Chapter 73: The Jianghu

The night colors of Hongyi Xiang are intense.

From the head of the alley to the tail, lanterns hang and streamers are tied, as if every day is a new happy marriage and every night is for drinking away sorrow. The buildings are full of beckoning red sleeves.

Jinxiangfang is therefore famous. It is within this great red color that gold leaf and gold powder are used to wipe each beam and pillar into a golden color. The Caisson ceiling of the Qianqiu Pavilion inside the building is inlaid with gem-studded, golden-green splendor, dazzling and magnificent.

This kind of method is already common in Jinling, but in Luocheng, it is still unique.

In the corner outside Hongyi Xiang, dark clouds slowly hide into the blackness. Chen Ji then quietly climbs up the wall eaves with both hands, using only slight force before leaping up and standing steadily on top of the wall eaves.

With another light leap, he wraps his hands around the protruding eaves of the building, swinging himself onto the roof.

His right leg is injured and cannot exert much strength, but fortunately, twenty-six lamp furnaces have already been lit, and he can easily climb the building relying solely on his arm strength.

Chen Ji squats down, quietly surveying his surroundings. Below the building, people flow like a shuttle, like a flowing river. Above the building, gray figures dot the rooftops and eaves, forming an undulating landscape.

Each roof ridge is like a mountain ridge. The side facing Hongyi Xiang is the sunny side with light, while the other side is the shady side with no light.

Confirming no one is present, Chen Ji slowly walks on the shady side of the roof. He steps lightly on the gray tiles, afraid of alarming the people below. Fortunately, Hongyi Xiang is originally noisy, and a tiny footstep sound is nothing.

As he walks, he gazes over the roof ridge, looking towards Hongyi Xiang below.

Chen Ji on the gray tiles walks in the night, while Bai Li and Shizi walk in the lamplight of Hongyi Xiang, as if they are two parallel lines that will never intersect.

He turns his head and stares at the footsteps of Bai Li and Shizi, wanting to see where Shizi is going, his heart hoping a thousand, ten thousand times that it's not Jinxiangfang, as there will be danger there.

At this time, he sees peddlers carrying shoulder poles coming and going. County Lord Bai Li stops and picks a box from a shoulder pole. The box contains a small dish of syrup and plum sauce mixed together. She picks at it with a bamboo stick, eating as she walks.

Amidst the crowd and the red colors, Bai Li and Shizi are both wearing white clothes, as if they are two pieces of mutton-fat jade hidden in the turbulent flow of a chaotic world, particularly conspicuous and eye-catching.

The next moment, Chen Ji hears the sound of tiles flipping both in front and behind him.

He suddenly turns his head and sees two people in black clothes with long knives hanging at their waists, climbing up from below the building using a ladder.

On the cold and remote roof, Chen Ji is startled, and the two people in black clothes are also startled.

These are elite black-clothed people, not knowing if they belong to the Mijian Department or the Junji Department. They climbed onto the roof to reside high and overlook Hongyi Xiang, to observe and stand guard, and just happened to meet Chen Ji!

In an instant, the two black-clothed people silently draw their knives and step on the slanted gray tiles, one in front and one in back, to kill him.

Chen Ji secretly curses his bad luck. When he first climbed up, he was worried that someone had the same idea as him, so he climbed up only after determining that there was no one on the roof.

At that time, he was still wondering in his heart why such a good observation post was not occupied by anyone. The battle layout consciousness of the Junji Department and the Mijian Department was really too poor.

Who would have thought that the other side didn't not think of this place, but arrived late!

Below the building, the song and dance in the red colors are peaceful. Above the building, in the night, the killing intent is fully present. None of the three people shouts or speaks, as if they are all afraid of being discovered by the outside world.

Chen Ji quickly runs. He controls the pain in his leg as much as possible, making himself run like a normal person, running out of the encirclement before the two black-clothed people surround him, avoiding the danger of a pincer attack from front and back.

