Book 14: Chapter 87
Night
“Present? Why didn’t you respond?”
“That dimwit Chen Lin annoyed me, so I was distracted.”
Although the commander could sympathise, he still cursed under his breath. Their entire squad ran around all night only to run into two naked men. Should he have not been annoyed at Chen Lin for not choosing a better time?
The commander resumed roll call and then after giving out instructions, stressed, “Stay sharp and don’t slack. If you mess up tonight, you’ll have my blade for breakfast.” Right after, he used needing medical attention for an old injury to rush off with hare feet.
The commander accepted 1520 silver taels from Wang Zhenyun to assist him on the nights of the imperial exams, but he now regretted accepting the offer. He thought it’d be an easy job since he couldn’t imagine scholars causing a big mess; never did he imagine he’d chance upon Young Master Feng’s big secret. To make matters worse, he foolishly obeyed Wang Zhenyun’s instruction to move Chen Lin. If Chen Lin was truly Young Master Feng’s romantic partner, not even offering their heads would be enough to appease Young Master Feng. As if he was going to stick around for an extra second.
It went without saying that the absence of the commander was a wish come true for Ming Feizhen. He didn’t have to worry about anyone finding out he wasn’t in his exam room for he was the very person assigned to that zone. The arrangement was no coincidence. As soon as the others realised that they also discovered Young Master Feng’s secret, they reacted the same way as their commander. They couldn’t have been happier to hear foolish Jia Ren was willing to take charge of the area. For that reason, there were no guards within the vicinity of Ming Feizhen’s column.
Ming Feizhen picked a spot to sit down, wrapped his arm around a broadsword and reviewed what happened.
One of the assassins was a brainwashed imperial guard of Yan Liren. One of them was Jia Ren, the imperial guard he was now posing as. Ming Feizhen didn’t know where the real Jia Ren was because he pulled the face of the assassin straight off to use as a mask. Considering Jia Ren’s skills with a broadsword, Ming Feizhen would’ve perished had it not been for his modified shuttle. As for the archer, he had evidently trained to an accomplished level in his internal and external training based on the fact that he pierced the tile without making much nose. Thus, he was the most advanced martial artist among the three assassins. Due to the fourth assassin disappearing before he could take action, Ming Feizhen couldn’t determine exactly how many assassins were at the exam venue.
Three hundred imperial guards were stationed at the exam venue. There couldn’t have possibly been more than thirty assassins because it’d no longer be an assassination if they exceeded 10% of the total imperial guards. At that point, they might as well have walked straight up to Ming Feizhen and gutted him without any regard for stealth.
The guards outside the imperial city weren’t particularly strict, but that wasn’t to say that it was easy to sneak past them. The fact that so many people could sneak in at once indicated that the central command group – majority of members of Hanlin Academy with the highest authority – were likely under Yan Liren’s control already. They were an easy and ideal group to target; they couldn’t fight, and they held authority. This wasn’t the root of the problem, though.
Yan Liren shouldn’t have had such a formidable assistant. Given the upheaval in the capital, he shouldn’t have been able to recruit such capable assassins on the spot. Moreover, there was another faction that had infiltrated the exam venue for another purpose besides avenging Yan Liren’s son.
“Motherflipper…”
There was still one more day to go until the end of the imperial exams. Wang Zhenyun was hellbent on sabotaging Ming Feizhen. Ming Feizhen hadn’t completed his exam, which would come back to bite him if he didn’t complete it; he’d be in trouble with His Majesty, and, even if he could get out of it, there were still more problems he couldn’t explain. How was he going to explain how he single-handedly took out numerous assassins when he couldn’t fight well? Tell them he had befriended a band of criminals?
Hence, rather than wait around, Ming Feizhen decided the best course of action was to try and find out who the people after him were.
***
The archer zipped through the palace doors and shut the door.
“You got hurt?” questioned the person in the darkness.
The middle-aged man checked around and then pulled the archer in between the two rows of bookshelves for cover.
The abandoned palace in the Imperial Library was reserved for miscellaneous items that didn’t belong anywhere else, but it had now become a hiding spot for assassins.
The man used his tools to remove the needle in the archer, applied herbs and wrapped up the injury proficiently. “How did you get hurt?”
Once he caught his breath, the archer answered, “He… used the trajectory of my arrow. Before I could move after shooting my arrow, he caught me… What weapon did he use?”
The archer glued his brows together when he saw the weapon the doctor held up. “A shuttle?”
The two of them looked up at each other and saw each other’s wide eyes.
An arrow could hit with enormous force thanks to the string system, and its force could be multiplied even from afar through adding internal energy. A shuttle, on the other hand, was a hidden weapon that was designed for convenience. As such, it was faster to operate than bow and arrows, but it lacked the same force capacity, yet there was undeniable proof before them that it could.
It was difficult to track down an archer based on the trajectory of an arrow, but the amount of internal energy needed to shoot a shuttle the same distance and still inflict serious harm was unthinkable.
“Is he… even human?”
The doctor shook his head. “Don’t take it to heart. There’s still one more day. There are still nine of us. We can definitely kill him.”
The archer nodded, then shook his head. “No… There aren’t just nine of us. There’s another group, as well.”
“Yan Liren? He’s on our side…”
“No. I monitored the situation for a long time from the roof. While I failed to kill Ming Feizhen, I saw a myriad of other things… We are not the only ones targeting Ming Feizhen.”