CH 55

TL: Hua

“Captain, who is that? Why was he in His Majesty’s study…”

After walking a certain distance, the team members behind Chen Man relaxed, walked quickly to keep up with her pace, and asked curiously.

Chen Man pondered for a moment and then shook her head. She had never met the young man during her tenure at the palace. At that time, she just chose the safest title after seeing that he could freely enter and exit the study.

Just when the atmosphere was about to fall into silence again, one of the beastmen in the patrol team, who usually had frequent spiritual sea fluctuations, scratched his head and interjected in a somewhat uncertain tone: “I feel that he looks a lot like a mermaid anchor I saw recently….”

At that time, Chen Man was the only one who talked face-to-face with the other party. The dazzling light behind the young man made his figure a little blurred in their eyes, so she was not sure if she had recognized the wrong person in her glimpse.

“When you put it that way, I also feel a bit like…” Chen Man recalled the unique silver hair and said so with some hesitation.

But immediately, she stopped in her tracks, and her sharp eyes swept over the team members behind her who had pricked up their ears and listened attentively to the gossip: “Unless I get a clear signal from His Majesty or His Highness, everything that happened tonight should never be divulged. I don’t want the traitor I’m carrying to become any of you one day, understand?”

“Yes!”

A dozen or so of the team members who had just relaxed their posture instantly corrected their expression and replied in a loud voice.

“Hmm… help me, help…”

Awakened by these dozens of voices ringing in the ear, the person in Chen Man’s hand groaned, and before he opened his eyes, he begged for mercy with an ambiguous tone and a painfully distorted face.

Glancing at him in disgust, Chen Man opened the door leading to the dungeon, and after finding a suitable cell, she opened the door and cursed angrily: “How dare you make trouble in the palace?! This sister has to work overtime and almost loses her job! Help you? I’ll help your death ass!”

After fastening the shackles fixed on the wall in the cell to the traitor, Chen Man pulled his head back to observe his face. After confirming that he would not die in a short time, she locked the cell door and took the team members back to the study to stand by.

In the study, Ji Mingjiang was leisurely leaning against the wall—the corner of the wall where Zhang Cheng was cowering at—he was in stark contrast to Zhang Cheng, who was shaking like he was about to shake off the wall.

“Relax, your fate is different from theirs; after all, we didn’t lump you together with them.”

After glancing at Clarice, who was expressionless, and then nodding to the next person, Ji Mingjiang comforted him very carelessly.

He didn’t care in the slightest about the way Zhang Cheng’s breath stuttered in shock at his offhand comfort.

“Ten seconds, who contacted you back then?”

In the tense and oppressive atmosphere created by the quick Q&A, the recorder twirled between Leiden’s fingers and pointed to the last person, who was also the highest-ranking patrol captain in the group.

“Yes…it’s Director Yang’s deputy, Zhou Hu. He contacted me a week ago and then suddenly sent me a sum of money the day before yesterday.”

With Ji Mingjiang’s feat of crushing the first person’s wrist with one hand and the other people saying anything they knew in order to stay alive, the patrol captain who was accused almost did not hesitate to surrender Zhou Hu.

After getting the answer he wanted, Ji Mingjiang and Clarice looked at each other, knocked out several guards one by one who were relieved that they had been pardoned, and handed them over to Chen Man and her team, who were waiting outside the study.

Back in the study room again, there were only Zhang Cheng, who didn’t dare to move, and Menguse Hollimawi, who had just woken up not long ago.

“I can’t believe he’s only waking up now. If you were to use a little more force, he could have avoided waking up again, right?” Seeing that Menguse Hollimawi had clearly not yet woken up, Ji Mingjiang complained unceremoniously.

“Speaking of which, how would you deal with those people? Kill them directly?”

Finding that Clarice did not specifically explain to Chen Man the different ways in which these people would be handled, Ji Mingjiang glanced at Zhang Cheng, who had unexpectedly and strangely relaxed after hearing the keyword, and tugged at the corner of his mouth, asking curiously.

“I won’t go as far as to kill them. There are a few mining stars that are still short of labor, so we can break them up and distribute them one by one.”

Grabbing Menguse Hollimawi, who reacted by trying to run out with one hand, Leiden answered Ji Mingjiang’s question while using his other hand to pull out his communicator to tell someone to go to Zhou Hu’s house and capture him. Yang Weiguang should be there as well, and if possible, he should also be captured.

Chen Yuanchuan, who suddenly received a message from Clarice at night: …

“Okay, now let’s talk about the two of you.” After ruthlessly hanging up the communication, Leiden looked at Menguse Holimawi and the lifeless Zhang Cheng and smiled uncharacteristically.

It’s just that no matter how they look at that smile, it makes the two of them feel cold.

“Be honest, where did you get that tube of potion from? The Empire Research Institute or a private institute?”

…

Half an hour later, Menguse Hollimawi was also thrown into the dungeon by Chen Man, who was waiting at the door, leaving Zhang Cheng with a dazed face in the study.

Ji Mingjiang, who had a grim expression after hearing what Menguse Hollimawi had just confessed, lowered his eyes to look at him for a few moments. Suddenly, a burst of mental power forcefully pierced through Zhang Cheng’s spiritual barrier and integrated into his rainforest-constructed spiritual sea.

