Chapter 25: Deciphering

On Anxi Street outside the Taiping Medical Clinic, Yun Yang and Jiao Tu, both dressed in black martial attire, sat side-by-side in a crouch in front of Meng Ji, resting their chins on their hands. "He looks like he's in pain... is it always like this when he creates a dream?"

Yun Yang shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe because I paid a higher price this time, so he's putting more heart into the dream-making?"

Opposite them, Meng Ji's expression was distorted and hideous, his body twitching rhythmically, looking like a shaman possessed during a ritual.

Yun Yang felt a sense of déjà vu. Frowning, he said, "Why does Meng Ji look like I'm the one stabbing him? No wonder he charges such a high price every time he creates a dream; the cost is indeed immense."

Jiao Tu nodded rapidly in complete agreement. "Mhm, mhm! If the money is worth it, he deserves to earn it!"

Inside the dream, Meng Ji—incarnated as Zhou Chengyi—was being held down and stabbed by the fictional versions of Jiao Tu and Yun Yang created by Chen Ji. They changed locations every three seconds, nearly covering his entire body.

Standing at a distance, Chen Ji fell into deep thought. He already knew this was a dream, but how was this dream being produced?

Yun Yang!

He remembered that outside Liu Shiyu's house earlier, Yun Yang had inexplicably cut off a lock of his hair!

Only such a bizarre behavior could explain his current strange predicament!

At this thought, Chen Ji decided to break free from the dream.

In an instant, the courtyard of the Zhou Estate before his eyes became transparent, and behind the transparent estate, another blurred image appeared... the main hall of the medical clinic.

The two images overlapped. Chen Ji wanted to return to reality, but it felt as if he were stuck in a massive spiderweb, unable to break through this layer of the dream.

Meng Ji sneered, "Want to leave? Come play in the Avici Hell instead!"

As the words fell, the Zhou Estate suddenly collapsed into an abyss. The colors of heaven and earth shifted, and Yun Yang and Jiao Tu dissolved into wisps of green smoke. The original dream had been just a small courtyard, but now it was infinitely vast.

In a daze, Chen Ji could no longer distinguish which layer was reality and which was the dream, falling back into a state of disorientation.

Meng Ji returned to his true form. Standing in the abyss, he brushed off his collar and combed his messy hair with both hands, saying in a high-pitched, thin voice, "I almost tripped up on a mere little apprentice like you. You've really made me angry... I didn't expect you to have the talent of an 'Officer.' You forced me to create a Grade A dream!"

As Meng Ji spoke, Chen Ji felt as if he were splitting apart. He could no longer distinguish left from right or up from down, as if the world had been turned upside down.

Suddenly, the floor of the abyss collapsed. Chen Ji's body plummeted into the darkness. When he opened his eyes again, he was submerged in molten lava, surrounded by tens of thousands of people struggling in the magma, suffering the agony of being burned.

In the next moment, the lava world vanished. Chen Ji fell further, plunging into a freezing pool, crushed by suffocation and cold.

He tried to maintain his sanity, but every time he attempted to do so, he would fall into another layer of the world.

Each time he fell into a new world, he lost a piece of his perception of the real world, and he could no longer see the blurred image of the medical clinic's main hall.

Just then, molten flow poured out from four furnace fires, flooding his entire body. Chen Ji realized he could move his hands!

The molten flow lifted him from the freezing pool back to the lava world, then from the lava world back to the abyss, and finally back to the Zhou Estate!

Then, it slowly came to a halt.

But what use was being able to move only his hands? He was still one step away from escaping this dream...

No, it was useful!

Chen Ji reached out his arms to grope the counter. He felt the *General Principles of Medicine*, and the sound of him flipping through the pages echoed loudly.

A moment later.

"Chen Ji?" Liu Quxing's voice appeared, tearing through the dream and instantly pulling Chen Ji back to reality.

The dream was over!

Chen Ji stood behind the counter, breathing slightly heavily. He turned to look at Liu Quxing. "Senior Brother Liu, why are you here?"

Liu Quxing, wrapped in a padded coat, stood by the counter looking at the disarrayed *General Principles of Medicine* in front of Chen Ji, looking heartbroken. "The sound of you flipping through books in the middle of the night is deafening. It's hard for me to sleep... Junior Brother Chen, please stop reading books in the middle of the night, okay? I'm scared..."

Chen Ji smiled. "Alright, I won't."

Liu Quxing beamed. "That's more like it! Master always says one must sleep by the Hour of the Pig to nurture oneself!"

Chen Ji said sincerely, "Thank you for the reminder, Senior Brother."

This time, he was truly grateful to Liu Quxing. If not for him, he might still be trapped in the dream.

Liu Quxing grabbed Chen Ji's arm. "Get some rest early. We brothers share both blessings and hardships. When Master starts beating us, we'll take it together!"

On the other side, Meng Ji also woke from his seated meditation, his pupils rolling back.

He looked at Yun Yang and Jiao Tu, his body suddenly trembling before he barked in anger, "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 Officer, you must state it clearly beforehand. That's a different price!"

Yun Yang and Jiao Tu looked at each other in confusion. "We didn't know. Does he have the talent to become an Officer?"

Meng Ji snapped, "How could it be fake? A Grade C dream only trapped him for the duration of an incense stick before he woke, and even a Grade B dream could only trap him for half an hour."

However, he was also somewhat puzzled: How did Chen Ji finally escape the dream?

Yun Yang waved his hand. "Let's not talk about that for now. Let me ask you, is Chen Ji a spy of the Jing Dynasty?"

