Green Mountain
Chapter 100 - 77, Ten Si Cao_2

Chapter 100: 77, Ten Si Cao_2

Chen Ji’s hands gripped Manager Yuan’s fingers and slowly pried open the plump hand, dropping it to the ground where he began to cough violently.

Manager Yuan incredulously clutched at his throat, stepping backward as blood gushed from between his fingers, swiftly draining all of his strength.

"When did you become an Executive Officer? This is the Sword Seed Path! How could you understand the Temple of Martial Arts’ Sword Cultivation Technique? Did your mother teach you? But how could she possibly master the technique..."

"Sword Seed Path..."

"It’s actually the Sword Seed Path!"

Manager Yuan collapsed with a thunderous fall.

Chen Ji slumped to the ground, cradling his palm as sporadic snowflakes began to flutter from the sky. They melted immediately upon landing in the center of his palm.

For a moment, he was somewhat bewildered. Had he finally killed Manager Yuan?

This night, he had first saved the Princely Heir and Bai Li, then dragged himself, wounded, to assassinate Manager Yuan. Even though dawn had not yet broken, it felt as though he had endured an entire, interminable season, from autumn to winter.

Before he could collect his senses, the sound of hooves came from the distant street... The Spy Department had arrived!

Chen Ji struggled to his feet, intending to quickly flee the scene, but just as he stood up, he fell hard again. The final piece of brick that Manager Yuan had kicked up had landed on his leg, bursting open his wound.

In this critical moment,

Footsteps approached, and someone spoke with focus, "So you’re here. I’ve been looking for you all night!"

Chen Ji was stunned; the voice was strikingly familiar.

...

...

At the end of Tongji Street, dozens of cavalry horses were thundering closer, Jin Zhu riding with a calm expression.

Just moments ago, he was in Hongyi Lane, preparing to lead his subordinates in retreat when he heard the familiar sound of explosions once more.

Jin Zhu had never imagined that this Jing Dynasty traitor, who controlled firearms, had not fled, but instead roamed to other parts of Luocheng City to commit a major crime.

The sound of the explosion was strange, though, seeming to come from a commercial area. Jin Zhu pondered for a long time, but couldn’t determine what the Jing Dynasty traitor could be doing here.

But a feud ignited by an explosion could not go unavenged.

Jin Zhu led the charge into Tongji Street. He spotted from afar the rising dust. "Men, seal off all the surrounding areas of Tongji Street. From tonight, entry is allowed, but not departure. Turn over every inch, and let not even an earthworm escape!"

However, as soon as he finished speaking, in the dark night, a crow suddenly swooped down.

The crow, falling and rising like a black wind, was hard to discern; its speed was incredibly fast.

The crow didn’t entangle itself with the men but repeatedly pecked at the eyes of the warhorses, startling each one into rearing up, their hooves flailing to shake off the crow, which resulted in the spies being thrown to the ground.

Jin Zhu leapt from his horseback with one foot on the saddle, hurtling towards the crow in the air.

Unable to withstand the recoil, the warhorse knelt on the ground as Jin Zhu’s corpulent figure crossed paths with the crow... and missed!

Jin Zhu was taken aback. The speed of the crow seemed even faster than his own. "What is this thing? Such an impressive crow... An Executive Officer?!"

"Use crossbows! Shoot it down!"

Spies hurriedly drew hand crossbows from their waists and shot towards the night sky, but the crow twisted and turned with ease, cawing mockingly while nimbly evading the crossbow arrows.

Jin Zhu was certain this was some kind of Official Gateway technique, but he could not recall having ever known such a technique, almost as if it had never appeared in history.

How was this possible?

The Ritual Supervision was in charge of managing the Inner Court’s intelligence. An Executive Officer that had ever existed should certainly be recorded in their archives, even if merely in folklore.

What kind of Official Gateway technique could be so deeply hidden that not a word about it was written in the archives of the Ritual Supervision?

"Abandon horses!" Jin Zhu shouted, rushing towards the smoke-veiled Yuan Mansion in the lead.

The crow became desperate. It dived down, striking at the spies with all its might, but more spies were arriving, and their crossbow arrows nearly intertwined to form a net in the sky.

Should it fly just a bit lower, it risked being pierced by a volley of arrows!

The crow was forced to soar into the night sky.

After just over a dozen breaths, Jin Zhu had arrived at the gate of the mansion where the explosion had occurred, he leaped over the towering entrance and descended into the courtyard, but at that moment, what was left of the mansion was just a collapsed house and a body stripped of its robes.

When he looked up again, the crow was nowhere to be seen.

"Chase, the killer can’t have gotten far!"

A few hundred meters away, Chen Ji was being carried on someone’s shoulder, followed by another person.

In the jostling, he looked back at the person following them and spoke with difficulty, "Brother Biaozi? I thought you had already left!"

