Jiang Jin: "..." These two looked so aloof and impressive, they were probably great fighters.
With an anxious tone, she asked, "Why aren't you two going to help put out the fire?"
Seeing her approach, the man on the left took a step back as if he had seen a virus. "Putting out fires is not our duty. You'd better quickly..."
Before he could finish his sentence, he felt something pressing against his abdomen, and his body began to convulse violently.
The man on the right was startled. With a shing, he drew the sword from his waist. "What kind of monster are you?"
Jiang Jin: "..." She realized that the man on the left probably had a phobia of dirt, while the one on the right was a bit foolish.
The man thrust his sword at her. Jiang Jin tilted her body to dodge his attack, and whipped out the stun baton in her hand, striking toward the man's waist.
Knowing this pitch-black object was formidable, the man quickly retreated to avoid it, opening his mouth to call for help.
Anxious, Jiang Jin suddenly made a Tang sword appear in her other hand and slashed at the man's legs.
Pfft, the man actually failed to dodge!
He took the slash head-on. Before he could even let out a scream, the stun baton was already pressed against his body.
To be honest, Jiang Jin was still a bit dazed at this moment. She thought these two aloof figures were martial arts masters. Unexpectedly, they were just at an ordinary level. She had even prepared herself for a bitter fight. Was this it?
After taking care of the two men, she entered the room. It was indeed a study. She first stored away the tables, chairs, couches, and other furniture.
However, when she tried to store the bookshelf in the back, she found it wouldn't budge. The bookshelf was actually connected to the wall behind it.
Jiang Jin's eyes lit up, a guess forming in her mind. This bookshelf was very likely the switch to a hidden room in the study.
She walked around the bookshelf twice and finally found a spot that looked slightly different. She carefully pressed it.
With a click, the bookshelf slowly parted to the sides, quickly revealing the secret room inside. The room was packed with wooden chests.
She extended her Tang sword into the secret room and tapped around. Only after confirming there was no danger did she step inside. She opened one of the chests, and the gold cakes inside nearly blinded her eyes.
At this point, she couldn't bother to check what was in the other wooden chests and simply stored them all into her spatial dimension.
She set a fire upon leaving the study as well. Then, she went to the stables, mounted a horse, and charged out of the Gao residence, shouting, "Make way, make way! I'm going to inform the Master that the estate is on fire!"
The servants and maids she encountered inside the Gao residence obediently made way. They had no choice; otherwise, the horse would have trampled right over them.
Not long after Jiang Jin rode out of the Gao residence, she ran into two men who were in the middle of a robbery. Seeing her dressed in a soldier's uniform, they assumed she was one of their own and ignored her.
Jiang Jin frowned. These two clearly had the faces of barbarians. There were still some differences in appearance between people of the Central Plains and the barbarians.
Of course, there were also many children born of Han people and barbarians, making them somewhat harder to identify.
She rode forward, dispatched the two of them with two strikes of her sword, and without further delay, headed straight for the county magistrate's office.
At this time, the county magistrate's office was in complete chaos. Dozens of soldiers were besieging three people. Yes, three people!
Besides Zhou Sui and Yun Chengxuan, there was also a woman.
Although the three were highly skilled in martial arts, the opponents outnumbered them, and these were elite soldiers with considerable strength.
Each person had to deal with ten to twenty enemies, making the fight somewhat arduous. This was especially true for the woman, who had already sustained several injuries.
Zhou Sui had also suffered a slash on his arm.
Among the three, the one fighting the most effortlessly was Yun Chengxuan. It wasn't that he was more skilled than Zhou Sui, but rather that the blade in his hand was incredibly powerful.
With a single slash, he would cut both the opponent and their weapon in half. Literally in half, into two pieces.
His immense strength, paired with an incomparably sharp blade that absolutely could not have been forged in this era, made him a veritable killing machine. He slayed gods and buddhas alike!
There were no guards at the entrance of the county office at this moment. Jiang Jin walked right in openly. As soon as she reached the outer courtyard, she heard the sounds of fighting coming from the inner courtyard.
She sensed something was wrong.
