Chapter 12: The Imperial Prison Riot

  "Uggghhh..."

  "Uggghhh..."

  Piercing sirens echoed through the night sky of Chang'an City. The civilians, who had been plagued by war for nearly a year, were awakened from their dreams. The city instantly boiled over, with men's curses and women's and children's wails resounding throughout the heavens.

  On Zhujia Street, the main thoroughfare of Chang'an, squad after squad of heralds with flags representing the highest level of alert rushed towards the four major military camps stationed in the city.

  In the Western Garden Prison, after Cai Yong read Wang Yun's reply letter, he seemed to be unable to accept it for a while, like a wooden puppet being lifted up, without saying a word, and let Qin Xu and Sima Mao change him into Hu Changshi's clothes.

  "How do we get out?" Cai Yan looked at Qin Xu with gratitude in her eyes after Qin Xu successfully "persuaded" Cai Yong. Seeing Qin Xu and Sima Mao supporting Cai Yong to come out, she hurriedly asked.

  "Lao Wangtou will definitely secretly order Hu Changshi to instruct General Mo to withdraw the guards far away. Otherwise, with such a big commotion, we would have been surrounded long ago." Qin Xu said with a smile.

  "Big bad egg! Did you think of a way out long ago?" Lü Linggui saw Qin Xu's lazy smile, and punched Qin Xu with her fist, pouting and saying: "Hurry up and say it! What's the bad idea this time?"

  "With your temper, I don't know if you'll be able to get married!" Qin Xu unconsciously took a step back and muttered under his breath.

  "What did you say? Speak louder! A man, speaking in such a soft voice, still dares to enter the trap camp? Hurry up, what method do you have?" Lü Linggui didn't hear clearly what Qin Xiang said and took another step closer to him, saying impatiently.

  "Of course, I'll just walk out with a big swing!" Qin Xuan decided to keep a distance from this little chili pepper. Thanks to Lü Linggui's gift, Qin Xuan's head was still slightly sore, and he decided it was better to stay away from this girl whose strength and brainpower were inversely proportional. Seeing Lü Linggui getting impatient, Qin Xuan took another step back and said.

  "Are you just going to walk out like that? Aren't you afraid of being caught by the dragon cavalry guards outside?" Lü Linggui looked at Qin Xiang as if she was looking at a monster, with a face full of disdain: "I just praised you for having brains, but this is such a stupid idea!"

  "You're praising me? And saying this is a great idea?" Qin Xu looked at Lü Linggui with an incredulous expression, as if he had just heard the most ridiculous thing since the Three Kingdoms era.

  "You've caught their leader, and you still dare to walk out like this? Aren't you afraid of being caught by them?" Lü Linggui rolled her eyes and said, "Am I supposed to praise you? Cut it out!"

  "What about their officer? Mo Zhi?" Qin Xu was so angry that he wanted to knock open Lü Linggui's head to see if it was mush, and said in a bad tone: "Who told them I caught their officer? Did you tell them? Didn't their General Mo ask Hu Changshi to follow us out of the camp?"

  "It was obviously you..." Lü Linggui's words were cut off, and she seemed to have understood the meaning of Qin Xu's words. She stopped talking, gave Qin Xu a dissatisfied glance, turned around and helped Cai Yan support Cai Ye, saying: "Sister Yan, it's getting late, let's hurry up!"

  “……”

  "Honk! Honk!"

  "Rustle rustle!"

  Due to Old Wang's deliberate arrangement, the prison cell where Cai Yong was detained was relatively remote in the imperial prison, but not too far from the main gate of the entire imperial prison. As soon as everyone had cleaned up the scene and just walked to the door, they heard a series of clashing sounds of armor and the friction sound of swords being drawn from their scabbards outside.

  "Qin's surname, didn't you say they didn't know about this? What's going on outside?" Lü Linggui heard the voice and glared at Qin Xu, asking in a low tone.