Wu Hongbiao revealed a smile and said, "I was planning to leave, but Si Cao thought that you might not leave because you wanted to do something alone, so he stayed with me. Earlier we heard the commotion in Hongyi Lane and sneaked over covertly, but we dared not get too close. After you escaped from the rooftop, we trailed you from a distance. At the time, we didn’t recognize you and thought you were some lawless madman."

The next moment, they heard the coachman Si Cao say in a cold voice, "Don’t be in a hurry to chat, be careful not to disturb your breath and be caught up by someone."

After speaking, he carried Chen Ji and turned left and right, taking up to an hour to arrive in a dark alley where a bullock cart was tied up.

Si Cao threw Chen Ji onto the cart bed and then took a seat at the front, lashing the whip and driving the bullock cart southward.

Chen Ji sat up and asked, "Where are we going?"

The coachman Si Cao said calmly, "We’ll head south to Yangzhou to lay low until the Spy Department lifts the blockade, then head north back to the Jing Dynasty. The Ning Dynasty no longer has a place for us, we have to go back and find your uncle."

Chen Ji was stunned; he looked back at the receding buildings and blue stone pathways. Was he really going to leave the Ning Dynasty after all?

He asked in a low voice, "Is there no other way?"

"There’s no other way, tonight you wounded Jin Zhu and killed Liang He and Yong, from now on neither the Military Intelligence Department nor the Spy Department can accommodate you."

"Liang He and Yong?"

"It was Manager Yuan whom you just killed," said Si Caogui in a cold voice. "He was once your uncle’s man, but he betrayed your uncle to present a show of loyalty to Lu Guanwu. Such a treacherous and unfaithful scoundrel deserves to be executed by everyone; even if you didn’t kill him today, I would have found a way to do it before leaving."

Chen Ji leaned against the cart in silence for a long time, "Why are you so loyal to my uncle?"

Si Caogui tightened his grip on the reins, "It’s none of your business."

Chen Ji recalled his fight with Manager Yuan and wondered, "What Cultivation Path did he practice that made his body as though it had copper skin and iron bones, impervious to the blade?"

"Before he came to the Ning Dynasty, your uncle had arranged for him to go undercover in our Jing Dynasty’s Shengjing City, at the Kujue Temple, where he practiced the Golden Bell Path. This path has no shortcuts; one must strike the bell in front of Buddha every day for ten years without fail to forge copper skin and iron bones. However, since he had only struck the bell for ten years, there were naturally many flaws. There once was an old monk at Kujue Temple who struck the bell for sixty years, his body of copper skin and iron bones without any flaw."

Exhausted, Chen Ji rested in the cart, "I learned something new. So, bell-striking can also be a form of cultivation."

He remembered the little monk beside the Princely Heir seemed to do the same, needing only to recite the Sutra of the Original Vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva over and over again as a form of practice.

With this in mind, wouldn’t the Buddhist Sect and the Daoist have many Cultivation Paths? No wonder the Buddhist Treasure dared to compete with the money shops...

During his time in the Ning Dynasty, Chen Ji had not seen a single money shop on the streets; surely the Buddhist Treasure had a monopoly.

Chen Ji then asked, "Exactly how many Si Cao do we have in the Military Intelligence Department?"

The coachman Si Cao was silent for a moment, seemingly deciding that they were of their own people and thus no longer hiding, "There used to be three, now there are ten, assigned the code names Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, and Gui."

"What are you?"

"I’m ’Gui’, and Manager Yuan was ’Xin’."

The Twelve Zodiacs of the Ning Dynasty correspond to the ten ’Heavenly Stems’ of the Jing Dynasty.

Chen Ji asked, "Why is there no place for us in the Ning Dynasty anymore?"

Si Caogui calmly said, "Originally, the Military Intelligence Department was raised by your uncle. Now that Lu Guanwu has been promoted to Military Strategist Envoy, overseeing all military intelligence of the Jing Dynasty, he’s brought his old followers in, planning to gradually purge your uncle’s old followers. The Division Head was also one of your uncle’s old followers, but I’ve been unable to contact him for half a month; I fear he’s already met with foul play. Once a new Division Head is appointed, there will surely be another purge."

Chen Ji suddenly asked, "Wait, if all of my uncle’s old followers have been purged, then who in the Military Intelligence Department, other than you, Manager Yuan, and Brother Biaozi, knows about my identity as a Jing Dynasty spy?"

Si Caogui pondered for a moment and replied, "The Division Head knew too."

Chen Ji took a deep breath, "But the Division Head has also been taken care of by Lu Guanwu, does that mean, apart from you and Brother Biaozi, no one else in the Military Intelligence Department knows my identity?"

After thinking it over again, Si Caogui replied, "Yes."

Chen Ji stood up, grabbed the reins from Si Caogui’s hands, and brought the bullock cart to a halt, resolutely and decisively saying, "You go to Yangzhou, I’m going back to Taiping Medical Hall."