On Anxi Street outside the Taiping Medical Hall, Yun Yang and Jiao Tu, both dressed in black, squatted side by side in front of Meng Ji, resting their chins on their hands.
"He looks like he's in pain... Does it always hurt like this when he creates dreams?" Jiao Tu asked.
Yun Yang shook his head.
"I don't know. Maybe it's because I paid more this time, so he put more effort into it?"
Across from them, Meng Ji's face was twisted in agony, his body convulsing as if he were possessed by some spirit.
Yun Yang frowned, feeling a sense of déjà vu.
"Meng Ji looks like he's being pricked by needles. No wonder he charges so much for creating dreams. The cost is indeed high."
Jiao Tu nodded quickly in agreement.
"Yeah, the money's worth it. He deserves it!"
In the dream, Meng Ji, who had taken on the form of Zhou Chengyi, was being pricked by the illusory versions of Jiao Tu and Yun Yang created by Chen Ji.
Every three seconds, they moved to a new spot, covering his entire body with needle pricks.
Chen Ji stood in the distance, deep in thought.
He knew this was a dream, but how had it come to be? Yun Yang! He remembered how Yun Yang had inexplicably cut off a strand of his hair outside Liu Shiyu's house.
That strange act was the only explanation for his current bizarre predicament.
Realizing this, Chen Ji decided to break free from the dream.
In an instant, the courtyard of the Zhou residence turned transparent, and behind it, a blurry image of the medical hall's main hall appeared.
The two scenes overlapped, but Chen Ji felt as if he were trapped in a giant spider's web, unable to break through the layer of the dream.
Meng Ji sneered.
"Trying to leave? Come play in the endless abyss!"
As soon as he spoke, the Zhou residence collapsed into a bottomless pit, the sky and earth changed colors, and Yun Yang and Jiao Tu vanished into wisps of smoke.
What had once been a small courtyard in the dream now expanded into an endless void.
Chen Ji felt disoriented, unable to tell which was reality and which was the dream.
Meng Ji returned to his original form, standing in the abyss, straightening his robe and smoothing his messy hair.
In a high-pitched voice, he said, "I almost lost to a mere apprentice like you. You really made me angry... I didn't expect you to have the talent of a 'Xingguan,' forcing me to create a first-class dream!"
As Meng Ji spoke, Chen Ji felt as if he were splitting apart, unable to distinguish left from right, up from down.
The world seemed to turn upside down.
Suddenly, the ground of the abyss gave way, and Chen Ji fell into darkness.
When he opened his eyes, he was in a sea of molten lava, surrounded by tens of thousands of people struggling in the scorching heat.
In the next moment, the lava world disappeared, and Chen Ji fell again, this time into a freezing cold pool, suffocating and shivering.
He tried to hold onto his sanity, but every time he did, he fell into another layer of the dream.
With each fall, he lost more of his grasp on reality, and the blurry image of the medical hall's main hall faded further from his sight.
Just then, four streams of molten fire poured out from a furnace, enveloping his body.
Chen Ji found that he could move his hands! The molten streams lifted him out of the cold pool, back into the lava world, then into the abyss, and finally back to the Zhou residence.
But being able to move only his hands wasn't enough.
He was still one step away from escaping the dream...
Wait, it was useful!
Chen Ji reached out and felt around the counter, finding the "Medical Compendium."
He flipped through the pages, the sound of rustling paper filling the air.
A moment later.
"Chen Ji?" Liu Quxing's voice pierced through the dream, pulling Chen Ji back to reality.
He woke up!
Chen Ji stood behind the counter, breathing lightly.
He turned to Liu Quxing.
"Senior Brother Liu, what brings you here?"
Liu Quxing, wrapped in a thick coat, stood by the counter, looking at the disheveled Medical Compendium in front of Chen Ji.
He sighed in exasperation.
"The sound of you flipping through books in the middle of the night is deafening. I can't sleep... Junior Brother Chen, can you please stop reading at night? It scares me..."
Chen Ji smiled.
"Alright, I won't read anymore."
Liu Quxing's face lit up.
"That's more like it! Master always says we should sleep by the hour of Hai to nourish ourselves."
Chen Ji nodded sincerely.
"Thank you for the reminder, Senior Brother."
This time, he was truly grateful to Liu Quxing.
If it weren't for him, Chen Ji might still be trapped in the dream.
Liu Quxing grabbed Chen Ji's arm.
"Get some rest. We're brothers in this. When Master gets angry, we'll face it together!"
Meanwhile, Meng Ji also woke up from his meditative state, his pupils flickering.
He looked at Yun Yang and Jiao Tu, his body trembling slightly before he snapped, "You said he was just an ordinary person! Next time, if you need me to create a dream for someone with Xingguan talent, you have to tell me in advance. That's a different price!"
Yun Yang and Jiao Tu exchanged confused glances.
"We didn't know. Does he really have the talent to become a Xingguan?"
Meng Ji glared at them.
"How could it be fake? A third-class dream only trapped him for the time it takes to burn a stick of incense. A second-class dream only held him for half an hour."
But he was also puzzled: How had Chen Ji managed to escape the dream in the end?
