Daqing Criminal Division

Early the next morning, when Zakshan with luggage came to knock on the door leading a horse from the post station, Fucha Erji and Duan Xiao also arranged everything for going out.

The two of them didn't mention the fight last night that stemmed from the 'broken underpants' after they got up this morning.

But in the matter of not buying each other's account, one has two.This time it was Duan Xiao who had the upper hand and took him into the army. It's hard to say whether someone surnamed Fu Cha would look for an opportunity to trouble him afterward.

"Hey."

Last night, he caught the blame all at once, seeing that Duan Xiao was about to leave after speaking, the man simply got up and hung his body upside down on the stairs, with only one head exposed.

"doing what."

Guessing that he had nothing good to say, Duan Xiao just gave him a back view without looking back.

At night, knowing that the two of them had something to do the next day, Fucharzi, who was resting his arms on his pillow, still kept his eyes on the man and spoke suddenly.

"If you don't do anything, I will give you a piece of advice."

"You will win once this time, but remember it. Next time, I will let you learn what it means to be inferior and what it means to lose to me."

This is really a naked provocation.

In fact, Fucha Erji seldom got serious with people before, but people like Duan Xiao just didn't want to be serious.

So taking it for granted, Duan Xiao didn't smile angrily after stopping, and immediately turned back to him.

"Okay, let's wait and see."

As soon as this remark came out, it was in response to Fuchaerji's words.

When the two soldiers met, they were extremely jealous.

"Tsk."

"Tsk."

This is the last ruthless remark across the upstairs and downstairs, and these two people just took it for the truth.

But this trip is far away, and it is also related to Liu Cen's safety and a crisis that is lurking in the Jiangning Mansion. They also have to act cautiously and hurry over there as soon as possible.

Also this morning, the two each took their own official horses, caught up with the dawn, and together with Duan Yuanbao and Zha Keshan got on their horses and crossed the gate of Songyang City.

The two Pingyang official horses that were acquired last time are usually raised in the Yamen, the black one was named Erliang by Fucha, and the white one was named Meihuazui by Duan Xiao.

At first Zakshan was ashamed when he learned the names of these two couples.

After all, to call a well-behaved official steed Erliang, only someone can come up with such a wild and unruly naming method.

However, he is still talking about such a cheap name to make a living. What do you people know about such nonsense.

However, in order to temporarily name the 'Two Liang' and the white horse Meihuazui in the county government, even though he knew that someone was unreliable, Duan Xiao, who was begged, still rarely did good deeds, and later helped to give the horse another job. A name was registered.

Dark fragrance.

This name is much more pleasing to the ear than Erliang.

Therefore, when Zha Keshan registered the names of their two official horses later, he only bypassed the "two liang" who was cheap and easy to support at the beginning, and simply recorded the name of the dark horse as the word "Dark Fragrance".

As for the journey along the way, Duan Yuanbao, carrying his own small burden, followed Fuchaerji and Anxiang first.

The reason why this kid would choose someone is very simple, because Fucharzi and him have a good relationship in private, which is far better than someone who wants to hit it off with his father.

This out-of-the-box sympathy is mainly manifested in the fact that Duan Yuanbao doesn't seem to find Fucha Erji's absurd behavior all day annoying, on the contrary, this kid will express some friendly attitudes towards him from time to time.

"Brother Bao, sit in the front or the back?"

Before setting off, seeing Duan Yuanbao squatting beside him with obvious fear of riding a horse, Fucha Erji, who had already mounted the horse first, waved him a signal.

He seldom rode a big horse before, and only walked with his father, so it was a bit scary to come here rashly.

"father."

Being summoned actively, Duan Yuanbao, who was standing under the horse, also asked his father what he meant first.

"Go if you want."

Seeing this, Duan Xiao also replied.

"Then I'll sit in the front."

Duan Yuanbao trotted and followed.

"Okay, then sit in the front."

