Tang Dynasty Bandits

Chapter 51 Green Dragon
Zhu Wen reacted extremely quickly, jumped off his horse, and drew his sharp sword in an instant.

The swords and spears collided, leaving behind a series of whistling afterimages.

Even though she was a little drunk, the woman's marksmanship was quite sharp, like a poisonous dragon emerging from the abyss.

Compared with Madam Aqing's swordsmanship, she was unable to give Zhu Wen a sense of life-and-death pressure.

One of the reasons, of course, was that he had fought with the woman opposite before and was familiar with her gun techniques.

Of course Zhu Wen recognized the other person.

The leader of the twenty-eight Nebula riders under Kou Qianzhi's command - "Blue Dragon" Tian Jun.

After fighting for more than thirty rounds, the long sword slashed across, cut off the short spear with one blow, and placed it on Tian Jun's neck.

"Why are you here?" Zhu Wen asked coldly.

"It's all your fault! You killed General Kou, and I have nowhere to go." Tian Jun's pretty face showed no fear at all. She sighed and said, "I lost. You can kill me or chop me up as you please."

This answer left Zhu Wen somewhat puzzled.

Tian Jun is undoubtedly a woman with outstanding appearance, and compared with Duan Hongyan, who has skin as white as snow, she is more in line with people's impression of a heroine.

She has a square face with well-defined features and healthy wheat-colored skin.

However, her high nose, deep eyes, swan-like neck, and perfectly proportioned waist and long legs give her a dignified elegance that is no less than that of men.

Zhu Wen remembered that they were now in Wei Bo Jie Town and asked: "Are you from the Tian family of Wei Bo?"

"Yes." Tian Jun finally looked a bit defeated and dejected: "My home is here, but I don't want to go back anymore."

Zhu Wen was not surprised by this. Since the family massacre more than 50 years ago, the Wei Bo Tian family, a family that had been rampant in Hebei for 60 years, has declined beyond recognition.

"General Kou died in battle, but General Qi is still here. Why don't you continue to follow General Qi?"

"It's nothing." Tian Jun spread his hands out like a man and said, "I joined the Taining Army because of General Kou."

She suddenly seemed to have thought of something and raised her voice, "No, this isn't fair. I'm still drunk. Let's compete again when I sober up!"

"You are speaking clearly now, aren't you?" Zhu Wen said, "You are just a little bit foolish."

Unexpectedly, the other party admitted it openly: "Coach Kou also said that I am stupid."

Zhu Wen had no choice but to say, "I defeated you once when we raided the camp."

Unexpectedly, Tian Jun immediately yelled, "You stole my snake spear! Give it back to me!"

"That's my trophy, and it's not on me anyway." Zhu Wen felt that he couldn't keep up with the woman's unreasonable thinking.

Tian Jun showed a frustrated look again: "After I left the Taining Army, I spent all my money and even sold my armor. I don't want to go home."

"Where is your horse?" Zhu Wen asked.

A true knight will never abandon his horse easily.

"He was shot dead during the Battle of Songzhou!" Tian Jun shouted angrily, "It was a girl in red who shot him. She was a very good archer!"

Then, regardless of the fact that Zhu Wen was still holding the knife to her neck, she suddenly grabbed Zhu Wen's arm, shook his hand like a little girl, and begged, "I say, do you want to hire me as your bodyguard? I don't want too much money."

"Hire a guard who can't beat me?" Zhu Wen said jokingly.

"Let's have a fair fight later." Tian Jun snorted unconvincedly, "Besides, you were fighting on foot at that time. If we were to fight on horseback, you might not be my match."

Zhu Wen had to admit this was true. Not to mention that he had already performed exceptionally well during the raid. In cavalry combat, he had a hard time defeating Chen Liqing, the "Phoenix Sword" of the "Five Heaven-burning Swords" under Marshal Yan.

He came to two conclusions.

First, this woman is really an idiot.

Second, this idiot is very good at making trouble.

"I killed Kou Shuai, and you don't hate me? How can I guarantee that you won't harm me?"

Tian Jun stamped her feet and said, "Of course I hate you, but General Kou died in a fair fight on the battlefield. If I were to assassinate you, wouldn't I be a less than human being?"

Zhu Wen thought about it and, judging from Kou Qianzhi's character, as the leader of the "Twenty-Eight Riders of Nebula", it seemed impossible for him to do such a thing.

Lan Suting looked at the two of them quietly for a long time, then suddenly said softly, "Let's take her with us. Her skills can be very helpful to us."

"Besides, the people of the Wei Bo Tian family don't care about going against the imperial court."

This is true, because the Cao army's rebellion lasted only two or three years, while the Tian family of Wei Bo had rebelled against the imperial court for fifty or sixty years.

"This little sister is obviously very smart, and what she said is absolutely right." Tian Jun couldn't help but say happily when she heard Lan Suting speaking for her.

Of course, Zhu Wen did not let go of his suspicion of Tian Jun.

He clearly remembered Mrs. Aqing's advice to him - don't trust anyone easily.

However, he did not want to kill Tian Jun to silence her.

"I can hire you, but I'll tie your hands until I'm sure you're trustworthy."

Tian Jun agreed quite straightforwardly: "As long as there is wine to drink, it doesn't matter." Zhu Wen went straight up and pinched her delicate chin hard.

"Hey, what are you doing? You're not trying to molest me, are you?" Tian Jun yelled, and then found that her mouth was blocked by a wine gourd, and a stream of hot liquid poured in between her lips.

