25. Decipher
On Anxi Street outside the Taiping Clinic, Yunyang and Jiaotu, both dressed in black, squatted side by side in front of Mengji, their chins propped up. "He looks like he's in pain... Is it like this every time he dreams?"
Yunyang shook his head: "I don't know. Maybe I paid more this time, so I put more effort into dreaming?"
The two men faced each other, but saw Meng Ji's expression was hideous and distorted, and his body was twitching, as if a witch was possessed.
Yun Yang felt like he had seen this scene before. He frowned and said, "Dream Chicken looks like I stabbed him. No wonder he charges such a high price every time he creates a dream. The price is really high."
Jiaotu nodded quickly, expressing his complete agreement: "Yeah, the money is worth it, he deserves it!"
In the dream, the dream chicken, which transformed into Zhou Chengyi, was being pierced by the fictitious Jiaotu and Yunyang created by Chen Ji. The piercing position was changed every three seconds, and the whole body was almost pierced.
Chen Ji stood in the distance, lost in thought. He already knew that this was just a dream, but how did this dream come about?
Cloud Sheep!
He remembered that Yun Yang had inexplicably cut off a strand of his hair outside Liu Shiyu's house!
Only this strange behavior can explain his current strange situation!
Thinking of this, Chen Ji decided to leave the dream.
In an instant, the Zhou Mansion courtyard in front of him became transparent, and behind the transparent Zhou Mansion, there was another blurry picture... the main hall of the clinic.
The two images overlapped. Chen Ji wanted to return to reality, but he seemed to be stuck in a huge spider web and could not break through this dream.
Meng Ji sneered and said, "Want to leave? Come and have some fun in the hell!"
As soon as he finished speaking, the Zhou Mansion suddenly collapsed into an abyss. The sky and earth changed color, and Yunyang and Jiaotu disappeared in a wisp of green smoke. The original dream had only been a small courtyard, but now it was extremely vast.
In a trance, Chen Ji couldn't tell which was reality and which was a dream, and fell into confusion again.
Meng Ji returned to his normal self. Standing in the abyss, he shook off his collared shirt, combed his messy hair with both hands, and whispered shrilly, "I almost fell for a little apprentice like you. It really made me angry... I didn't expect you to be a potential 'official'. You forced me to create a top-notch dream!"
As Meng Ji spoke, Chen Ji felt as if he was split apart, unable to tell left from right or up from down, as if the world was turned upside down.
Suddenly, the ground of the abyss collapsed, and Chen Ji's body fell into the darkness. When he opened his eyes again, he was already in the lava, and there were tens of thousands of people around him struggling in the magma, suffering from the pain of burning.
The next moment, the lava world disappeared, and Chen Ji fell down again, falling into the cold pool, being suffocated and squeezed by the cold.
He wanted to keep his sanity, but every time he tried to keep his sanity, he would fall into another world.
Every time he fell into a new world, he would lose a bit of his understanding of the real world, and he would no longer be able to see the blurry image of the main hall of the clinic.
At this moment, molten streams from the four furnace fires poured out and poured into his whole body. Chen Ji found that he could move his hands!
Those molten flows carried him from the cold pond world back to the lava world, and from the lava world back to the abyss world, and finally back to Zhou Mansion!
Then slowly stop.
But what's the point of only being able to move my hands? I'm still one step away from escaping this dream...
No, it works!
traces
Stretching out his arm to grope for the counter, he touched the "General Principles of Medical Skills" and flipped through the pages with a rustling sound.
A moment later.
"Chen Ji?" Liu Quxing's voice appeared, tearing the dream apart and instantly pulling Chen Ji back to reality.
The dream is over!
Chen Ji stood behind the counter, panting slightly. He turned to look at Liu Quxing: "Senior Brother Liu, why are you here?"
Liu Quxing, wearing a coat, stood beside the counter, looking at the messed-up Medical Principles in front of Chen Ji, feeling distressed: "The sound of you flipping through the pages in the middle of the night is deafening. It's hard for me to sleep... Junior Brother Chen, please stop reading in the middle of the night. I'm scared..."
Chen Ji smiled and said, "Okay, I won't watch it anymore."
Liu Quxing smiled brightly: "That's right, Master always said that we should sleep peacefully during the hour of Hai in order to nourish ourselves!"
Chen Ji said sincerely: "Thank you for the reminder, Senior Brother."
This time, he was really grateful to Liu Quxing. If it weren't for him, he would probably still be trapped in the dream.
Liu Quxing pulled Chen Ji's arm and said, "Go to bed early. We brothers share happiness and hardships together. When Master beats us, we will bear it together!"
On the other side, Mengji also woke up from sitting cross-legged, with his pupils rolling.
He looked at Yunyang and Jiaotu, his body suddenly trembling, and then he shouted angrily: "Didn't you say he was just an ordinary person? Next time you need me to create a dream for someone with the talent of an official, you must tell me in advance. There will be a different price!"
Yunyang and Jiaotu looked at each other in confusion, "We don't know either. Does he have the talent to become an official?"
Meng Ji angrily said, "How could it be false? A dream like the third one would only keep him awake for the time it takes to stick an incense stick, and a dream like the second one would only keep him awake for half an hour."
But he also had some doubts in his mind: How did Chen Ji finally escape from the dream?
