Chapter 215: Cicada's Wing

Inside the hall room, Su Zhou sat weakly on the bed couch. Xiao Man hid behind Chen Ji, peeking out her head. In the dim flickering candlelight, the shadows of the three people constantly shifted, just like their thoughts, shaking non-stop.

Chen Ji instructed Xiao Man:"You stay inside the room, I'll go and come back."

Xiao Man pulled his sleeve and said in a low voice:"Young master, this woman is too fierce, I'll go with you!"

Chen Ji comforted her:"You watch the door carefully, don't let anyone else come in."

Xiao Man:"Oh..."

Su Zhou looked coldly at Chen Ji:"I advise you not to have any wicked thoughts, otherwise your entire Chen family, from top to bottom, will die."

Chen Ji said slowly:"Rest assured, I'm going to get some things to heal you."

With that, he turned and went out the door. After closing the two wooden doors of the hall room, he headed towards the courtyard outside.

Xiao Man said anxiously behind him:"Young master, go quickly and come back quickly. I'm a bit scared being alone with this woman."

Chen Ji raised his eyebrows but did not turn back.

The moment the door closed, Xiao Man stood up straight, the panic on her face also somewhat restrained.

She pushed the door open a crack as if nothing had happened, quietly looking outside. She casually said to Su Zhou behind her:"You fierce woman are definitely mistaken. My young master is absolutely not someone who would betray Jing Wang. This afternoon at the Zhang family, young master already proved it..."

Before her words were finished, Xiao Man turned her head only to discover that Su Zhou had already come up behind her like a ghost.

Xiao Man chopped towards Su Zhou with her fingers like a knife, but Su Zhou's body was like a slippery fish that doesn't stick to mud. She actually stuck to the chopping arm and flashed behind Xiao Man.

The Emei thorn pressed against Xiao Man's lower jaw again. With a slight movement, the poisoned Emei thorn would nail into her chin.

Xiao Man suddenly let out a surprised cry:"You let go of me, we'll go out and find a place to fight."

Su Zhou said in a low voice:"Don't shout, otherwise I'll kill you too."

She observed Chen Ji through the door crack. Seeing that Chen Ji talked with the soldiers from the Bingma Si for a moment and that no one came in to capture her, she slightly relaxed.

Xiao Man mumbled:"Are you relieved now? My young master will definitely not betray you, nor will he betray Jing Wang."

Su Zhou said deeply:"Knowing a person's face doesn't mean knowing their heart. Even brothers who have been by Wang Ye's side for many years can betray Wang Ye, so why can't he?"

Xiao Man said helplessly:"My young master isn't that kind of person. He hasn't been willing to kill even one chicken since he was little. Before, he raised two little chicks, and when one accidentally died, he cried for a long time. He's very kind."

Su Zhou laughed coldly:"People change. Everyone in the Jianghu says that he is very close to the county master's heir apparent, but I see that the Jing Wang mansion is already in great trouble, and he isn't sad at all. This still doesn't prove that he betrayed Wang Ye?"

Xiao Man looked at Chen Ji's distant retreating figure outside the door crack. After a long silence, she said:"He's very sad, he just doesn't want others to see that he's sad, but I can see it."

Su Zhou snorted and laughed:"You're his belly's roundworm."

Xiao Man was silent for a moment, then said calmly:"Hey, we're all working under the same supervisor master. I saved you with good intentions, you shouldn't be ungrateful. You've put your Emei thorn against my neck twice. What, you can't really kill me, can you?"

The candlelight in the room stagnated for an instant, and the atmosphere turned icy cold. Even the charcoal basin in the room seemed somewhat grayish.

Su Zhou said calmly:"You're just a seventh-rank Candle Attendant, yet you dare to speak to me like this."

Xiao Man opened her mouth:"I... I just don't have your heavy killing nature, and I don't like killing people, so I can't be promoted. Oh right, I saved you this time, and you still haven't given me the copper coin."

Su Zhou thought for a moment, slowly put down the Emei thorn, and took out a copper coin from her sleeve, throwing it into Xiao Man's arms.

Xiao Man picked up the copper coin and examined it carefully, only to see that the characters engraved on the copper coin were not 'Jia Ning Tong Bao', but the two characters 'Deng Huo':"So this is a Deng Huo copper coin. Can it really be exchanged for two hundred taels of silver?"

Seeing her appearance, Su Zhou doubted:"You haven't seen a copper coin."

Xiao Man stiffened her neck:"Who says I haven't seen one? Haven't I seen one now?"

Su Zhou doubted even more:"You really haven't seen a Deng Huo copper coin? Could it be that you haven't taken on a single mission before? Who exactly led you into Deng Huo?"

Xiao Man pouted:"Who are you? Why should I tell you? Oh right, the supervisor master hasn't said why we're called 'Deng'."

Su Zhou sighed:"How can you not know anything? 'Deng' implies 'home'. When returning home, if there is a lamp at home, it means there are people at home. 'Deng Huo' is to give us people with no home to return to a home."

Xiao Man lowered her head and put the copper coin into her waist pouch:"That's not necessary. All of you have no home, but I have one."

Su Zhou:"..."

After the bustle in the market.

Xiao Man put away the copper coin and warned:"Saving you is saving you, but I must warn you not to hurt my young master, not to expose my identity, and not to put the Emei thorn against me again... Hey you!"

Xiao Man's words were not finished, but Su Zhou had already fainted to the ground.

When Chen Ji returned, he was still carrying two red lacquer food boxes in his hand.

