"Boss, Fifth, let's escape!" the Second Brother's voice trembled. "This is too terrifying. What 'the weak and the old' are these? They are clearly demons!"
"I want to escape too, but how? If we leave here, we'll be within their arrow range."
The Boss was not foolish. What made him slightly better than the Second and Fifth brothers was that he tried his best not to let his voice tremble.
"Then what do we do? Should we surrender?" The Fifth Brother's eyes flashed.
After a brief hushed discussion, the Boss raised his voice and shouted:
"Good sirs, we are merely passing through your land and have caused much disturbance. Some of my brothers have offended you, and you have shot them dead, so you must have vented your anger. Can you spare our lives?"
Mi Guo and Hu Lanfang looked at Gu Qingcheng.
In this battle, Gu Qingcheng had become everyone's backbone. Without her decisiveness, these bad guys could not have been subdued.
Gu Qingcheng pursed her lips and sneered, then said:
"Letting you go is not impossible. What do you have to offer in exchange?"
Damn it, this stinky bitch was asking for money to buy their lives?
It was always them who demanded a ransom for lives, and they never expected that one day they would have to pay a ransom to others.
The Boss's mouth felt bitter. After thinking for a moment, he took out a bag of gold bars from his embrace and said:
"I have about ten taels of gold here. Do you think it's enough?"
Ten taels of gold?
Gu Qingcheng truly didn't value it.
However, she pretended to hesitate for a moment, as if thinking, and then said:
"Alright, place the gold on the steps, and I'll have someone retrieve it."
The Boss quickly agreed and gave a signal to his accomplices with his eyes.
Having worked together for so long, they understood that their boss wanted them to take the opportunity to subdue the opponents and use them as hostages. They all nodded.
The Boss, holding the gold, crept along the wall to the courtyard gate and shouted loudly:
"I've put the gold on the steps."
As he said this, he deliberately threw it hard. The bag landed on the stone steps with a dull thud.
Gu Qingcheng and Mi Guo came down from the watchtower, while Hu Lanfang remained on it.
Mi Guo pulled the bolt...
Hearing the movement inside, the bandit boss drew an axe from his back. The door opened, and a head peeked out. The boss ferociously swung his axe at the head.
The head rolled to the ground with a "gurgle," but the boss's heart was startled: the feel was wrong!
He had beheaded countless heads, and this was definitely not the right feel.
He looked closer, and the head on the ground was facing upwards. It was a clown's face, with its mouth stretched upwards, smiling happily at him.
The bandit boss had never seen a clown mask before and was instantly stunned. What was this thing?
Gu Qingcheng took the head of the clown doll from the storage cabinet and had Mi Guo tie it to a bamboo pole to probe outside first.
As expected, the bandit had ill intentions.
However, this move by him provided Gu Qingcheng with an opportunity. While he was dazed, she shot him directly in the chest with an arrow.
They leaped out of the gate, aimed at the other two bandits, and drew their arrows at them.
The two of them quickly raised their hands in fear, throwing their weapons to the ground.
"Heroines, spare us!"
The two men fell to their knees with a thud.
At this point, only these two men were still capable of fighting.
Hu Lanfang, on the courtyard watchtower, occupied the high ground and also aimed her arrows at the two men.
"If you want to live, tell us quickly, where are you from, and why did you target us?"
Gu Qingcheng commanded.
Seeing the sharp, glinting arrowheads pointed at them, the two knew that this young girl, despite her age, was ruthless and her archery was precise. They had no choice but to confess honestly.
It turned out that these bandits were from Black Wind Fort, about ten miles away. They had been living as mountain lords, and their lives were quite carefree.
Unexpectedly, about ten days ago, it suddenly became bitterly cold, and eighty to ninety percent of the people in the fort froze to death. Only a few of them survived, barely subsisting on the supplies they had plundered.
Now that their food was running out, they descended the mountain to scavenge for supplies as the temperature began to rise. They found that most of the people in the city had also died. They had collected a lot of valuables and even stayed in the city for a night.
However, to their surprise, just a few days later, Prince Xia had strengthened patrols in the city. They scavenged cautiously during the day but dared not linger at night, retreating to their mountain stronghold as soon as night fell.
Last night, they took a shortcut back to their stronghold and, passing through this area, found a sheep leg ladder on an icy slope. They found it very strange and decided to investigate, only to find that there were people living at the top of the slope.
As a result, three of their companions were killed. The rest, not understanding the situation in the dark and not daring to retaliate, fled back.
Of course, they became more and more angry as they thought about it. The next morning, they gathered the remaining men from the stronghold to seek revenge. Unexpectedly, this family was so fierce that they were killed instead of killing them.
Gu Qingcheng then realized that there were more than three bandits last night.
Fortunately, it was dark then, and the other side was unaware, so they dared not prolong the fight. Otherwise, if they had not been prepared, it would have been quite dangerous.
"How many people are left in Black Wind Fort?"
Gu Qingcheng continued to ask.
"None, just us remaining. We used to have nearly a hundred people, but they all froze to death. Only about ten of us are left."
As he said this, Gu Qingcheng's arrow shifted slightly, no longer pointing at the man who was speaking.
Bandits are bandits. The seemingly docile bandit saw an opportunity and suddenly jumped up, flinging a short knife from his sleeve at Gu Qingcheng.
The other bandit also lunged at Mi Guo with a dagger.
But before either of them could strike, they felt a chill in their chests. With two "swish" sounds, Hu Lanfang's arrows shot down from above, hitting them squarely in the chest.
Both men looked at their bodies in disbelief, never imagining that the woman they underestimated had such superb archery skills.
Gu Qingcheng's lips curved upwards, and she gave her mother, who was peeking out from the watchtower, an OK gesture and said:
"Mom, you're the best!"
Hu Lanfang, holding her bow, showed a smile that said, "Your mother is still your mother."
Hu Lanfang went out of the courtyard and looked at the eight corpses, saying dejectedly:
"Drag them to the side and bury them. If we throw them all into the ground, it will turn into an incinerator."
Gu Qingcheng had the same idea.
So, they dragged the eight men to a clear space outside the yard near the mountain, dug a pit in the snow, threw the eight men in, and then shoveled snow to cover them, considering it dealt with.
Gu Qingcheng knew that the extreme cold weather would last for some time. Buried here, no one would be foolish enough to dig them up anytime soon.
Then, the three of them shoveled away the blood-stained snow from the fight in front of the courtyard. The vast white snow covered everything, purifying everything, as if no intense fight had ever taken place here.
After finishing everything, nearly half a day had passed.
Gu Qingcheng thought it over and said with unease, "Mom, I should still go to Black Wind Fort for a look to see if there are any stragglers. Otherwise, if there are still remnants, someone will come to provoke us again."