiazhou City, to visit the ruins of the Great Wall of Qin.

Eighty miles seems to be quite far, in fact, it is not far, it can be arrived in an hour, set off in the morning, and you can come back in the evening, which is very convenient.

The convoy first passed through the Wuding River, and then went straight to Dejing County.

This Wuding River is the most important river in Xiazhou, it is because there is Wuding River in Xiazhou, it can become a state and county, after all, human beings live by water, if there is no water source, human beings have no way to survive, only with water sources, human beings can survive.

In addition, the Wuding River is a tributary of the Yellow River, with a total length of more than 1,000 li, it is a very large river, and its annual flow contributes a lot to the Yellow River.

On the Qianli basin of Wuding River, there are many tributaries, including Yuxi River, Lu River, Dali River, Yihegou and other tributaries, and the flow of these tributaries is not small.

However, since the ecological environment along the route has been destroyed, the flow of the Wuding River has been affected to a certain extent, and the annual runoff has decreased a lot, and the people along the way will divert the river water to irrigate their own farmland, so that the river water is less.

As more and more people began to learn to farm, the ecology around the Wuding River has been greatly damaged, and a lot of originally flat land has become ravines and ravines, giving people a feeling of devastation from a distance.

In addition, with the ecological damage caused by soil erosion, the rainfall around and upstream of the Wuding River has shown a downward trend, which further aggravates the water pressure in Xiazhou, not to mention the supply of human needs, even if the grass and trees in the wild have been dried up a large area, except for the two banks of the river or the oasis, the rest of the places are raised from time to time to raise sand and dust, making people feel like walking into the desert.

When Li An crossed the Wuding River Bridge, he saw large green plants on both sides of the river, which looked very eye-catching, but after crossing the bridge and only five miles away, the vegetation on the side of the road began to decrease significantly, and he could only see some drought-resistant poplars and unnamed weeds, and in addition, the rest was dust.

As we continued to move forward, the scene in front of me was even more shocking, just now I could see some drought-tolerant plants, but now I can almost only see the trunks of poplar trees that have been dead for many years.

After all, the poplar tree has a characteristic that it does not fall down for a thousand years after death, and it does not rot for a thousand years after falling, so even if you see a dead poplar tree on the side of the road, you can't figure out how many years the tree has been dead.

A breeze blew, raising gusts of smoke and dust, from the ridges that leaked from time to time, it can be seen that both sides of the road were farmland reclaimed by the common people, but because of the drought, these farmlands can no longer grow food crops, and in desperation, the people can only give up this part of the land and let it become a desert.