Chapter 136 Black Jade
In the dim room, Chen Ji slowly opened his eyes.

The doors and windows of the dark room were closed, and the moon could only cast a hazy light and shadow through the white paper window.

He heard the light footsteps outside the door gradually fading away, and finally going downstairs.

Chen Ji lay flat on the bunk bed, slowly put the dagger back into his sleeve, and breathed a sigh of relief: at least those guests with knives were not here to assassinate them.

No wonder an old hand like Prince Jing didn't notice the problem with this inn. No wonder Prince Jing went on a secret tour even when he was ill. It turned out that everything was for the meeting tonight.

But Chen Ji's heart suddenly became anxious again: Who was meeting with Prince Jing? What did the other party want to discuss with Prince Jing?
rebellion!

Apart from this, Chen Ji couldn't think of anything else that would require a powerful vassal to come to a small county town under an assumed name and keep a meeting so secret.

He sighed in his heart, thinking it was a rebellion.

Once involved in such an incident, the fate of the entire Jing family would be uncertain. Take the Ningshi as an example. Civil officials who disobeyed the emperor might still have a chance to survive, but the princes had no chance at all. Some princes were put into steamers and steamed to death, while others were locked in their rooms and starved to death. There were all kinds of strange and cruel ways of death.

If this fails, the Crown Prince, Baili...

However, Chen Ji was more puzzled now, who exactly did Prince Jing want to see, Liu Gun, the elder Liu? Or... the chief of the Military Intelligence Department of Jing Dynasty!

He let out a long breath, slowly sat up, and looked at all the tenants carefully.

Mr. Wang, the prince and the others were exhausted from the long journey and had fallen asleep early. The other tenants slept very soundly, snoring loudly.

Chen Ji sat on the bunk bed and hesitated for a moment. Finally, he got up quietly, walked to the window quietly, opened the window a little and looked out.

He didn't dare open the gap wider and could only scan the yard through the gap from different angles.

Outside the window was the backyard, where a horse-drawn carriage, several ox-drawn carts, and boxes of goods were parked.

Several men in black were scattered in the yard, guarding something obscurely.

Chen Ji looked to the side and saw a man in a black robe standing quietly under the thatched eaves of the stable, waiting calmly.

This is the person Prince Jing wants to see!
Chen Ji changed his angle and tried to see the man's face clearly, but his upper body was blocked by the eaves of the thatched hut, so he couldn't see his face at all, and couldn't tell his age.

At this time, a faint light was reflected from the waist of the man in black robe. It was a jade pendant.

As the ancients said, a gentleman will never leave his jade without a reason.

Ordinary scholars and officials would wear jade around their waists, but the jade that most people wear is either white or green, but this person wears a black jade!
The saying "a gentleman is like jade" has always been used to describe a gentleman's noble character. What kind of person would wear a piece of black jade?

While thinking, Prince Jing followed a man in black out of the inn and came to the stable.

Prince Jing stood tall and straight, and the man under the stable was neither humble nor overbearing, with no intention of greeting. The two spoke in very low voices, and Chen Ji couldn't hear a word from the second floor.

In the yard, a man in black casually glanced at the window on the second floor. Chen Ji was startled and leaned back slightly to avoid being discovered by the other party.

Through the gap, he saw that the other party did not react after his eyes swept over him, but just looked around other places in the yard as if nothing had happened.

Chen Ji breathed a sigh of relief.

However, the next moment, he felt something was wrong... one of the men in black in the yard was missing!
Chen Ji retreated quickly without hesitation and lay down on his bunk to take a nap.

After just a few breaths, he heard the wooden door of the dormitory creak and be slowly pushed open.

A man in black, holding a long knife, looked around the room with a serious expression. Seeing that everyone was asleep, he leaned over and observed everyone's eyelids in the dim moonlight.

If a person is not asleep, his eyelids will twitch uncontrollably, and it is absolutely impossible to disguise it.

Chen Ji didn't expect that the followers brought by the black-robed man downstairs were so alert that they could detect something unusual when the window was just slightly opened.

Not only that, after the other party noticed something unusual, he did not make a fuss, but calmly and quietly signaled someone to go upstairs to check... Chen Ji didn't even know when the other party passed the message to his colleagues.