  Lü Linggui was indeed the only daughter of Lü Boss, deeply inheriting her father's true tradition. Without waiting for Qin Xu to answer, she seemed to be startled like a small leopard, arched her back and probed forward, instantly entering a state of combat, subconsciously shielding Cai Yong and Cai Yan behind her.

  "So fast! It's actually so fast!" Qin Xu seemed to have not heard Lü Linggui's questioning, and through the gap in the door, he looked at the outside where Long Xiwei's soldiers were quickly gathering under the shouts of their respective team leaders.

  "Uggghhh..."

  "Wooo..."

  "Qin Zhu Bo! This is an enemy raid alert!" The guard on Qin Xu's side, Old He, leaned in to listen, his eyebrows furrowed with a hint of seriousness.

  "Longxian Wei is the Western Garden Imperial Guard, it seems like they are going to deploy troops to guard the city? Has something unexpected happened in the city?" Sima Mao also furrowed his brow, and with a sleight of hand, pulled out a pair of backscratchers from his sleeves, peering through the gap in the door at the commotion outside.

  Simazhou's meaning Qin Xu understood. He suspected that Li Jue and Guo Si led the remnants of the Western Liang to attack the city, which was exposed when the court dispatched troops to quell the rebellion.

  "No!" Qin Xu's eyebrows furrowed with a hint of worry, and he slowly said: "It should be General Lü returning."

  "General Lü?" Old Xi and the others still didn't understand Qin Xu's meaning, but Cai Yan's face showed surprise, saying: "Qin Zhubu, are you saying that General Lü...?"

  "Not bad!" Qin Xu said in a low voice, his eyes gazing into the distance at the starry night sky, thinking of that extraordinary person who had almost single-handedly altered the course of the Three Kingdoms' history. His tone was heavy as he continued, "General Lü has lost!"

  "Impossible! Qin, you...!" Lv Lingxi heard Qin Xu say this and immediately became anxious. She didn't care if others could hear her or not, and loudly scolded Qin Xu: "How could my father possibly lose? Absolutely impossible!"

  "Qin Zhubu, what's going on?" Old Xu and Sima Mao also looked incredulous. Lü Bu, their commander, their undefeated war god, how could he have lost? If it weren't for Qin Xiang, others who said this would have been killed by that person long ago.

  However, they witnessed Qin Xu's foresight tonight, and did not get excited like Lü Linggui. They waited for Qin Xu's explanation with a straight face, but the fervor in their eyes when looking at Qin Xu earlier also faded a bit.

  Don't believe it? Qin Xu smiled bitterly in his heart. That's because you don't know that there is a person in the Western Liang army, a poisonous expert who even made Cao Cao wary of him. Lü Bu's night raid plan was probably within his calculations from the very beginning, and even letting Lü Bu hear the news of the Western Liang army's invasion was part of this man's strategy.

  But now this person is unknown and unremarkable, and even if he says it out loud, no one will believe him.

  "This old fox!" Qin Xue didn't pay attention to the different expressions of the crowd, but instead looked forward to the future collaboration between the two. However, at this time, neither Qin Xue nor the poisonous master he admired could have imagined that the two would eventually work together as Qin Xue had hoped, but in a way that neither of them had expected.

  "Anyway, let's get out of here first." Seeing that neither Lao Xu Sima Mao nor Lü Linggui seemed to be in a good mood towards Qin Xiang, Cai Yan mediated.

  "Now there are more and more soldiers gathering outside, I'm afraid our previous plan won't work." Qin Xu looked at the strange expressions of everyone and said to Sima Mao: "Dead cat, I don't care what you think about what I said before, but now I am also a member of the Feathered Forest Cavalry and the Pingzhou Army. There is something that needs you to do!"

  "Please instruct, Lord Qin's steward!" Sima Mao gritted his teeth and bowed in response.

