The young man from Luo City walked along the stone-paved street at night, a small black cat in his arms. His footsteps were heavy at first, but gradually grew lighter.
Life had to go on, didn't it? He had found new hope.
"Dark Cloud, let's talk about something cheerful," Chen Ji said with a smile. "Can you tell me about Prince Jing's Estate?"
Dark Cloud lay curled up on Chen Ji's arm, bored out of her mind, and pulled a dried fish from her little blue bundle to gnaw on. "What's there to say about that rotten place? It's a prince's estate, with deep compounds and sprawling courtyards. The old matrons and maids alone are mixed up in heaps of dirty business. For instance, Consort Jing bought Chunhua to seduce Prince Jing, but he wouldn't even look at her. And that venomous woman Chunrong is jealous of Chunhua's youth and beauty, so she secretly spits in her food..."
Chen Ji smiled and changed the subject. "Has anything major happened in the three months you've been at Prince Jing's Estate?"
"Of course!" Dark Cloud perked up. "The estate's about to get lively."
Chen Ji looked expectant. "Oh?"
Dark Cloud said eagerly, "The Double Ninth Festival is almost here. Prince Jing's eldest son, Zhu Yunxi, Consort Jing's daughter Zhu Lingyun, and Consort Yun's daughter Zhu Baili are all coming back from Eastern Grove Academy. I hear there's a little monk coming too."
"A little monk?" Chen Ji asked, puzzled.
Dark Cloud said, "I heard Consort Jing say he's the reincarnated Buddhist child of the Gening School, a tantric sect in Yunzhou. The Gening School needs the imperial court's support and official recognition, so they left him in the Central Plains as a hostage."
"Is Eastern Grove Academy very famous?" Chen Ji asked curiously. He remembered that his two elder brothers had returned from Eastern Grove Academy.
Dark Cloud explained, "I hear Eastern Grove Academy, Green Cliff Academy, and Yuelu Academy are known as the Ning Dynasty's three great academies. They're places the realm's talented scholars flock to like ducks. They say the monthly tuition is very expensive, and only children of prominent families can study there. Every time the imperial examination results come out, thirty percent of those who earn the juren degree are students from Eastern Grove Academy."
"After three years away, they're finally coming home. It should be lively... Which of them is the principal consort, Consort Jing or Consort Yun? And whose son is Zhu Yunxi?"
Dark Cloud answered, "Neither of them is. The principal consort was Zhu Yunxi's mother, but she died many years ago... I'm going back to Evening Star Court first!"
They were almost at the entrance to Taiping Medical Hall when she suddenly jumped out of Chen Ji's arms and vanished in a flash.
Chen Ji walked around the next corner and saw Old Yao standing at the entrance, his face expressionless. "Where did you go?" he asked.
Chen Ji thought, If I told you I took a kitten to find her mother, you certainly wouldn't believe me...
He answered, "I left something at home during my day off today, so I went back to get it."
Old Yao frowned, squeezing the wrinkles on his forehead together. "Actually, your family didn't give you today's tuition money, did they?"
Chen Ji froze.
Old Yao sneered. "I thought something was wrong at the time. That legal mother of yours has always been narrow-minded. To avoid paying your ten taels of silver in monthly tuition at Eastern Grove Academy, she sent you here to be my apprentice. It's good enough if she pays your tuition now. How could she possibly buy so many gifts to show me respect?"
Chen Ji said nothing, unsure how to answer.
Old Yao asked again, puzzled, "Wait, if the money didn't come from your family, where did you get your tuition? Don't tell me you've attached yourself to some family's wife..."
As he spoke, Old Yao's expression changed drastically, and his beard nearly bristled with anger. "You're an apprentice at my Taiping Medical Hall, at the very least. If you did something like that and word got out, how would it be any different from shitting straight into my trouser pocket?"
Chen Ji said, "...Huh?"
"What do you mean, huh?"
Chen Ji hurriedly said, "You've misunderstood. How could I possibly do something like that?"