But these two black-clothed people are also battle-hardened. After seeing through Chen Ji's intention, they immediately change their movement trajectories, linking up one in front and one in back to seal off his direction of movement.

The roof is only that big a place. Chen Ji has no way to retreat, unless he jumps directly off the roof.

He stands on the edge of the roof eaves, looking at the height of over six meters and thinking of his injured leg. After repeated consideration, he still retreats.

In the time it took to think, the two elites had already killed their way to Chen Ji's front and simultaneously swung a horizontal chop!

The two long knives twisted towards him like scissors, the blades reflecting the red light from the alley!

In a breath, Chen Ji's knife technique instinct, engraved in his bones, seemed to be awakened. Like the sound of an iron hammer forging, it suddenly erupted in his heart. He swiftly and thunderously swung out two knives, one in front and one in back.

Chen Ji's speed is faster than that of the two black-clothed people. Although he drew his knife later, he arrived first.

The trajectory of his knife draw is like a white deer in a forest, sketching lightly and naturally.

Two clangs of metal against iron are drowned in the noise of Hongyi Xiang. One black-clothed person's forged steel long knife breaks with a sound, the broken blade clanging as it falls onto the slanted tiles.

It slides along the roof and falls into the dim small courtyard behind.

Although the other black-clothed person's knife did not break, it was also shocked out of his hand.

Chen Ji is startled, and the two elites are also startled once again.

The pupils of the three people suddenly contract, as if they have seen something unbelievable.

Cuojin.

Chen Ji once asked Feng Huai what this move was called that makes his hand ache when it strikes a knife blade. Feng Huai replied, Cuojin, using clever force to find flaws and break the knife. If not for the special material of the whale, it should have broken long ago.

And now, a medical hall apprentice who was originally supposed to flee in disarray under a pincer attack, made a move under the instinct of a thousand hammer hundred refining, actually using a short knife used in the medical hall to chop medicinal materials, chopping and breaking one knife, and shocking another knife flying.

If Chen Ji hadn't been a bit unfamiliar with using Cuojin for the first time on outsiders, perhaps both knives would have broken.

The two black-clothed people look at each other. They only feel that tonight is a bit strange. It's one thing to encounter a knife guest of this level on this cold and remote roof, but why did this knife guest want to run, and why was this knife guest more startled than them!

Who knew that when Chen Ji fought with Feng Huai, he only felt that he couldn't use all his strength. The other side had no flaws in his body and often suppressed and beat him.

When facing an opponent like Feng Huai, he always felt a sense of powerlessness and frustration, even thinking that he had no talent for practicing the knife.

But when he changed opponents to people other than Feng Huai, everything seemed different.

The two black-clothed people lower their heads and look at the broken knife edge again. A trace of fear rises in their hearts, but since they have come, there is no reason to retreat.

The two people, wrapped in the firm will cultivated in the bitter cold place, simultaneously throw off the broken knives and draw daggers from their waists to stab at him.

The two people cooperate tacitly, one feinting an attack and the other snatching an attack, one virtual and one real, sealing off Chen Ji's possible escape routes.

However, Chen Ji suddenly feels that compared to Feng Huai, these two people are actually full of flaws.

In the instant that the two daggers, one in front and one in back, stab at him, Chen Ji's body lightly shifts, avoiding the trajectory of the two stabbing daggers. His left hand grabs one person's wrist, like iron pliers, preventing him from pulling the dagger back.

His right hand then lightly picks, and the knife blade picks and breaks the other person's hand tendon. With a clang, the dagger falls onto the gray tiles of the roof, rolling into the courtyard under the roof eaves.

The black-clothed person whose hand tendon was broken quickly retreats.

Chen Ji pulls the wrist of that one person, like pulling a puppet, sticking tightly to the retreating black-clothed person and pursuing him, his body urging the knife forward.

The short knife stabs one after another into the heart, spleen, and liver. The last knife wipes across the neck.

