The 55th time the bandits' arrogance reached its peak

  Lu Junyi and the three of them arrived in the capital, only to see that the atmosphere of Kaifeng was different from that of Daming Prefecture, with more hustle and bustle. Standing on the bridge, they saw one by one cargo ships slowly coming up the Wu Zhang River, with very deep water, ten or so men baring their arms rowing, shouting loudly, and on the shore, there were over a dozen ropes thrown out from the dock, pulling hard towards the shore.

  The stalls on both sides of the riverbank stretched all the way to the bridge, mischievous children running back and forth. A kind-hearted middle-aged woman was pinching a string of sugar gourds, enticing a little girl: "Auntie has candy, come with Auntie..."

  That little girl shook her head like a rattle drum, and the woman continued to instruct her patiently. Meanwhile, Yan Qing saw that the woman's face was not right, she didn't seem like a good person, and seemed to be a child trafficker who specialized in abducting children. He felt secretly angry, dismounted his horse, and walked forward, saying in surprise: "Qing'er sister, how are you here? Your parents have been looking for you for a long time, hurry up and follow brother back home!"

  "I don't know you." The little girl was not afraid at all, looked up curiously and praised: "You look really good, with a strength of several hundred pounds in your arms, what a man!"

  The woman also looked up at Yan Qing, sneering: "Met a fellow practitioner, you look like a good man, didn't expect you to be from the Demon Gate as well. Whose disciple are you? Report your name, maybe I know your master!"

  Lu Junyi and Yan Qing listened, furious. This woman is so shameless, abducting a young girl on the street and still being so arrogant. Just as they were about to take her down to ask for justice, suddenly Shi Qian appeared, exclaiming: "Auntie Xi, it's really you!" He hugged the woman's leg tightly, unable to let go - unfortunately, he was too short, so he could only hug her leg.

  That woman was Shi Xiang's wife, who grabbed Shi Yan and looked at him repeatedly, then hugged him in her arms, crying with joy: "My son, it's been so many days since I've seen you, I thought I'd die of longing for my child!" Lu Junyi and Yan Qing were both extremely shocked.

  At this time, Shi Qian finally managed to extricate himself from her arms and introduced them: "This is my aunt. When I was born, they kidnapped me because I was ugly and had a big mole on my back, so they couldn't sell me. That's why my mother adopted me as her son, while the other five called her 'aunt'."

  Lu Junyi and Yan Qing exchanged a glance, both thinking that Shi Qian's experience was incredibly absurd. He had obviously been deceived, yet he was born ugly, and those female deceivers treated him like a treasure, looking at him like their own son.

  "Rubbish! My sisters and I, all six of us, are your mothers. If we weren't afraid of being beaten by Big Sister, we would have snatched you away long ago. How is Big Sister doing?"

  Shi Qian said with a sigh: "My wife is dead, I'm alone and adrift outside, but I couldn't find you all, and I didn't want to kidnap children, so I've been making a living by some small means until now. I heard that my sister-in-law has made it big in the capital, so I came over to take a look and see if there's any business."

  At this time, the woman slapped him heavily and laughed: "Follow me. I am now a fourth-grade Taoist priest, a red person in front of Wu Gezhai, and it's easy to give you a career?" Turning to Lu Junyi: "Are these two officials your colleagues?"

  Lu Junyi and Yan Qing chimed in unison, "We don't know him!" Before they had even finished speaking, Shi Qian jumped onto his horseback, laughing, "Aren't we fellow travelers? We're all good men coming to join Wu Dalang, and we've been chatting along the way!"

  The two of them listened and rolled their eyes. Shi Xi Niangzi picked up the little girl and smiled, "This is Chen Liqing, who loves to cause trouble, our master's treasure is spoiled. Just now when I heard you guys talking like that, I thought we had encountered a fellow from the Shi Yao Gate trying to deceive us into giving away our little princess!"

  Chen Liqing smiled sweetly at Yan Qing and said: "You're really good-looking, dressed up you look even better than Yanyan sister."

  "I am a man."

  "I know. You're born to be beautiful, and if you wear a pleated pink skirt with floral embroidery, style your hair in a flowing waterfall hanging moon shape, and pin up a dragon and phoenix hairpin, you'll look even more stunning!"