"Then where did you get the money?"
Chen Ji fell silent for a moment. "Master, I can't tell you. I don't want to implicate you."
Old Yao looked him up and down. "The Secret Intelligence Directorate? You're working for them?"
Chen Ji marveled. No wonder people often said that with age came cunning. He had revealed so little, yet the old man had guessed correctly.
He could only explain, "Master, Cloud Goat came looking for me. I had no choice."
Old Yao stared fixedly at him for a long while, then turned and walked into the medical hall. "Whether you had a choice or not, you've already made it. I won't interfere or ask questions. Just pay your tuition every month. If you die out there someday, you'd better not let me hear about it either... Now get lost and go to bed!"
The medical hall's doors closed. Three people emerged from the corner at the end of Anxi Street. Cloud Goat folded his arms across his chest and muttered, "Imperial Physician Yao doesn't seem to like our Secret Intelligence Directorate much."
Bright Rabbit shrugged. "It's perfectly normal for him not to like us."
Cloud Goat looked at the third person. "Dream Rooster, that apprentice is the one I want to interrogate. I need to find out whether he's a spy for the Jing Dynasty."
The man called Dream Rooster wore a bright brown, cross-collared robe embroidered with dozens of vividly colored pheasants, making it look like a piece of stage costume.
Dream Rooster touched his neatly groomed sideburns and said in a soft, delicate voice, "An apprentice is worth such a lavish payment? You even invited me all the way from Kaifeng Prefecture."
"I pay, you work. I've told you everything you need to know, so don't ask about the rest," Cloud Goat said calmly.
"Fine. I guarantee you'll be satisfied. In a dream, I decide what can be done." Dream Rooster laughed shrilly, and Bright Rabbit couldn't help rubbing the goosebumps on her arms.
Cloud Goat asked curiously, "There's something I've always wondered. Why do you dare openly reveal the path you cultivate? Aren't you afraid of bringing trouble down on yourself?"
Dream Rooster smiled. "The chief eunuch said I'm the only one in the world who cultivates this path. What trouble could I bring down on myself?"
He sat cross-legged on the ground and took a sheet of yellow talisman paper from his robes.
Dream Rooster bit his finger and used the blood to write and draw on the talisman. Finally, he wrapped a lock of hair in it and swallowed it!
In an instant, Dream Rooster's pupils rolled upward, leaving only the whites of his eyes visible!
Chen Ji did not return to his room to rest. Instead, he quietly lit an oil-residue lamp in the medical hall's main room and silently leafed through the "General Outline of Medicine."
The six hundred and eighteen acupoints along the twelve primary meridians of the human body alone were difficult to memorize.
It was as though he had returned to a classroom on a hot summer day, with piles of test papers and books before him and the clear sound of students reading aloud in his ears. Memories of studying were among the deepest memories of almost every student's youth, rumbling on as the sun rose and fell.
At that moment, Chen Ji wished he had a copy of "Five Years of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Three Years of Practice Tests" in front of him.
As he studied, he suddenly felt sleepiness wash over him. It was as though, in a mild season, his whole body were wrapped in warm seawater, carried drifting toward the depths of the ocean.
Chen Ji grew wary. Ever since he had lit four furnace fires inside his body, he had been full of vigor. This sleepiness had come for no reason.
But no matter how wary he was, his eyelids slowly closed all the same.
After an unknown length of time, Chen Ji opened his eyes in a dream. He found himself standing before the vermilion gates of Zhou Chengyi's residence.
Huh? What had he come to do?
Chen Ji looked at the packet of medicine in his hand, wrapped in yellow hemp paper and marked "Taiping Medical Hall." Then he looked up at the plaque reading "Zhou Residence."
Right, he had come to deliver a tonic to Lord Zhou.
Knock, knock, knock. Chen Ji picked up the bronze ring and rapped it against the gate. Everything seemed perfectly natural; he had forgotten this was a dream.