The man in black held the long knife around Chen Wenzong's neck, leaned over and stared quietly at Chen Wenzong's eyelids. If there was any movement, the blade would probably cut Chen Wenzong's artery immediately.

After dozens of breaths, the man in black slowly stood up, moved a step to the right, and leaned in front of Chen Wenxiao to repeat what he had just done.

The other party was extremely serious and focused, and did not intend to let go of any suspicious person.

Time passed by little by little, and seeing that there were two or three more people who would find Chen Ji, Chen Ji immediately controlled the ice flow in his body to spread out from his dantian, pulling himself into the dark sea of ​​clouds and the green mountains. After a while, the man in black leaned over to check on Chen Ji, and the cold knife stopped at Chen Ji's neck, as if it would fall at any time.

However, Chen Ji's eyelids did not move, and there was nothing unusual.

After dozens of breaths, the man in black felt relieved and then checked the prince beside him.

There were more than ten people sleeping in the room, and not a single one was missed.

After the entire check was completed, the man in black, holding a knife, quietly backed out of the house.

He whispered to his colleague who was waiting outside the door, "They are all asleep. Did you see it wrong just now?"

Another person looked puzzled: "I clearly remember that the windows on the second floor were originally closed tightly, but now that window is open a crack. Besides, who would sleep with the window open in this cold winter?"

"That's right," the black-clothed man in charge of the inspection whispered, "How about killing them all? The news that Prince Jing will meet with you tonight must not be leaked!"

The other person narrowed his eyes slightly and said, "I can't make the decision on this matter. You stay here and I will go ask Prince Jing. No, you can't ask Prince Jing, you have to ask the adults alone."

……

……

The rooster crowed.

The prince patted Chen Ji beside him and said, "Hey, wake up. How come you can sleep more than me?"

Chen Ji opened his eyes and immediately looked at where Prince Jing was lying. He saw Prince Jing had just stood up and was saying with a smile, "We have to leave quickly, otherwise we won't be able to get to Luhun Villa before dark."

Prince Jing showed no strange expression, as if everything that happened last night was just a dream of Chen Ji. But the black-clothed man was real, and Chen Ji was chased by Feng Huai all night on the green mountain.

Is the crisis over?

Have the people who came to see Prince Jing left?
Chen Ji had no idea. He didn't know what happened after he fell asleep, but it seemed that he had muddled through it.

He stood up, went downstairs with the prince, squatted in the yard, broke a willow branch, and brushed his teeth clean.

While brushing, Prince Jing squatted beside him without any airs and asked casually: "Did you sleep well last night?"

The prince said helplessly: "Dad, this inn is terribly cold, and the bedding stinks. If you didn't insist on hiding your identity, we could live in the manor of the palace, and there would be people waiting to burn charcoal for warmth."

"You should go out and suffer every year, so that you can know how the people live," Prince Jing scolded with a smile, then turned to ask Chen Ji: "How about you, how did you sleep?"

Chen Ji smiled and replied, "Not bad, I sleep soundly, it doesn't matter where I am."

Prince Jing said, "That's good."

At this time, Princess Baili and Zhang Xia actually walked out of the inn hand in hand, and did not separate until they entered the backyard.

Zhang Xia said to Bai Li, "Wait a moment. I'll go to the shopkeeper to get you some willow branches and green salt."

Bai Li smiled and said, "Okay."

When Zhang Xia rushed to the front hall, the prince looked at Bai Li and was inexplicably shocked: "You two were so incompatible before you entered the house yesterday, how come you are holding hands so early in the morning?!"

Bai Li smiled and said, "We talked until midnight last night, and I found that Zhang Xia is actually a good person, but he is a little too straightforward and not as domineering as I imagined."

The prince sighed: "You girls' emotions are like the wind, they come quickly and go away quickly!"

Bai Li glanced at him and said, "Don't ask too much about girls' affairs."

Prince Jing stood up, threw away the willow branches, put his straw hat back on his head, and said casually, "After washing up, hurry out. We still have to hurry on our way."

"Okay," the prince replied.

When the sky was bright, everyone got on the ox cart and swayed towards Luhun Villa.

Chen Ji looked around silently, and found that when the ox cart was moving, several young men dressed as scholars carried boxes on their backs and followed behind the ox cart, talking and laughing, neither getting closer nor going far away.

(End of this chapter)