Yun Yang waved his hand: "Let's not talk about this matter for now. Let me ask you, is Chen Ji a spy from the Jing Dynasty?"
Mengji said unhappily, "Are you sure he's not."
As he spoke, he stood up and patted his butt: "What about the reward? Double it, and I only accept Buddhist Tongbao."
Yunyang thought about it and finally took off a string of Buddhist beads from his wrist. Each black and purple bead was engraved with strange patterns and dense numbers.
He said distressedly: "Five hundred taels of silver, any temple can take it."
Mengji saw the Buddhist Tongbao and dusted himself off in satisfaction: "Deal, remember to look for me next time you need interrogation work."
Jiaotu said, "With so much money, I can buy so many new clothes and jade bracelets. Baohou's reward is lower than yours. We will go to him next time."
Meng Ji smoothed his hair and said slowly, "Then you should go find him. He's a big mouth and can't keep secrets."
Jiaotu curled her lips and said, "We are all colleagues, and all you do every day is collect money, collect money, collect money."
Meng Ji said disdainfully: "Go and help me kill Wu Xiu for free."
Jiaotu rolled her eyes at him and said, "I'm not going."
Meng Ji put the Buddhist beads on his wrist, turned around and waved: "Let's go, the errand in Kaifeng Prefecture has been completed, I will leave for Jinling tomorrow."
Watching his departing figure, Yun Yang whispered, "Chen Ji actually has the talent to become an official. We must not let the Minister of Internal Affairs know of his existence... Otherwise, he might really come after us."
…
…
Late at night, Chen Ji lay on his bunk bed and couldn't fall asleep, with every recent event swirling in his mind.
Suddenly, there was a rustling sound from the bed next to him. He opened his eyes slightly and saw Liu Quxing wearing a coat, holding a book between his armpits, and tiptoeing out of bed and going out.
Chen Ji looked through the crack in the door in confusion, only to see Liu Quxing sneak into the kitchen and light an oil lamp...
You fucking...
Chen Ji also sat up, first lifted the mattress to check the five small silver ingots hidden in the gaps between the wooden boards, and then took out a book from under the mattress: "Jinsi Lu".
This is the book that Wuyun helped him retrieve from Liu Shiyu's residence.
At that time, everyone's attention was drawn to Chen Ji's "Four Books and Commentaries", and there was no time to look for any unusual things in other books.
But Chen Ji only took two glances at it and was sure that the book contained a secret letter technique: the Fanqie method.
The so-called fanqie method is to combine the initial consonant of the previous character and the final vowel of the next character to form a new character. For example, the initial consonants and final vowels of the eight characters "Shi Zhang", "Xiao Da", "Zong Luo" and "Yi Jiu" correspond to the four tones of "shang", "xia", "zuo" and "you" respectively.
Chen Ji sat on the bunk bed in the dim light from the window, reading "Jinsi Lu" word by word, and arranging every combination that could form a new word.
After reading half of it, he suddenly put the words together in his mind: "Jing Chao doesn't believe me, the palace's message, needs to be confirmed with you in person."
Chen Ji's pupils shrank slightly. The information that this book wanted to convey was even more explosive than that in the "Four Books and Commentaries". It actually directly involved the internal affairs of Prince Jing's Mansion.
Zhou Chengyi is a spy from Jing Dynasty. He conveys information to Liu Shiyu on behalf of Jing Dynasty.
The book in Liu Shiyu's home was destined for a certain important figure in the palace. Liu Shiyu was the intelligence hub between Jing Dynasty and a certain important figure in the Jing Palace!
Originally, when Yun Yang asked Chen Ji to accuse Prince Jing's Mansion, Chen Ji thought that the other party was trying to frame him, but he didn't expect that Yun Yang's words would come true, and Prince Jing's Mansion was really connected with Jing Dynasty!
Chen Ji's eyes were bright. He had no sense of belonging to either Ning Dynasty or Jing Dynasty, so no matter what happened, it didn't matter. What mattered was that he could seize the initiative.
He continued to decipher the second half of the book until dawn, when he finally got the following message: The spy in the palace will find an opportunity to meet with you.
Chen Ji was stunned.
There's a Military Intelligence Department spy in the palace, who is it?!
Wait, could the spy in the palace be from Taiping Medical Clinic?
The master had previously used the hexagram technique to tell fortunes, and the hexagram said that going out for a consultation was a bad omen. As a result, the master passed away with the Liu family that morning...
Judging from this, Master seems to have a good relationship with the Liu family. Could it be that Master is not going there to diagnose a disease, but to exchange information?
Could Master be a spy for Jing Dynasty?!
Wait a minute, Liu Quxing's behavior of not washing dirty clothes and insisting on taking them back to his mother might be that he is hiding information in his clothes...
Chen Ji was so confused by his own inference that he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He had been so nervous these past few days that everyone looked like a spy to him now.
Thinking of this, he leaned out half of his body on the bunk bed, quietly opened the door and looked towards the kitchen opposite.
At this moment, Liu Quxing, holding a book in his hand, also leaned out of the kitchen and quietly looked around the apprentice dormitory to see if anyone had noticed him secretly studying...
Their eyes met.
Liu Quxing: “…”
Chen Ji: “…”
The two of them retreated silently, only She Dengke lay on the bed and slept soundly, without any worries.
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