Fucharzi said, holding the rein with one hand, and reaching out with the other hand, he hugged the little guy on his horse smoothly.

Duan Yuanbao was a little frightened at first, but when he was brought up by someone and directly let him hold the rope, he became less afraid in an instant.

This person is originally a casual person, and every word and word has a sense of freedom and not being restrained by anything, so it is always very contagious.

And when he saw someone kidnapping his son with his hands, Duan Xiao didn't say anything. Afterwards, he and Fuchaerji took turns riding to Jiangning with Duan Yuanbao. .

"Hey, everyone is fine, let's go."

Seeing this, Zakshan said something as he put his luggage on his back.

"Well, let's go."

The two people behind also replied.

In this line, since they chose to ride horses, they must be faster than the usual way.

According to Zha Keshan, as long as you don’t take the official road, but walk on the water from the bank of Huaiyang, climb the mountains all the way to Jiangning, and then turn to the official road to go to the government office, this method will be bumpy, but it is also their current way. The fastest way I can think of is to go to Jiangning Mansion.

On the way, the three adults traveled all night except for occasionally stopping to order the horses to drink water for a while, and they didn't have a good rest.

After passing through Tuoba Mountain on the bank of Huaiyang, the winding and twisting mountain roads along the way gradually became less and less. By the evening of the next day, when the sun was setting, they had already entered the main city of Jinling from the official road.

Jinling has been the capital of famous dynasties since ancient times, and it has been an important imperial city for half of the time until the previous dynasties.

After the previous dynasty moved the capital, the charm of the Forbidden City is now accumulated in Shuntian Mansion thousands of miles away, but this ancient city of Jinling is still the most prosperous area in the entire south of the Yangtze River for trade, merchants and even salt officials.

When the three of them arrived at the gate of the city, they could enter the city with the approval documents in hand.

On this day, the sun is not bad.

Soldiers and horses are stationed in the front all the year round, checking one by one, but they must dismount and cannot ride in the main city. Afterwards, they walk all the way through this huge street, listening to the Huaiyang dialect of the city intertwined together, forming a unique local custom landscape.

In the past, the canal water never reached Songyang County, so it was only available in Jiangning Mansion.

In the distance, a long and scattered canal is crowded with all kinds of salt boats and fishing boats. Some of the bows are stepping on wooden boards to land goods, some are spreading their nets to catch fish, some are old boatmen, some are Huansha women.

On the Hongqiao, which is built with water conservancy wooden frames, there is an endless stream of workers pulling poles and rowing oars. On the streets, the most common snacks are nothing more than two, pot stickers and sesame cakes, and duck blood soup with offal.

There are also many folk customs, flower boats, official prostitutes, inns along the street, and they are all different from those in Songyang County, but the most common one is the faintly visible pavilion in front of the canal. The Qinhuai scenery seen from above.

The scenery of the Qinhuai River, these four words clearly pointed out one of the purposes of their trip.

Therefore, Liu Cen once mentioned in the letter the stolen "Qing Yuan Ben Qing Ming Shang He Tu".

According to Duan Xiao’s impression, this painting was painted in the first year of this dynasty. Unlike the previous one, which was done by an unknown painter in the Song Dynasty, this painting is due to the fact that there are too many imitations of paintings in Suzhou and Hangzhou. Today, the Holy Spirit has hired five painters to reuse them. Drawn in Western painting.

These five painters were originally officials in the imperial court. Because they were good at Western painting, they also borrowed from their predecessors to draw this pair of "Qingyuan Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival".

The two most famous points of this painting, one is that part of the scene is no longer the original Bianjing, but the Jinling City in front of you, which is why this famous painting worth 4 taels will be offered in the Jiangning Supervision Institute.

The second is to use a perspective method to draw the city defenses, buildings and Eight Banners garrisoned soldiers and horse camps of the entire Jiangning Prefecture, and there are four or five hundred kinds of life styles of the common people. This picture is a glimpse of the entire Jinling scenery. is truly priceless.