Outside the gate of Ming Quan Yuan, six Bingma Si soldiers were holding torches. Chen Ji handed the food boxes to them:"Generals, it's not easy to come out on duty in this cold wind. I instructed the back kitchen to prepare some food for you all. Eat it quickly while it's hot."

The Bingma Si soldiers were flattered:"Third young master is too polite. How could we trouble you to remember about food?"

Although Chen Ji was the illegitimate son of the Chen family, to these soldiers he was already a high and mighty figure, someone they couldn't reach even by standing on tiptoes.

Chen Ji smiled and asked casually:"Oh right, since so many of you are here to guard the Chen family, how is the matter of catching people being handled?"

The leading soldier at the gate said with a sigh:"We Lo City Bingma Si know exactly how much we're capable of. The proper matters of catching people still need the Xuanjing Si to do."

Chen Ji asked carelessly:"Are there any clues at the scene of the incident?"

The soldiers answered with a smile:"You asked the right person. Several of us were the first to rush there. Xing Lo Street was covered in blood. The Qiannian Army soldiers were killed until only one was left, and General Wang's chest was already stabbed into a sieve."

Chen Ji gasped:"So many people killed, how many criminals are there?"

The soldiers said casually:"Listening to the Living Yan Wang of the Xuanjing Si say, there are a total of two criminals, one is a female assassin from Deng, and there is also an accomplice driving spirits."

Chen Ji asked with a smile:"Since the Xuanjing Si is taking action, presumably they will certainly catch them. Has the Xuanjing Si said how to catch them, and when can they catch them? After all, such fierce people roaming free still make people quite afraid."

"Third young master, there's no need to be afraid, we brothers are guarding you," one soldier said with a simple and honest laugh:"The Xuanjing Si is going to search all the medical halls in the city now. It is said that the female assassin was severely injured, and if she doesn't receive timely treatment, she might not survive."

Chen Ji said 'Mm' and entered Ming Quan Yuan with a smile:"Big brothers, you've worked hard. I'll go back to rest first."

Several soldiers hurriedly nodded and bowed:"Thank you, third young master. You go back and rest quickly."

Chen Ji fastened the bolt of the courtyard door and returned to the room.

Su Zhou was just lying on the bed couch unconscious. When Xiao Man saw him return, she hurriedly came forward, still frightened and unsettled, saying:"Young master was gone for a long time. I was in the same room with this fierce woman, and I was almost scared to death."

Chen Ji smiled and didn't take her words to heart.

The strangest part of tonight's matter was how Su Zhou could accurately find his room on the escape route.

Finding the Chen family wasn't difficult, but how could a female assassin who had just arrived in Lo City and was alone accurately find his location within the Chen family?

Both Su Zhou and Xiao Man treated him as an ordinary person, thinking he was easy to deceive.

Chen Ji didn't expose them either, quietly watching what exactly they wanted to do.

He took out a palm-sized white porcelain bottle and a needle and thread box from his embrace, handing them both to Xiao Man:"Inside the white porcelain bottle is the mansion's strongest Bai Gan wine. Use it to clean the wound on the person on the bed, and the wound won't fester."

Xiao Man looked at the needle and thread box:"This is..."

Chen Ji glanced at Su Zhou's knife and sword wounds:"Roast the needle on the charcoal basin. After roasting, sew her wound like sewing clothes. As for whether she can endure it, that depends on her own luck."

Xiao Man's eyes widened:"Pouring strong wine on a wound mouth I've indeed heard of, but this using needle and thread to sew human skin, did young master learn it in a medical hall? Why have I never heard of it before?"

Chen Ji said 'Mm':"Learned it in a medical hall, it's useful."

Sewing the wound can avoid secondary infection, and flesh buds can grow and heal in about ten days. If it's not sewn, it might not heal for one or two months.

Chen Ji exited the room, letting Xiao Man administer aid.

He sat by the stone table in the middle of the courtyard, quietly looking at his palm.

The next moment, he closed his palm. When he opened it again, there was already a black 'sword seed' suspended in his palm.

The black sword seed was like a piece of bamboo leaf, without a sword handle or a sword guard, thin like a cicada's wing.

Chen Ji stroked it with the belly of his finger. The surface was rough, as if cast from black iron, and even the edges were not smooth and flat. No matter how he looked at it, it didn't seem very stylish.

He pondered in his heart:"Why is Xuanyuan's sword seed colorful and flowing, shuttling like a star? While my sword seed looks just like an inconspicuous piece of iron... is it because I haven't seized enough swords, or because I haven't nurtured it long enough?"

Chen Ji tried to control the sword seed with his thoughts, but the black iron piece swayed unsteadily in front of him, always a bit disobedient, and the speed didn't pick up.

In an instant, he simply controlled the sword seed to rush towards the wintersweet tree in the courtyard.

His original intention was to pierce through a single leaf, but when the sword seed reached the wintersweet tree, it deviated by several inches.

With a 'zhi' sound, a wintersweet branch as thick as two fingers broke with a snap. By the time the sword seed returned to Chen Ji's palm, it was intact and undamaged.

Chen Ji walked forward, raising his head to look at the smooth and flat wintersweet branch stem, as if he had just cut a piece of tofu, not a wooden branch.

He lowered his head to examine the sword seed. His cultivation of the sword seed path had finally entered the door and was no longer an outsider.

He just didn't know how many more sword intents he would need to seize and how many people he would need to kill to achieve his goal.

With a 'zhi ya' sound, the door of the hall room was pushed open. Chen Ji flipped his hand and retracted the sword seed into his sleeve, asking as if nothing had happened:"What happened?"

Xiao Man suspiciously sized him up for a moment, then said:"The wound is all sewn up. Come in."