Meng Ji said irritably, "I'm certain he isn't."

With that, he stood up and brushed himself off. "Where's my payment? Double the price, and I only accept Buddhist Treasure Coins."

Yun Yang thought for a moment and finally took a string of prayer beads from his wrist. Each dark purple bead was engraved with strange patterns and dense numbers.

He said with a pained expression, "Five hundred taels of silver. It can be withdrawn from any temple."

Seeing the Buddhist currency, Meng Ji finally patted the dust off his clothes with satisfaction. "Deal. Remember to look for me next time there's an interrogation job."

Jiao Tu said, "With that much money, think of how many new clothes and jade bracelets we could buy. Bao Hou's payment is much lower than yours; we'll look for him next time."

Meng Ji smoothed his hair and said leisurely, "Then go look for him. He's a big mouth; he can't keep a secret."

Jiao Tu curled her lip. "We're colleagues, after all, and all you know is collecting money, collecting money, collecting money."

Meng Ji said disdainfully, "Why don't you go help me kill Wu Xiu for free then?"

Jiao Tu rolled her eyes. "I'm not going."

Meng Ji put the string of beads on his wrist, turned, and waved. "I'm off. My business with the Kaifeng Prefecture is done. I set off for Jinling tomorrow."

Watching his departing figure, Yun Yang whispered, "If Chen Ji actually has the talent to become an Officer, then we must not let the Grand Chancellor know of his existence... otherwise, he might truly end up riding over our necks."

...

...

Late at night, Chen Ji lay on the bunk, unable to fall asleep, as every event he had recently encountered surged through his mind.

Suddenly, a rustling sound came from the adjacent bunk. He opened his eyes slightly and saw Liu Quxing, wrapped in a padded coat, clutching a book under his arm, tiptoeing out of bed and out the door.

Confused, Chen Ji peered through the crack in the door and saw Liu Quxing sneak into the kitchen, where he proceeded to light an oil lamp...

You bastard...

Chen Ji also sat up. He first lifted his mattress to check the five small silver ingots hidden in the cracks of the wooden boards, then pulled out a book from under the mattress: *Records of Near Reflection*.

This was the book Wuyun had retrieved for him from Liu Shiyu's residence.

At the time, everyone's attention had been drawn to the *Commentary on the Four Books*, so no one had noticed anything unusual about the other books.

But after only two glances, Chen Ji was certain that this book contained a secret messaging technique: the *Fanqie* method.

The so-called *Fanqie* method involves taking the initial consonant of one character and the final vowel of the next to form a new character. For example, the initials and finals of the eight characters *Shi, Zhang, Xiao, Da, Zong, Luo, Yi, Jiu* correspond respectively to the four sounds *Shang, Xia, Zuo, You* (Up, Down, Left, Right).

Using the faint light from the window, Chen Ji sat on the bunk and flipped through *Records of Near Reflection* word by word, arranging every combination that could form a new character.

After reading about half of it, the characters suddenly pieced together in his mind: *"The Jing Dynasty does not believe my message from the Prince of Dai's Mansion; it must be confirmed with you personally."*

Chen Ji's pupils constricted. The information this book intended to convey was even more explosive than the *Commentary on the Four Books*; it was directly involved in the internal affairs of the Prince of Jing's Mansion.

Zhou Chengyi was a Jing Dynasty spy, representing the Jing Dynasty to pass messages to Liu Shiyu.

And the book in Liu Shiyu's house was meant to be sent to a certain high-ranking figure within the Prince's Mansion. Liu Shiyu was the intelligence hub between the Jing Dynasty and a certain high-ranking figure in the Prince of Jing's Mansion!

When Yun Yang had originally prompted Chen Ji to implicate the Prince of Jing's Mansion, Chen Ji had thought the man was trying to frame him, but he hadn't expected Yun Yang's words to come true—there really was a connection between the Prince of Jing's Mansion and the Jing Dynasty!

Chen Ji's eyes shone brightly. Neither the Ning Dynasty nor the Jing Dynasty held any sense of belonging for him, so nothing mattered except his ability to seize the initiative.

He continued to decrypt the second half of the book until dawn, finally obtaining the remaining information: *"A spy within the Prince's Mansion will find an opportunity to meet with you."*

Chen Ji was stunned.

There was a spy from the Military Intelligence Department within the Prince's Mansion—who was it?!

Wait, could that spy within the Prince's Mansion be someone from the Taiping Medical Clinic?

Earlier, Master had used the I Ching to cast a hexagram, and the omen said that going out for a house call was a sign of great misfortune. As it turned out, Master had left with the Liu family early that morning...

Looking at it this way, Master seemed to have a relationship with the Liu family. Could it be that Master wasn't going to treat a patient, but to exchange intelligence?

Could Master be a spy for the Jing Dynasty?!

Wait again, Liu Quxing's behavior of keeping dirty clothes instead of washing them, insisting on taking them back to his mother, might also be a way to hide intelligence in the clothes...

Chen Ji found himself caught between laughter and tears at his own deductions. His nerves had been so taut these past few days that he now saw everyone as a spy.

Thinking of this, he leaned half his body out from the bunk and quietly pulled the door crack open to look toward the kitchen opposite.

At that moment, Liu Quxing, holding a book, was also leaning out of the kitchen, quietly peering into the apprentice dormitory to see if anyone had caught him studying in secret...

Their eyes met.

Liu Quxing: "..."

Chen Ji: "..."

The two silently retracted their bodies, leaving only She Dengke, who lay in bed snoring loudly, free of all worries.

(End of Chapter)