Yun Yang waved his hand.
"Let's not talk about that for now. Tell me, is Chen Ji a spy for the Jing Dynasty?"
Meng Ji snorted.
"He's definitely not."
With that, he stood up and brushed off his pants.
"Now, where's my payment? Double the amount, and I only accept Buddhist coins."
Yun Yang thought for a moment, then reluctantly took off a string of Buddhist beads from his wrist.
Each black-purple bead was engraved with strange patterns and tiny numbers.
He said with a pained expression, "Five hundred taels of silver. You can withdraw it from any temple."
Meng Ji looked at the Buddhist coins and finally nodded in satisfaction.
"Deal. Next time you have an interrogation job, remember to call me."
Jiao Tu muttered, "With that much money, you could buy so many new clothes and jade bracelets. Bao Hou charges less than you. Maybe we'll go to him next time."
Meng Ji smoothed his hair and said leisurely, "Go ahead and hire him. But he's a big mouth. He can't keep secrets."
Jiao Tu rolled her eyes.
"We're all colleagues, and all you care about is money, money, money."
Meng Ji sneered.
"Why don't you go kill Wu Xiu for me for free?"
Jiao Tu glared at him.
"I'm not going."
Meng Ji put the string of beads on his wrist and waved as he walked away.
"I'm off. The business in Kaifeng is done. I'm heading to Jinling tomorrow."
As he left, Yun Yang whispered, "If Chen Ji really has the talent to become a Xingguan, we can't let the Inner Minister know about him... Otherwise, he might really end up ruling over us."
...
...
Late at night, Chen Ji lay on the shared bed, unable to sleep.
His mind was filled with the events of the past few days.
Suddenly, he heard a rustling sound from the bed next to him.
He opened his eyes slightly and saw Liu Quxing, wrapped in a coat, tiptoeing out of the room with a book tucked under his arm.
Chen Ji watched through the crack in the door as Liu Quxing slipped into the kitchen and lit a small oil lamp.
What the hell...
Chen Ji sat up, first checking the five small silver ingots hidden in the cracks of the wooden bed, then pulling out a book from under the mattress: "Jinsi Lu."
This was the book Wu Yun had retrieved for him from Liu Shiyu's residence.
At the time, everyone's attention had been drawn to the "Four Books and Five Classics," and no one had noticed anything unusual about the other books.
But Chen Ji only needed to glance through it to confirm that this book contained a secret message technique: the "Fanqie Method."
The Fanqie Method involved taking the initial consonant of one character and the final vowel of another to form a new character.
For example, the characters "Shi Zhang," "Xiao Da," "Zong Luo," and "Yi Jiu" corresponded to the sounds "up," "down," "left," and "right."
Chen Ji sat on the bed, using the faint light from the window to read through "Jinsi Lu," arranging every possible combination of characters that could form new words.
When he was halfway through, he suddenly pieced together the characters: "The Jing Dynasty does not trust the messages from the Dai Prince's residence. We need to confirm with you personally."
Chen Ji's pupils contracted.
The message hidden in this book was even more explosive than the one in the "Four Books and Five Classics."
It directly implicated the Jing Prince's residence.
Zhou Chengyi was a spy for the Jing Dynasty, delivering messages to Liu Shiyu on their behalf.
And this book in Liu Shiyu's home was meant for a high-ranking official in the Prince's residence.
Liu Shiyu was the link between the Jing Dynasty and a powerful figure in the Jing Prince's residence!
When Yun Yang had told Chen Ji to implicate the Jing Prince's residence, Chen Ji had thought it was a setup.
But now, Yun Yang's words had come true—the Jing Prince's residence was indeed colluding with the Jing Dynasty!
Chen Ji's eyes gleamed with determination.
The Ning Dynasty and the Jing Dynasty meant nothing to him.
What mattered was that he could seize the initiative.
He continued deciphering the second half of the book, and by the time dawn approached, he had finally uncovered the rest of the message: "The spy in the Prince's residence will find an opportunity to meet with you."
Chen Ji was stunned.
There was a spy from the Military Intelligence Bureau in the Prince's residence.
Who could it be?
Wait, could the spy in the Prince's residence be someone from the Taiping Medical Hall?
Earlier, the master had used divination to predict that going out for a consultation would bring great misfortune.
That very morning, the master had left with the Liu family...
From this, it seemed the master had some connection with the Liu family.
Could it be that the master wasn't going to treat an illness, but to exchange information?
Was the master the spy for the Jing Dynasty?
Wait, Liu Quxing's habit of not washing his dirty clothes and insisting on taking them back to his mother could also be a way to hide information...
Chen Ji couldn't help but laugh at his own deductions.
His nerves had been so tense these past few days that now everyone seemed like a spy.
Thinking this, he leaned halfway out of the bed and quietly opened the door to peek into the kitchen.
At that moment, Liu Quxing, holding a book, also leaned out of the kitchen, sneakily checking if anyone had noticed him studying in secret...
Their eyes met.
Liu Quxing: "..."
Chen Ji: "..."
Both silently retreated back to their beds, leaving She Dengke snoring soundly, carefree and untroubled.
(End of Chapter)