The intense pain within his brain, as if his nerves were being pulled and coned, made Zhang Cheng’s face turn pale instantly. He bit the tip of his tongue hard to keep himself awake so that he didn’t pass out directly in Clarice’s study.

“What do you want me to do? Just say it…” After the stinging pain in the spiritual sea gradually turned into a throbbing dull pain, Zhang Cheng tried to calm down his breathing, looked at the calm Ji Mingjiang, and said with a wry smile, “I’m not stupid enough to provoke an emperor and a mermaid who can freely control the spiritual sea for that old bastard, Bisnar Orfeild.”

Although he had never brought other people’s mental power into his own spiritual sea before, seeing how Ji Mingjiang went straight to the protection station after climbing the watchtower as if he had opened his third eye, he had a clear idea of what the mermaid’s mental power could do.

“I know you’re not stupid.” Ji Mingjiang glanced at him lightly and said, “But adding layers of insurance can always make people feel more at ease, and it’s also a protection for you.”

He sneered mockingly, “A man full of such nasty tactics, who knows if he’ll attack your spiritual sea?”

Every minion captured from the enemy camp is very precious. He will feel distressed if he loses one, okay?

“As for what you are going to do…,” Ji Mingjiang and Clarice looked at each other and smiled. “You will continue to be a mercenary for the Orfeild family. If the plan fails this time, they will definitely make another move. I want you to figure out what their purpose is, and then collect the evidence.”

“If possible, by the way, check to see if there is another mermaid locked up in Orfield House.”

Seeing Clarice’s fluttering eyelids, Ji Mingjiang said softly, “After all, this is too similar to that incident you told me about ten years ago, isn’t it?”

Ten years ago, both the emperor and the empress died. Some people took advantage of this chance to cause trouble, and there was chaos in the palace.

Ten years later, Clarice almost had a mental riot. The members of the patrol team in the palace were bribed, and the defenses were in chaos.

Ten years ago, after Clarice settled everything, he found that the mermaid named Kiro had suddenly disappeared.

Ten years later, if Ji Mingjiang’s bug-like existence hadn’t caught everyone off guard, then the same fate would have awaited him.

The two highly related incidents simply make people want to pry open the brains of the person behind them to see what happened.

How did his brain grow to make no progress in the last ten years?

After confirming that Zhang Cheng had memorized his future tasks clearly, Ji Mingjiang picked him up from the ground, took a few steps back, looked up and down, frowned, and looked at Clarice. “Wouldn’t it make you look like too much of a loser to just let him go out of the palace in one piece?”

Zhang Cheng: ?

I suddenly had an ominous premonition.jpg

Ten minutes later, Zhang Cheng limped out of the study door, clutching his arm pierced by the laser gun.

The blood soaked through his black night clothes, dripped out of the cracks of the fingers covering the wound, and dripped onto the ground, leaving a bloody footprint.

Damn, in the future, he would beat up whoever told him that mermaids are fragile, gentle, and kind.

After Zhang Cheng’s figure completely disappeared in the corridor, the cleaning robot in the study lit up and wandered obediently on the ground, cleaned the blood and sweat stains on the floor, and then ran to open the windows and the ventilation system.

For a while, in the study room, there was only the hum of the robot and the whistling of the autumn wind. Ji Mingjiang pulled the chair aside and plopped down on the desk. His shirt was pulled taut upward by the shoulder blades, outlining the mermaid’s tight and powerful waistline.

“You’re really miserable as an emperor.”

Recalling the internal problems of the research institute that Menguse had just confessed, Ji Mingjiang tilted his head and looked at Clarice, who was clearly not in a good mood, and tsked.

Ignoring Clarice, who was staring at him closely after hearing this, Ji Mingjiang mocked his seemingly besieged situation while pulling out the network of relationships he had sorted out tonight from his light brain and sending it to him.

“I found it all in some corners of the forum in Starnet. There must be some gaps in them. You can just use them as a reference for yourself.”

After finishing speaking, Ji Mingjiang paused and said, “Actually, there is no need to use it as a reference. After Zhang Cheng is caught by us tonight, it is basically an open deal.”

“No, it’s still useful.”

What he didn’t expect was that, after reading it, Clarice gave him a surprise look and then put this somewhat messy character relationship diagram into the encrypted folder very seriously.

Ji Mingjiang looked over with some confusion and heard Clarice explain: “You may not have noticed the identities of some people inside, but they are related to several other nobles. It’s very complicated.”

From the establishment of the empire to the present, the marriages between the nobles in order to monopolize resources and consolidate their status have never stopped. After finding an excuse to deal with the Codd family, the resistance of the remaining nobles forced Leiden to give up his idea at the time.

Ji Mingjiang nodded. Seeing that Clarice was still sitting firmly behind the desk and didn’t plan to get up, he yawned and picked up the cloak hanging on the side before going back to sleep. Halfway through the journey, he suddenly remembered something, turned around, and asked, “If your mental riot today was induced ahead of time, does that count as you’ve passed your manic period or not?”

This question was quite unexpected. After carefully feeling the stability of the spiritual sea, Leiden replied, “Yes, it should have passed. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.” Ji Mingjiang shook his head with a relaxed tone and said, “If your mental state is fine, then I plan to go back to my own big pool to broadcast live tomorrow; otherwise, it will be somewhat inconvenient.”