Just according to what Liu Cenxin said, the "Qingyuan Ben Qingming Riverside Picture" should have disappeared in the Supervision Yuan.

It's just that I don't know who stole this famous painting.

Thinking of this, Duan Xiao and his party have already entered the Jiangning Mansion.

Because there were the most mules, horses and livestock in front of the main city gate, in order to prevent the four people from breaking up and being crowded here and unable to get out, Zakshan and the two of them waved and greeted and went to the front first.

After entering the city gate, Duan Xiao, who was walking next to the crowd, was holding the plum blossom in his hand. When he looked up, he saw that the entire main city was next to the Grand Canal that runs through the passenger ships.

Fucha Erji, who was walking half a step behind him, only led Duan Yuanbao to follow step by step.

But as they walked, the tall and burly Zakshan walked to the front alone, leaving only the three of them behind.

Coincidentally, it will be Qiuwei in more than a month, and the tax and bank issue will catch up again. Jinling City is very lively. He can only hear some gossips from the returnees, and he also listens to the local people's livelihood along the way.

In the past, Duan Xiao had been to Jinling once, so although the Huaiyang words sounded a bit awkward, he could understand most of them.

But just at this time, he and Fucha Erji beside him overheard a tea guest walking ahead, talking in Huaiyang dialect to someone about an anecdote he had heard in the other side of the city in the past few days.

At that time, Duan Xiao and Fuchaerzi were standing outside the crowd, surrounded by a few good things and listening to the tea guest.

I don't know why I always feel that there is a reason for this, so Duan Xiao stopped and listened for a while when he saw this.

Immediately afterwards, they heard from the tea guest that just three days ago, a relative of him told him a strange incident that actually happened in Jinling.

It is said that a local lazy man in the tea business picked up a sack of eight watermelons overnight outside the city.

This lazy man was going to catch up with night work that night. When he came home, he came down to drain the water. He only saw the watermelons picked up for nothing on the ground. Everyone was looking at the boss under the moonlight.

It was cold and frosty to the touch, and it was a great deal from God to throw it on the side of the road at such a late night. The lazy man was overjoyed, and didn't think carefully about where the good thing came from. He just stretched out his hand on the side of the road and touched the circle. The yo watermelon ordered one by one.

One, two, three, count to eight.

He was good at groping in the dark, and they were all round. The man was overjoyed and knocked, and there was a thumping sound, which must be ripe melons.

Thinking of this, the tea man picked up a bag of iced watermelon and headed home in the middle of the night.

On the way, the ice watermelon couldn't bear the heat and quickly melted.

Tick-tock-tick, the red watermelon water was sprinkled all the way, and the lazy man didn't notice anything unusual.

But when he got home, he knocked on the door and called out his mother-in-law to come quickly and eat watermelon with a knife. The couple opened the bag by the candle light at home, but they were scared out of their wits.

Because the eight watermelons in this bag were somehow mixed with bloody human heads.

One, two, three, the first seven are ice watermelons.

The only one was a frozen head thrown in a sack and thrown on the side of the road!

——The anecdote that there was a human head in the watermelon that no one picked up by the side of the road immediately aroused discussions among the people around the tea drinker.

"..."

Fuchaerzi and Duan Xiao who were walking aside obviously heard it, but they folded their arms and watched silently, and didn't make a sound, only to see the people around them dispersed again after the tea guest finished telling the story.

This was the first strange thing they heard after they arrived in Jiangning, but it sounded like a very common thing.

After all, there are many people in teahouses on the side of the road who will talk about strange stories, and no one knows whether the story of the frozen head is also made up by the gang of traffickers.

But they didn't seem to think it was a coincidence in their hearts.

After all, people lost seven watermelons and a human head inexplicably all over the city. The government should have received a report, but why this human head was mixed with iced watermelon is a bit strange.