  Yan Qing listened, and the tears of a man's heart flowed into his belly. The group came to bypass the old Cao Gate and arrived at the old Song Gate, only to see those cavalrymen dismounting one after another, saying: "The old Song Gate is the territory of Wu Guoshi, horse riding is prohibited."

  Lu Junyi and Yan Qing exchanged a glance, thinking to themselves: "This martial hero is indeed powerful!" Before they had even reached the Tianji Pavilion, they saw cart after cart of scrap iron being pushed out from the side door of the pavilion.

  Two men secretly wondered, as they walked into the Tianji Pavilion, but saw inside a fiery sky, at the door was a huge furnace, under the furnace there was no firewood, nor charcoal, but there was a raging fire burning without roots. On both sides of the furnace were built high platforms five or six feet tall, seven or eight strong men with bare arms held three or four foot long large iron ladles stirring the molten iron in the furnace.

  The platform was surrounded by eight strange and peculiar arrays, made of jade stones. The jade stones were unlike any others, called Rouge Red Jade, emitting a faint red glow. Lu Junyi and Yan Qing didn't know what the arrays were for, they only felt shocked in their hearts.

  He walked a few steps forward and saw four or five such giant furnaces, with different arrays on the side. Some didn't even have a big furnace, nor could they see flames, but only a huge metal ball floating in the air, next to which were several Taoist priests with strange faces, constantly adding strange things to that metal ball.

  Further ahead, even the metal balls were gone, leaving only a hundred or so blacksmiths wielding large iron hammers, exerting themselves to forge something. The sound shook the heavens and sweat rained down. Next to them were batches of gigantic mechanical beasts that had not been fully assembled yet, with enormous bodies and ferocious appearances.

  There were also some craftsmen who hung the assembled mechanical beasts from steel bars, suspending them above the furnace where fierce flames burned below, with red, green, white and black fire tongues licking at them. The mechanical beasts not only did not melt, but instead became smaller in size.

  Lu Zhishen and Yan Qing walked further ahead, the more shocked they became. Not only were there mechanical beasts here, but also foot-operated crossbows, siege carts, thunderclap carts, and rolling thunder carts, all sorts of strange and bizarre things that they had never seen or even heard of before.

  On one hand, they were shocked by the bandits' ferocity, and on the other hand, they were intimidated by the power of Tianji Pavilion.

  "Borrowing the wealth and power of the world to satisfy one's own selfish desires, indeed worthy of being called a martial thief, the first of the six great treacherous ministers of the Great Song! The actions of Cai Jing, Liang Shi Cheng and others are simply like jesters compared to him!"

  Two people walked to the depths of the Tianji Pavilion and saw a giant furnace, much larger than the one outside. On top of the furnace lay a huge sword, its entire body snow-white like silver. Below it, flames rose tens of feet high. A thin Taoist priest stood under the furnace, seemingly unaffected by the heat waves. He opened his mouth and spat out a stream of white air from his throat, striking the giant sword.

  At this time, a woman stepped forward and said: "Vice Magistrate Wang, three more people have arrived."

  Wang Laozhi was too busy to entertain, hastily saying: "I'm practicing swordplay, take them to the backyard and look for Old Man Zhou." He continued to focus wholeheartedly on casting a precious sword.

  Time Xi led Chen Liqing and the three of them to the backyard of Tianji Pavilion, as soon as they stepped through the door, the noise and heat around their ears suddenly disappeared, the backyard was quite quiet, birds chirping could be heard, looking around, flowers were red and grass was green, willows drooped branches, several beautiful maids had nothing to do, some sat under the corridor reading books, some fished by the pond, others slept under the willow tree.

  "Earlier, I set up a soundproof barrier in the front courtyard," said Shi Xi with a smile. "The noise can't get out."

  The three of them suddenly realized, Shi Xi Niang led the three to Zhou Tong's residence, Lu Junyi and Yan Qing saw Zhou Tong and immediately knelt down, saying: "Master, you were also kidnapped by that martial bandit?"

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  I've updated twice already, and I don't update slowly either, so why are you book friends still not satisfied?