The slender fingers picked up a piece of stoneware fragment that fell into the grass.

The black stoneware is not smooth and there are some pores on it.

This kind of defective container cannot be filled with water. It is mostly made in rural earthen kilns and is sold at a low price because of defects.

"strangeness."

Meng Qi murmured to himself, and he lowered his head and picked up another piece of something that looked like the bottom of a bottle.

After putting together the pieces, it was a stone bottle the size of a fist.

Although it is not made of stone, people are used to refer to such ugly and crude objects as stone bottles and earth bottles, and they don’t feel bad if they break them.

During the prosperous era of the Chu Dynasty for decades, Meng Qi had seen more good objects. He could identify porcelain produced by famous kilns and appreciate calligraphy and paintings. However, the knowledge of stone bottles was really impossible to study, and the origin could not be traced. There are many earthen kilns among the people, some of which were very small in scale, and there were no shops, no business, and no account books. Even if the kiln owner was found, the buyer could not be found.

Meng Qi frowned and carefully smelled the smell at the bottom of the bottle.

In addition to grass leaves and soil, it has the flavor of herbs.

It seemed that the bottle had medicine, but Meng Qi looked around on the ground and didn't see a single pill.

Instead, many traces of dragging and kicking were found, just like a dozen people rolling on the ground to snatch gold.

Even the thorn bushes were affected. Meng Qi saw a lot of cloth strips. Although they were all black clothes, they had more than one piece of them together. There were five or six sleeve tubes, obviously not only those left by the swordsmen.

Contacting the swordsman to hide what was thrown in the thorns, Meng Qi looked at the stone bottle in his hand thoughtfully.

——Is it the medicine used by Piaoping Pavilion to control the killer?

This time, he might have made a mistake in his actions. Meng Qi thought to himself, he couldn't hear what medicine was in the bottle.

The smell is strong and there is a faint smell.

Antidote?

If it is not a medicine to relieve the toxic attack, why should the swordsman rush to throw things away?

Meng Qi threw away the excess shards of pottery, leaving only the piece at the bottom of the bottle, picked up a piece of cloth strip and casually followed the traces on the ground to track the killer of Piaopingge.

These killers were very cautious. The situation of rolling around the ground seemed to be suddenly abnormal. They rushed to leave again, so there was no clear trace.

The more Meng Qi chased after him, the fewer clues there were.

There were no thorny leaves stuck on the soles of the shoes, and no footprints were left on the ground. Meng Qi stared at the low trees and taller stones to see if the moss or epiphytic weeds were falling off.

This is a difficult job, but fortunately, Meng Qi is very good at lightning skills, so he is not alone in chasing him.

What surprised Meng Qi was that these killers were very fast, with large steps, but the landing point was unstable. A killer slid hard when he stepped on the moss and fell down directly.

Can you be a killer like this?

Meng Qi was confused.

As the trees are sparse and the terrain gradually becomes smooth, the official road can be seen in the distance.

At the same time, Meng Qi encountered the first problem: the killers were dispersed.

There were only a dozen people in total, and they actually divided them into seven paths. The direction they came out was really gone. No one from all directions missed. This move was endless, and Meng Qi would not divide it. He didn't have enough fellow travelers around him to track these killers from Piaoping Pavilion separately.

Especially when it comes to densely populated areas, the traces left by the killer of Piaoping Pavilion cannot last for a long time like the moss peeled from the trunk of a giant rock.

There is only one opportunity, you can only choose one direction to go.

Meng Qi stopped.

In fact, this place was far away from where he and Mo Li separated. Meng Qi recalled the swordsman's performance when he fled for desperate times and finally confirmed that although the guy was still dodging left and right, he tried to shake off the person behind, he was basically walking westward.

So Meng Qi chose the east direction without hesitation.

——In order to deliver antidotes to subordinates in time, the swordsman is willing to take a chance. Then the master of Piaoping Pavilion, the person who has given him kindness to the swordsman, must be more safeguarded.

The place where the killers live and hide is a secret of Piaoping Pavilion. It involves both the "benefactor" and the safety of "subordinates". What decision will the swordsman make?

It must be avoiding it subconsciously.

Because the swordsman knows that the people behind him are the most threatening, and the swordsman is such a "stupid" person, and he is also very straightforward and cannot play the drama of "predicting what the enemy wants to do the opposite".

A faint smile appeared on the corner of Meng Qi's lips. He brushed his sleeves with a calm elegance and leisure.

As long as you see through people's hearts, everything is in control.

***

"Ah Yeh."

The swordsman sneezes continuously in a mess.

It wasn't that he was not covered with clothes and was affected by the wind and cold. On the contrary, he was poured into a large cloth bag and carried away by the old monk.

The cloth bag is a personal belonging to Monk Yuanzhi. It was not originally used to hold people, but to hold food.

Yuan Zhi would occasionally go to Shimo Mountain Village to bring some urgently shortage of salt and food to the mountaineering people there.

Because Monk Yuanzhi himself is poor, and the people in Shimo Village are used to hard life and are not picky, so the cloth bag contains wheat and millet, which is cheap and even the shell has not even been taken off. The cloth bag is very familiar with the fabric fibers, and the disadvantage is that it is difficult to clean, which causes the swordsman to choke on the gray shell.

