Outside the Taiping dical Hall on Anxi Street, Yun Yang and Jiao Tu, both dressed in black outfits, squatted side by side in front of ng Ji, propping up their chins. "He seems to be in pain... Is it like this every ti he constructs dreams?"
Yun Yang shook his head. "I don't know, maybe it's because I offered a bigger reward this ti, so the dream construction is done with more heart?"
Across from them, they saw ng Ji's expression was fierce and twisted, his body convulsing from ti to ti, like a possessed spirit dium in the throes of a ritual dance.
Yun Yang always felt this scene was strangely familiar. He frowned and said, "Why does ng Ji look like he's been pricked by ? No wonder he charges so much for each dream construction; the cost is indeed significant."
Jiao Tu nodded vigorously in agreent. "Mhm, the money is well spent, he deserves to earn it!"
In the dream, ng Ji, who had taken the form of Zhou Chengyi, was being pinned down and pricked by the fictitious Jiao Tu and Yun Yang created by Chen Ji, changing spots every three seconds, quickly running out of places to prick.
Chen Ji stood in the distance, deep in thought. He knew this was all a dream, but how had this dream co about?
Yun Yang!
He rembered that just outside Liu Shenyu's house, Yun Yang had inexplicably snipped off a strand of his hair!
Only this bizarre behavior could explain his current perplexing circumstance!
With this in mind, Chen Ji decided to escape the dream.
In an instant, the courtyard of Zhou Mansion before his eyes beca transparent, and behind the transparent scenes of Zhou Mansion, another blurry image appeared... the main hall of the dical Hall.
The two images overlapped, and Chen Ji wanted to return to reality, but it was as though he was stuck to a giant spider's web, unable to break through this layer of the dream.
ng Ji sneered, "Want to leave? Co play in the Infinite Purgatory!"
As his voice fell, Zhou Mansion suddenly collapsed into an abyss, the world changed colors, and Yun Yang and Jiao Tu dissolved into wisps of green smoke and disappeared. The original courtyard dream had been small, but now it was boundless.
In a daze, Chen Ji found it hard to distinguish which level was reality and which was the dream, once again falling into confusion.
ng Ji returned to his own appearance, standing in the abyss he shook his double-breasted jacket and tidied his ssy hair, speaking in a high-pitched, delicate voice. "I almost tripped over such a minor apprentice like you, truly infuriating ... I didn't expect you to have the talent of an 'Executive Officer,' forcing to create a Class A Dream!"
As ng Ji spoke, Chen Ji felt as though he had split in two, unable to distinguish left from right, nor up from down, as if the world had turned upside down.
Suddenly, the ground of the abyss collapsed, and Chen Ji's body fell into darkness. When he opened his eyes again, he was in the midst of molten lava, surrounded by tens of thousands of people struggling in the magma, suffering from the burns.
The next mont, the Molten Lava World disappeared, and Chen Ji fell again, tumbling into a Cold Pool World, constricted by suffocation and cold.
He tried to keep his sanity, but each ti he tried to stay rational, he would fall into yet another layer of the world.
With each fall into a new world, he lost a part of his recognition of the real world and could no longer see the blurry image of the dical Hall's main hall.
Just then, molten streams burst forth from four stoves, enveloping his body, and Chen Ji realized he could move his hands!
The flows lifted him from the Cold Pool World back up to the Molten Lava World, and from the Molten Lava World back up to the abyss, finally returning to Zhou Mansion!
And then, it all ca to a gradual halt.
But what use was it to be able to move only his hands? He was still a step away from breaking free from the dream...
No, it was useful!
Chen Ji reached out his arms to feel around the counter and touched the dical Skills Summary, flipping the pages with a whoosh.
A mont later.
"Chen Ji?" Liu Quxing's voice appeared, tearing through the dream and instantly pulling Chen Ji back to reality.
He had woken from the dream!
Chen Ji stood behind the counter, catching his breath. He turned to look at Liu Quxing, "Senior Brother Liu, how did you co to be here?"
Liu Quxing, wearing a jacket, stood next to the counter, looking at the disheveled dical Skills Summary in front of Chen Ji with heartfelt pain. "The noise of you flipping through books in the middle of the night is deafening. It's hard for to sleep... Junior Brother Chen, can you not read books in the middle of the night anymore, I'm scared..."
Chen Ji laughed, "All right, I won't read anymore."
Liu Quxing's face brightened with a smile. "That's better. Master always says, 'At the hours of 9 to 11 PM, one must rest to nourish oneself.'
Chen Ji replied earnestly, "Thank you for the reminder, Senior Brother."
This ti, he really was grateful to Liu Quxing. If it weren't for him, he might still be trapped in the dream.
Liu Quxing pulled on Chen Ji's arm, "Let's rest early. As brothers, we share our fortunes and face troubles together. We'll bear the master's beatings together!"
Elsewhere, ng Ji also awoke from being seated, his pupils shifting.
He looked at Yun Yang and Jiao Tu, his body suddenly trembling, and then he angrily rebuked, "Didn't you say he was just an ordinary man? Next ti you need to construct a dream for soone with the talent of an Executive Officer, you must make it clear in advance. That's a different price!"
Yun Yang and Jiao Tu looked at each other, puzzled. "We didn't know either. Does he have the talent to beco an Executive Officer?"
ng Ji angrily said, "Could it be false? A Class C Dream only confined him for thirty minutes before he beca aware, and a Class B Dream could only keep him for an hour."
But in his heart, he also wondered: How did Chen Ji manage to escape the dream in the end?