Then her expression suddenly became quite intriguing.

"If you drank this kind of liquor, you would lie on the side of the road and not fight, but let passers-by do whatever they want." Zhu Wen said lightly.

"I have plenty of this kind of wine here, but you have to be careful not to drink so much that you become like a dead pig and can't walk."

"It doesn't taste good." Tian Jun wiped the wine from her lips with her sleeve: "I used to follow General Kou to kill the Hu people and I seized some. It's not like I haven't tried it before."

"Then why do the Hu people drink this strong liquor? Isn't it to show off their masculinity?" Zhu Wen said leisurely. "And you, you should think that your masculinity is not inferior to that of men, right?"

Tian Jun was stunned for a moment, and then found that what Zhu Wen said made sense.

"Okay, then I'll try it until I like the taste."

Zhu Wen took out a gold ingot and stuffed it into her arms. "Okay, I'll consider you employed now. Don't call yourself 'auntie' in front of me from now on. It's very uncultured."

"Then what should I call myself?" Tian Jun asked in surprise.

"I see that you are younger than me, so you can call yourself 'silly sister'. You are quite stupid anyway." As Zhu Wen said this, he took out a rope and tied Tian Jun's hands behind her back.

"Also, stop wiping your mouth with your sleeve. No matter how much more manly you are than a man, you're still a girl. This is not only unclean, but also disrespectful to others."

Tian Jun snorted in dissatisfaction, then jumped onto Zhu Wen's horse with his hands behind his back.

She was a very good rider. She would use her long, strong legs to step on the stirrups and drive the horse into a gallop with a "whoosh".

There was only one problem. The packhorse was already heavily laden with things, and after carrying her for a while, it soon began to pant.

"You are too heavy." Zhu Wen commented, looking at Tian Jun's exquisite and curvy figure with a calm gaze.

She was very tall, not shorter than Zhu Wen, and probably not much lighter either.

"It's your horse that's not good." Tian Jun said unconvincedly, "The horses I rode before were not like this."

Even with her hands tied behind her back, the woman still looked heroic, bright and beautiful while riding a horse.

Her impeccable chin and nose lines make her profile look much better than the front.

With such three-dimensional facial features, the other party probably has Western Hu ancestry - the Wei Bo Tian family once ruled Hebei for a long time, so it is not surprising that they intermarried with the Hu people.

This woman is stupid, but really beautiful.

Zhu Wen commented in his heart. Of course, the premise is that what she said is true.

Otherwise, to achieve such acting skills would be extremely terrifying.

While passing by a temple fair, Zhu Wen bought a horse for Tian Jun and lamented, "Money goes by so fast! We need to find some funds when we get there."

Then he said to Lan Suting, "We shouldn't be so polite as to accept the fifty rolls of silk Madam Aqing wanted to give us right then and there."

While speaking, he secretly glanced at Tian Jun's expression and saw that she looked confused and didn't seem to know the existence of Ah Qing.

It seems that except for a very few people like Kou Qianzhi, no one in the Taining army knows about Madam Aqing.

Zhu Wen and Lan Suting's destination was the Taishan area south of Pinglu Town.

Mount Tai is a land of towering mountains and densely packed with temples. Temples to the Jade Emperor and Bixia Yuanjun can be found on the mountain's summit, while at its foot lie numerous Buddhist temples, Confucius temples, and temples dedicated to ancient emperors like Fuxi, Nuwa, and Shennong, representing a region where various religions coexist.

I heard that the Nestorian Church also built a temple on Mount Tai a few years ago, where there were Nestorian monks with high noses and thick beards, and blonde and blue-eyed nuns.

The flow of pilgrims established many settlements in the area of ​​Mount Tai. However, the complex and difficult terrain made the government's control over the area quite weak.

In a town, Zhu Wen found a guesthouse to stay in. To be on the safe side, after Tian Jun entered the room, he used several thick ropes to tie her up tightly like a zongzi and stuffed a hemp seed in her mouth.

Tian Jun was tied to the bed and unable to move, making vague moans. From her slightly sunken eye sockets, her pair of clear, big eyes cast an angry look at Zhu Wen, obviously quite dissatisfied.

"No one is watching you. What if you look through the confidential documents in my luggage?" Zhu Wen said, then closed the door and left with Lan Suting.

He went to a medicine shop called Tong Ren Tang on Cross Street and bought four grams of dried tangerine peel and four grams of angelica. Then he went to a braised food shop across the street and bought four ounces of chicken feet and four ounces of beef.

He asked the shopkeeper to weigh the weights to the millimeter, not a bit more or less.

He held the tangerine peel and chicken feet in his left hand and the angelica and beef in his right hand, walked into a small alley, lifted a curtain of the same color as the wall, threw the tangerine peel and chicken feet in his left hand to the ground, and hung the angelica and beef in his right hand on the beam of the house.

While he was doing this, the room was empty and there was no one at the counter.

But after waiting for only a short while, a man wearing a round-necked, narrow-sleeved robe, a leather belt around his waist, and black boots came out quickly.

"My dear, you are Zhu..."

Zhu Wen waved his hand and said, "Now my surname is Qin, and my given name is Yan."

There must be many more people named Qin Yan than Zhu Wen. Even if they have the same name and surname, there is nothing strange about it.

The man laughed out loud: "Very good, very good! Mr. Qin, what do you want me, Wu, to do?"

(End of this chapter)