The wrist of the other black-clothed person is clamped and pulled, causing him to only stagger forward. He watches with wide eyes as his colleague is stabbed one knife after another, yet he cannot even stand steadily.

Before he could figure out how to struggle free from Chen Ji's wrist, he saw a cold flash of a knife suddenly reverse, drawing across his neck under the moonlight.

Blood splatters lightly on Chen Ji's face, which is stained with charcoal ash. He slowly loosens his hand, letting the black-clothed person slowly kneel and fall.

Chen Ji searches the corpses. He knows that all the Secret Spies under Jin Zhu carry a copper whistle that can imitate bird calls to transmit information, but these two people don't have one.

"These are Yuan Shopkeeper's people..."

The wound on his leg stabs with pain. He didn't feel it during the fight, but now Chen Ji discovers that the old injury was aggravated during the fight.

Chen Ji wipes away the blood on his hand to prevent it from slipping when he holds the knife, but it's no use.

He lowers his head and tears off a piece of cloth from the hem of his clothes to wrap around his hand. He raises his head again, gazing over the roof ridge towards Hongyi Xiang. Beside Shizi and Bai Li, several Jianghu people have gathered at some point, talking very happily.

He sees County Lord Bai Li and Shizi have already walked to the door of Jinxiangfang. Yan Girl walks out from inside the door, smiling and welcoming them in.

They are indeed going to Jinxiangfang.

Chen Ji sighs in his heart, standing silently on the roof, rapidly surveying his surroundings.

He doesn't care about Shizi and Bai Li; he must find Yuan Shopkeeper as soon as possible.

In Hongyi Xiang, more and more people are walking into Jinxiangfang, but he still doesn't see Yuan Shopkeeper. He doesn't know if the other side hasn't come or has already gone in.

Wait.

Chen Ji sees figures gathering in the darkness outside Hongyi Xiang. He sees over a hundred Secret Spies with long knives at their waists, divided into two teams, surrounding the alley from the head and the tail.

Among the crowd, Jin Zhu is also wearing a set of light armor, without the amiable smile of the past, looking more like a general directly dispatched from the palace front.

Further away, Chen Ji actually sees five hundred Xiuchou Guards using hemp cloth to wrap their horses' hooves, everyone wearing hats and raincoats, quietly holding spears and standing in the black night outside the alley.

The leader holds his knife horizontally on the horse saddle, unmoving.

Lin Chaoqing...

Lin Chaoqing has also come!

Chen Ji sighs that Jin Zhu is too cautious. He has just checked the clue of the lost firearms from the Gongzao Bureau, and he actually did not hesitate to cooperate with the Yuzhou Criminal Department, directly mobilizing all the Xiuchou Guards from the Mengjin Great Camp.

At the entrance of Hongyi Xiang, Lin Chaoqing sits on his horse and says indifferently, "The twelve zodiac signs of the Mijian Department are all impulsive and reckless. Bailu Yunyang mobilized the Xiuchou Guards last time and ended up in prison. I don't know what fate Master Jin Zhu will have this time."

Jin Zhu chuckles, "Can I be the same as them? I have already found the Jing Dynasty thief, and not only the external thief, but also the internal thief."

"Oh, Master Jin Zhu's tone is indeed extremely strict. There was no hint of it before,"

Lin Chaoqing mocks, "After you came to this humble Mengjin Great Camp, you shouted every day that you wanted to eat large Yellow River carp, making this humble Xiuchou Guard go fishing for you. This humble person thought you only knew how to eat.

With Bailu and Yunyang as examples, this time if you don't say what you want to do, this humble Xiuchou Guard will not make a move."

Jin Zhu smiles, "Commander Lin, don't say angry words. You lead the Yuzhou Criminal Department. Naturally, I also need to let you know why I mobilized the Xiuchou Guards.

Commander Lin, what do you think the Jing Dynasty thief wants to steal from our Ning Dynasty the most?"

"Military deployment maps, court secrets, firearms."