  "Go and open all the prison cells in the imperial prison, let those inside escape," Qin Xu said, then added with a heavier tone: "The more lively the better."

  "Release? Release whom?" Sima Mou uncertainly repeated Qin Xu's words, but immediately responded in a low voice: "Yes!"

  "Aren't you afraid that Wang Situ will settle the score with you in the future?" Lü Linggui asked coldly. Previously, Qin Xu's questioning of Lü Bu had made this little girl feel very uncomfortable, but she was still somewhat worried about Qin Xu.

  "King Sutu?" Qin Xu's eyes revealed a hint of an inexplicable glow, and he didn't respond to Lü Linggui's words.

  Let's see if Wang Zitu can live until then.

  Qin Xu did not respond, and the crowd fell silent for a moment, listening to Sima Mao's increasingly loud noises in the prison. Unbeknownst to them, they found that the fifteen-year-old boy in front of them had become somewhat inscrutable.

  Qin Xu's past life wasn't very impressive, and when he came here, he thought about finding a big backer to rely on and just getting by. However, it can't be denied that Qin Xu is a daring person who dares to fight and gamble; otherwise, he wouldn't have come to this chaotic world for the sake of a small client. As for this life's Qin Zhongbo, a weak and thin 15-year-old boy, his one and only thought was to join the Vanguard Camp, which always fights in the front lines on the battlefield. The specific reason is unclear, but it's definitely not because he's a good person.

  Affected by the two generations of human beings, Qin Xu listened to the increasingly urgent long drum and drum beat, and a few boiling hot blood actually emerged in his heart.

  "The Western Coolies are attacking again! Quick! Rush out! Once you're out, you won't have to suffer here anymore!"

  Simmao's words were very provocative. Coupled with the fact that everyone in the prison had also heard the increasingly clear alarm sounds outside, the entire prison was suddenly thrown into chaos.

  Chang'an City, as the capital of Luoyang, had a prison in Xiyuan that was used to detain serious offenders with dissenting political views. However, during Dong Zhuo's rebellion in Chang'an, it began to hold people who were deemed not entirely safe. After Dong Zhuo's death, Wang Yun launched a massive crackdown on his remaining followers, and some of the Langjiang officers and street rascals who had been close to Dong Zhuo gradually filled this originally culturally rich prison.

  The various people gathered at the gate of the prison were getting more and more numerous, squeezed by the neat military appearance of the soldiers standing outside the door. The soldiers gathering not far from the outer gate also seemed to have noticed something unusual here. There were already small teams of armored soldiers running towards this side with spears in hand.

  "It's now!" Qin Xu muttered to himself: "Let's go!"

  The soldier who came running from outside the prison gate was originally executing the military order to check on the sudden strange noise in the prison, in case there were rioters causing trouble during this tumultuous autumn. However, before he even reached the entrance, he discovered a young man dressed as a scholar, holding onto a little girl wearing red armor with one hand and half-embracing a stunning beauty with the other. Behind them followed two burly men closely guarding an elderly man also dressed as a scholar. Further inside the gate, scattered people wearing prisoner uniforms could be seen rushing out.

  "Not good! Form a phalanx!" The reaction of the squad leader was not slow, and he immediately waved his hand to stop the soldiers following behind him. In an instant, they formed a defensive formation, and the last soldier quickly turned around to indicate that a large army was gathering not far away.

  Although the Great Han Dynasty is almost at its end, these soldiers from Western Liang are not well-received by the current court, but it cannot be denied that the regular army of the Great Han still has high efficiency and mobility.

  "I am Qin Xu, the chief clerk of General Fen Wu's mansion. I was ordered to come here on official business with Hu Mou, the chief historian of the Shangshu Ling's mansion. Unfortunately, we coincided with a group of rioters who had premeditated evil intentions. Please hurry and rescue us!"

  Qin Xu's two hands were both pulling people, and instead of evading these vigilant soldiers, he was loudly charging straight into the defensive formation!