Yun Yang waved his hand dismissively, "Let's not talk about that for now. I want to ask you, is Chen Ji a spy from the Jing Dynasty?"
ng Ji said irritably, "Make sure he isn't."
Saying so, he stood up and patted his bottom, "Where's my paynt? Double it, and I only accept Buddhist coins."
Yun Yang thought for a mont and finally took off a string of prayer beads from his wrist. Each blackish purple bead was engraved with strange patterns and dense numbers.
He lanted, "500 taels of silver can be withdrawn from any temple."
Seeing the Buddhist Treasure, ng Ji satisfiedly patted the dust off his clothing, "Deal, rember to find for the next interrogation job."
Jiao Tu said, "With so much money, think of how many new clothes, how many jade bracelets you could buy. Treasure Monkey charges much less, next ti we'll find him."
ng Ji stroked his hair leisurely, "Then go ahead and find him, but he's a big blabbermouth who can't keep secrets."
Jiao Tu pouted, "We're all colleagues here, and all you think about is money, money, money."
ng Ji scornfully said, "Go kill Wu Xiu for for free then."
Jiao Tu gave him a glare, "I won't."
ng Ji put the prayer beads on his wrist and turned to leave, waving his hand, "I'm off, I've finished my business with Kaifeng Prefecture. I'll be starting for Jinling tomorrow."
Watching his retreating figure, Yun Yang murmured softly, "Chen Ji actually has the talent to beco an Executive Officer. We really can't let the Lord Pri Minister know he exists... otherwise, he might really end up getting the better of us."
...
...
Deep into the night, Chen Ji lay on the common sleeping area, unable to fall asleep, his mind churning with every incident he had recently encountered.
Suddenly, rustling noises ca from the adjacent bunk. He slightly opened his eyes just in ti to see Liu Quxing wrapping himself in a padded jacket, sneakingly getting out of bed with a book in hand, and heading out the door.
Chen Ji, puzzled, peered through the crack of the door and saw Liu Quxing slip into the kitchen, where he then lit an oil residue lamp...
Damn it...
Chen Ji also sat up, first lifting his blanket to check the five small silver ingots hidden in the cracks of the wooden planks, then pulled out a book from beneath the blanket: Reflections On Things at Hand.
This was the book that Wu Yun had retrieved for him from the Liu Shenyu's mansion.
At the ti, everyone's attention was drawn to the Four Books with Chapter Notes, with no ti to notice anything odd about the other books.
But with just a glance, Chen Ji had determined that this book contained a secret ssaging technique: the Reverse Cut Technique.
The so-called Reverse Cut Technique was to take the initial consonant of one character and combine it with the rhy of the following character to form a new character. For example, the initials and rhys of the eight characters shi zhang, xiao da, zong luo, and yi jiu correspond respectively to the sounds for up, down, left, right.
Chen Ji, by the faint light from outside the window, sat in the common sleeping area, flipping through Reflections On Things at Hand line by line, arranging every combination that could form new characters.
Halfway through, he suddenly pieced together the individual characters: "Jing Dynasty doesn't trust to relay ssages for Prince Mansion, you need to confirm with you in person."
Chen Ji's pupils constricted slightly; the ssage this book wanted to convey was more explosive than that of the Four Books with Chapter Notes, directly implicating the insides of Prince Jing Mansion.
Zhou Chengyi was a Jing Dynasty spy, representing Jing Dynasty in passing ssages to Liu Shenyu.
And this book in Liu Shenyu's house was ant to be delivered to soone important in the Prince Mansion. Liu Shenyu was the intelligence hub between Jing Dynasty and soone inside Prince Jing Mansion!
Originally when Yun Yang asked Chen Ji to incriminate Prince Jing Mansion, Chen Ji thought the other party wanted to fra him, but he didn't expect Yun Yang's words to co true; there was indeed collusion between Prince Jing Mansion and Jing Dynasty!
Chen Ji's eyes glead with resolve. To him, neither Ning Dynasty nor Jing Dynasty felt like a place of belonging, so whatever happened was insignificant. What mattered was that he could seize the initiative.
He continued to decipher the latter half of the book until dawn was about to break, and finally got the ssage from the latter part: A spy inside the Prince Mansion will find an opportunity to et with you.
Chen Ji was astonished.
There was a spy from the Military Intelligence Departnt inside the Prince Mansion, but who?!
Wait, could the spy inside the Prince Mansion be soone from Taiping dical Hall?
Previously, his master interpreted an ominous on from a divination, suggesting that going on a dical visit was a bad sign, and that very morning, his master went along with the Liu Family...
Considering this, his master seed to have a connection with the Liu Family; could it be that his master didn't go to treat a patient but to exchange information?
Could his master be a spy for Jing Dynasty?!
And wait, Liu Quxing's behavior of storing dirty clothes without washing them, insisting on taking them ho to his mother, could also be a way of hiding information in the clothes...
Chen Ji was amused and frustrated by his own conjecture; he had been on edge so much these last few days that now everyone seed like a spy to him.
With this thought, he leaned out halfway from the common sleeping area and stealthily peeked through the crack of the door towards the opposite kitchen.
At that mont, Liu Quxing, clutching a book, was also sticking his head out from the kitchen, stealthily surveying the apprentice dormitory to see if anyone had noticed his secret studying...
Their eyes t.
Liu Quxing: "..."
Chen Ji: "..."
The two retracted their bodies in silence, while She Dengke lay in bed, sound asleep with no worries.
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