Xie Siyu pushed off with one foot and threw himself down from the roof. He kicked off from the big pagoda tree in the courtyard with both feet, turned three and a half times in the air, and landed perfectly!

"Good! That was very handsome!"

Ning Chen clapped as hard as he could.

Jiang Zhengyang looked at Xie Siyu and could make nothing of it at all... Couldn't you just jump down from the roof? Weren't you afraid of turning an ankle with all those tricks?

Just then the snow piled up on the tree came rustling down.

Xie Siyu shuddered. Snow had gone down the back of his neck.

He had kicked off the trunk too hard, and that had shaken the snow loose.

The corner of Ning Chen's mouth twitched. "Ahem... Elder Brother Xie, where's the entrance?"

Xie Siyu turned, stepped over to the stone table two yards to his left and kicked it over.

The base of the stone table was almost as wide as the top. When the table went over, a hole showed underneath.

Ning Chen and the others came up and threw a torch down it.

It was not deep, three yards or so.

Jiang Zhengyang said, "Somebody go down and look!"

Ning Chen waved a hand. "No need. A turtle in the jar can't get away. (TL Note: from the Chinese saying about catching a soft-shelled turtle in a jar — a quarry with nowhere left to go.) All we have to do is wait... The space down there is narrow, and they have crossbows. Going down after them would be hard."

"Elder Brother Xie, are you sure this hidden passage has only one way out?"

Xie Siyu nodded.

In the hidden passage, Qiu Qiyi and seven or eight men were moving fast.

"Hurry. We'll be out in a minute!"

The other end of the hidden passage came up inside a little farmhouse courtyard, and he had left several men waiting there.

What he did not know was that Xie Siyu had killed every one of the men he had left waiting.

Xie…