"Correct. Before, Zhou Chengyi always wanted to win over the officials of the Gongzao Bureau, which means their biggest goal is firearms.

So after I came to Luocheng, the first thing was to monitor the sale of all saltpeter and sulfur. The second thing was to pursue the inventory and accounts of the Gongzao Bureau.

A few days ago, I discovered that the firearm inventory and account books in the Gongzao Bureau did not match, and several drawings were also lost.

Subsequently, I followed the clues and caught six people, some from the Yuncai Gang, some from the Gongzao Bureau. Finally, I discovered that the batch of lost firearms flowed here, to Hongyi Xiang."

Lin Chaoqing doubts, "There are so many brothels in Hongyi Xiang. Which one is it? You should know that everyone doing business in Hongyi Xiang has a deep background. You don't want the Xiuchou Guards to check all the brothels one by one, right?"

Jin Zhu chuckles, "Earlier I set up a trap and caught twelve spy captives in the Chencang gambling house. Eleven of them swallowed poison and committed suicide. The last survivor defected and told me that he had once received instructions from Si Cao of the Junji Department to go to Jinxiangfang to pick up a batch of goods.

Reason dictates that the Jing Dynasty thief should not be stupid enough to trade in the same place twice, so at first, I only arranged several Secret Spies to monitor this place, considering it a move on the side.

Who knew that today, suspicious people suddenly transported another batch of goods into Jinxiangfang and were caught by me."

Lin Chaoqing no longer doubts. He knows that Jin Zhu is a trusted subordinate of Master Neiguan and has made great achievements.

The other side is still a lower ninth-rank zodiac sign, not because of insufficient ability, but because Jin Zhu and Tianma have too good a relationship, and Master Neiguan does not allow such good relations among the upper three-rank zodiac signs.

Some people speculate that if Bing Hu retires in recent years, Jin Zhu might take over.

But Lin Chaoqing knows that with Master Neiguan's character, as long as Tianma does not die, Jin Zhu will never have an opportunity.

He thinks for a moment and says, "Master Jin Zhu, the Xiuchou Guards will follow your dispatch tonight. Just don't make a mistake."

"That's enough with your words," Jin Zhu signals to the Secret Spies below.

Dense Secret Spies rush into Hongyi Xiang to arrest people. For a time, the soldiers are in chaos and the horses are in disarray. Guests in the wine houses and brothels panic and flee, afraid of being affected by this matter.

They want to escape Hongyi Xiang but are blocked at the north and south alley entrances by the Xiuchou Guards' cavalry, unable to leave at all.

Chen Ji hides on the roof and suddenly sees Shizi, Bai Li, and those Jianghu chivalrous guests also running out of Jinxiangfang. Seeing the two roads blocked, they simply rush into the wine house opposite Jinxiangfang, the building Chen Ji is standing on, wanting to escape through the wine house's main hall and flip over the wall from the back courtyard.

Six Secret Spies discover their intention to escape and immediately give up on arresting others, holding knives and chasing into the wine house.

Chen Ji stands on the edge of the roof eaves overlooking below and sees those Jianghu people beside Shizi reaching the back courtyard and lightly flipping over the courtyard wall, which is over two meters high.

Shizi shouts from the back courtyard across the wall, "Hey, give us a hand, help us flip over!"

The Jianghu people stop. One person leaps up, lies on the top of the wall, reaches out a hand and says, "Grab my hand, I'll pull you up."

But before Shizi could grab his hand, he sees six Secret Spies already holding knives and chasing in...

"Quickly go!"

The next moment, the Jianghu chivalrous guests actually abandon Shizi and Bai Li, turn around in the small alley outside the courtyard wall, and run away without a trace.

Chen Ji frowns. There is something fishy about this matter.

If Shizi came here just to play, then he only needs to stay honestly and wait for the Mijian Department to investigate.

When things are cleared up, those with no suspicion will naturally be fine.

Why risk escaping?

...