It was also because they were originally from the Songyang County Yamen to investigate the case.

Both of them can be regarded as serious business, so Zakeshan, who was still carrying an ultimatum from Ma County Magistrate, went to Jiangning Mansion to report after the round with them.

Speaking of which, this Jiangning mansion is now jointly governed by Zuo Shen, the censor, Su Qizhan, the prefect of Jinling, and the assistant supervisor Mingpeng.

Among them, the most famous ones are the above three, they can be regarded as the three officials in Jinling who can talk.

In addition, in the early years of this dynasty, the Eight Banners were garrisoned in Jiangning Mansion. By the early years of Shengzu, the number of troops stationed in the Eight Banners had exceeded 5000.

Most of the banner people have a separate full city as their residence. Nanjing's full city is about two kilometers long and wide, and the city wall is eight meters high. It is the largest in the country. The tens of thousands of houses in the city are all public housing. offer.

Such measures made it inevitable that the troops stationed in the city would be more heavily guarded. The Imperial Court established the Supervision Institute in order to have a place to supervise and handle official affairs in this huge Jiangning Mansion.

When they arrived at the concierge, Zach Shan dismounted first and handed it to the censor of the Inspectorate, and then asked an acquaintance to go in and find the chief arrester of the Yamen of Jiangning Prefecture, a arrester surnamed Sima.

It was only half a moment before there was a gray-blue government house inside, and a small police officer with a long knife ran out quickly, and said that it was the police officer Sima who asked him to come out to meet people.

This time, they have found the right place.

When the three of them entered the busy Jiangning Prefecture Government Office, they walked through the outer room where the group of police officers interrogated some small thieves. Inside, a tall and thin policeman dressed as the chief police officer was also sitting in the middle, and had an early Prepare some tea.

The etiquette is also thoughtful, and the tall and thin policeman seems to be the number one person in charge of criminal investigation in the entire Jiangning Mansion.

"I'm Sima Zhun, the Chief of the Police Department of Jiangning Mansion. I just don't know what the names of these two colleagues are?"

This was Sima Zhun's first time seeing them, but he also looked at the two people sitting beside him.

"Fuchardhi."

"Duan Owl."

Hearing this, the two of them took it as an answer.

Several people sat down and reported their names to each other, and Sima Zhun even received them as a police officer of Jiangning Mansion.

But because the famous post just now didn't mention what they came here for.

At first, Sima Zhun thought they came because of tax and bank matters, but when he heard the three said that they came to look for Liu Cen, the face of Sima, who was otherwise fine, suddenly changed strangely. .

"Liu Cen? But that Liu Cen who used to be an official in Jiangning Prefecture and went to Songyang County?"

"Yes, Detective Sima, have you seen him in Jiangning Mansion these two days?"

It was for this purpose that I came here. Seeing that Captain Sima's expression was a little off, Zakeshan, who was more irritable, hurriedly asked this question.

But the next sentence, which obviously frowned while looking outside, and didn't know whether to tell the truth to them or not, surprised all three of them.

"If you are looking for Liu Cen, I'm sorry I can't tell where he is now, because three nights ago, he who was originally on duty had disappeared in the Supervisory Court. There's something."

Hearing this, Fuchaerji and Duan Xiao had already vaguely noticed something, but Sima Zhun continued with a serious tone in the next sentence.

"It's the famous painting "A Picture of Rising the River during the Qingming Festival" originally hung above the Inspectorate, worth 4 taels of silver."

The author has something to say: [About the names of the two horses]:

The name Plum Blossom Drunk comes from a poem by Li Qingzhao.

'In the snow every year, plum blossoms are often inserted to get drunk.Move all the plum blossoms without good intentions, and win the clothes full of tears. '

"Ambient Fragrance" comes from "These two songs, Shihu played with them endlessly, and made workers and prostitutes learn them. The syllables are harmonious and euphemistic, so they are called "Ambient Fragrance." '