135. Black Jade
In the dim room, Chen Ji slowly opened his eyes.
The doors and windows of the dark room were closed, and the moon could only cast a hazy light and shadow through the white paper window.
He heard the light footsteps outside the door gradually moving away, and finally going downstairs.
Chen Ji lay flat on the bunk, slowly put the dagger back into his sleeve, and breathed a sigh of relief: at least those guests with knives were not here to assassinate them.
No wonder an old hand like Prince Jing didn't notice the problem with this inn. No wonder Prince Jing went on a secret tour even when he was ill. It turned out that everything was for the meeting tonight.
But Chen Ji's heart suddenly started to worry again: Who was meeting with Prince Jing? What did the other party want to discuss with Prince Jing?
rebellion!
Apart from this, Chen Ji couldn't think of anything else that would require a powerful vassal to come to a small county town incognito and keep a meeting so secret.
He sighed in his heart, thinking it was a rebellion.
If caught up in such a situation, the fate of Prince Jing and his entire household would be uncertain. For example, in Ning Shi, civil officials who disobeyed the emperor might have a chance of survival, but princes faced no such fate. Some princes were steamed to death in bamboo steamers, others were locked in their rooms and starved to death. The methods of death were bizarre and extremely cruel.
If this fails, the Crown Prince, Bai Li...
However, Chen Ji was now even more puzzled as to who exactly the person Prince Jing wanted to see was, Liu Gun, the Elder Liu? Or perhaps… the Chief of the Jing Dynasty's Military Intelligence Department?
He let out a long breath, slowly sat up, and looked at all the tenants carefully.
Mr. Wang, the prince and the others were exhausted from the journey and fell asleep early. The other tenants were sleeping very soundly, snoring loudly.
Chen Ji sat on the bunk bed and hesitated for a moment, but finally got up quietly, walked to the window quietly, opened the window a little and looked out.
He didn't dare open the gap wider, so he could only scan the yard through the gap from different angles.
Outside the window was the backyard, where a horse-drawn carriage, several ox-drawn carts, and boxes of goods were parked.
Several men in black were scattered in the yard, vaguely guarding something.
Chen Ji looked to the side and saw a man in a black robe standing quietly under the thatched eaves of the stable, waiting calmly.
This is the person Prince Jing wants to see!
Chen Ji changed his angle, trying to see the man's face more clearly. However, the man's upper body was obscured by the eaves of the thatched hut, so he couldn't see his face at all, and couldn't tell his age.
At this time, a faint light was reflected from the waist of the man in black robe. It was a jade pendant.
As the ancients said, a gentleman will never leave his jade without a reason.
Ordinary scholars and officials would wear jade around their waists, but the jade worn by ordinary people is either white or green, but this person wore a black jade!
The saying "a gentleman is like jade" has always been used to describe a gentleman's noble character. What kind of person would wear a piece of black jade?
While thinking, Prince Jing followed a man in black out of the inn and came to the stable.
Prince Jing's body
The two spoke in very low voices, so Chen Ji couldn't hear a word from the second floor.
In the yard, a man in black casually glanced at the window on the second floor. Chen Ji was startled and leaned back slightly to avoid being discovered by the other party.
Through the gap, he saw that the other party did not react after his eyes swept over him, but just looked around other places in the yard as if nothing had happened.
Chen Ji breathed a sigh of relief.
However, the next moment, he felt something was wrong... one of the men in black in the yard was missing!
Chen Ji retreated quickly without hesitation and lay down on his bunk to take a nap.
After just a few breaths, he heard the wooden door of the dormitory creak and be slowly pushed open.
A man in black, holding a long knife, looked around the room with a serious expression. Seeing that everyone was asleep, he leaned over and observed everyone's eyelids in the dim moonlight.
If a person is not asleep, his eyelids will twitch uncontrollably, and it is absolutely impossible to disguise it.
Chen Ji didn't expect that the followers brought by the black-robed man downstairs were so alert that they could detect something unusual even when the window was only slightly opened.
Not only that, after noticing something was wrong, the other party did not say anything, but calmly and quietly gestured for someone to go upstairs to check... Chen Ji didn't even know when the other party had passed the message to his colleagues.
