Red Mansion: Fuyao River and Mountain

Chapter 41 Hidden Gate Hongxiu
She saw the knife in Jia Cong's hand fall to the ground. Looking at the corpse on the ground, she stepped back a few steps in panic, as if she wanted to stay as far away from the corpse as possible.

There was no trace of ruthlessness in his expression. I guess he was forced to do it in order to survive, and he only felt scared afterwards.

The man on the ground had received a heavy blow on the head and had his arms chopped off by Jia Cong. He was already dead by now.

She dragged her tired body to his side, her voice revealing a hint of tenderness:
"Don't be afraid. These people followed Zhou Junxing to kill innocent people in Dezhou, including women and children. They deserve to be killed, so just kill them.

Besides, if you don’t kill them and bring the message back to Zhou Junxing, your whole family will suffer.”

Jia Cong was used to her fierce look, so he felt a little strange when he heard her gentle tone.

"Are you really from the Hidden Sect...?" Jia Cong had heard a lot about the remnants of the Hidden Sect in the past few days and almost said the word "remnants", but swallowed the words back when they were on the tip of his tongue.

"If you want to call you remnants, just call you that. We've been used to being called that our whole lives." There was a sense of sadness in his words.

Jia Cong's heart softened when he heard this, and he changed the subject: "My name is Jia Cong, what's your name?"

"I am a remnant of the Hidden Sect. You are not afraid, but knowing my name is not a good thing." After saying that, he thought for a while and then said, "My name is Qu Hongxiu. You are not allowed to tell anyone."

"Does Wu Jinrong have a grudge against you?"

If it had been three days ago, Jia Cong would never have asked her this question. Perhaps it was because they had killed someone together, and perhaps once people had a common secret, some of the wariness and estrangement would slowly dissipate unconsciously.

The man in black was not wrong, the two of them did end up in cahoots with each other, and after this bloody fight, a strange tacit understanding developed between them.

"The brother-in-law of Wu Jinrong is an important figure in the Hidden Sect branch in Dezhou. He went to Shenjing for work last month. Somehow Wu Jinrong found out his identity. It's possible that they are close relatives, and that man likes to drink.

It is unknown how the information was leaked. In order to gain wealth and glory, Wu Jinrong actually went to Dezhou to inform the military officer Zhou Junxing.

His brother-in-law was captured by Zhou Junxing that night. Unable to withstand the torture, he confessed everything about the Dezhou Hidden Sect.

Zhou Junxing mobilized a large number of officers and soldiers, followed the map, and surrounded and killed all the more than 300 people in the Dezhou Yinmen branch. I escaped by luck, but my brother's family of four all died!

Wu Jinrong was a Hanlin, one of the best scholars, but he was full of shamelessness and had killed so many people!"

Qu Hongxiu's voice choked up when she said this, and Jia Cong roughly understood why she would risk sneaking into Shuyun Villa to kill people, and why she disliked scholars.

In Shuyun Villa, he must have seen that he was in the limelight among the scholars, and he also had a conversation with Wu Jinrong.

Perhaps because of this, he disliked me at that time and caused me a lot of trouble in the past few days.

"After I entered the city, I found that Zhou Junxing had many good personal guards around him, so Wu Jinrong would be much more convenient. Besides, he was the culprit for the murder of more than 300 people in Dezhou."

After saying this, Jia Cong saw that her face was pale, her brows were furrowed, and the clothes on the back of her shoulders were soaked with blood.

Jia Cong helped her undress and found that the wound, which had almost healed, was torn open again, and the injury was even more serious than before.

He tore off a clean strip of cloth from his underwear and helped her wipe the blood from the wound. He then used the same method as before to re-seal the wound with black sticky ointment.

This time, she did not hold the scimitar in her hand and be alert as she did before.

After spending the past few days together, and the thrilling fight just now, she had let down her guard against Jia Cong, and even got used to him applying medicine to her like this. "It was quite noisy just now. There are often hunters going out here. It would be bad if they attracted people. We need to leave quickly. We can't bury the body on the spot, otherwise it will be easy for people to find traces."

"Let's go look for them at the edge of the woods. These two men must have come here on horseback."

The woman was slightly stunned to see that he was so young but had such a meticulous and sophisticated mind, but when she thought of his amazing behavior just now, these details became natural.

Sure enough, the two men found two horses with complete saddles at the edge of the woods. After a lot of effort, they finally moved the two corpses onto one horse, and then they rode the other one together.

It was already dark and the two horses were marching in the open field.

The corpse of one of the horses was still dripping with blood, and blood flowers bloomed on the snow along the way. When the blood stains on the corpse solidified, snowflakes fell and silently covered up these traces.

There was a warm and soft place behind Jia Cong, and he could smell a faint fragrance, which he thought was the scent of Qu Hongxiu. The sound of horse hooves dripped, and the whole world seemed to be immersed in a pleasant silence.

Thinking about the two people who were originally confronting each other like soldiers and bandits, but now riding together in a somewhat intimate manner, it was the first time in two lifetimes that I encountered such a strange thing.

Fortunately, there were two horses, otherwise with Qu Hongxiu's injuries, she would not have been able to go far.

The two walked for nearly an hour before they found an abandoned wild temple in a sheltered valley.

Jia Cong found a place with soft soil near the wild temple. He used the long knife left by the man in black to dig a deep pit and buried the two bodies. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

It was fortunate that under such circumstances, Qu Hongxiu and I killed both of them, if we could let them go back alive.

If the black-clad man's words were to be told to others, given the court and the emperor's fear of the Hidden Sect, I would be afraid that I would become the fuse, and there would be too many unpredictable consequences.

Who can say for sure whether the ending of "The Red Mansion" with a clean and white earth will come earlier than expected, and what will be the fate of those sisters in the family who are kind to her.

When they returned to the temple, Qu Hongxiu had already lit a bonfire. Her face looked particularly beautiful in the light of the fire.

She has a slightly thin oval face, skin as white as jade, lightly drawn eyebrows, eyes as clear as autumn water, a pretty and straight nose, and lips like cinnabar.

Although Jia Cong had seen many beautiful women in the Jia Mansion, he was still stunned by her.

During this half day, the two men fought a life-and-death battle and trudged all the way to move and bury the corpses, exhausting their mental and physical strength. Qu Hongxiu's injuries were even worse.

As the two of them sat down by the fire, they felt warmed by the heat and felt extremely tired all over. This wild temple was located in a remote area and no one could find it. They felt relaxed and soon fell into a deep sleep.

Although there was a feared Hidden Sect member like Qu Hongxiu by his side, strangely enough, Jia Cong slept soundly that night and did not wake up until dawn.

Suddenly, he felt that Qu Hongxiu beside him had a burning breath, her pretty face was flushed, and her mind was a little blurred. He bravely touched her forehead and found it was burning hot.

He originally wanted to rush back to the city early in the morning, but after last night, he believed that Qu Hongxiu would not stop him. He had no news for several days, and sisters like Tanchun and Yingchun must be worried.

The person he was most worried about was Zhishao. He left her alone in a small courtyard in the west of the city that day, and he didn't know how she was doing now.

(End of this chapter)