"Show his head out." Mo Li suggested.

Sneezing too hard will cause the body to tremble. The swordsman is now dislocating his limbs and joints, and a sneeze can make him feel painful, let alone continuous sneeze.

"this……"

Monk Yuanzhi hesitated.

An old monk was carrying a cloth bag that was loaded with people, which was no longer decent. If he exposed his head, he would still have a face full of scars like a ghost. Is he going to scare the passing people to death?

Monk Yuanzhi and Mo Li were not capable of asking the secrets of Piaoping Pavilion from the swordsman. Although there was no dispute or even no explanation, both sides knew that Mo Li wanted to wait for Meng Qi to come back, and Yuanzhi wanted to hand over this person to Fengxing Pavilion.

However, a hateful person must be pitiful. Seeing the swordsman's scarred appearance, Yuan Zhi lowered his head and thought of the scriptures.

All sentient beings suffer, and a thought becomes a demon.

If it were the past, Monk Yuanzhi would preach and chant Buddha day and night in front of the swordsman, he would not expect the other party to put down the butcher's knife. However, doing so would trap the swordsman, so that there would be less killing swords in the world and less weapon controlled by others.

Xuanchuan Pass is as dangerous as it is. It is hard to say that one day the Heavenly King will be at the city, and Yuanzhi doesn’t have much time to delay.

"Why."

The old monk sighed heavily, rushing to the road and chattered, "Donor, be favored by others and listen to others. This is cause and effect. If others collect money, you go to kill people, and it is also cause and effect. If you repay that person's favor, but what about the person you killed? Where should they ask for their cause and effect?"

"The dead are not worthy of cause and effect."

The swordsman finished choking and was not grateful at all. He looked at the back of Yuanzhi's head and sneered, "If you die, you will have nothing."

Mo Li frowned slightly.

Yuan Zhi did not argue with the swordsman about reincarnation in the next life and suffering in hell. He put down the cloth bag and looked at the swordsman steadily and said, "Those cause and effect are not in the people you killed, but in your heart."

The swordsman had no expression on his face, and this time he was too lazy to even speak out of ridicule.

Those who walk in the darkness don't believe that at all.

But Mo Li was thinking.

The doctor can see many things. Mo Li can’t do anything about Piaoping Pavilion, but Mo Li can see clearly the secret of the swordsman.

This person is born with deficiencies and should have died in his mother's womb. He was unexpectedly nourished by spiritual energy before he could come to the world smoothly.

The swordsman himself does not have the ability to actively absorb the spiritual energy of the outside world. He is really a "person" and not a monster.

The spiritual energy obtained by taking heavenly and earth treasures is not like this. This spiritual energy is not a consumable, but more like filling the gap of congenital deficiency. Similarly, once the spiritual energy is withdrawn, the swordsman will soon lose internal organs and die.

In this way, the source of this spiritual energy is very clear, it is a good medicine and a gift.

Someone, or more directly, had a dragon vein encountered a woman who was about to die of a womb. In order to allow her child to be born smoothly, she gave a ray of spiritual energy.

It is precisely because it has been possessed before it has appeared in the mother's womb that spiritual energy has become the innate energy in the legend, so it can stay firmly in the swordsman's body for a long time and not dissipate.

A child who died prematurely became born extraordinary.

If it were a storybook, it would be a legend. This child will definitely be able to do something big in the future and even leave a name in history.

But things in the world will not develop like stories. The spiritual energy given by the dragon vein will allow a child who should have died to be born smoothly, but what we welcome him in the world is misfortune and pain. Mo Li doesn't know what the child's parents are, and doesn't know what the child encountered after he was seven years old. The scars mean that he was tortured, beaten and abused, and even cannot live as a "person".

Later, the child finally escaped and began to practice martial arts hard.

Perhaps this is the kindness he said, a person who took him out of suffering and gave him the opportunity to learn martial arts, the owner of Piaoping Pavilion.

If this is the life of the swordsman and the reason why he works for Piaoping Pavilion, then Mo Li doesn't find it strange at all to the swordsman's appearance now.

Whether as a child or as a killer of Piaoping Pavilion, the swordsman saw darkness and killing. He did not have good or evil, but had never seen good or good at all. This is exactly what Monk Yuanzhi said about cause and effect in the heart.

A person who has no heart for good and evil will not feel his mistakes.

What if he knew one day? What the people he had killed had done would come out of his heart, like sharp blades and shackles, tying them tightly while stirring them viciously.

Mo Li moved her lips and said nothing in the end.

Monk Yuanzhi didn't know what Mo Li was thinking, so he clasped his hands and continued to persuade the swordsman: "I think the donor is not a vicious person."

"You just felt undesirable pity for me because of these scars on my body." The swordsman snorted and said sarcastically, "If there were no such things, you had already smashed your staff against my heavenly spirit. I wish you could kill all those who are afraid of me and pity me."

He was full of murderous aura, and he seemed to think so.

Yuanzhi started chanting scriptures again.
To be continued...