Logically speaking, no matter how afraid of death Magistrate Gao was, having ten or twenty people by his side would be the maximum, especially since he didn't know someone was coming to kill him today.
With Zhou Sui's skills and Yun Chengxuan's immense strength, setting aside whether they could kill Magistrate Gao, escaping shouldn't have been difficult. They shouldn't have been entangled in a fight for so long.
She didn't hesitate anymore, throwing out a wooden ladder and quickly climbing onto the roof.
For some reason, a phrase suddenly popped into her head: With a wooden ladder in hand, I can go anywhere in the world!
Lying flat on the roof, Jiang Jin finally got a clear view of the battle before her.
She saw dozens of soldiers in the courtyard besieging Zhou Sui and his group of three. Three?
Jiang Jin was baffled. Where did this extra woman come from?
At the scene, besides the dozens of soldiers still attacking Zhou Sui and the other two, there were over a dozen corpses lying on the ground.
She frowned deeply, unable to figure out why Magistrate Gao had stationed so many people at the county office.
She looked at the woman in the center again, wondering if these people were actually targeting this woman, and Zhou Sui and Yun Chengxuan had unluckily stumbled into it.
Thinking about it, it was entirely possible. They had just arrived in Lin County today, didn't even know Magistrate Gao, and no one knew their plan. There was no way this trap was meant for them.
Standing right in the middle under the eaves were three middle-aged men. Flanking them were a dozen or so archers, their arrows aimed directly at the three people fighting in the courtyard.
Seeing that Zhou Sui and Yun Chengxuan could still hold on, Jiang Jin wasn't in a hurry to make a move. Instead, she carefully observed the three men.
The man in the middle was rather short; Jiang Jin guessed he was at most 160 centimeters tall. According to the information Mu Zhuo had provided, this person should be Magistrate Gao.
The man standing to his left was tall and heavily built, holding a long sword. Watching the woman in the courtyard take another slash, he shouted.
"Eldest Miss Xia, why not surrender without a fight? We'll give you a quick death so you won't have to suffer."
The tall, thin man on the right also spoke up: "That's right, Lady Xia, why struggle so bitterly? If you're willing to become our Master's concubine and serve him obediently, perhaps the Master will spare your life!"
Such humiliating words made the woman burn with rage. In a moment of inattention, her arm was slashed again. She pressed her lips tightly together, reined in her thoughts, and focused entirely on the enemy.
The tall, thin man continued to break her spirit: "Look at you, why put yourself through this? Women are born to be men's playthings. The fact that our Master has taken a fancy to you..."
Magistrate Gao frowned slightly, his gaze falling on Zhou Sui, who had just hacked down another soldier, and then on the young man who had kicked someone flying. He couldn't understand where these two fierce fighters had popped out from.
His plan had clearly been foolproof. He had arranged twenty soldiers and twelve archers, just waiting for Xia Chanyi, the daughter of the former county commandant, to show up at his door.
He had killed her father, Commandant Xia, and knew that she hadn't left Lin County, but was hiding in the shadows, always ready to assassinate him.
Having such a skilled expert lurking in the dark made it hard for him to eat or sleep, constantly afraid that he might actually be killed by her if he wasn't careful. That was why he used this plan to eliminate her once and for all.
Despite all his calculations, he hadn't anticipated that two even more highly skilled men would suddenly appear out of nowhere. Not only did they ruin his plan, but they also looked very capable of breaking out of the siege.
Fortunately, he acted with caution. Besides the men out in the open, he had arranged over forty experts in the shadows, which was just barely enough to hold the three of them back.
Jiang Jin hesitated no longer and took a silenced pistol out of her spatial dimension. At this distance, a handgun was enough.
With hardly any need to aim, she fired a shot at the tall man holding the long sword.
Military men possess a remarkably keen instinct for danger. She worried that the moment she assassinated Magistrate Gao, this officer would pinpoint her location. If that was the case, she might as well eliminate him first.
The tall man did not even register any pain. He felt only a sudden chill pierce his mind, followed by the sensation of liquid trickling down his forehead.