The man in black hung the long knife on Chen Wenzong's neck, leaned over and stared at Chen Wenzong's eyelids quietly. If there was any movement, the blade would probably cut Chen Wenzong's artery immediately.
After dozens of breaths, the man in black slowly stood up, moved a step to the right, and leaned in front of Chen Wenxiao to repeat what he had just done.
The other party was extremely serious and focused, and did not intend to let go of any suspicious person.
Time passed bit by bit, and seeing that there were two or three more people who would find Chen Ji, Chen Ji immediately controlled the ice flow in his body to spread out from his dantian, pulling himself into the dark sea of clouds and above the green mountains.
After a moment, the man in black leaned over to check on Chen Ji, and the cold knife stopped at Chen Ji's neck, as if it was about to fall at any time.
However, Chen Ji's eyelids did not move, and there was nothing unusual.
After dozens of breaths, the man in black felt relieved and then checked the prince beside him.
There were more than ten people sleeping in the room, and not a single one was missed.
After the entire investigation was completed, the man in black retreated silently out of the house with a knife in hand.
He whispered to his colleagues waiting outside, "They're all asleep. Did you see it wrong?"
Another person looked puzzled. "I clearly remember that the second-floor windows were all closed tightly, but now that window is open a crack. Besides, who would sleep with the window open in this cold winter?"
"That's right," the black-clad man in charge of the inspection whispered, "How about killing them all? There must be no word of Prince Jing meeting with you tonight!"
The other person narrowed his eyes slightly and said: "I can't make the decision on this matter, you stay here and watch.
I'll go ask Prince Jing. No, I can't ask Prince Jing, I have to ask you alone."
…
…
The rooster crowed.
The prince patted Chen Ji beside him and said, "Hey, wake up. How come you can sleep more than me?"
Chen Ji opened his eyes and immediately glanced at where Prince Jing was lying. He saw that Prince Jing had just stood up and was saying with a smile, "We have to leave quickly, otherwise we won't be able to reach Luhun Villa before dark."
Prince Jing's face showed no change of expression, as if everything that happened last night was just a dream of Chen Ji. But the black-clad man was not fake, and Chen Ji was chased by Feng Huai all night on the green mountain.
Is the crisis over?
Have the people who came to see Prince Jing left?
Chen Ji had no idea. He didn't know what happened after he fell asleep, but it seemed that he had gotten away with it.
He stood up and went downstairs with the prince. They squatted in the yard, broke off a willow branch, and brushed their teeth.
While brushing, Prince Jing squatted beside him without any airs and asked casually, "Did you sleep well last night?"
The prince said helplessly, "Dad, this inn is freezing cold, and the bedding stinks. If you didn't insist on hiding your identity, we could live in the palace's farm, and there would be people waiting to burn charcoal for warmth."
"You should go out and suffer a little every year, so you can understand what life is like for the common people," Prince Jing scolded with a smile, then turned to ask Chen Ji, "How about you? How did you sleep?"
Chen Ji smiled and replied, "Not bad, I sleep soundly, it doesn't matter where I am."
Prince Jing said, "That's good."
At this time, Princess Baili and Zhang Xia walked out of the inn hand in hand, and did not separate until they entered the backyard.
Zhang Xia said to Bai Li, "Wait a moment. I'll go to the shopkeeper to pick some willow branches and some green salt for you."
Bai Li smiled and said, "Okay."
When Zhang Xia hurried to the front hall, the prince looked at Bai Li and was inexplicably shocked: "You two were so incompatible before entering the house yesterday, how come you are holding hands so early in the morning?!"
Bai Li smiled and said, "We talked until midnight last night, and I found that Zhang Xia is actually a pretty good person. He's just a little too straightforward, not as domineering as I imagined."
The prince sighed, "You girls' emotions are like the wind, coming and going quickly!"
Bai Li glanced at him and said, "Don't ask too much about girls' affairs."
Prince Jing stood up, threw away the willow branches, put his straw hat back on his head, and casually said, "After washing up, hurry out. We still have to hurry on our way."
"Okay," the prince replied.
When the sky was bright, everyone got on the ox cart and swayed towards Luhun Villa.
Chen Ji looked around silently, and found that when the ox cart was moving, several young men dressed as scholars carried boxes on their backs and followed behind the ox cart, talking and laughing, neither getting closer nor farther away.
(End of this chapter)
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