With a creak, the vermilion gate opened, revealing Steward Wang greeting him with a smile. "Young Doctor Chen is here? Please, come in."
"Where is Lord Zhou? I've brought the medicinal ingredients he wanted." Chen Ji followed Steward Wang inside, and the gate slowly closed behind them.
Chen Ji looked around. A maid was wiping down the rosewood furniture in the main room. In the courtyard, a smiling woman held a little girl in her arms, while a little boy beside her kicked a feathered shuttlecock.
Steward Wang led him into the main room. Chen Ji felt that the place was particularly familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had seen it.
Zhou Chengyi was sitting behind a desk, copying out a book with a brush in hand. When he saw Chen Ji arrive, he dismissed the steward and the maid.
Chen Ji placed the packet of medicine on the desk. "Lord Zhou, here is your medicine."
Zhou Chengyi looked up and suddenly asked, "Does Prince Jing have any new information to pass on to me?"
Chen Ji froze for a moment. "Lord Zhou, what are you talking about?"
Zhou Chengyi's voice grew dark. "Have you forgotten? You and I are spies sent south by the Jing Dynasty's Military Intelligence Directorate. I'm responsible for contacting the Liu Family, and you're responsible for contacting Prince Jing! I'll ask you again: is there any new information from Prince Jing?"
Chen Ji frowned without answering, thoughts racing through his mind.
Zhou Chengyi kept asking, over and over, "Have you forgotten who you are?"
"Have you forgotten how our Jing Dynasty's Military Intelligence Directorate trained you?"
Zhou Chengyi's voice grew louder and more piercing. "Have you forgotten that you're a spy?"
The relentless questions bored into Chen Ji's ears like demonic sounds, leaving his head swimming. He felt as if his mind were being controlled, and his eyes rolled upward involuntarily.
The next moment, only the whites of Chen Ji's eyes remained visible. He answered, "Lord Zhou, haven't you misunderstood? I'm not a spy!"
A satisfied smile appeared on Zhou Chengyi's face. He had obtained the answer he wanted and could go to Cloud Goat to complete the deal.
But then his curiosity was piqued. "How did you meet Cloud Goat?"
As the words fell, Chen Ji felt the four furnace fires in his dantian blaze up, burning away all the monsters and demons inside his body!
Oblivious, Zhou Chengyi rose, braced both hands on the desk, and leaned forward. "Why does Cloud Goat suspect you're a Jing Dynasty spy? And what's so special about you that Cloud Goat didn't kill you outright?"
That last question was no longer spoken in Zhou Chengyi's original voice, but in a high-pitched one.
At that moment, Chen Ji's pupils rolled back into view, and he turned to walk out!
"Zhou Chengyi" stared in astonishment as Chen Ji turned and walked out, proceeding to the vermilion gate as though no one else were there. He yanked it open.
When the gate swung wide, "Zhou Chengyi" saw Cloud Goat and Bright Rabbit standing outside with amused smiles. He exclaimed in shock, "Huh? Cloud Goat, Bright Rabbit, how did you get into my dream?"
Wait!
No!
"Zhou Chengyi" realized clearly that Cloud Goat and Bright Rabbit couldn't possibly invade his dream, and he had never conjured them up in it...
The Cloud Goat and Bright Rabbit before him had been conjured up in the dream by that apprentice, Chen Ji!
The dream was no longer entirely under his control!
After thinking for a moment, Chen Ji pointed at "Zhou Chengyi" and said to Cloud Goat and Bright Rabbit, "Lord Cloud Goat, Lady Bright Rabbit, Zhou Chengyi is a Jing Dynasty spy, beyond any doubt!"
Cloud Goat asked with interest, "Do you have proof?"
Chen Ji said with conviction, "Does the Secret Intelligence Directorate need proof to arrest a spy? Just stab him and be done with it!"
Watching Cloud Goat and Bright Rabbit pounce at him, "Zhou Chengyi" roared, "Wait... Ah!"